What you need to know:

• Next&Co’s half-yearly Digital Media Wastage Report has found more than $100m of digital media didn’t drive sales or enquiries for businesses audited. Retailers were wasting the most spend, according to the audit.
• Facebook and Google were the channels in which most digital media spend was lost.

Australia’s major businesses spent $104.3 million on digital marketing that yielded few commercial results over the past six months, indie agency Next&Co says.

Between July and December 2021, the agency audited 130 companies’ digital media spend and found the retail sector “wasted” nearly $30m, the finance sector lost $27m, real estate and insurance companies lost $15m, pharmaceuticals lost $13m and education companies lost $3m.

Most of the digital ad spend was poorly spent with Facebook ($37m), followed by Google ($34m), LinkedIn ($21m) and Bing ($9m).

“We have seen tens of millions of dollars wasted across campaigns that are driving zero value in terms of commercial objectives, by bidding on terms that drive no sales or enquiries, or buying against the wrong demographic and audiences,” Next&Co’s co-Founder, John Vlasakakis, said.

The analysis, released in the agency’s half-yearly Digital Media Wastage Report, was carried out by Next&Co’s Prometheus platform, which has now looked under the hood of the digital advertising for more than 600 companies around Australia.

The platform estimates almost a third – $3 billion – of digital ad spend is wasted each year in Australia.