November 06, 2025

Australian vs UK marketers on attention, measurement, reach and cost – and why Australia is pulling ahead on ad effectiveness over efficiency

45 minutes

Australian brand marketers and their UK counterparts came up with very different views on where they see their biggest challenges, according to a study by QMS that was aligned to research by Ocean Outdoor UK. Marketers from the UK cited attention as their key challenge, while Australian marketers flagged sustainable growth and unified measurement.

When it came to top marketing investment priorities, the top two criteria for both markets were the same things. Number one: reach. Number two: ROI. But they diverged on the third, which for the UK was cost (CPM), whereas for Australian marketers it was attention.

“So the question [for Australian marketers] is not ‘how much?’ but ‘how well?’, per global advisor to QMS and ad industry veteran, Anne Parsons. “It's a real shift that says that Australian brand marketers are thinking about effectiveness much more than they're thinking about efficiency.”

She says that chimes with peer-reviewed research by Oxford University Professor Felipe Thomaz that found optimising media for reach alone no longer works because all reach is not equal – and used bluntly won't deliver business outcomes. “It's attentive reach, the quality of the reach,” that matters, per Parsons.

Netflix ANZ marketing boss Tony Broderick is 100 per cent aligned.

“As a business, the only metric that really counts is revenue. But the one that marketing is chiefly tasked with is to drive outsized conversation – and reach for the sake of reach won't generate conversation. You need to capture attention. You need to build creative that stops someone scrolling through a feed – phone stopping content,” he says.

“We make great stories … our job is to create the conversation around it. If we do that, we're supporting acquisition, retention, engagement. We have an ad service – engagement drives that as well.”

He says Netflix analyses what people are watching, the conversations about it (Netflix has a billion social media followers globally) and then aims to rapidly launch campaigns based on those insights. “How can we bring those proof points in and get it live within digital out of home, targeted at the right people, a couple of days later? That's something we now do each and every week, working with partners like QMS.”

While Australian marketers flagged cross-media measurement as their biggest challenge, Broderick thinks focusing too hard on measurement creates its own problems.

“A big challenge and an ongoing discussion I have with my team, with my agencies, is ensuring that we try to pursue a plan that is best versus what's easiest to measure. What I'm most focused on is really just the right set of signals, rather than the absolute best report card for every campaign,” says Broderick.

“If you're just following what has always delivered the best results in the past, you're naturally steering away from innovation as well.”

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By Mi3 & iHeart Podcasts Australia