'Get your media audited more frequently': Australian advertisers 'wasted' $100m on bad FB and Google buying April-June

News 11 Aug 2021 - 1 min read

'Get your media audited more frequently': Australian advertisers 'wasted' $100m on bad FB and Google buying April-June

By Sam Buckingham-Jones - Senior Writer

“The answer is to get your media audited more frequently," Next&Co's John Vlasakakis says.

Market Voice 3 min read

Retail media: Key lessons to avoid repeating programmatic ‘gold rush’ mistakes, hollowing out brand budgets

By Rory Heffernan - Chief Executive Officer, Atomic 212º | Partner Content

Retail media’s rise comes as marketers are being told to do even more with even less, says Atomic 212º Chief Executive Officer, Rory Heffernan, and puts brand budgets under further pressure.

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Airports are back bigger and better: why they are the next frontier for incredibly human brand connection

By Jemma Enright - General Manager, Airport, JCDecaux ANZ | Partner Content

In the next 5 years, brands will be reaching 85m passengers a year in the transformed terminals of Sydney, Adelaide, and Perth airports. That’s a massive opportunity to engage an emotionally charged audience in a context of curiosity and discovery, says JCDecaux’s Jemma Enright.

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The best relationships are personal – regional strategies should be too

By Phil Leyshon - Director of Digital, ACM | Partner Content

Mi3 sat down with ACM Director of Digital Phil Leyshon to discuss how first party data and enriched targeting is bringing brands closer to the regions – and notching upwards of 30 per cent growth.

Tags: Next & Co John Vlasakakis digital marketing google Facebook

Indie digital agency Next&Co’s new quarterly Digital Media Wastage report has found 115 brands wasted $123.3 million, finding more than $100m is wasted by brands on Facebook and Google alone. The firm suggests insurance and healthcare providers wasted the most money through overbidding and bad buying.

What you need to know:

Next&Co’s new quarterly Digital Media Wastage Report has found 37 per cent of digital advertising spend was wasted after analysing spend by 115 major brands.
Facebook and Google were the places most brands wasted their spend, with $55m and $48m wasted with those two platforms.
Waste included overbidding on search terms, buying ineffective search terms and buying the wrong demographic.

More than a third of digital advertising by major brands was wasted in the second quarter of 2021 with more than $100 million misused on Facebook and Google alone according to analysis by Melbourne-based digital agency Next&Co.

The firm's quarterly Digital Media Wastage Report found that from April to June, 37 per cent of digital expenditure was wasted, which extrapolated across the market equates to $3 billion each year.

The report audited 115 brands from the FMCG, finance, retail, health, insurance, and education sectors, with budgets from $500,000 to $27m.

The insurance sector was the biggest-spending sector, but also wasted the most - $69m, Next&Co found. Health wasted $50.6m, education $42m, retail $38m, FMCG $26m, and finance $21m.

On individual digital media channels, most was wasted on Facebook, with $55m, followed by Google, with $48m, and LinkedIn at $11m. Overbidding on and buying ineffective search terms and buying the wrong demographic were the key culprits fingered.