Brands and retailers are increasingly evaluating their channel mix, especially as recession looms, according to a new report.

As businesses focus on maximising ROI and ROAS (return on advertising spend), optimising their channel and content mix with a balance of paid and organic will become absolutely business critical.  

Bazaarvoice has released its latest research, based on a survey of more than 500 budget holders and decision-makers from brands, retailers, and agencies.

Key Australian findings include: 

Maximising brand revenue: 81% of Aussies are planning to maximise their brand revenue in 2023 via retail, while 52% said via media  

First-party data: 98% of Australians have access to first-party data to allow for the segmentation they need, with 85% saying that they would pay to get access to more first-party data  

Our target market: Aussies are most likely to target millennials (72%), followed by Gen Z (60%), Gen Alpha (32%) and 11% saying none of the above.  

Measuring social commerce success: Over half of Aussie agencies (57%) rely on traffic volume, followed by conversion rate within a social platform (45%), then its conversion rate when engaging with social content on their site/retail and the revenue generated within the social platform at 40%  

A shift is happening: 57% are considering moving their budget away from paid advertising efforts to owned and earned content creation, while 21% are already doing so  It’s likely to be a considerable one: a quarter (24%) are considering moving, while 15% or more of their budget to owned and earned content creation, away from paid advertising efforts  

Demand for fresh content continues: 100% feels like they are keeping up with the demand for fresh content  When UGC is trusted, it sells: 88% believe that more authentic UGC in their paid and owned media would improve the performance of their ads and content  

The recession is affecting budgets: 55% said their budget will be impacted by the recession, while 19% are unsure  

Spending to be slashed: Many (85%) said they will be expected to reduce marketing dollar spend  

Teams are impacted too: 31% said they will be expected to reduce headcount within their team 

As a result, ROI is a huge focus: 72% of respondents said they are targeted on improving the ROI of their marketing dollars 

"For years, brands have always leaned on paid channels to amplify branded content, tactics, and offers," says Zarina Stanford, Bazaarvoice CMO. 

"In fact, more than $700B was spent on paid advertising alone in 2022. Now we are seeing a rebalancing to optimise the marketing mix modeling (MMM) as consumers are yearning for organic content from other shoppers, i.e. earned and shared content and channels." 

The research was commissioned by Bazaarvoice and conducted in November 2022 by Savanta among 502 budget holders and decision makers from brands, retailers, and agencies from Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the U.K., and the U.S.