Above the line vs below the line marketing, explained

Above-the-line marketing is advertising in mass media, such as television, radio, press and outdoor, that reaches a whole market at once. Below-the-line marketing reaches people more directly, through direct mail, email, events, sampling and point-of-sale. Through-the-line campaigns combine the two under one idea, which is how most campaigns are planned today.

Key takeaways

Above the line means mass media aimed at a broad audience, used mainly to build awareness and memory of a brand.
Below the line means direct, targeted activity such as direct mail, trade shows, events and promotions, usually aimed at people closer to buying.
Through the line means running both under one campaign idea, so each makes the other work harder.
Digital channels sit on both sides. Broad online video behaves like above the line, while search and retargeting behave like below the line.
The IPA’s Binet and Field report warned against judging marketing mainly on short-term online metrics, which is the trap a below-the-line-only plan falls into.

Where do the terms come from?

The usual explanation is a line in a marketing budget, with mass-media advertising above it and other promotional costs below it. The Cambridge Business English Dictionary now defines above-the-line as relating to advertising on television, in newspapers, on the internet and similar media, rather than other ways of telling people about a company. Its below-the-line entry covers work such as trade shows and direct mail, which communicate more directly with customers and cost less than television and newspaper advertising.

You will often read that the terms started at a particular company in a particular year. We couldn’t find a primary record of that story, so we have left it out.

What counts as above the line?

Above-the-line, or ATL, is any media that reaches a broad audience you don’t select individually. Television, radio, national and regional press, outdoor posters, cinema and broad-reach online video all count. Its job is mainly to build memory, so that when someone in the market thinks of the category, your brand comes to mind.

ATL is hard to measure in short-term response, because most of the people who see it aren’t buying that week, and reaching people before they are in the market is the whole job. The Category Entry Point research playbook helps decide which buying moments your mass media should link to the brand.

What counts as below the line?

Below-the-line, or BTL, reaches a narrower group more directly. Direct mail, email, events, trade shows, sampling, sales promotions, point-of-sale displays in shops, and the activation around a sponsorship all sit here. BTL usually targets people close to buying, so its results show up quickly and are easier to count.

The event sponsorship and retail partner programme playbooks are both largely below-the-line work, and the lifecycle journey builder covers the email and CRM side.

	Above the line	Below the line	Through the line
Audience	Broad, not individually selected	Narrow, often named or segmented	Both, under one idea
Main job	Build awareness and memory	Prompt action from people near buying	Join memory to action
Examples	TV, radio, press, outdoor, cinema, broad online video	Direct mail, email, events, sampling, point-of-sale, promotions	A TV launch with matching retail displays, email and events
How it’s measured	Reach, brand awareness, long-term sales	Response, redemptions, leads, short-term sales	Both, reviewed together
Typical risk	Spend with no visible short-term return	Squeezing existing demand without creating more	Two teams running two ideas

What does through the line mean?

Through-the-line, or TTL, is a campaign that uses above-the-line and below-the-line activity together under one idea. A launch film builds awareness, retail displays and sampling meet people in the shop, and an email sequence follows up with those who signed up. Each piece is more recognisable because of the others.

For most marketing teams today TTL is simply what good campaign planning looks like, and the useful lesson is to give each line a clear job and stop arguing about which line matters more. The Basics piece on strategy, campaigns, creative and execution covers how one creative idea carries across a campaign.

Is digital above or below the line?

Digital is on both sides, which is why the old line has blurred. A homepage takeover on a national news site or a broad online video buy works like ATL. A search ad, a retargeting ad or a personalised email works like BTL. Paid social can be either, depending on how tightly it is targeted.

The blur matters because digital made BTL-style measurement available for everything, and it is tempting to judge all media on short-term clicks. Les Binet and Peter Field’s IPA report The Long and the Short of It examined how campaign effects build over time and warned that relying on short-term online metrics as the main measures could harm long-term success.

Our view at Manual Focus is that the line is still a useful planning question even if the media have changed, because asking “is this building memory or prompting action” stops a team pouring its whole budget into harvesting demand it never created. The channel-mix simulator helps model that split before the money is committed, and paid channels in the AI era covers how platform bidding agents now run much of the targeted side.

