New Mutinex data shows Australian advertisers cutting the long-term brand-building channels hardest while pouring more into already saturated social and search. The MROI Index, built on almost $3 billion in spend across 83 brands, calls it shorting the long.
You cut the channel with the longest tail to fund the channel with the shortest. It looks efficient this quarter. It costs you next year.
New Australian data has put a name to a habit a lot of marketers have fallen into. Mutinex calls it "shorting the long". The channels with the strongest long-term brand building power are the ones being cut the hardest, while the channels that are already saturated keep getting more money.
The MROI Index, built from anonymised data across 83 brands in Australia and New Zealand and almost $3 billion in annual spend, found cinema, radio and free-to-air TV brand spend taking the biggest cuts in 2025 against 2024. Mutinex head of marketing science Nicky Barton said those channels have the longest tail and the longest carryover effect. They are the ones that keep working long after the campaign ends.
Here is the paradox. Most channels are nowhere near exhausted, yet the two that are already saturated, social and search, saw the highest increases in investment. Marketers are crowding into the busiest channels and walking away from the ones doing the heavy lifting on brand.
Why it matters
This is the marketer to finance gap showing up in the spend data. Brand building is slow and hard to attribute, so it is the first thing cut when someone wants the numbers to look tidy this quarter. Performance channels report back fast and clean, so they get the money. The problem is you are pulling spend out of the work that compounds and pushing it into the work that is already crowded and getting more expensive.
Almost $3 billion in annual spend across 83 Australian and New Zealand brands sits behind the MROI Index findings
Pull brand spend to juice short-term numbers and you get a sugar hit. The quarterly report looks better. Then the warm audience shrinks, the cost of every click creeps up and a year later you are wondering why performance got so expensive.
What to do about it
Cutting the long to feed the short is a decision that feels safe and ages badly. The brands that hold their nerve on the channels that compound are the ones still growing when the cheap clicks dry up.