Report: Aussie advertisers wasted $54m on digital media campaigns last quarter
- 01 October, 2021 11:12
Nearly 40 per cent of digital media spend, or more than $54 million, was wasted by Australian brands pursuing advertising campaigns between July and September this year, a new report claims.
The latest quarterly Next & Co Digital Media Wastage Report found $54.3 million in media spend as wasted in Australia during the quarter. The figures are based on an audit of 67 brands across pharmaceutical, real estate, finance, retail, insurance and education sectors including ASX-listed and private companies. Media budgets in this group ranged from $500,000 to $27 million.
The data is derived from Next & Co’s media auditing tool, Prometheus, which originally found $3 billion is wasted across digital media channels annually. The company’s first report from April to June reported digital media wastage worth $123 million across 115 companies in Australia.
The Prometheus tool uses KPIs set by advertisers, such as leads, ROI, reach and customer conversions, to audit media activity by campaign as well as creative. Each is given a score out of 100 against each metric and the dollar figure of ad spend wastage calculated.
According to the figures, the retail sector was the worst for ad spend wastage at more than $15 million over the quarter. This was followed by real estate at $10.3 million, insurance at $8 million, pharmaceuticals at $4.8 million and education at $2.7 million.
Topping the list of the worst digital channels for wastage was Facebook ($25 million), followed by Google ($20m), Bing ($8m) and LinkedIn ($4 million).
Next&Co co-founder, John Vlasakakis, said the wastage problem highlighted an ongoing problem in the market locally and globally.
“Many brands are simply spending their digital advertising budgets in the wrong places and not harnessing the right platforms for their campaigns,” he said. “The answer is regular, independent media auditing. These audits allow companies to find the spend that is not attributed to a conversion, and then look for opportunities to scale their media spend in areas that are working.”
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