How ATL and BTL map to paid, owned and earned

ATL and BTL describe reach and purpose. Paid, owned and earned describe who controls the channel. Almost all ATL is paid media, while BTL mixes paid activity such as promotions with owned channels such as your email list. The two frames answer different questions, and owned, paid and earned media explained covers the second one.

Frequently asked questions

What is above-the-line marketing?

Above-the-line marketing is advertising in mass media that reaches a broad audience at once, such as television, radio, newspapers, outdoor posters, cinema and, today, broad-reach online video and display. It is used mainly to build awareness and memory of a brand across a whole market rather than to target named individuals.

What is below-the-line marketing?

Below-the-line marketing is promotion that reaches people more directly and selectively, such as direct mail, email, events, trade shows, sampling, point-of-sale displays, sponsorship activation and sales promotions. It usually aims at a narrower audience closer to buying and is easier to measure in short-term response.

What is through-the-line marketing?

Through-the-line marketing is a campaign that uses above-the-line and below-the-line activity together under one idea. A television ad builds awareness, while targeted email, retail displays and events turn that awareness into action. It describes planning both kinds of work together rather than in separate teams.

Is digital marketing above or below the line?

Digital marketing can be either. Broad-reach online video or a homepage takeover on a news site works like above-the-line media, while a retargeting ad, a search ad or a personalised email works like below-the-line activity. That is why many teams now describe campaigns by objective and audience rather than by the line.

Sources

Above-the-line, Cambridge Business English Dictionary, Cambridge University Press
Below-the-line, Cambridge Business English Dictionary, Cambridge University Press
The Long and the Short of It, IPA

From the podcast

A Manual Focus Basics episode. James and Hannah explain above the line (mass-media advertising that builds memory), below the line (direct, targeted activity that prompts action) and through the line (both, under one idea). They cover where the terms come from and the origin story they couldn’t verify, why digital sits on both sides of the line, what Binet and Field’s IPA work says about short-term metrics, how the split looks in B2B, and who should own the balance between memory and action.

Get AI on this

Paste these into whichever AI assistant you use: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or Copilot. Swap the bracketed parts for your own details. All three work with pasted text or uploaded files.

1. Sort last year’s budget into memory and action

I lead marketing at [company]. I want to see how last year's budget split
between building memory of the brand (above the line) and prompting action
from people close to buying (below the line).

Definitions:
- Above the line: mass media reaching a broad audience not selected
  individually, such as TV, radio, press, outdoor, cinema and broad-reach
  online video.
- Below the line: direct, targeted activity such as direct mail, email,
  events, trade shows, sampling, promotions, point-of-sale and sponsorship
  activation.
- Digital that could be either: search, social, display and video, depending
  on how tightly it was targeted.

Attached is our spend by line item for [period].

Give me a table with the columns: Line item | Spend | Above / below / could
be either | The job it was doing (memory or action) | Why you classed it
that way.

Then give the totals and the percentage split. If a line item's description
doesn't tell you what it was, mark it "can't classify" and say what I'd need
to tell you.

2. Check a campaign is genuinely through the line

We're running [campaign] across these channels: [list]. The campaign idea, in
one sentence, is: [idea].

Attached are the assets or copy for each channel.

For each channel, tell me: Channel | Mass or targeted | Does the asset carry
the campaign idea? (clearly / partly / no) | What has drifted (message, look,
offer or tone) | Suggested fix.

Then say whether the mass and targeted pieces would be recognisable as one
campaign to someone who saw both. Quote the assets' own words. If you can't
see an asset, say so in its row.

3. Draft a measurement plan for both horizons

Our campaign objective is [objective], running from [date] to [date] across
[channels].

Draft a measurement plan with two parts:
1. Short-term response measures for the targeted, below-the-line work, such
   as leads, redemptions or sales, with how often to check them.
2. Longer-term brand measures for the mass, above-the-line work, such as
   awareness or branded search, with when they can first be judged.

Give it as a table with the columns: Measure | Which channels it judges |
Data source | First reading | Review rhythm.

End with a short note on when and how to review both sets of numbers
together. Only use data sources from this list, which is what we have:
[list]. If a measure needs data we don't have, say so rather than assuming
it.

