There’s a big difference between being everywhere and being everywhere with purpose. 

Too often, marketers confuse multichannel marketing with an omnichannel strategy. Both involve using multiple platforms—social, search, display, CTV, audio, and more—but only one creates real momentum in what Google calls the Messy Middle of the buying journey. 

In Google’s 2020 Messy Middle study, they found that simply adding more channels didn’t drive significant results. But when marketers aligned their messaging and experiences across channels—omnichannel marketing—they saw up to a 16% lift in conversions. 

That’s not because they added a new ad placement or platform. It’s because the customer journey suddenly made sense. 

The Spaghetti Analogy: Omnichannel vs. Multichannel 

Google likens the Messy Middle to a bowl of spaghetti—a tangled web of exploration and evaluation that consumers navigate before making a purchase decision. But why?: 

• Omnichannel marketing keeps the spaghetti strands connected. It ensures that each touchpoint—be it diverse channels such as a display ad, streaming media like CTV or a pod cast, or a digital out of home (DOOH) placement —is part of a cohesive strategy delivered via a single ad delivery platform. This interconnectedness allows AI and machine learning to activate across channels, providing a deeper view of attribution and enabling more accurate retargeting. 

• Multichannel marketing, on the other hand, is like cutting the spaghetti into pieces and trying to stitch it back together. Each channel operates in a silo, making it challenging to track the customer journey holistically and diminishing the effectiveness of attribution modeling and retargeting efforts. Worse yet, you lose the ability to be in the right place at the right time because the signals between channels are broken. 

Why Omnichannel Matters in the Messy Middle 

In the Messy Middle, people bounce between exploration and evaluation. They stream videos, scroll social feeds, scan reviews, and move to an in-app environment—sometimes within minutes of each other. 

If your brand shows up inconsistently, you’re forgotten. 

But when your CTV ad complements your display message, which is then reinforced through multiple other channels throughout the journey, that’s when your brand becomes the obvious choice. 

Being present is step one. Being aligned with traceable ads across every channel is how you win. 

At MarketStorm, we don’t just help you show up—we help you show up strategically, making every touchpoint work harder by working together. 

If you’re still using a multichannel approach, it might be time to shift. The lift in results is real—and the opportunity in the Messy Middle is too big to ignore.