Media

Virtual professor Mark Ritson reckons key strategic marketing planning functions face automation within five years or so. Marketing and its supply chain should prepare accordingly, though Ritson thinks creative agencies may survive a cull coming faster than many realise. With a hard swing to the right globally, he suggests sustainability and purpose are being rapidly downgraded – and only the "naive" now position the latter as a revenue driver. Big platforms have likewise pivoted to mass reach over pure personalisation – hoovering up what the virtual professor sees as an investment swing back to brand. Hence TV, especially locally, being overlooked despite continuing to deliver the goods, per Ritson: "I've never seen a bigger delta or disparity between how the tool [TV] continues to work very well for brands and how marketers look at it ... It's still a very strong medium."

More than 3,500 media agency professionals can’t be wrong: They all voted for the best media sales execs and teams in Australia – with the top guns awarded last night at a sold out Ivy Ballroom in Sydney. Here’s the full list of winners.

Seven's new leadership has had to align fast following a major clear out, though some agency chiefs suggest they’re not quite there – yet – as a cohesive unit. Meanwhile, a dialled-down upfront had the network promising to be a “better partner” instead of “obsessing” purely about winning overnight ratings; repositioning its streamed content as SVOD, not BVOD; and claiming its new tech can predict audience behaviour 28 days out with 95 per cent accuracy – and maybe even keep them from switching channel. Plus, it’s wooing smaller advertisers with $10m worth of inventory to prove total TV’s effectiveness.

Commbank’s push for high margin ad revenues from its owned media and data will likely see more banks, telcos, utilities, petrol-convenience stores and travel companies break cover – and could spur further acquisitions in the mould of Woolworths $150m swoop for screen network Shopper Media. Owned media specialist Sonder has just polled 50 global marketers across brands including Accor, BP, BT Group, Citibank, Emirates, Hertz, Hilton, ING, KFC, Marriott, Mastercard, NAB, Nokia, Shell, Tesco, Turkish Airlines, Verizon, Visa, Vodafone and Western Union – and their answers imply a doubling of owned media and first party data monetisation within two years. But the report also suggests some amateurish approaches could prove costly – especially if owned-retail-paid media converge.

Expect more structural upheaval in the $14bn ad market in the next 12-18 months as more corporates like Commonwealth Bank’s move this week to monetise owned media assets join retailers in carving out new touchpoints to customers, says Coles360 boss Paul Brooks. Broad consensus has retailer media growing 10-20 per cent at present and will exceed forecasts of a $1.6bn to $1.9bn pool by 2025.

In an Upfronts seasons that has centred around big plays on repositioning audiences and measurement, tech-led data pushes, and transformative programming decisions to better reflect a ‘total TV’ approach, SBS offered a very safe and familiar – albeit always distinctive – narrative at this year’s advertising sales pitch. The part-commercial, part-public broadcaster eschewed surprises, instead exuding confidence in the purpose-led path it has been walking for nearly 50 years. There was a doubling down on the multicultural and First Nations content slate, plus a progressive take on its unique audience reach and understanding of “contemporary Australians”. There was also the confidence of first-mover advantage when it comes to integrating video and audio in SBS On Demand as well as extending Scope 3 reporting to digital campaigns in a sustainability narrative that's future focused. But the push to get buyers to stop thinking 25-54? Not quite so easy.

Nine is touting younger audiences on its total TV services, claiming one in three signed in viewers are millennials. It's gunning for more, per Director of 9Now and programming Hamish Turner, transforming content formats and programming efforts to keep the advertiser catnip incoming. Among its bets: Vertical video, shorter, personalised news formats, a willingness to embrace the intersection of data, product and tech – and more off-platform partnerships.

Former GroupM stalwart and one-time Maxus Australia boss Dave Gaines has built a USD$400m-billing independent agency in New York that doesn’t make any money on media mark-ups. He thinks audience metrics may face redundancy – as do media buyers – and agrees with former UM privacy chief Arielle Garcia that the data underpinning the promise of personalisation at scale is woefully inaccurate. But marketers and their peak bodies are doing little to change the status quo. Act fast, warns Gaines, or get fleeced by machines as well.

Lee Stephens, the former boss of Australia’s first listed digital agency e-mitch – a spinoff by the late Harold Mitchell’s Mitchell & Partners – and onetime boss of Carat ANZ is back in the media agency game with a plan to do it differently. Meerkat is an unlisted public company to facilitate better equity management for execs and employees and the agency is moving to channel planning and buying based on the best “media moments” for a target audience or segment. Meerkat will also eschew sector specific targeting algorithms from the likes of The Trade Desk for custom-built versions for Meerkat clients. 

It is a mistake to pit the priorities of online safety against those of online privacy, and many of the people who do so represent the interests of giant digital platforms that promote the idea of a decentralised open web, despite having enclosed and centralised control of that same global infrastructure. That was a key message from Privacy Commissioner Carly Kind, eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, lawyer and human rights activist Lizzie O'Shea, and UNSW Criminology Professor Michael Salter at SXSW last week. The "data extractive business models" of digital giants came under heavy fire and limiting those models was described as the best way to limit privacy and safety harms by removing the economic incentives that underpin "surveillance capitalism."

Greenhushing versus greenwashing: How companies tout their sustainability progress is increasingly a binary argument as they balance the risk of saying nothing at all with regulatory and consumer retribution for ego marketing or making claims they can’t evidentially back up. Which is why the AANA’s CEO Josh Faulks says its newly updated Environmental Claims Code was so important to get into the advertising industry’s hands sooner rather than later.