Read the episode transcript

James: Above the line, below the line, through the line. If you've joined a marketing team in the last ten years, there's a fair chance someone used those phrases in your first week and nobody explained them. They're older than digital marketing, and they're still a useful way to think about a budget. I'm James Vickers, this is Manual Focus, and this Basics episode is the plain-English version, with Hannah.

Hannah: Hi James. I'm glad we're doing this one, because I'll be honest, the first time I heard "below the line" I assumed it meant something slightly disreputable.

James: It doesn't, though it's never sounded glamorous. Start with the definitions.

Hannah: Above the line, or ATL, is advertising in mass media that reaches a whole market at once. Television, radio, newspapers, outdoor posters, cinema, and these days broad-reach online video. Below the line, or BTL, reaches people more directly and selectively. Direct mail, email, events, trade shows, sampling, sales promotions, displays in shops. And through the line, TTL, is a campaign that uses both together under one idea.

James: And where do the names come from? People always ask.

Hannah: The usual explanation is a literal line in a marketing budget. Mass-media advertising sat above it, and the other promotional costs went below it. The Cambridge Business English Dictionary now defines above-the-line as advertising on television, in newspapers, on the internet and so on, rather than other ways of telling people about a company. Its below-the-line entry covers things like trade shows and direct mail, which communicate more directly with customers and cost less than television and newspaper advertising.

James: You'll also read that the terms started at one particular company in one particular year.

Hannah: You will, and we went looking for a primary record of that story and couldn't find one. So it's not in the article, and I'm not going to repeat it here.

James: Good. So let's take them one at a time. Above the line. What's it for?

Hannah: Mainly memory. Its job is that when someone in the market thinks of the category, your brand comes to mind. Most of the people who see a TV ad aren't buying that week, so it's hard to measure in short-term response.

James: And that's the bit finance teams struggle with. You'll usually see the conversation go like this. The response numbers on the TV campaign look poor, so someone proposes moving the money into search, where the numbers look great. And it works, for a while.

Hannah: Until?

James: Until the search volume dries up, because nobody's building the demand that search was harvesting. That's the point of mass media rather than a flaw in it. The Category Entry Point research playbook in The Lens helps you decide which buying moments your mass media should link the brand to, so it's doing a specific job, not just being seen.

Hannah: Then below the line. What's that for?

James: Prompting action from people who are close to buying. Direct mail, email, events, trade shows, sampling, promotions, displays in shops, the activation around a sponsorship. Its results show up quickly and they're easy to count. Leads, redemptions, footfall, sales that week.

Hannah: And the risk with BTL on its own?

James: You squeeze existing demand without creating any more. It looks efficient, every pound is measured, and the market you're selling to slowly gets smaller. The event sponsorship and retail partner programme playbooks are both largely below-the-line work, and the lifecycle journey builder covers the email and CRM side.

Hannah: Does any of this apply in business-to-business marketing? It sounds very consumer.

James: It applies, the mix just looks different. In most business-to-business teams, below the line is the bulk of the budget. Trade shows, events, direct outreach, email, the sales team's own materials. Above the line is often small or missing altogether, and that's usually the gap. If nobody in the market has heard of you before your salesperson calls, every deal starts from cold.

Hannah: So the same memory and action split, just weighted the other way. Which is interesting, because I'd have guessed the jargon belonged to consumer brands and big television budgets.

James: It's a fair guess, and a common one, but the idea travels well beyond that. And for a business-to-business team, above the line might well be broad-reach online video or a sponsorship rather than television, which is where the digital blur comes in. We'll get to that.

Hannah: Which brings us to through the line.

James: TTL is simply what good campaign planning looks like for most teams now. One idea, carried across both. A launch film builds awareness, retail displays and sampling meet people in the shop, and an email sequence follows up with those who signed up. Each piece is more recognisable because of the others.

Hannah: So the useful thing isn't arguing which line matters more.

James: No, it's giving each line a clear job. Memory or action. And where I'd say it still goes wrong in a lot of businesses is structural. Two teams, sometimes two agencies, one doing brand and one doing response, running two different ideas at the same audience. The customer doesn't know or care which budget paid for what, they just see a brand that seems to say two things.

Hannah: Our strategy and campaigns Basics episode made the same point about one creative idea running through a whole campaign.

