Nine out of 10 marketers say budget constraints are squeezing their paid media programs, yet many are still overlooking one of the biggest drivers of return: what happens after the click. New research from Unbounce and Ascend2 found marketers consistently invest more time and money in targeting, creative, and AI than in the landing pages and post-click experiences that ultimately determine whether paid traffic converts.
The survey of 304 U.S. paid media professionals found a clear disconnect between what marketers believe improves ROI and where they actually invest. While 40% said optimizing destination pages is one of the most effective ways to maximize paid media spend, only 31% invested in landing pages during the past six months. Budgets instead flowed to audience research (40%), AI tools (39%), and ad creative (38%).
The findings suggest that budget pressure isn’t simply forcing marketers to spend less. It’s pushing them toward faster, easier optimizations inside advertising platforms while leaving more resource-intensive post-click work behind.
Budget pressure shifts spending upstream
Budget limitations have become nearly universal. Ninety percent of marketers reported paid media budget or resource constraints, with testing and experimentation the areas most affected. Audience targeting, ad creative, and reporting also took a hit, while nearly half said landing page creation or message matching suffered when resources tightened.
That pattern continued in spending decisions. Audience research, AI tools, and ad creative attracted the largest share of new investment, while landing pages ranked well behind, despite marketers recognizing their importance. The report found that marketers who exceeded their ROI targets invested more evenly across audience research, AI, attribution, testing, and landing pages instead of concentrating resources in a few highly visible areas.
AI followed the same pattern. Eighty-six percent of marketers reported using AI in paid media, and nearly three-quarters said it improved ROI. Most, however, used AI for reporting, audience targeting, platform tools, and ad copy. Just 19% used AI for landing page creation or optimization, even though marketers who outperformed their ROI goals were roughly twice as likely to use AI in those areas.
The click isn’t the problem
Many marketers also undermine their own targeting efforts after earning the click.
More than half of respondents send paid traffic to general website pages rather than campaign-specific landing pages. Twenty-eight percent primarily direct visitors to existing product or category pages, while another 25% direct them to the homepage. Only 24% primarily use dedicated landing pages built for individual campaigns.
The mismatch becomes more apparent when campaign objectives are considered. Forty percent of marketers focused on direct sales send traffic to general product or category pages rather than to destinations built specifically to convert. More than one-quarter of marketers running lead-generation campaigns still send prospects to their homepage.
That strategy appears to carry a cost. Nearly two-thirds of marketers who primarily send paid traffic to their homepage said they are not exceeding their ROI goals, while marketers outperforming their targets were less likely to rely on homepages and more likely to use reusable or campaign-specific landing pages.
Marketers know what works, but don’t prioritize it
The report found marketers understand the value of post-click optimization. Audience targeting ranked first as the most effective way to optimize paid media spend, followed by destination page optimization, ahead of cutting underperforming channels, shifting platforms, or setting spending caps.
Their day-to-day priorities tell a different story.
More than half said audience targeting receives most of their optimization effort, followed by ad creative and bidding strategy. Landing pages and post-conversion experience ranked at the bottom of the list despite being widely viewed as important contributors to ROI.
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The report points to operational constraints rather than strategic disagreement. Team capacity, design and development resources, expertise, maintenance, and software budgets were the biggest obstacles preventing greater use of landing pages. In other words, marketers generally know the post-click experience matters. They often lack the people, time, or resources to improve it.
The strongest-performing teams appear to solve that problem by treating paid media as an end-to-end system rather than a series of disconnected optimizations. Throughout the report, marketers exceeding their ROI targets consistently invested more in landing pages, attribution, testing, and post-conversion improvements, alongside audience targeting, creative, and AI, suggesting that the biggest gains come from strengthening the entire customer journey rather than simply generating more clicks.
The full report can be downloaded here. (Registration required)
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