Australia’s $6bn dull media tax: Quest for the Cost Per Meaningless Thousand, cheap reach sees brands sacrificing attention and impact, culminating in a 12X efficiency gap, finds Dr Karen Nelson-Field

About this episode

The episode discusses the significant financial impact of dull media on advertising efficiency in Australia, revealing a $6 billion annual waste.

Host: Nadia Cameron, Publisher | Editor – Marketing Last year, one of the world’s leading minds on attention, Amplified founder Dr Karen Nelson-Field, set out to put a figure on the eye-watering cost of dull media. The job followed on from the esteemed Dr Peter Field and Eatbigfish consultancy lead, Adam Morgan’s original work ascertaining the cost associated with dull creative. The media work was based on attention volume – a metric that compares how much attention an ad actually gets versus how much is theoretically possible (the total time in view). Globally, the tariff exposed was huge: US$198bn per year is being spent to make up for shortfall of dull media choices as attention collapses tenfold and the mental availability opportunity is lost. That’s an average of $0.43 in every dollar spent. And it’s even higher than the $189bn wasted on dull creative per the former research. Now for the first time, the true cost of dull media has been revealed in Australia, and yep, it’s equally shocking: $6bn in annual wasted media budget. That’s over 20% of the nearly $30 billion Australian marketers reportedly spent on advertising in 2025…

People in this episode

Host: Nadia Cameron

Guest: Dr Karen Nelson-Field

Topics covered

• media efficiency
• advertising costs
• attention metrics
• dull media
• marketing strategies
• budget waste

Keywords

• dull media
• advertising efficiency
• attention volume
• media budget
• marketing waste
• Dr Karen Nelson-Field
• Australia advertising

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Amplified, Eatbigfish

Places: Australia, US

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