Opinion

The second year of Advertising Week APAC pulled in circa 4,000 delegates over three days at Sydney's Luna Park, covering a mountain of themes from mental health to the future of tech stacks, agencies, AI, VR, influencers, industry secrets and lies and performance marketing versus brand building. Here's our curated selection of standout quotes from last week's event.      

Okay, for 'Houston' read Silicon Valley and for 'problem' read massive understatement. IPG Mediabrands' APAC CEO Leigh Terry provides some context to the announcement of the big tech antitrust investigations in US, and the release of the ACCC Digital Platforms report locally. 

PwC continues to cop flak on its vanishing Facebook video consumption study - which will rise again - but there's a bigger conundrum: consulting groups are on a lucrative gravy train with cashed-up tech platforms and media groups are now catching on. What becomes?   

Everyone's asking when the Federal government will release the ACCC's final findings from its Digital Platforms Inquiry.  Some insiders are betting on it landing this week along with some curveballs for data houses like Quantium and Experian getting unexpected attention.     

Put it in your diary. If the rumblings here and abroad are right, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) chairman, Rod Sims, has some feisty proposals to put to the federal government by June 30 and it will likely mess with the marketing supply chain. Or "surveillance marketing" as industry critics call it. Still boring? Too bad. It's real. 

There are three critical themes hurtling toward industry at present that look ominously like freight trains. It’s not whether they will hit but when and how hard. All of them will materially shift how the industry operates today. All of them should have the industry’s brightest mapping worst and best-case scenarios within a three-year window.

Australia's media agencies have mobilised under the Media Federation of Australia (MFA) to shut their shops and send their people to a new industry media "Effectiveness Expo" in a move of solidarity and symbolism. Marketers take note. Agencies... don't squander the opportunity for real regime change.       

The rumours were flying hot this week about PwC exploring a deal with WPP globally. Several well-placed executives I spoke to say talks have taken place at a global level. Not that a deal is done. Or that it will be done. Just that the two professional services giants are in conversation.  

There's one constant in talking to hundreds of people across marketing, media, agencies and tech: a desire for safe, intelligent conversation and analysis of global and Australian industry developments. Conversations that are considered, constructive and challenging. That avoid anonymity. Mi3 is a contemporary take on an industry journal - part journalism, part equities-style analysis. It's designed to be different in its conversations across the nexus of marketing, agencies, media and tech. Transactional industry news is not a focus for Mi3 - that turf is well served. The intent is to go deeper for leaders and emerging leaders in marketing, agencies, media and technology. Let's see if the pool of curious, time-poor, intelligence-hungry, considered industry folk in the marketing food chain get some value. Welcome anyway. Read on.