14 per cent over that same period.  Users of the platform, whom retailers hope to convert to customers, have noticed that their feeds have been increasingly filled with suggested posts and ads – an outcome that can cause ad blindness and reduced attention. Taylor Fielding, CEO of Brisbane-based digital marketing agency TFM, forecasts that these platforms are turning into “digital skip bins” – a term he came up with after comparing the oversaturation of Meta and Google ads to old-school letterbox drops. “I think [the platforms] did a really good job at making an ad platform so easy to use that anyone can really jump into and have a go at running ads,” Fielding told Inside Retail. “That’s why they had an explosion in terms of their ad revenue over the last sort of 12 months as well,” he added. Recalibrating social media Retailers might not be seeing a return on investment from Meta and Google because they’ve let ads become their entire marketing strategy instead of what they should be – an accelerator, according to co-founder of digital agency Ecom Nation Mal Chia. “The brands struggling right now aren’t just dealing with rising ad costs They’re dealing with a fundamental lack of differentiation. Meta and Google won’t fix that,” Chia stated. Paid ads across Meta and Google still have the power to cut through the “digital skip bin” if retailers build compelling and unique campaigns that align with their customer journey. However, the increased use of artificial intelligence (AI) in advertising could have a negative effect. According to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg, AI tools can now do a better job predicting which audiences to target than the advertiser – which many retailers have opted into. Previously, retailers would have outlined demographic and psychographic information about their proposed audience instead of relying on an algorithm. “AI tools have also led to broad, open targeting that removes critical thinking from the equation. It’s never been easier to run ads – but that ease comes at a cost,” Chia explained. “Brands are outsourcing too much of their strategy to automation, forgetting that while AI can optimise, it can’t replace fundamental marketing strategy (yet),” he added. Feilding believes retailers need to be more specific in their approach and use digital advertising platforms as retargeting tools to convert sales and not to build broad brand awareness. “We want to use those bigger channels to get more efficient media buying, to push them to the website, and then use Google and Meta to help retarget and remind from an e-commerce perspective,” Fielding elaborated. Ultimately, it’s about understanding how Meta and Google ads fit into the business’s broader marketing strategy. “Advertising has always been a tool to amplify a well-thought-out strategy. But too many brands are treating Meta and Google as the strategy itself,” said Chia. “When performance dips, the knee-jerk reaction is to throw more money at the problem, jump onto the next AI-powered ad trend or blame their agency,” he added.  “That’s how you end up with generic ads, generic creative, and generic results.” Platforms like Meta and Google still play a vital role in retailers’ marketing strategies but they shouldn’t monopolise the whole marketing strategy.  There are other areas of the marketing funnel that retailers can look to explore before going all in on paid media, including local area marketing. The next big marketing move is local TFM is attempting to reposition local area marketing as more than a step to tick off the marketing funnel list. “Local area marketing is getting your ideal cost customer to turn left instead of right – we want them to come into our store as opposed to our competitor store,” stated Fielding. Effective local area marketing consists of directional and localised messaging that will push consumers into your online or offline store – but this requires deep understanding of community. In-person purchases still represent 82 per cent of total transactions in Australia so understanding local markets where retail stores are located is essential. “Go through your own first-party data, trying to understand your audience at a store level – don’t cluster them,” reminded Fielding. “We can take that data to understand how we need to appeal to consumers and their needs before you go out and create any video content, creative or mega strategy and put dollars into a platform,” he added.  According to TFM’s local area marketing playbook, retailers need to understand the customers’ triggers around each store and tap into and exhaust these triggers before trying to run a blanket campaign across an entire state.  “A lot of retailer brands think ‘we need to have this amazing brand campaign, spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a TVC so people know where we are’,” shared Fielding. “But that doesn’t normally resonate with someone, you know, in southwest Sydney,” he added. Fielding’s point around understanding individual consumers and communities before advertising to them is echoed by Ben Willee, the general manager and media director at advertising agency Spinach.  “As media consumption fragments, the discipline of media strategy, planning and buying becomes more important than ever,” Willee told Inside Retail. “We must constantly remind ourselves to seek out independent data on our target audience consumption and apply it to our campaigns alongside our advertising objectives and what we want the role of the channel to be,” he added.