The Australian market has really embraced digital advertising, says retargeting platform AdRoll. Unlike the US and the UK, digital advertising now attracts a larger ad spend than TV. Digital programmatic buying and big data prompted a marketing shift from analog guess-and-test programs to highly targeted real-time programmatic campaigns.

This shift has forced marketers to become more like analysts, using technology to react to always-on consumers in real time. It’s only natural that they’ve begun to demand tools that support their vision for a full-funnel, multi-platform, data-driven marketing strategy.

Retargeting allowed marketers to leverage first-party data to directly target the most promising individual consumers. It introduced a simple, practical way to put programmatic ambitions and valuable customer intent data into action and drove clearly measurable ROI. Today, programmatic buying techniques represent 60–70% of all display related ad spend in Australia.

But are Australian marketers truly embracing retargeting? Is it just a cheap conversion tactic or an important part of a full-funnel marketing strategy? Are marketers investing time and resources into retargeting?

To find out, we partnered with independent research firm Qualtrics to survey a diverse group of 200 professional marketers in Australia across a variety of industries and examined AdRoll retargeting campaign data.

Key findings:

Expanding the definition of retargeting

• Retargeting doesn’t just drive sales. 71% of marketers use retargeting for brand awareness and 55% for customer retention.

• The number one marketing objective of retargeting is brand awareness (71%), followed by driving sales (60%) and customer retention (55%).
• Total conversions came in as the #1 campaign success metric among Australian marketers. Insights into customer behaviour was a close second.

Increasing investment & performance

• 41% of marketers spend 10–25% of their entire online ad budget on retargeting.
• 69% of marketers intend to increase their retargeting budgets over the next 12 months.
• 74% of marketers claim retargeting campaigns increase online conversions—55% have seen an increase in mobile conversions.
• 93% of marketers claim retargeting performs equal to or better than other display, 90% equal to or better than email, and 88% equal to or better than search.

Catching up to consumers

• One in every two marketers is retargeting on mobile—rapid adoption driven by unparalleled cross-device performance.
• For both B2B and B2C, one in two marketers say social media is the single hottest topic in retargeting. Mobile and cross-device retargeting comes in at #2.

Addressing the attribution gap

• 90% of marketers consider attribution important or critical to success.
• Understanding the customer is the number one reason why marketers believe attribution matters.
• 47% of marketers think viewability tracking is the future of attribution.