Brands rethink ‘rented’ audiences as rising CAC pushes owned media back into focus

For years, brands have relied heavily on social platforms and paid media to acquire consumers, with the focus largely centred on driving reach, traffic and new customers. But as customer acquisition costs (CAC) rise and marketers contend with privacy changes and unpredictable platform algorithms, brands are increasingly looking at what happens after the first transaction.

That is putting owned channels such as apps, loyalty programmes, WhatsApp, email, CRM and brand communities back in focus.

For fashion brand Snitch, the change has been driven by the business becoming more mature. Chetan Siyal, CMO, SNITCH, says the brand continues to invest heavily in paid media, but the role of CRM and retention has increased as the company has scaled.

“I wouldn’t say we are moving budgets away from paid media. We are still investing heavily there. But the share and importance of CRM and retention has definitely increased as the business has grown,” said Siyal.

The brand is consequently putting greater emphasis on its app, WhatsApp, email, CRM and loyalty programmes. Siyal says the focus is also on connecting these consumer touchpoints better as Snitch's offline presence grows.

For the brand, the rationale is closely tied to what happens after a customer has already been acquired. Instead of repeatedly relying on a third-party platform to reach an existing customer, owned channels give Snitch another route to continue the relationship.

He added, “Because once someone has bought from Snitch, I don’t want to keep paying another platform every single time I want to speak to that customer.”

He, however, does not see the shift as being driven by customer acquisition costs alone. According to Siyal, the larger consideration is the value of the relationship after the first transaction. On third-party platforms, brands are effectively accessing an audience they do not control, while their own app, website, WhatsApp and CRM give them a more direct relationship with consumers.

That is also why Snitch does not see owned channels as a replacement for paid media. Third-party platforms remain important for discovery and acquisition, but owned channels are becoming a bigger priority for engagement, personalisation and retention.

The distinction is becoming important as more brands look at the economics beyond the first purchase. While the initial customer may have been acquired through a paid campaign, subsequent interactions can take place through channels that the brand has greater control over.

GoKwik is seeing this change across a much broader consumer base. Chirag Taneja, CEO and co-founder, GoKwik, says brands that were previously focused heavily on paid acquisition are now building out owned consumer journeys alongside their acquisition strategies.

“Brands that were pouring almost everything into paid acquisition three years ago are now building out apps, WhatsApp journeys, loyalty layers and owned checkout experiences with the same intent,” said Taneja.

GoKwik's network covers more than 210 million shoppers, and its data points to WhatsApp as one of the clearest areas where brands are building owned customer journeys. Across 26 billion messages, the company says automated, trigger-based journeys on WhatsApp have seen engagement levels as high as 73.9%, compared with much lower open rates for one-off broadcast campaigns.

Taneja said the higher engagement from trigger-based journeys is encouraging brands to invest more in automated, action-led communication rather than one-off broadcasts. He said this focus is also extending to checkout and post-purchase experiences, which brands are increasingly using as owned touchpoints. Apps are emerging as destinations for high-value customers, while loyalty programmes are moving towards experiential benefits such as early sale access, subscriber pricing and exclusive product drops. Email continues to play a role in high-consideration purchases and lifecycle journeys.

Taneja said rising acquisition costs and growing platform dependence are also driving the shift. According to GoKwik, higher blended CAC is putting pressure on digitally native brands, while repeated reliance on paid platforms effectively means paying to reach the same customer again. Privacy changes and algorithm updates have further added uncertainty to targeting, measurement and ROAS.

He added that brands are increasingly using purchase histories, WhatsApp conversations, quiz responses and other direct consumer data to enable personalised recommendations, restock reminders and pricing.

The company also points to the importance of repeat purchases for the economics of D2C businesses. With initial acquisition costs high, it says profitability depends on increasing customer lifetime value through repeat purchases and engagement through owned channels.

Broader perspective

For agencies, the change is being viewed as something broader than a tactical shift in channel allocation.

Ambika Sharma, Founder and Chief Strategist, Pulp Strategy Communications and Product Architect of NeuroRank, argues that brands have spent years building audiences on platforms where access to those audiences ultimately remains controlled by the platform.

“Brands are done renting reach. For a decade, the audience lived on someone else’s platform, and the terms only got worse. Acquisition costs rose every year. Privacy changes broke the targeting and the measurement that made paid media efficient,” said Sharma.

