Advertisers wasted more than $74 million in ad spend in the July to September quarter, according to the latest Next & Co Digital Media Wastage Report.
The wastage sits at an average of 40% of audited spend, which is down less than only 1% on the previous quarter.
Next & Co audited 32 companies with annual digital ad budgets of between $500,000 to $21 million across a mix of ASX-listed, multinational, national and SME companies.
The data, compiled from Next&Co’s Prometheus proprietary media auditing tool, found ecommerce brands wasted the most digital ad dollars last quarter at $20.2 million. This was followed by retail at $17.2 million, finance ($8.2 million), insurance ($7.4 million), education ($5.2 million), and other sectors ($16.4 million).
Across digital media channels, the most digital ad Q3 spend was wasted on Google at $33 million, followed by Facebook ($31 million), LinkedIn ($6.7 million) and Bing ($2.9 million).
Next&Co Co-founder, John Vlasakakis, said: “Ad spend is still sitting at an industry high, but we are heading into a period where brands will need to think smarter, not harder about where and how they spend their money.
“We have been using our Prometheus technology to audit brands across a range of sectors and it is clear that efficiency will be key for brands to succeed over the next year. Assessing the efficiency of media spend will be crucial, and also the thing that sets them apart from the competition.”
Next&Co’s auditing platform Prometheus has now been used by more than 500 companies across Australia. It has the ability to tell advertisers exactly how much, and where, ad spend is being wasted on their digital platforms.
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