Above the line vs below the line advertising, explained

Above the line vs below the line is the oldest sorting rule in advertising, and it is an accounting rule rather than a creative one. Above the line means mass media bought through an agency: television, radio, press, outdoor and cinema, aimed at everyone and paid for by the thousand. Below the line means everything aimed at someone in particular: direct mail, sales promotions, sampling, loyalty schemes, point of sale, events and, later, email.

The line itself was drawn in 1954 inside Procter & Gamble, and it separated the bills the company paid to media-commissioned agencies from the bills it paid to everyone else. Seventy years on the commission system is dead, most budgets are spent on channels that sit on both sides at once, and the terms survive mainly as shorthand for brand building versus direct response. This piece explains where the line came from, what sits on each side today, why digital has made it fray, what through the line means, and when each approach earns its money.

Where did the line come from?

For most of the twentieth century advertising agencies were not paid by their clients at all. They were paid by the media, which rebated a standard 15 per cent commission on every page or spot the agency booked, so a £100,000 television campaign earned the agency £15,000 without an invoice ever reaching the advertiser. Promotions, direct mail and sampling had no media to rebate anything, so the suppliers who did that work charged fees instead.

That difference in how the bills arrived is the whole origin of the phrase. In 1954 P&G’s budgeting manual separated communications spend according to how it was paid, with commissioned agency work above a line on the page and fee-based promotional work below it, as Mark Ritson recounted in Marketing Week in June 2020. The American Marketing Association’s dictionary tells the same story, citing Baker and Hart’s The Marketing Book: only the traditional advertising costs made the draft budget, so staff drew a line beneath them and wrote the promotional costs in by hand.

An accident of bookkeeping became an industry structure. Agencies that lived above the line hired the famous creative directors and won the awards; agencies below it, the direct marketing and sales promotion shops, made more of the money and less of the noise. The snobbery ran in one direction for forty years, until the below the line people started measuring things.

What is above the line advertising?

Above the line advertising is communication you cannot address to an individual. You buy an audience of a given size and composition and accept that most of it is not in the market for what you sell this week, on the grounds that being known before the buying moment is what makes the buying moment go your way. It is bought by the thousand, it builds memory and it is hard to attribute to a single sale, which is both its weakness and its point.

The purest British example is the John Lewis Christmas film. In 2015 the retailer spent about £1 million making Man on the Moon and a further £6 million running it, mostly on television, according to the Telegraph. Nobody was targeted and nothing was discounted; the money bought two minutes in the first break of Gogglebox and a nation’s attention. Cadbury’s January 2018 relaunch under VCCP, a £12 million campaign led by the Mum’s Birthday film and posters that showed the glass and a half without the Cadbury name, was above the line in the same way, and we reviewed it here.

Print and outdoor count too, and can be the whole campaign. KFC’s 2018 FCK apology was a single press ad that ran in the newspapers and then everywhere else for free, which is above the line doing the job of a press office.

What is below the line marketing?

Below the line marketing is communication with a name on it, or at least a hand on it. Direct mail, loyalty programmes, coupons, sampling, in-store promotion, sponsorship activation, events and email all reach a chosen person or a chosen moment, and all can be counted: how many redeemed, how many replied, how many bought. It is bought by the response rather than by the thousand.

Tesco Clubcard is the British benchmark. Launched in February 1995 with data partner dunnhumby, it turned a discount into a mailing: every quarter, members received vouchers shaped by what they had actually bought, and the scheme helped carry Tesco past Sainsbury’s to become market leader that same year. It sat beneath the Every Little Helps line that Lowe Howard-Spink had written in 1993, and Creative Review’s history of the slogan treats the card as one of the initiatives the advertising was built to announce.

Merchandise and experiential belong here as well. Aldi’s Kevin the Carrot soft toys, priced at £19.99 in November 2019, produced queues, a two-per-customer limit and reports of shoppers shoving in the aisles, which is a sales promotion doing the work of a second advertising campaign. Cadbury’s Greek Street pop-up in January 2018, where a bar of Dairy Milk could be bought for a button or a trinket, was the Mum’s Birthday film made physical for four days.

Why is the distinction fraying?

Two things killed the line, and neither was a creative decision. The first was money: the 15 per cent commission had been eroding since independent media agencies appeared in the 1970s, and by the 1990s most agencies were on fees, so the bookkeeping difference that created the line no longer existed. The second was the internet, which produced channels that behave like both sides at once.

