News Analysis

The race for first-party data is heating up and marketers are looking to creative agencies to demonstrate their data skills to drive smarter campaigns and to ensure they do not lose the ability to collect data. Leaders at both the big groups and the indie shops think that requires a more integrated approach, if not a full swing back to full service models – as proven by recent pitch battles.

Three months out from launching Volkswagen's first e-commerce platform, DDB's digital agency Tribal was fighting to keep the brand on the books. Following a successful pitch, the agency got to work on delivering an "Australian first" for the auto industry, selling more than 600 cars online in the last 18-months, with some models selling out in two minutes, sight unseen. Volkswagen Marketing Growth Manager, Rowena Kanna, says the platform has been more than just a sales conversion tool for the brand, shining a light on how the auto manufacturer can target across the entire marketing funnel.

Agencies are signing up to NeverNotCreative’s new Internship Minimum Standards, but the organisation’s creator insists he’s not looking to name and shame bad players. Instead, the industry should shine a light on best practice.  

Marketers are scrambling to find workarounds to Apple's iOS 14.5 update, urgently asking agencies for solutions and prioritising them in current pitches. Advertising execs think it's just the tip of the iceberg. 

Resisting the rise of underhanded workarounds to replace third party cookie-style user tracking – sometimes known as fingerprinting – should be central to advertisers’ post-cookie planning or industry risks a more aggressive privacy response from regulators, which have already taken cookies as their first scalp, digital industry leaders warned yesterday. A wave of direct deals between publishers and brands is also building as authenticated, logged-in users become mission-critical – but lazy defaults to the tech giants remain a reality.

Contextual marketing is the new black - or the new old black. But nobody can land on the same definition. As marketers scramble for privacy-compliant ways to manage scaled campaigns, what does 'contextual marketing' actually mean? Mi3 asked six experts about how context plays out in a cookie-less future – and what it means for marketers.

Media agencies have pushed back on a proposal from Seven and 10 to replace the decades-long ritual of overnight ratings with a seven-day reporting cycle to capture ongoing shifts in viewing times and screen types. Some critics say it's to “paint a rosier picture” of declining audiences across linear TV and others were “confused” as media agencies typically report to clients already on a similar cycle. Broadcasters point to the US and UK markets as already there.

While Facebook delivered on its ultimatum to shut down news, industry figures say its implicit threat to replace free, ad-funded services with a paid model in response to Apple's iOS tracking changes is "ridiculous" – given Facebook takes north of $80bn in ad revenue. Meanwhile, as Australia's opt-in percentages struggle to reach double digits, some publishers and brands are holding out for higher public acceptance of tracking over the next few weeks. 

Athena takes its name from the goddess of war and wisdom. The fintech upstart is waging an all out attack on both the conventional wisdom that brands must be universally liked, and the homogeneity of a mortgage sector that appears to value new customers over old. In two years since launch, CMO Natalie Dinsdale has baked performance media into everything – even brand – and she's had Josh Frydenberg plug Athena's customer-first mantra and scold the banks. She's begun building her own econometrics model and barely looks at last click figures. Both brand and CMO are looking to land more punches on the established order.