James: So if you're planning a through-the-line campaign from scratch, there are four steps in the article. Write the objective and the audience once, so every channel, mass or targeted, works to the same brief. Give each line a job, memory for the mass work and action for the targeted work. Keep one idea running through both. And measure both horizons, short-term response from the targeted pieces, longer-term brand measures from the mass pieces, and review them side by side.

Hannah: The last one sounds like the hard part.

James: It is, because the two sets of numbers move at different speeds. The response numbers arrive in days, the brand numbers in months. If you review them separately, the fast numbers win every argument.

James: It did. Now, digital. This is where people get confused.

Hannah: Because digital sits on both sides. A homepage takeover on a national news site, or a broad online video buy, behaves like above the line. A search ad, a retargeting ad or a personalised email behaves like below the line. Paid social could be either, depending on how tightly you target it.

James: So the line hasn't disappeared, it just doesn't follow the media any more.

Hannah: That's how I'd put it. And there's a trap in it. Digital made below-the-line style measurement available for almost everything. So it's tempting to judge every channel on short-term clicks.

James: Which is where Binet and Field come in again.

Hannah: Les Binet and Peter Field's report for the IPA, The Long and the Short of It. They looked at how campaign effects build up over time and warned that relying on short-term online metrics as the main measures could harm long-term success.

James: Our view is that the line is still worth asking about, even though the media have changed. "Is this building memory or prompting action?" is the question that stops a team pouring the whole budget into harvesting demand it never created.

Hannah: And then there's the other way of sorting channels, owned, paid and earned. How do the two fit?

James: They answer different questions. Above and below the line is about reach and purpose. Owned, paid and earned is about who controls the channel. Almost all above-the-line is paid media. Below the line mixes paid things like promotions with owned channels like your email list. We've done a separate Basics episode on owned, paid and earned.

Hannah: And the paid side has changed a lot with AI.

James: It has. Back in the spring we wrote about paid channels in the AI era, where the platforms' bidding agents now make most of the targeting decisions. That's mostly below-the-line style activity, run by machines on both sides of the auction. Which makes the human decision about the split between memory and action more important, not less, because the agents will happily optimise towards whatever's easiest to count.

Hannah: So who should own that split, between memory and action?

James: The most senior marketer, written into the plan. In SOSTAC terms it's a strategy decision, not a tactic, so it shouldn't be left to whichever channel team argues hardest or to whatever the platforms' algorithms prefer. Set it once a year, review it each quarter, and make anyone who wants to change it explain what's changed in the situation.

Hannah: That links straight back to the SOSTAC episode.

James: Most of this series does, which is rather the point of it.

Hannah: So what can we hand over?

James: Get AI on this: sorting last year's budget into memory and action.

Hannah: Give it your media and marketing spend by line item, and it hands back a table classing each line as above the line, below the line or digital that could be either, with what job it was doing, and the overall split. It'll mark anything it can't classify from the description rather than guessing.

James: Second, get AI on checking whether a campaign is genuinely through the line.

Hannah: Give it the campaign plan and the assets for each channel, and it checks whether one idea runs through the broadcast pieces and the targeted ones, listing any channel where the message or look has drifted.

James: And third, a measurement plan that covers both horizons.

Hannah: Give it the campaign objective and the channels, and it drafts a measurement plan with short-term response measures for the targeted work and longer-term brand measures for the mass work, and when to review them together. The prompts are in the show notes.

James: Common mistakes, then.

Hannah: From the article. Judging above-the-line media on next week's sales. Running below-the-line on its own and wondering why demand shrinks. And two teams running two ideas under one brand.

James: And one of mine. Using the jargon in front of the board. "We're shifting from ATL to BTL" means nothing to most people outside marketing. "We're spending less on reaching new people and more on converting people who already know us" is the same sentence, and it starts the right argument.

Hannah: Which is a very Basics note to end on.

James: So the takeaway. Above the line builds memory, below the line prompts action, through the line joins them, and every channel, digital included, should know which job it's doing.

Hannah: And the article has the comparison table, with how each one's measured and where each one goes wrong.

James: It's on manual-focus dot co dot uk. Follow Manual Focus in Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to get the rest of the Basics series as it comes out. And if you'd like help balancing brand and response spend in your own plan, book a free working session at manual-focus dot co dot uk. Thanks, Hannah.

Hannah: Thanks, James.