A YouTube pre-roll is bought by the thousand like television and targeted by the household like direct mail. Paid search is pure response, but a brand’s own name is the keyword most often typed, which is a brand effect being harvested. Retail media puts a display ad on a shelf edge or a checkout page, which is point of sale and mass media in one unit. The AA/WARC Expenditure Report for 2025, published 30 April 2026, put search at 38.3 per cent of a £46.7 billion market and social at 24.7 per cent, with television at 11.2 per cent; the majority of British ad money now sits in channels the line cannot classify.

Ritson’s June 2020 piece was a tribute to Don Schultz, the Northwestern University professor who spent the 1990s arguing for integrated marketing communications, the idea that a customer experiences a brand as one thing and so the brand should plan as one thing. Schultz won. The line survives as a habit of speech, and the useful distinction underneath it has migrated to a different pair of words: brand and activation.

What is through the line marketing?

Through the line, or TTL, is the trade’s name for a campaign built to run on both sides from the start, with one idea expressed in mass media and in the direct, measurable channels beneath it. The best examples make the promotion and the advertising the same object.

Share a Coke is the textbook case. Launched in Australia in October 2011 by Ogilvy Sydney, it replaced the Coca-Cola logo with the country’s 150 most popular first names, then supported the packs with television, radio, outdoor and kiosks printing personalised cans in shopping centres; Campaign Brief records more than 250 million named bottles and cans sold that summer. Britain got it in 2013, and Coca-Cola Great Britain brought it back on 1 May 2025 with QR codes on pack leading to a personalisation hub. The pack is the promotion, the promotion is the ad, and the ad is the pack.

John Lewis did the same in 2014 with Monty the Penguin, a two minute film above the line and a shop’s worth of Monty merchandise, apps and in-store experiences beneath it; our review calls it the Christmas advert that became a shop. The retailer’s IPA Grand Prix paper credits the whole approach with £1,074 million of incremental sales in just over two years.

Above the line vs below the line: the comparison

When should you use which?

The evidence on the split comes from Les Binet and Peter Field’s analysis of the IPA Databank, which found that budgets weighted roughly 60 per cent to brand building and 40 per cent to activation outperformed those tilted heavily either way. Brand building is the old above the line job whatever channel it now runs in; activation is the old below the line job. We set out how that split fits into a plan in our guide to the campaign planning process.

The practical rule is to ask what problem the brand has. If people do not think of you when they need what you sell, no amount of below the line spend will fix it, because there is no demand to harvest. If people know you and do not buy, the problem is usually price, availability or a reason to act now, and that is a promotion, a mailing or a search budget. Most brands have a bit of both, which is why the 60:40 starting point exists.

• Go above the line when awareness or salience is the problem, when the category is large and buyers are light, or when you need to justify a price.
• Go below the line when you can name the buyer, when the product needs a reason to act now, or when you must prove a return within the quarter.
• Plan through the line by default: write the idea once, then decide which parts of it are bought by the thousand and which by the response.
• Do not let the channel that reports fastest set the split. Search and email will always look more efficient, because they harvest demand something else created.
• Measure the two halves differently: share and pricing over years for brand, response and attributed sales over weeks for activation.

Frequently asked

Is digital marketing above the line or below the line?

Both, depending on the buy. A broad online video campaign bought by the thousand is above the line in everything but name, while paid search, retargeting and email are below the line because they address a specific person or intent. This is the main reason the terms have lost their usefulness.

What is the difference between ATL, BTL and TTL?

ATL is mass media aimed at a whole audience, BTL is targeted and measurable activity aimed at individuals or moments, and TTL is a campaign planned to do both from a single idea. Share a Coke and John Lewis’s Monty the Penguin are the standard TTL examples.

Is social media ATL or BTL?

Organic social and community management are below the line, because they talk to people who have chosen to follow you. Paid social can be either: a reach campaign against a broad audience behaves like television, and a retargeting campaign against site visitors behaves like direct mail.

Why is it called above the line?

Because of a line on a Procter & Gamble budget sheet in 1954. Media advertising bought through commissioned agencies was listed above it and fee-based promotional work below it, and the accounting habit became industry vocabulary.