$74 million wasted in digital media ad spend, Next&Co report finds

Advertisers have wasted more than $74 million in ad spend in the July to September 2022 quarter, the Next&Co Digital Media Wastage Report finds.

The report audited 32 companies with annual digital budgets between $500,000 to $21 million across a mix of ASX-listed, multinational, national and SME companies. The report found e-commerce brands were among the biggest offenders, with wastage of $20.2 million, followed by retail at $17.2 million and finance at $8.2 million.

July - September 2022 digital media waste.

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.”

Wastage sits at 40 per cent of audited spend, which is down less than one per cent in the previous quarter, highlighting the consistency of ad spending waste, Next&Co said. Prometheus is now used by over 500 companies nationwide, which advertisers now use to identify where ad spending is being wasted on their digital platforms.

Prometheus has in-built KPIs for advertisers, including leads, customer conversions, ROI and reaches, enabling brands to choose their targets across each metric. The auditing tool then determines the exact wastage of their total annual digital spend in dollars and where that wastage is occurring.

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).