Maximising ROI in the advertising landscape

Overview

Digital performance and ad spend is complex—and PwC’s experience has shown that between 30% - 90% of digital campaign impressions are not delivered fully as intended due to inefficiencies within the media advertising ecosystem. Despite the sophistication of modern paid media, the industry is revealing significant gaps between client expectations and campaign delivery. 

Our inaugural publication, Maximising ROI in the advertising landscape: Navigating the complexities in advertising for optimal campaign performance, provides key insights into maximising return on investment and value for media campaigns and shares practical examples on how businesses can navigate the advertising ecosystem.

To ensure that media campaigns are hitting the mark as effectively as possible, a few key elements must be considered. 

1. Taking a comprehensive approach to the digital advertising ecosystem

Understanding the intricate process of ad delivery and management is crucial for effectively executing campaigns. Several key steps are involved in this process and it is imperative to understand their interconnectednessy are:

By using the above model to examine your campaign plan, it could help eliminate frequent mistakes that businesses encounter and offer effective strategies to optimise your return on investment in this evolving domain. 

2. Strategic oversight on traditional and digital campaigns

Robust strategies are needed to maximise the effectiveness of campaigns in both digital and traditional landscapes. Focusing on key areas of oversight and optimisation allows advertisers to enhance their return on investment and ensure their messages are effectively reaching their intended audience.

To do this, a multi-faceted approach is needed. This includes a thorough examination of contractual obligations and financial reconciliations to uncover discrepancies and potentially recover unbilled media spend. Secondly, performance monitoring is needed to ensure that contractually promised key performance indicators are met throughout the campaign lifecycle (this includes specific, measurable targets such as video views or engagement rates, which should be clearly defined and regularly evaluated). And lastly, and perhaps most critically, advertisers must prioritise the integrity and visibility of their ad placements to track viewability, combat ad fraud and ensure brand safety—a non-negotiable in today’s digital landscape. 

3. Benchmarking excellence: Driving strategic insights and cost efficiency 

Benchmarking is also crucial as it serves as a vital tool for cost optimisation and strategic improvement in advertising. By comparing a company’s advertising practices against those of industry leaders, benchmarking helps identify areas for improvement and cost reduction. In the case of digital advertising, benchmarking can reveal how top performers are managing viewability rates, combating ad fraud and ensuring brand safety, while in traditional media, typical benchmarks comprise circulation, viewership impressions and reach to ensure the campaigns are optimally placed for the best results. 

4. Unveiling digital campaign realities through a Digital Performance Review

Performing a Digital Performance Review (DPR) is the game changing factor being used by forward thinking companies to ensure they’re achieving the maximum impact from their advertising campaigns. A DPR  addresses a crucial question in digital advertising: Is my agency/in-house team bidding for the right audience, in the right context, at the right time? 

Some common gaps we are seeing in advertising campaigns today are:

Explore the report for a deeper understanding of the current advertising landscape.