- Australian brands are increasingly wasting ad spend by repeatedly reaching the same audiences rather than finding new ones, as consumers shift towards human-vetted communities and away from algorithmic feeds.
- With $20.7 billion in Australian ad spend and growing competition for the same platform inventory, rising ad frequency and shrinking addressable audiences mean additional budget buys repetition rather than reach.
- UNTMD's benchmark data from $147,000 of managed spend across 20 client accounts shows that ad frequency below 3.5 delivered the strongest cost per enquiry, with efficiency eroding sharply once frequency exceeded five.
- UNTMD founder Maria Kathopoulis argues the fix is structural — expanding the defined audience or broadening the channel mix — rather than simply increasing budgets or refreshing creative.
- UNTMD is a South Melbourne full-service digital marketing agency serving growth-stage and scaling brands nationally, holding certifications including Google Partner, Meta, Klaviyo, HubSpot, and Semrush.
SOUTH MELBOURNE, Australia, 16 September 2026. UNTMD, a South Melbourne digital marketing agency, says a growing number of Australian brands are running advertising campaigns that are efficiently reaching the same people repeatedly, while missing the new audiences their spend is supposed to be finding.
Two trends are converging to create the problem. Sprout Social's mid-2026 Australian analysis identified a trust shift underway, with consumers moving away from algorithmic feeds toward human-vetted communities and tighter interest groups. At the same time, $20.7 billion in ad spend, with more brands competing for the same platform inventory. The result is rising frequency and shrinking addressable audience, a combination where additional spend buys repetition rather than reach.
UNTMD's own benchmark data, drawn from $147,000 of managed spend across 20 client accounts over 90 days, shows a consistent pattern: accounts maintaining average ad frequency below 3.5 delivered the strongest cost per enquiry. Efficiency eroded sharply once frequency passed five, at which point additional budget was reaching people who had already seen the ad multiple times rather than finding new prospects. The data covers construction, solar, education, health and beauty, and direct-to-consumer retail.
"The default response to rising ad costs is to increase the budget or tighten the creative. Neither fixes a frequency problem. When an account has exhausted the audience the platform is willing to show it to, more spend just buys more impressions to the same people. The fix is structural: a larger defined audience, a broader channel mix, or both. Most brands we see have been optimising within a constrained audience for so long that the audience itself has become the constraint," said Maria Kathopoulis, founder of UNTMD.
UNTMD provides full-service digital marketing across strategy, SEO, paid media, content, social, PR, email, and brand to growth-stage founders and scaling brands nationally. The agency holds Google Partner, Meta, Klaviyo, HubSpot, and Semrush certifications and publishes its benchmark data quarterly, with figures aggregated across managed accounts and reported by sector.
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About UNTMD
UNTMD is an Australian digital marketing agency providing integrated strategy, SEO, paid media, content, social media, PR, email, and brand services to growth-stage founders and scaling brands. The agency is based in South Melbourne and led by Maria Kathopoulis.
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UNTMD
1300 009 111
