Maximizing ROI: How to Avoid Wasting Your Advertising Budget

Posted: 2023-01-26

Running an ad campaign isn’t always easy, since there are many factors to take into consideration – from choosing the perfect ad network for your brand to creating great copy for your ads. And of course, it’s eventually all about the money and the ROI – the advertising budget, how well you spend it and how much you gain from it. 

One of the biggest issues for advertisers is an ad budget that isn’t spent properly, and essentially goes to waste.

An advertising budget can be wasted for a variety of reasons. One common issue is poor targeting, where ads are shown to users who are not interested in the product or service being advertised. This can happen when advertisers do not properly segment their audience or use inaccurate demographic data. Additionally, ads might be placed on websites or platforms that do not have a large enough audience or are not relevant to the advertiser’s target market.

Another issue is poor ad placement or design, which can lead to low click-through rates and poor performance.

According to the Next&Co annual Digital Media Wastage report, 41% of digital advertising spend in Australia was wasted in 2022, amounting to $5.46 billion out of a total $13.9 billion spent. 

This is an increase from the $3 billion wasted in 2021. This data covers various industries, such as real estate, finance, pharmaceutical, insurance, retail, and FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods). Retail brands were found to have wasted the most money last year – a staggering $80.4 million, followed by finance ($72.6m) and FMCGs ($21.4m). The digital media channels where waste was most prevalent were Facebook, at $119 million, and Google, at $109 million.

Optimizing your advertising campaign is essential to prevent such issues. There are several steps you can take in order to utilize your ad spend to the max:

Define your target audience and segmenting based on demographics, interests, and behaviors. Use data, not hunches! 

Rely on professionals: AdMaven provides you with an account manager and dedicated support. We make sure you spend only where you have a chance to convert, and you’ll also receive tips and insights on a regular basis. Other ad networks don’t have this service, and really there’s no one for you to lean on.

Conduct A/B testing to determine which ad designs and placements perform best.

Kill the duds: Eliminate non-converting traffic easily or even automatically with automatic optimization rules. Tools like that are only offered by advanced ad networks, such as ours.

Utilize retargeting to reach users who have previously interacted with their brand or website.

Continuously monitor and analyze the performance of your campaigns to make data-driven decisions about future ad spend.

Get a better bang out of your bucks: once you qualify (usually over a $5k spend threshold for a single campaign and advertiser verification) – AdMaven will transfer you to a CPA program, in which you only pay for conversions.


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