SYDNEY: A large majority of Australia's brand owners and media buyers believe the display ad model is fundamentally flawed and at risk of becoming obsolete.

Econsultancy's recent People-Based Advertising report, which surveyed 350 brand owners and media buyers in Australia, revealed that two-thirds of marketers believe the current display ad model is broken.

And nearly three quarters (72%) think the rise of ad blockers will render display advertising completely obsolete in the future.

Though ad blocking remains a point of contention in the industry, marketers acknowledge the fact that display ads can have a negative impact on the user experience by intruding on browsing, slowing page load times considerably, and eating up huge amounts of data on mobile.

Marketers consider people-based advertising and native advertising as possible ways forward and that smart use of data will be key. Two-thirds of Australian brand marketers agree that "…display will be replaced by relevant, data-driven advertising".

Marketers already using people-based marketing, fueled largely by CRM or POS data, are optimistic about the future. 61% of Australian respondents are already using first party data to create sharply targeted and personalised ads that circumvent the broken display ad model.

Native advertising is also considered a major opportunity for marketers to work around the failing display ad model.

An exclusive survey by Warc & King Content revealed that two-thirds of marketers in Asia-Pacific are enthusiastic about opportunities presented by native advertising, with 61% planning to invest in the platform.

A fifth of respondents in the survey believe that native advertising offers a more credible alternative to traditional advertising, particularly in markets more cynical to traditional advertising, such as Australia.

Data sourced from Econsultancy; additional content by Warc staff