Lowering Cost Of Acquisition Through Net New Audiences

Key Takeaways

  • Optimising Google and Meta won’t be enough on its own. Google CPCs rose 9% and Meta CPMs rose 12% year-on-year, so the same budget now buys less. Lowering acquisition cost means reaching new buyers, not just squeezing more out of the same channels.
  • Cheaper, untapped reach is out there. Pinterest adds 15% reach beyond Meta, with an average CPC around 60¢ compared with $2–$5 on Google. TikTok overlaps with Meta by only 12%. Amazon, affiliates and Reddit are all growing fast in Australia.
  • Judge each channel on what it adds, not on its ROAS alone. Comparing CPA or ROAS across very different channels is misleading. Measure what each channel adds to the whole business, and remember that cheaper new traffic also builds bigger retargeting audiences on your main platforms.

With another Black Friday/ Cyber Monday now in the rear view mirror, data out of the US is showing online sales were up 3.4% on last year (Reuters), with the expectation AU will land in line if not slightly higher. While sales are up, there is already a lot of chatter around profitability taking a hit with (the majority of) businesses seeing increased costs across the two dominant players, Google and Meta, as more demand floods their platforms. According to Skai Google CPC’s have increased 9% YOY and Meta CPM’s up 12% YOY…

So where to next, to find new avenues of growth online that don’t kill your profit margin and business? 

Brands need to invest time and resources into reaching net new audiences outside of Google and Meta.

What is Net-New Audience? 

In simple terms, a net-new audience is getting your brand exposed to relevant audiences who haven’t interacted with your brand before, and on channels you do not currently have a presence on.

We’ve seen an explosion of growth across the time tested affiliate space where the total global market size has gone from $8.3B in 2022, to $15.7B in 2024 and is expected to grow to a whopping $36.9B by 2030. (Source: Shopify). In addition to the more recent trend of publishers globally moving to take a clip of the ticket on traffic or sales generated from their content, where The New York Times led the pack with their Wirecutter offering. 

Amazon reported a 50% growth rate in advertising sales in Australia in 2023, with Australian retailers spending $153m across the Amazon ad suite. (Source AdNews). As they start to better monetise Prime video and link back to purchase, they will likely see continued strong growth for years to come. 

We are also seeing emerging channels like Pinterest and Reddit deliver strong user growth and release new ad features geared for lead generation and sales. The Tik Tok audience continues to scale and the ad product evolves for online shopping. For example, Tik Tok provides an incremental reach of 20% on Meta (Net-New Audience). This means 38% of users only see ads on Meta, 20% only see ads on Tik Tok, with only 12% of their audience seeing it twice. Reference (Source: TGI) 

It’s a similar story at Pinterest, where they can deliver a 15% incremental reach on top of Meta. Pinterest has grown their global user base by 12% in the past year and now boasts over 8.3m users each month in Australia. An impressive 51% of all Australian Gen Zs are active users of the platform, and for those targeting the boomer market, 31% of Pinterest users are over the age of 55. (source: Pinterest)

Reddit also boasts over 8m active users in Australia making Australia the 6th largest market globally and has a reported annual compound user growth rate of 38%. (Source: Datareportal) 

As such, it’s more important than ever for brands to move past a siloed, channel-driven approach to truly optimise their marketing investment and reduce their cost of sales/ cost of acquisition. There are tactics that can be employed to optimise campaigns to circumvent increased costs but ultimately increased costs mean diminishing returns on your investment. Therefore, finding new ways to optimise your investment and where to drive new investment for future growth has become more critical than ever. The focus for 2026 should be on finding highly relevant net-new audiences to lower costs to improve your business outlook. 

But do they drive results?

Whilst Google and Meta continue to deliver results, too often clients want to test new channels with one standard channel metric as a measure of success, generally CPA or ROAS, comparing results like for like with Google and Meta, and only investing in those channels for a short period, then switching investment back to those channels and abandoning that net-new audience.  

Google’s average cost per click in Australia is $2-$3 depending on category, with some more competitive categories exceeding $5 per click. Compare that with Pinterest which averages a 60c cost per click in Australia. (Source Semrush)  

Pinterest users also have high purchase intent. Black Friday last year saw 63% of pinners on Pinterest make a purchase, which was +38% more likely than no Pinterest users. (source: Pinterest) 

In addition to the brand exposure, and direct conversions from these channels, the lower cost, highly qualified traffic to site helps build stronger retargeting pools enabling us to leverage retargeting on those other platforms to drive down overall cost. 

Measure, measure, measure 

Whilst standard, siloed channel metrics are useful for decision making, using historical data from key sources, and proper attribution modelling provides a more granular analysis to reveal the true incremental value of each marketing activity and moves the focus away from individual channel targets and toward overall business goals, removing bias and enabling data driven investment decisions to improve business metrics. 

Understanding your core audience and where they are spending time online will help determine which new channels you should be testing. These channels present a great opportunity to lower the cost of acquisition by opening up net-new audiences, those who have not been exposed to your brand previously and will not be exposed to your brand via the traditional channels (Google & Meta). Stay the course and set up more sophisticated attribution reporting to understand the relationship between channels on overall business performance. 

What actions can you take?

  1. Exploit affiliate opportunities, don’t rely on one partner and set and forget. You should have a comprehensive strategy to maximise exposure and incentivise the top performers accordingly. 
  2. If you sell online, seriously review the opportunity to introduce Amazon as a new sales channel for your business.
  3. Work with your agency or internal stakeholders to develop a test & learn program for 2026 to gain exposure, learnings and insights across emerging channels before it’s too late.

Reach out if you would like to know more about how you can grow your business by reaching net new audiences for your campaign. 

Frequently Asked Questions

They’re relevant potential customers who haven’t engaged with your brand yet, reached on channels you don’t advertise on today. The aim is growth that doesn’t come from bidding harder for the same people on Google and Meta, where costs keep rising.

It depends on your category and customer, but the strongest options are Pinterest (8.3M monthly active Australians and low CPCs), TikTok (little overlap with Meta), Amazon (Australian retailers spent $153M on its ads) and affiliate marketing. Retailers selling online should review Amazon as a sales channel, not only an ad platform. Run a structured test-and-learn program with clear success measures, rather than spreading budget thinly across everything.

Don’t expect a new channel to match Google Search’s ROAS in its first month. Look at incrementality: whether it brings in customers you wouldn’t have reached anyway, and whether it lowers your blended acquisition cost. Use historical data and proper attribution, and track knock-on effects such as larger, cheaper retargeting pools on Google and Meta.