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UPDATED: Former war correspondent, media-tech commentator and founder of AI video news service Oovvuu, Ricky Sutton, has warned publishers face declines of up to 45 per cent in referral traffic from their organic Google Search listings - and brands will face similar falls. Sutton says Google is running a rapid and "reckless" rollout globally to plug its AI chatbot Gemini into the $46bn search engine. Traditional unsponsored listings in Google’s new “AI Overview” search function are displaced for Gemini-generated answers, packaged in a conversational tone but dominate “almost the entire first page of a search query”, says Sutton. That squeezes non-sponsored links out of user sight. Sutton, who has shot to international repute with his regulatory analysis on big tech, says Google Search becomes an “answers engine” with a “conversational response" crafted by chatbot Gemini. "This is a huge change,” Sutton says although “as far as I can tell, Australia is the only country in the world that doesn’t have it at the moment”. An ACCC interim report due in September on the Australian search market and contentious negotiations around the Federal Government’s Media Bargaining Code might have something to do with it. 

The AI revolution is upon us but the knowledge gap is unprecedented and the learning curve steep. Many in marketing are happier to keep the new tech at arms length - fears of getting AI wrong, given the the unique ethical and security concerns, are at the crux of the issue. Boss of AI consultancy Move 37 and former The Royals founder Dave King says the AI knowledge gap is the biggest he's seen in his career and the only solution is for marketers to get into the tech and experiment for themselves. It's what indie media shop This is Flow is looking to tackle, last week launching the first of a workshop series it's coined 'Playgroup'. The first session, fronted by King, attempted to crack through some reservations and give clients a holistic view of AI and what it can do for their organisation. So far, it seems to have landed but marketers from Princess Cruises and Care Pharma point to time and money as a key barrier to broader AI deployment. Nonetheless, former STW CCO turned advisor Chris Savage suggests that the agency is on the right track but with clients likely to in-house their future AI capabilities, he says agencies will also need to get their own houses in order via AI and automation if they're to avoid an "extinction event". 

It's the return of Dr No. CIOs are hoovering up a greater share of martech budgets and asserting more control over martech decisions as CEOs look to regain control of sprawling cross-functional infrastructure. And with Gen AI they also want to avoid the mistakes of the SaaS era where business heads jumped in and did their own thing to get around what they viewed as the impediment of the IT Department. Instead, organisations now want IT to act as an AI gatekeeper. That presents a risk to marketers if the customer needs don't get enough consideration in the process says Gartner's Chief of Research.

Carsales head of CX Deb Heaphy understands the power of voice of the customer (VOC) programs to drive better outcomes both for the customer and the business. The company is already using AI, but now with Gen AI on the horizon she is hoping for more efficiency gains.

Every tech cycle brings disruption, but AI’s advance is so rapid that the advertising and media industries no longer have time to adapt, says US-based media ecologist Jack Myers. Which means the winners and losers will be determined much, much faster – and there's no chance of a slowdown.

Iconic Australian FMCG SPC had a massive 87 per cent brand awareness and a strong portfolio when CMO, Peta Allsopp joined the new-look leadership team. The bad news was that long-term brand strategy was virtually non-existent and it had a marketing team of two. But after re-engineering its balance sheet under private ownership and with a new exec leadership team in place, appetite for change was strong in the business – from the top down. Allsopp has wasted little time, hiring new marketers, shaking up its agency roster and building out the FMCG's portfolio to better match shifting consumer tastes. She's aiming to boost exports into Asia as well as re-fire local brands through consistent messaging and building mental availability. But while some brands are now getting above the line investment for the first time in years, there are some things Allsopp's not going to do. TV partnerships for one.

Gartner’s latest global CMO survey finds marketing budgets as a percentage of company revenues are at a five-year low. Martech spending is its lowest in 10 years while talent and agencies are likewise getting squeezed. But results-pressured marketing chiefs are ringfencing working media in a bid for short-term growth. Locally CMOs from Uber, Adore Beauty, and one financial services firm, along with Publicis and Orchard executives, suggest overt trimming of marketing budgets is not prevalent – yet. But there is no doubt significant scrutiny is going into every dollar spent to maximise efficiency, productivity and commercial value across the funnel. Responsible marketing is the name of the game, and demonstrating impact – ideally immediately – is imperative.

Ogilvy One is back, but this time it's got a new end-to-end proposition. The newly revamped CX and commerce unit of WPP's legacy creative brand rolled out in market earlier this year, bringing together a full spectrum of digital experience-adjacent capabilities (including it's 2022 martech acquisition Bower House Digital) into a single unit that Ogilvy ANZ experience chief Jason Davey says will shake up best practice. The CX shop does away with customer relationship management in favour of what it's calling 'relationship design', taking cues from the one-to-one approach of its direct marketing origins. Davey says marketer's relationships with their customers have become "too technologically driven" and their loyalty schemes too transactional - he argues community and values alignment are the new frontier but that all hinges on getting the right insights. To tackle all of this Ogilvy One has devised a new standardised process of relationship design that's due to be rolled out via a new cloud-based platform, plugging right into WPP Open to drive insights and optimisation at scale. 

Agency holding companies are displacing traditional IT systems integrators when it comes to commerce services and strategy. Per Forrester’s latest research, the sector is now led by holding companies Publicis, Omnicom and WPP, plus Accenture. IPG and Dentsu-owned Merkle are in the second tier, according to the research firm, but still on par with IBM and ahead of the likes of Capgemini. Report co-author Ted Schadler notes “a very important shift in the landscape” as holdcos race to re-engineer their models to ride the wave of disruption that is collapsing traditional funnels and drastically shortening the path to purchase.