Black Friday's digital waste: Are brands getting buried?

Waste, waste, everywhere

We’re not talking about small leaks. Recent research shows that ad waste in digital is growing rapidly. For example, wasted programmatic spend in the US grew 34% in just two years, hitting around $27bn. Another study puts the proportion of digital ad spend wasted at between 23% and 56%, showing that cheap reach is often a false economy. Meanwhile, reports revealed that over 15% of spend in digital display goes to inventory that delivers no real value. In short, if you’re buying impressions simply because they’re cheap or because they fill dashboards, you’re increasingly paying for the landfill

‍

Black Friday clutter

Black Friday is not just another date on the calendar. It is a beast of volume, urgency and distraction. The race to secure attention becomes fiercer, the feeds become noisier, and budgets stretch thinner. The risk is simple: brands playing in the “messy middle” of paid media, neither pure brand-building nor full conversion, will be buried under the weight of inert impressions and empty eyeballs.

‍

Two clear poles: Brand building and conversions

In cluttered environments, the logic is clear. Pick your pole and don’t straddle.

• Big brand building: When the objective is long-term memory, mental availability and category salience, invest in work that interrupts, is memorable, emotionally rich and anchored in brand identity.

• Hard conversion: When the objective is near-term action, invest in channels and formats that minimise waste, maximise relevance, reduce distraction and drive the right behavioural response.

Anything in between, the “mid-funnel scatter” of generic reach, cheap visibility and vague messages, becomes the very landfill we are warning about.

‍

What “balance” looks like in practice

Restoring balance means changing mindset and mechanics.

• Choose fewer, higher-impact placements rather than chasing volume.
• Be ruthless about media environments. Cheap price does not guarantee real attention.
• Align creative format with platform behaviour. Short, bold and branded for fast-scroll; and richer storytelling in slower formats.
• Guard against bot-clicks and ad fraud. Automated traffic and fake click-throughs continue to drain budgets and distort performance data, particularly in low-cost inventory environments. Prioritise verified, human attention and trusted placements over cheap clicks.
• Measure what matters. Look beyond impressions and reach to understand what those metrics achieved in attention, memory and action.
• Don’t confuse playing safe with being effective. The middle ground might feel lower risk, but it usually delivers the lowest return.

‍

What South African brands can do

South Africa, faces the same cluttered landscape as global markets, but also has an opportunity. With many global brands still chasing scale, local advertisers can lead with clarity: define the objective, invest in the right format, and avoid chasing every eyeball. Platforms like TikTok and Instagram deliver strong active attention when creative aligns with correctly with the ad formats. YouTube non-skippable formats provide a slower, more stable environment for storytelling. Open web display ads still offer scale, but if that scale comes with high wastage, it contributes to the landfill problem. The challenge for South African brands is to resist the temptation to “try a bit of everything” during peak retail periods. Instead, pick a side, invest properly and say no to the cluttered middle.

‍

Upon reflection

Here’s the real question. As Black Friday and Christmas approaches, are you going to fill your bins or build your brand? The digital landfill is real, the cost is high and the risk of irrelevance is growing. If you continue to spend in the messy middle, you’re not just wasting budget; you could be diluting your brand’s future. Choosing structure, clarity and strategic media focus is not about avoiding waste. It’s about seizing value, creating impact and restoring balance in how we spend in digital advertising.