It was the perfect wave.

Until recently, brands and consumers enjoyed a solid decade of record low interest rates, low
unemployment and a booming global economy, leading to all-time highs in disposable income.
The average household had $7,000 per-month to spend after paying the mortgage or rent, and
brands spent eye-watering sums to convert customers using poorly optimized multi-channel
campaigns.
In 2020 we had a pandemic that forced people inside, tripling the average amount of time
spent online. Finally, ad platforms – like Google and Meta – had lots of access to customer data
to fuel their increasingly powerful machine learning algorithms, greatly increasing the odds of
conversion. With little financial consequences, brands invested even greater sums in poorly
optimized campaigns, with varying conversion success.

It was fun while it lasted.

Shifting global economic conditions have created the perfect storm for brands. High inflation
and high interest rates are severely cutting into consumers’ once-high disposable income. With
pandemic restrictions now lifted, consumers can travel and shop where we want. Data Privacy
initiatives like iOS14 have left ad platforms with ineffective algorithms leading to rising ad cost
to compensate for the decreased brand investment activity.
For today’s brands, higher borrowing costs have placed pressure on cash management, placing
budget pressures on all aspects of a business.
I might be the first agency CEO in the history of the world to say these words, but:

It’s time for brands to do more with less.

In 2022, Australian advertisers wasted an estimated 40 per cent of their total media budgets,
equivalating to $5.5 billion. As an industry, we got sloppy because the wave was so easy to
ride. Marketers don’t typically look for wasted media when they’re hitting their stretch
forecast goals. Moving from 2023 to 2024, it’s critical that brands focus on ways to be more
precise with their media and deliver efficiencies that achieve the same result.

Get back to the fundamentals.

In a marketer’s world of buzz words and hyperboles, we often lose focus on the basics of
marketing. Our job is to serve the right ad to the right person at the right time on the right
channel to achieve our desired result.
While the strategy on how we execute this can be complex, the fundamentals are this simple:

• Right Person – Uncover a 360 degree view of your best customers to help fuel plans to retain them as well as acquire more high value customers.
• Right Time – Understand each customer cohort’s unique customer journey from first to last interaction so you can layer in the right channels and right ads at the right time.
• Right Channel – Have expertise in a wide mix of media channels, both traditional and digital – paid and owned. Then like tools in your tool chest, use the right channel at the right stage of the customer journey.
• Right Ad – Build personalised creative specifically for each audience that has the appropriate messaging for each stage of the customer journey. Back all creative with data-driven learnings to ensure relevance and the highest odds of conversion.

By adopting these principles of precision, brands will spend less to convert more customers,
resulting in greater commercial success for the business.

Get back on the wave with precision.

Perfect storms bring great waves, they just require more skill, discipline and focus. But if you’re
successful, you can wave to your inefficient competitors who are still waiting for last decade’s
perfect conditions to return. Our agency Alley was founded in 2014 on the simple premise that when brands spend money on marketing, they should make money on marketing. Today, Alley is proud to help the world’s top brands run more efficient full funnel campaigns focused on serving the right ad to the right person at the right time on the right channel. Our agency premise is just as relevant today, with precision-based marketing fundamentals even more so.