Francesca Ryan.
The AdNews end-of-year Perspectives, looking back at 2025 and forward to next year.
And see the AdNews 50 plus page state of the market report, Forecast 2026
Francesca Ryan, Marketing Lead, Boomtown.
2025 was the year that truly tested the resilience and ingenuity of marketers. Budgets were tightened, teams were leaner, and yet, high expectations remained. The phrase ‘do more with less’ was so widely repeated that it’s effectively become part of our industry’s DNA.
One of the clearest examples of this shift came from brands unafraid to rethink where their media dollars could work hardest, and regional advertising has been a compelling choice.
It’s no wonder, really, considering that the great migration to Boomtown continued in 2025, and the makeup of regional Australia continued to shift and evolve. What started as a lifestyle “experiment” during and after the pandemic has, this year, solidified into a long-term demographic shift driven by Millennials entering their peak earning and family‑raising years.
According to ABS data, increasingly, it is 20-40 year olds choosing lifestyle destinations such as the Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast, Geelong, Ballarat and similar hubs, bringing with them higher spending power, digital fluency and expectations for premium experiences.
Or as Australian demographer, Bernard Salt puts it: “You can continue to live that single lifestyle in St Kilda and Bondi and live in an apartment which is all chic and scandy and minimalist, the minute you have a kid. It's about 12 months later, when suddenly you have a toddler, and there is Lego everywhere - that’s when your world changes, when you think, I can't do this anymore.”
This year, we continued to see Millennials, wanting their ‘forever home’ and a better lifestyle balance, have continued their migration to the regions, and the trend shows no sign of slowing. They do, however, expect the experience to match their urban standards. The SCAiQ Mood Monitor* tells us that happiness in 2025 is the highest it’s been since 2019. And this group continues to be a largely untapped market.
Marketers are facing increased audience fragmentation; campaigns now require hundreds, sometimes thousands, of bespoke assets to meet consumer expectations. Regional audiences, those part of the great migration, by contrast, continue to offer scale, engagement, and cost efficiency, making them an essential consideration for brands planning smart, agile and effective campaigns.
This year, Australian Pork, for example, reallocated a significant portion of its spend from metro to regional Australia and saw measurable returns, including total TV reach growing by 28%, and advertising awareness going up 8% in the year. By shifting spend from metro to regional TV, immediate benefits were realised under the same total media budget. The organisation found that regional audiences were an incredibly powerful and engaged consumer base, offering the elusive combination of cost efficiency and meaningful impact. For marketers looking to stretch every dollar without sacrificing effectiveness, regional has increasingly become the landscape to make that possible.
When Sunrice Chief Marketing Officer, Tamara Howe, joined the organisation, regional was not part of the media mix. “It’s one thing I put in place straight away. Most people who work on brands are based in the cities, and there’s a natural bias that ‘people are like us’, which can make us overlook these markets. But the growth potential is so significant that it really makes you wonder if we’re even investing enough in regional areas,” she said.
And career media executive and now futurist, Katie Rigg-Smith, urged marketers to consider regional when looking to unlock growth. “Every single client wants us to unlock growth for them, and regional markets provide the critical mass and huge spending power to do just that…The opportunity with regional media is that it offers this amazing way to engage a community that is localised and personalised to them while still getting critical mass and audience numbers.”
While audiences and platforms may be multiplying, the core principles of effective marketing remain unchanged. Regional markets in 2025 have continued to show us that reach and engagement are not only about scale, but about understanding who your audience is, where they are, and what resonates with them. Campaigns that combine creativity, insight, and careful allocation of resources can cut through the noise, even in an increasingly fragmented landscape.
As 2025 draws to a close, one thing is clear: the pace of change shows no signs of slowing.
In 2026, we’ll see marketers returning to the fundamentals of solid strategy, sharp creative, and deep audience insights. Because when everything else is moving faster than ever, the real power might just lie in slowing down to refocus on what we know works best.
*Source: SCAiQ Mood Monitor | October 2025
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