Results from one of Australia’s biggest marketing surveys broadcast a challenging media landscape for Aussie marketers, with projected lags in strategy, implementation of new tech and AI fluency. 

The 2025 Digital, Marketing & eComm in Focus Report has revealed significant trends in digital marketing and eCommerce across a range of Australian brands – and not all of them are good. 

Now in its fifth year, the report – generated by Melbourne-based eCommerce advisory board Arktic Fox, in partnership with recruitment agency Six Degrees Executive – surveyed more than 200 senior leaders in the Australian business and marketing sector. The range of topics covered included customer experience, AI implementation, privacy and retail media, among other subjects. 

The survey found that over half of respondents (54 percent) maintained low levels of trust in retail media networks, while only four in 10 senior executives agreed their brands possessed clear plans to evolve in tune with proposed changes in privacy guidelines. 

An eye-opening picture of the industry

Arktic Fox founder-director and report author Teresa Sperti said this year’s findings drew an especially revealing portrait of the Australian digital marketing industry. Key factors such as changing customer demands, heightened financial pressures and increasingly vigorous competition were among the contributing factors. 

“We see a host of maturity gaps and lag across marTech, data and analytics, customer experience and more,” Sperti said. 

Speaking of the evolving utilisation and adoption of artificial intelligence, she emphasised some brands were “moving beyond experimentation” and “re-skilling teams, embedding AI in workflows, and building governance to support scale”. 

The report found 59 percent of brands were experimenting with or scaling efforts around generative AI and AI more broadly to drive personalisation efforts. Half were experimenting with GenAI for content generation, while almost a quarter (24 percent) were scaling up efforts. Similarly, nearly half (49 percent) of brands were experimenting using AI for insights generation, however only 19 percent were scaling up.  

Sperti said the opportunity for growth in the AI space remained considerable, with advanced levels of AI adoption typically confined to larger companies. “While adoption is growing, most brands still face barriers to unlocking AI’s full potential,” she said. 

“Only 14 percent have a mature, unified customer view, despite it being a key investment area. Without strong data foundations, efforts to use AI for personalisation and experience delivery will fall short.”

“Based on what we are observing in market, AI utilisation is still being driven by efficiency based plays and whilst some brands are scaling their efforts more sophisticated use of genAI for experience delivery is still an opportunity for most.”

Shifting brand priorities drive tighter budgets 

As compared with the previous year, the focus toward brand-building has substantially shifted against a climate of rising cost concerns. Broad strategic priorities were at the forefront of 45 percent of brands, in contrast to the 36 percent of brands committed to brand-building in 2024. 

However, the proportion of businesses that were either in the process of resizing or had already done so represented 74 percent of respondents. The drive toward expanding brand presence while cutting back on expenditure placed many businesses under the pressure of achieving more with fewer resources. 

One consistent finding to have carried over from last year’s report was that the majority of business leaders – 75 percent in the 2025 report – upheld a primary focus on broadening brand growth. Below this, 49 percent of respondents placed customer acquisition as their number-two priority.  

“The shift to brand-building is being driven by tougher trading conditions,” Sperti said. “Whilst many brands have been trading through more challenging economic conditions, the sustained lower growth environment combined with rising costs of acquisition from digital media, is creating a greater need to drive brand salience and preference for many.”

Read more: Why the content marketing playbook needs a rewrite.