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Three years after taking on the daunting challenge of rebuilding respect for the AMP brand, Renee Howie has been lured by the appeal of a group-level executive role to join Insignia Financial as chief customer officer. It's a mega remit, spanning all traditional marketing functions through to digital, data, analytics, marketing, brand, customer analytics, government relations, media, public relations – and, overseeing the advice business, she’s also picking up a P&L. All of which comes under the watch of a recently installed CEO who’s future focused and chasing growth for an ASX-listed group that now managed $311bn in funds. As Howie tells Mi3, it was too rare an opportunity to pass up.

Twilio had the opportunity to exit the customer data platform (CDP) market thanks to a strategic review ordered by new CEO Khozema Shipchandler in February this year. Instead, it is staying the course and doubling down on the strategy that saw it buy Segment for US$3.2 billion at the start of the decade. Now, the popular Segment CDP is seen as central to its embrace of generative AI and ultimately to executing is conversational commerce plans. Twilio Segment President Thomas Wyatt describes to Mi3 the importance of data orchestration in delivering personalised customer experiences in an increasingly complex digital landscape, as Twilio seeks to integrate its Communication platform-as-a-service (CPaaS) with its CDP offerings to unlock new market opportunities.

Use of generative AI by business decision-makers in the US doubled over the last 12 months with 72 per cent now utilising the technology weekly. It's a significant leap from just 37 per cent a year prior. This growing reliance on generative AI is accompanied by a dramatic increase in budgeting, with organisations planning to double their spending from an average of US$4.5 million in 2023 to an impressive US$10.3 million in 2024. As companies shift their focus from initial experimentation to strategic implementation, the potential of generative AI to drive efficiency and innovation is becoming increasingly clear, prompting executives to re-evaluate their investment strategies in pursuit of tangible returns on investment.

Tech investment advisor Terry Kawaja – the man behind the adtech Lumascape – thinks adtech’s lean M&A period might be about to turn, driven by an incoming wave of what he calls “creative tech” start-ups. Canva's $370m acquisition of Leonardo.AI is an early example and Luma Partners, he says, is “one hundred per cent” eyeing potential deals. Meanwhile, he thinks agency arbitrage via principal-based media buying is anything but nefarious. “It’s fine,” per Kawaja. But he doubts it will prop up business models under “encroachment” from all quarters. The holdcos, he suggests, are going to need a bigger tool belt. Kawaja’s also spoiling to fight Apple CEO Tim Cook, at the very least verbally, for hobbling the digital ad industry in the name of privacy while, he claims, using the same data to fuel its own ad business. Apple, per Kawaja, is putting itself in antitrust crosshairs – he hopes it’s next.

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.

Generative AI costs have plummeted 80 per cent in less than two years since OpenAI launched ChatGPT. Some of the world’s biggest firms have rolled out company-wide use cases, saving hundreds of millions of dollars and driving new previously unimaginable revenues. What’s more, AI is fuelling itself. “We're using AI to build AI tools to build better AI”, per Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Addo AI CEO and cofounder Ayesha Khanna says the costs will keep falling due to Scaling Law, AI's equivalent to Moore's Law.

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.

This year’s winner of the Australian Marketing Institute’s Certified Practising Marketer award, Paper + Spark’s Paul Everson, is in plenty of conversations right now, but reports a market afraid to commit to decisions as socio-economic uncertainty and short-termism persist. It’s not helping many marketers are either struggling to draw insights from data, or lack commercial nous to connect the dots to the business bottom line, he says – a big reason why skills development programs like Certified Practising Marketer are so critical to the industry. But with the core fundamentals of marketing as solid as ever – even with more channels and sophisticated terminology at our disposal – this experienced agency leader, marketing industry mentor and Uni lecturer is keen to see the industry embrace big M marketing with more confidence.