Advertisers are increasing their budgets to attract new audiences, but 81% are failing to reach people beyond the audience segments they already target, according to a new study by advertising technology company Taboola.
The report, The Data Advantage, released on October 5, found that advertising budgets are rising by nearly 10% as brands seek to expand their reach. However, 30% of advertisers identified new audiences as a top priority for additional budget allocation, even as most struggle to connect with potential customers they have not reached before.
The study attributed the problem to increasingly fragmented consumer journeys, with purchase decisions spread across multiple devices, channels and platforms, including email, news websites, search engines, price comparison sites and large language models (LLMs).
US adults spend nearly 13 hours a day consuming media, the report said, making it harder for advertisers to track potential customers as they move between platforms before making a purchase.
The research found that 75% of advertisers struggle to recognise the same customer across multiple touchpoints before a purchase or conversion. This makes it difficult to understand consumer behaviour and identify people who have shown interest in a product but have not yet completed a transaction.
“As customer journeys become increasingly fragmented, brands and agencies must understand true purchase intent at the crucial moment of choice,” said Adam Singolda, CEO at Taboola.
“Outside closed ecosystems, advertisers face a significant identity blind spot, and by relying on recycled audiences on walled gardens, they miss many opportunities. Unlocking identity and measurement on the open web allows brands to break free from targeting ruts and connect with valuable, untapped audiences.”
The report also highlighted advertisers’ interest in diversifying their spending beyond closed digital platforms, commonly known as walled gardens. It found that 81% were open to increasing their advertising spend across channels such as publishers and news websites if identity-related challenges could be addressed.
The study said better identification and measurement could help advertisers understand how audiences interact with content across the open web and improve their ability to reach prospective customers who may otherwise be overlooked.
The findings are based on a survey of more than 300 senior marketing and advertising leaders at companies with over 1,000 employees and monthly marketing expenditure of at least $300,000.
Why it matters for the Middle East
The findings have implications for advertisers across the Middle East, where brands are competing for consumer attention across social media, search, publisher websites, e-commerce platforms and an expanding range of digital services. For marketers in the UAE, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf markets, the challenge is not simply to increase advertising budgets, but to determine whether spending is bringing brands into contact with new potential customers or repeatedly reaching people who have already been exposed to their campaigns.
The region’s multilingual audiences and cross-border consumer journeys can add further complexity to audience measurement. A consumer may encounter a brand through a social media advertisement, research it on a publisher’s website and complete a purchase through a retailer or marketplace. If these interactions cannot be connected reliably, advertisers may struggle to assess which channels are attracting new customers and which are mainly reinforcing existing reach.
For publishers and news organisations in the region, the findings also point to a potential opportunity. If advertisers can measure campaign performance more effectively outside closed platforms, publisher websites could attract a greater share of budgets currently concentrated in major digital ecosystems. However, the study’s findings reflect the surveyed companies and do not establish that the same percentages apply directly to Middle Eastern advertisers.