According to Sharma, the growing interest in apps, loyalty programmes, WhatsApp, email and communities is therefore not simply a return to older marketing channels. She sees it as a move towards assets that brands can build and control, particularly first-party data and direct consumer relationships.

Sharma added that three factors are putting pressure on the old model: rising acquisition costs, changes to privacy and measurement, and declining organic reach. In her view, brands may have built audiences on social platforms but increasingly have to pay to reach those audiences, creating a situation where the audience has been built but the access remains rented.

That is influencing how she sees budget allocation changing. Sharma says brands are gradually reallocating towards owned media rather than simply adding it as another line item. Paid media continues to play its role in acquisition and reach, while owned channels are expected to deliver retention, loyalty and lifetime value.

The distinction is therefore less about paid versus owned and more about what each is expected to accomplish.

Apps and loyalty programmes, according to Sharma, are becoming important anchors because they can bring the customer and the data into one place. WhatsApp is particularly important in India because it allows direct and conversational communication at scale. CRM and first-party data sit underneath these channels, while email continues to be a high-return lifecycle channel. Communities, meanwhile, can help turn customers into advocates.

Sharma also pointed to a second dimension of ownership that is becoming increasingly relevant: the brand narrative itself.

With consumers increasingly encountering brands through search and AI-generated answers before they reach a brand's own website or app, Sharma argues that brands need to pay attention to how they are represented in those environments as well. In her view, the question of ownership is therefore expanding from who controls the customer relationship to who influences what consumers hear about the brand before they engage with it.

For marketers, however, the growing focus on owned channels does not mean paid media is becoming obsolete.

Yasin Hamidani, Director, Media Care Brand Solutions, sees the two areas becoming more interconnected rather than one replacing the other.

Hamidani said, “Owned media isn't replacing paid media; the two are becoming more interconnected. Paid media still plays an important role in discovery and acquisition, while CRM and owned channels are increasingly responsible for retention, repeat purchase and lifetime value.”

According to Hamidani, brands are increasingly investing in WhatsApp automation, loyalty programmes, apps, email CRM and customer data infrastructure. WhatsApp is particularly significant in India because of its scale and immediacy, while apps and loyalty ecosystems tend to attract greater investment from brands with high purchase frequency.

His assessment broadly reflects the way the role of owned media is changing. Paid media remains responsible for bringing consumers into the funnel, but the subsequent stages of the journey are increasingly being handled through CRM and other owned touchpoints.

That makes the relationship between acquisition and retention more important than the choice of any single channel.

For example, a consumer acquired through a paid social campaign may subsequently interact with a brand through WhatsApp, make a repeat purchase through its app, receive a loyalty benefit and continue to engage through email. The different channels may still have separate functions, but they become part of a broader customer relationship.

The growing role of first-party data is central to that model. As brands collect more information directly through purchases, interactions and preferences, they can use those signals to personalise communication and make subsequent engagement more relevant.

For brands, this also changes the way marketing investment can be evaluated. Instead of looking only at the cost of acquiring a customer, the emphasis increasingly shifts towards how much value that customer generates over time.

That is particularly relevant for businesses where repeat purchase is an important part of the model. If the cost of acquiring the first transaction is high, the ability to bring the customer back through a lower-cost owned channel can have a direct impact on the economics of the relationship.

But the sources also make clear that this is not a wholesale migration away from social and paid media. Snitch continues to invest heavily in paid media. GoKwik's view is that brands are building owned journeys alongside acquisition efforts. Sharma sees paid media continuing to perform its role in reach and acquisition, while Hamidani describes paid and owned media as increasingly interconnected.

The emerging picture, therefore, is not one of brands abandoning platforms. Instead, brands are looking to ensure that the relationship created through those platforms does not remain entirely dependent on them.

The shift towards owned channels is consequently less about finding the next alternative to Instagram or performance advertising and more about changing what happens after those channels have done their job.

For brands, the objective is increasingly to turn a customer acquired through paid media into a consumer they can engage directly, retain through their own ecosystem and bring back without having to pay for the same access every time.

In a digital landscape where reach can be bought but relationships take longer to build, owned channels are increasingly being treated as the part of the marketing mix that can compound beyond the initial media spend.