New research from Adobe Digital Insights has revealed that while Australian brands are embracing digital transformation, the experiences they are delivering in advertising are currently not meeting consumer expectations.

The 2017 State of Digital Advertising Report for Asia-Pacific was released today at Adobe Symposium 2017, a conference for digital experience and business transformation, attracting over 2,000 industry leaders, digital marketing experts and inspirational speakers.

“More than half of Australian marketers surveyed believe they're doing a better job at delivering valuable, personalised ads compared to two years ago, however, only 38% of consumers agree,” says Adobe Digital Insights principal analyst Tamara Gaffney.

“Even with the great strides already taken to provide more relevant advertising, consumers are expecting even more, underscoring the opportunity for marketers to leverage the data they have to better understand the needs of their customers.

“Australia is among the top countries with consumers switching from internet browsers over to smartphones,” says Gaffney.

“Success in advertising absolutely requires brands to engage these mobile consumers, but the report found that 78% of brands underinvest on smartphone advertising."

Marketers cannot keep up with the complex multi-device, multichannel digital advertising landscape, Gaffney says.

“The best way to target across all the options is to use technology optimisers to ‘programmatically' select the most relevant placements,” she continues.

Other key findings for Australia in the report include:

• 66%  of Australian brand marketers claim accurately measuring return on ad spend is the biggest challenge to media buying
• Older Australian consumers (35+) are most likely to be engaged by funny ads (40%), while consumers in India (49%) and Korea (43%) prefer ads to focus on product benefits

Key findings for Asia Pacific (APAC) include:

• Total visits to APAC websites have grown 36% in the last 36 months, but growth is slowing; total website visits in the US is stagnant
• The opening seconds of a video ad are crucial; 22% of APAC consumers move on after a video ad has played for just five seconds, higher than US consumers at 19%

“Marketers looking for growth in visits or revenue are faced with increased costs with declining results," says Gaffney.

“The integrated data platform combined with programmatic media buying solution, is an absolute necessity,” says Adobe Australia and New Zealand Advertising Cloud head Sam Smith.

“With consumer expectations rising and advertising channels becoming more complex, advertising and data must go hand in hand.

“The opportunity for marketers to bridge the martech and adtech divide is the only way to enable marketers to understand what's working best for their customers, and take action,” Smith Says.

Adobe Advertising Cloud, part of the Adobe Experience Cloud, is the first end-to-end platform to manage advertising across traditional TV and digital formats, helping marketers to more effectively navigate the landscape, reach consumers and drive business results.

The integration between Adobe Experience Cloud, Adobe Creative Cloud and Adobe Document Cloud provides a complete platform for brands to design and deliver exceptional experiences.