Over half of retail digital marketers fear their brand will get cancelled if they get a digital advert wrong, The Retail Advertising Effectiveness Report 2022 revealed.

According to the report by ROI Hunter, half the consumers surveyed are receiving an advert for items out of stock and 64% are frequently targeted for products they are not interested in.

This is a major concern marketers as 38% are prepared to boycott a brand which serves them irrelevant ads.

Some 54% of those surveyed could also reduce digital marketing budgets if an online sales tax is introduced, the report revealed, as on average retailers are spending over £50,000 a month on digital advertising.

READ MORE: Too far! Top six most outrageous ads banned this year

Pressure is also mounting on marketers from consumers and the board, as 53% of marketers feel under greater pressure from the board to improve ROI over the past 12 months.

Over half of people surveyed (52%) said it has become “harder to compete online” since the pandemic.

“Marketers are under more and more pressure from both consumers and business leaders to get their digital ad strategy right,” ROI Hunter Karel Schindler told Marketing Beat.

“Those that are serving irrelevant ads – whether that’s of out of stock items, inappropriate products or an item with only one variant left to choose from – not only risk losing potential customers but wasting valuable marketing budget at a time when budgets are already tight.

“Small changes such as introducing product data into their ad strategy can hugely increase the relevancy of their ads.”

However, Lewis Ellis, the founder of Hussel Marketing told Marketing Beat cancel culture in marketing is “not really relevant”.

“I’m not concerned about it,” he said. “Cancel culture is only attributed to the worst and unforgivable things like racism, homophobia, anti-trans etc, which no marketer in their right mind would ever do.”

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