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A line-up of big name entrepreneurs, investors and Australian and Silicon Valley VC firms have piled into the second, $20.5m funding round of three-year-old New Zealand SAS start-up Tracksuit, with ambitions of “creating the world’s best brand tracker”. The Series A funding, which values the firm at $142.9m, has eyes on disrupting global incumbents including Qualtrics, Kantar, Ipsos, Nielsen and YouGov. An intriguing competitive tussle between a new, automated and materially cheaper SAS-based brand tracking firm and the research establishment is in play – private equity firms control Qualtrics (Silver Lake), Kantar (Bain, WPP) and Nielsen (Elliott Investment Management).

Advertising, ecommerce sales and fulfilment plus subscription revenues are all powering north at Amazon in Australia – and its ad takings, up 51 per cent in 2023, should get a major boost in the second half of this year as it links streaming ads on Prime to its retail media business. I.e. vertically integrated brand and demand with sales and delivery. The company's claim to advertisers that it will hit 5 million subscribers may be a stretch but is doable, even if some analysts suggest its 40 per cent subscriber growth rate has maxed out. Either way, consultants suggest there is existential pressure for local incumbents as the juggernaut starts to hit top gear. After playing the long game, they reckon Amazon is finally approaching primacy, with pure-players likely to be "knocked off" as a result.

Two new appointments to the Mi3 team will see Kalila Welch oversee Mi3’s daily AI Fast News project and cover the agency and media rounds; Pamela Schoenhofer joins in Editorial & Partnerships.

Two and a half years after ditching Nielsen for Ipsos, the IAB is in market with the next phase of its plan to build a true cross-media currency. BVOD data via OzTam is now live, more connected TV data is incoming from both streamers and social media platforms – and the CEOs of all three organisations think "rat bag" Australia can ultimately succeed where markets such as the UK have seemingly succumbed to political stalemate. For now, the new data brings a sharper read not just on reach across the piste but on shifts in consumer behaviour – like how people are hopping from loyalty apps and into media and back again. Which means less guesswork for advertisers.

Marketers, media players and agencies will never knowingly pass up an opportunity to tap the cultural zeitgeist. And the arrival of Taylor Swift and her ‘The Eras’ tour in Australia proved irresistible for plenty. From rebranding a private island in North Queensland to creating a special Tay Tam line of Tim Tams, greetings from Vegemite and Tooheys plus tributes from Twisties to Taylor and her football-playing boyfriend, Travis Kelce, we’ve had a flurry of activations and campaigns pop up, most notably in out-of-home. Here's 13 of the most memorable fired across Mi3's desk.

CMOs need to get their consent management house in order or risk tainting the AI models they are currently spending millions to develop, says Tealium CEO Jeff Lunsford. His company has just been named a leader in the first ever Gartner Magic Quadrant for Customer Data Platforms, along with Salesforce, Adobe and Treasure Data. In Australia, Tealium is the leading enterprise CDP, according to research conducted by Mi3 last year. Gartner warned however, that the sector may have peaked and consolidation could follow. Tealium's boss believes that's more of an issue for companies that piled into the CDP sector when it was running hot. He says AI will drive strong ongoing demand for a platform that not only addresses the challenges of data collection, enrichment and distribution, but also solves for activation.

It’s not quite the viewer utopia of universal search for any content on any streaming or broadcaster app but Foxtel’s launch last night of a connected TV super hub aggregating 18 competing apps in a single platform with a one-time sign-in for all is getting close. Hubbl will see Hamish & Andy front a major consumer marketing effort designed to tap growing viewer frustration managing dozens of streaming apps and subscriptions and the time it takes to find something to watch. Early results from Sky Glass in the UK and US – Hubbl’s genesis – indicates viewers spend less time choosing content and their viewing time and repertoire of shows and genres increases. “It’s a content-first experience, not an app-first experience,” Hubbl’s global Chief Product Officer, Fraser Stirling told Mi3 in what he argued was a groundbreaking shift in how people will connect with, manage and consume content.