Digital marketing intelligence company Pathmatics said Optus’ decision to reduce its advertising did not come as a surprise as this is the normal response during a crisis.

Ten days after the breach, the company had yet to re-ignite its advertising efforts. But since 14 October, the digital advertising spend has come back to normal levels.

Pathmatics said an interesting fact about the restored spend was that practically all of it was on Facebook advertising

• Telstra’s advertising spend rose from US$140,000 on the day of the cyber attack to US$180,000 three days later.
• Vodafone increased its advertising efforts with a particular focus on Facebook where its spend rose from just under US$15,000 per day to almost US$35,000 per day.
• Exetel also ramped up its marketing efforts, with a significant spike in advertising spend on 23 and 24 September, the two days following the announcement of the Optus data breach.
• Lycamobile’s advertising spend fluctuated, with peaks in activity on the day the breach was announced and the next day.
• Boost Mobile’s advertising spend increased from US$400 to US$5000 following the announcement of the breach.

Pathmatics noted that no telco was yet including warnings about online safety as part of the messaging in their advertising, but instead focusing on product and brand awareness.

Asked why Optus had reduced the digital ad spend after the breach announcement — when one could logically argue that any company suffering bad media exposure would increase its ad spend to counter that — Pathmatics APAC managing director Tom Cui said: "Given the ongoing fallout and public scrutiny of the data breach, I would expect to see Optus maintain a lower profile in the short term while they assess reputational damage and financial implications of the data breach.

"While the company seems to be gradually increasing its advertising spend, particularly on Facebook, it’s at a slow and steady pace."

Cui was asked whether the drop in expenditure on digital advertising was a general trend when a company was receiving bad press or when an adverse event affected its profile. "More often than not we see companies halt their digital ad spend following negative press," he responded.

"For example, when DoorDash was recently investigated for leaking its users' credit card information, we saw its digital advertising spend drop from more than US$$60K per day to US$3.5K per day following the attack.

“This allows the company to focus their efforts on fully assessing the crisis and any potential negative impact."

Given that Optus took out full-page ads in some newspapers to apologise for the data breach, Cui was asked about advertising in these media. He said Pathmatics could not comment on print advertising as it only provided insights and analysis on digital advertising spend.

Cui said it was correct to assume that other telcos were stepping up their digital ad spend to try and grab some of Optus' market share.

“Yes, our data shows Telstra, Vodafone, Exetel and Lycamobile all increased their digital ad spend following Optus’ attack. It’s presented them a real opportunity to capitalise on consumers who will be looking to migrate telco service providers," he commented.

Cui was asked why Pathmatics had underlined the fact that no telco had included online safety messages in their advertising, instead focusing on product and brand awareness.

He replied: “While privacy and security has increasingly become an important topic for many consumers and businesses alike right now, this doesn’t necessarily translate into the most optimal advertising messages to drive purchases.

"At Pathmatics we found that the top advertising creatives for telco companies continue to focus on production introductions, brand awareness and promotions.

"Behind the scenes I expect to see telcos turning much of their attention towards data security compliance infrastructure to prevent something like this happening again.”