From Social Samosa:
Every day, consumers receive between 20 and 40 marketing messages. Most are ignored. The ones that do get opened rarely convert. And the customers who engage today often disappear by next quarter. This cycle of attention, disengagement, and reacquisition has created ad waste, according to Rajesh Jain, Founder and Group CEO of Netcore Cloud. He notes the ad waste problem drains an estimated $500 to $700 billion annually from global digital advertising budgets.
According to Jain’s analysis, 90% of marketing budgets go toward acquiring new customers, while only 10% is allocated to retention. What’s astounding is that 70% of acquisition spending is actually spent reacquiring past customers who were once loyal but drifted away due to irrelevant communication. Four out of five customers who click on marketing messages in one quarter stop engaging by the next.
Most brands plateau at 8 to 10% CRM contribution to total revenue. Marketing has become a cost centre rather than a profit engine, with CMOs struggling to demonstrate clear ROI. The promise of delivering the right message to the right person at the right time remains largely unfulfilled despite decades of investment in marketing technology.
“Success, to me, is simple. It’s about eliminating ad waste,” Jain says. “Today, nearly 70% of marketing budgets are spent on inefficiencies, reacquiring the same customers multiple times instead of retaining them. That’s pure waste.”
