The research was collated from experiments with over 65k search ad impressions. With $172bn spent on search advertising each year, the findings suggest that over $60bn could be wasted annually.

Bango found that search ad and communications campaigns often fall into a variety of audiences. One trial campaign targeting marketing professionals was found to land in front of students, doctors, lawyers, supermarket cashiers and a dog breeder.

Anil Malhotra, CMO at Bango, says “For all the talk of big data and advanced targeting, the truth is that most search engines aren’t delivering as promised. Despite this fact, marketers and brands continue to pump billions of dollars into a system that’s fundamentally flawed. We all expect to lose audiences down the funnel, but to lose a third of them before a campaign’s even got off the ground — that’s not acceptable.”

Bango has launched the ‘Worst Ad Campaign in the World’ to highlight the issue of misplaced advertisement and communications budgets. As part of the campaign, Bango has placed a billboard near Manchester with the statement ‘still a better use of budget than many search ads.’

“Search targeting is broken. To me, buying a search ad nowadays is about as useful as putting up a billboard in the middle of nowhere. A huge percentage of the target audience never sees it, and of those who do, the likelihood that they will act on it is slim to none,” adds Malhotra.

Bango is instead pushing for the introduction of purchase behaviour targeting, which calls on payments data from around the web. This allows marketers to target audiences based on what they’ve previously bought.

Purchasing behaviour targeting focuses on those audiences that have spent money on similar products, regardless of their age, gender or profession. “Purchase Behaviour Targeting fills the gaping holes in online targeting by focusing on buyers, not browsers,” says Malhotra.

Find out more about purchase behaviour targeting here.