Foxtel's aiming to beat OzTam to market with its own trading currency – with the two set to land days apart. That could prove bumpy for media agencies. Foxtel Media boss Mark Frain, while piling pressure onto the incumbent currency provider, hasn't ruled out bringing everything back together. But only under a "very different operating model". In the meantime the pay TV firm turned streamer is going all-out to align new partners: Measurement firm Beatgrid, IPG's Magna and Wesfarmers are running tests on reach, frequency, incrementality and brand lift, while Amplified Intelligence and OMG are building a major video streaming attention and context amplification study for the Video Futures Collective.

Omnicom Media Group’s CEO Peter Horgan announced he would leave the firm next year, after tripling the business over a decade and carving out a market position around media transparency. But he says advertisers have now lost interest – and "integrity" is no longer “a halo” for OMG’s agency brands OMD and PHD. The disclosure comes as industry rumblings have media agencies returning to the opaque practices of a decade ago that triggered a global firestorm around the digital media supply chain and undisclosed incentives, rebates, strong-arm tactics and arbitrage deals with media owners on unsold advertising inventory. Horgan accepts cooling advertiser sentiment to transparent media trading has impacted the business – but scotched rumours of his exit being partly over frustration of intensifying control and intervention by US headquarters.

Travel is now surpassing pre-pandemic levels – even amid an economic crunch – and airports are looking to up their CX act with millions in Capex outlay to refine the terminal experience. JCDecaux has taken the wrappers off a new ‘connected journey’ media buying proposition across Australian airports for brands plus new program options that go beyond the screen. With the final arrival of Move 2.0, it’s not just the OOH provider’s CEO who sees a more compelling full-funnel narrative in his sights – agencies are welcoming on the flight to better outcomes for brands.

Job cuts, restructures, depressed spend and corporate reputation firefighting. It's hardly a surprise that free-to-air networks have toned down the upfronts razzle dazzle – and some agency execs welcome a more tailored conversation. But could the shift put TV's recovery narrative at risk just as streamers are hitting the ads accelerator? OMG's Kristiaan Kroon reckons it might. Foxtel Media's Mark Frain sees things the same way. He's still planning to go large.

Seven Network confirmed former Amazon Media ANZ and holdco agency CEO Henry Tajer has been engaged to advise the broadcaster on building out its commercial strategy following a sweeping cost-out and redundancy program in June that included the exit of long serving Chief Revenue Officer Kurt Burnette. Tajer has been meeting with media agency group executives in recent weeks.   

Stealth layoffs among marketing teams and media and agency groups since March were all signals for the crunch now hitting the advertising market with SMI reporting a 6.3 per cent decline in spending from the media agency sector and its largely blue chip and mid market clients. The restaurant sector led the retreat with a 24.2 per cent cut in spending in July – even the mighty McDonald’s and the powering KFC are said to be facing a material tightening in customer spend. But a digital ad decline of 10.6 per cent in August has been questioned by agency groups – a revised figure is expected.

Pinterest aims to put clear air between itself and rival platforms under pressure globally over mental health and algorithm-induced anxiety and the prospect of teen bans locally. It’s simultaneously making a play for more full-funnel ad dollars as performance media acquisition costs soar, doubling in the last four years and threatening unit economics, especially for ecom pureplays. The platform called out rivals at this week’s annual showcase, with global CEO Bill Ready talking up a “positive business model centred on emotional wellbeing rather than engagement via enragement”, and throwing down the gauntlet to Meta, Twitter and TikTok to use its third party-developed tools to gauge negative impacts on users. Local MD Melinda Petrunoff said it’s been private by default for under-16s for more than a year “before this was a discussion”, and advertisers are buying the positive vibe. Now it’s pushing performance and commerce capability – and the likes of Mecca, Pandora, Adidas and Walgreens are converts.

Google's fast-tracked legal battle with the Justice Department has ended faster than anticipated, just three weeks in, with Google putting up a remarkably weak fight, according to some observers. Tactical? Maybe. Whether it decides to appeal a guilty judgement – if given – will be telling. 

YouTube is out to prove its breadth of niche long-form content gets audiences more engaged than they might be elsewhere. It's hired Kantar to help make a solid case that this so called 'flow state' makes audiences more receptive to new information – i.e. advertising. And it's also making some bold claims about how YouTube reduces ecom returns. But Neuro Insight's Peter Pynta queries whether such macro level observations go deep enough, and importantly, whether they can really be applied to advertising. From those deciding where spend goes, the feedback was mixed. Buyers are not yet convinced that it translates to all-important advertising effectiveness – and some say YouTube's jamming in plenty of ads that might break that flow state.

The blockbuster Google ads antitrust trial looks likely to end weeks early after the testy judge launched a series of attacks on the search giant’s witnesses yesterday. The inability of the tech giant's legal team – full of the most expensive big name lawyers corporations can buy – to match the Justice Department's case blow for blow left onlookers baffled.

NIB and University of Tasmania are two Australian organisations that have begun squaring up to the sustainability reckoning coming to marketers, agency and media publishers as legislated climate reporting ratchets up a notch and Scope 3 emissions become front and centre. With media and marketing emissions estimated at a whopping 59 per cent of total group emissions at NIB, marketing this year adopted GroupM’s Project Alpha reporting tool to start accurately measuring and optimising campaigns with immediate double-digit reductions effect. At Uni of Tas meanwhile, 30 per cent-plus reductions just by tackling the low-hanging fruit of digital advertising optimisation – largely programmatic display and made for advertising sites. Meanwhile switching out clicks to conversion metrics not only won over the c-suite, it’s cementing the education provider’s global number one position for climate action with prospective students, and led to a 264 per cent increase in conversions in early campaign trials.