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Programmatic digital out of home (pDOOH) is starting to make headway in the Australian marketplace, but remains a single digit percentage of the overall OOH pie. To start catching up with penetration in more advanced markets, agencies reckon owners must fully embrace the medium and stop selling – and setting targets – in silos. In return, they will do their bit on justifying higher CPMs. Nexus’ James Lambert, PHD’s Joanna Barnes, Initiative's Paige Wheaton, Kinesso's Michael Whiteside, EssenceMediacom’s Katherine Pochroj and Jean-Christophe Conti weigh in.

OMG Chief Investment Officer Kristiaan Kroon says advertisers have reacted to sustained macro pressures with "relationship rationalisation". That bodes ill for all but the largest publishers with tight propositions and the ability to execute at scale. Generalists will find ad revenues shrinking even if the bear ad market turns bullish, though he sees upside for publishers with niche, high value audiences. Private Media CEO Will Hayward agrees. The problem is, media agencies are not set up to work with myriad small publishers, despite some talking up media diversity. Even if planners and strategists buy-in, investment directors and CEOs have little incentive "if it's going to take five times as long" for the same percentage cut, per Avid Collective MD Luke Spano. Concrete Playground MD Alex Light says at least one investment director at a holdco-owned agency is more receptive to "deeper" connections over reach, but Spano thinks the only way for independents to compete with News and Nine is via aggregation. He's planning to build "The Trade Desk" of native content – and claims white labelling conversations with holdcos locally and globally are progressing fast.

It’s the sort of longer-term shift in brand narrative, customer base and commercial impact strategic CMOs crave. Three years on from becoming marketing chief at jewellery retailer, Michael Hill, Jo Feeney has seen loyalty program numbers increase by 1.5 million to over 2m, average transaction values lift circa 30 per cent, and a growth cohort of customers progressively responding to its premiumisation play. Playing the strategic long game hasn’t come without its challenges – the jewellery retailer hasn’t been immune to tough retail conditions and over the first six months of the financial year, overall sales remain flat. Several stores closed and executive redundancies occurred. But the jeweller retailer is holding firm. Now Feeney is about to unveil her latest program of work: A rebrand two years in the making, stretching from refreshed design systems and brandmark to Michael Hill’s first brand ambassador and a new-look retail approach.

Attaining 100 per cent consideration with tradies, a three-point jump in brand awareness, and 14 percentage point increase in first-choice consideration with enterprise buyers are some big proof points Kennards Hire’s Manelle Merhi has to show for her ‘Ken Oath’ creative investment. But behind the multi-year campaign is a whole experience and service commitment that’s been critical to turning a smart, fun marketing tagline into a fundamental business ethos.

Agency and media strategy guru, David Fish, sees an awful lot of short-term thinking going on – and it’s leading too many businesses and leaders to jump at shadows and fail to focus on things that matter most – like category disruption. Having signed up as one of the new mentors under former GroupM boss and McDonald's CMO Mark Lollback's Global Mentorship venture, Fish is looking to bring his agency and media strategy experiences – from good to bad and ugly – to mentees seeking a mindset reset and a way to grow in an evolving world of work where emotional connection and employee belonging remain paramount to future success.  

After five years of diminishing incoming demand, finance and HR SaaS brand Workday embarked upon what its CMO Emma Chalwin called a bold brand strategy that has already powered massive gains in awareness, consideration, trust – and crucially, leads. Sales is now drinking the brand Kool Aid and the company, which has reached a growth inflection point with its global and vertical market expansion, is lifting the curtains on the second act of its award-winning Rockstars campaign as it chases giant tech brands like Oracle, SAP and Microsoft.

Fast food chain Mad Mex was able to drive a 9 per cent uplift in sales in restaurants within a proximity of its latest programmatic digital out-of-home campaign that also demonstrated the flexibility and agility of the channel. Just as importantly, digital efficiency helped to extend the life of the campaign.

WPP's VML is the tenth merger ANZ CEO Thomas Tearle has under his belt to date. As agencies locally and globally rush to consolidate brands, he says it's "becoming a specialism". Three months into the VMLY&R and Wunderman Thompson smush, he claims it's not far off "humming" and isn't just a bid for efficiency. But in all mergers there is always a cultural unknown to navigate, "the only thing you can't predict is the team dynamics."

In its latest half-yearly financial report, Carsales cited a 22 per cent rise in media business sales to $34.5 million, representing 16 per cent of total group revenue. It’s the proof point its media division leaders, Stephen Kyefulumya and Davor Vilusic, know shows their multi-year strategy to put first-party data at the heart of Carsales’ strategy is truly paying off.

Now, with Google’s plans for cookie deprecation finally becoming a reality in 2024, the pair are confident the seamless combination of identity resolution, CDP, tag solution, creative solution support and measurement they’ve put together will ensure 100 per cent addressable advertising and reporting for advertisers that meet their every need, regardless of the state of the advertiser’s own data sets. During the recent Adobe Summit, the pair caught up with Mi3 to discuss the status of their mediahouse play and focus on scaling the business.