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The race is on to crack AI search before brand and publisher rankings slide. The latest version of Google's AI Overviews has Resolution Digital's David Castle optimistic that the SEO wheel won't need to be completely be remade when it lands in Australia within the next six months, with Google already testing AI Overviews ads in the US – but Castle fears deciphering chatbots will prove more difficult. Hotwire CEO Heather Kernahan claims the firm has managed to reverse engineer where AIs are pulling from and what’s influencing them – but it’s early days and only in testing with a handful of clients. Meanwhile, a new generation of search upstarts are eschewing the ad-funded model entirely: Andi Search CEO Angela Hoover suggest ads would lead to her platform's "ultimate destruction". But that’s what Sergey Brin and Larry Page once said. Perhaps they were wrong on the timing.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff declared the end of 'DIY AI' at the cloud giant’s heaving annual tech conference in San Francisco last week, tapping already frustrated boards, c-suite and operating executives on the complexity, time and budgets to achieve meaningful AI deployments and business improvement. The only beneficiaries so far were “frontier” AI companies, Benioff punched home to media earlier in the week - hundreds of billions, he said, had been invested in these firms with little revolution for business to see versus the hype. Saks Fifth Avenue, Gucci, publisher Wiley, and ANZ’s Fisher & Paykel were among those in early trials for the biggest bet Salesforce has made since its early shift to a SaaS-based cloud model – autonomous, reasoning AI agents. "You don't need to DIY your AI. This is the big fundamental thought,” Benioff said repeatedly over three days. “Our job is to break DIY AI.” The message hit home with customers, say analysts, "But now he needs to deliver."

The blow torch is burning red hot on the bellies of digital giants around the world, and now a new report from the US Federal Trade Commission is turning the dial to maximum, accusing firms including Amazon.com (owner of Twitch), Meta Platforms, YouTube LLC, X, Snap, ByteDance (owner of TikTok), Discord, Reddit, and WhatsApp of posing unique risks to children and teens, and basically lying about the number of children using their platforms. The FTC suggests algorithms are designed to be addictive, and that data abuse is a tool to build market dominance. There is a special shout-out about automated decisioning that will no doubt catch the eye of Australia's Attorney General's Department, given its inclusion in the first tranche of privacy reforms. Indeed, many of the findings of the report reinforce the goal of the Australian Government to implement a social media ban.

A dedicated, multi-channel marketing campaign to engage Australia’s culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) consumers helped Stan firstly get one in 10 viewers tuning into its 2024 Paris Olympic coverage to watch one of eight dedicated international, in-language streaming channels. Even more importantly, the 2.5 million campaign impressions delivered via agency partner, CulturalPulse, which stirred up word-of-mouth, saw this figure grow to one in seven over the course of the tournament, helping generate a hefty 50 per cent uptick in sports subscribers during that time. For Stan CMO, Diana Ilinkovski, the results speak volumes around how the streaming service can continue to find growth by tapping Australia’s multicultural consumers not only around sports content, but broader entertainment programming. For CulturalPulse CEO, Reg Raghavan, it’s a strong example of an approach that recognised the distinctive collective versus individual attributes of multicultural communities, had a creative eye for the sports and athletic stars that resonate most (cue Greek NBA basketball stars), and demonstrated just how much brands need to invite – not just reach – CALD consumers to win them over. 

"Every company is a software company," as Watts S. Humphrey once famously observed, but this is probably not what he had in mind. As brands bid to wring every ounce of profit from every dollar earned through the efficiency of automated decision-making that understands customers better than they understand themselves, they now face a new and potentially costly risk – penalties in the millions of dollars, and a regulatory regime that makes it easier for the market policemen to write you a ticket. What's more, it's not fully clear how broad the definition of what constitutes automated decision-making will be – which puts almost everyone on notice. Privacy specialists Mi3 spoke with stressed there's much more work to be done than simply writing a new privacy policy. For starters, you have to adhere to it. That might mean costly and complicated business and system process changes that move at the speed of compliance – but in a market powered by the accelerant of generative AI.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff was itching for a street fight with Microsoft and Open AI at a press conference earlier this morning in San Francisco after his “Dreamforce” conference keynote. He claimed the “third wave of AI” had started with reasoning autonomous agents that blended with humans in meetings across every company function was already delivering substantial gains in early trials with Saks Fifth Avenue, Gucci and publishing firm Wiley. Benioff launched the company’s “Agentforce” this morning – the most important in Salesforce's history, he said – which sets autonomous agents into companies trained for business outcomes, not language processing. 

Mamamia wants to bust out of its media for mums silo and it's put together an "Avengers" style squad of big name media recruits to make it happen. Former Seven national sales chief Natalie Harvey is at the helm with ex-IAG marketer Zara Curtis and Carat's Danni Wright now in the fold and Harvey's one-time Seven Network comrade Georgie Nichols clocking-in next month. Harvey says the number one job is for the team to drive awareness of Mamamia's jam-packed offering. Luckily, that's just what upfronts are for. Taking the stage to address Sydney-based marketers and buyers, the new recruits pitched four new content verticals, a vodcast format, and an expanded first party data play that Wright reckons will give Roy Morgan a run for its money while handing Mamamia's "secret sauce" to clients via a propriety content planning tool. 

The digital transformation sprint left everybody with “bland” customer experiences, per Fjord founder turned Accenture Song’s global design and product chief Olof Schybergson. After the Covid hangover, he thinks the next wave is incoming, driven by ‘fluid experiences’ that cut through templated attempts at personalisation, where design leads technology, not vice versa, and creates new products, income streams and business models while delivering actual customer value. He reels off case studies for Fortune 500, beauty firm Shiseido and Saudi Arabia’s flagship airline as needle movers. Sydney-based APAC design and digital products boss Cristiano Dencker was shocked at the high penetration of recommendation engines in Australia when he landed last year. Problem is, he reckons, they are not being properly harnessed and personalisation as a differentiator “is BS” pushed by vendors and agencies. ANZ design lead, Fabio Buresti, thinks local airlines and streaming services are standout examples of ‘cut and paste’ homogeneity when it comes to UX and UI. But he says blue chips like NRMA, Qantas and Tourism Australia are busting to break the mould.

Paramount has landed the first of the TV network's 2025 upfronts pitches, slinging a first in market unified total TV trading platform that promises to target and deliver audiences across BVOD, SVOD, AVOD, and FAST assets in a single play by early 2025 – with linear following mid year. Paramount Connect plays into TV's convergence and coming tipping point, with buyers long itching at the friction of siloed transactions, per sales chief Rod Prosser. The new set-up will provide buyers with a "compelling blended CPM" that Prosser reckons will offer a more tempting entry point into premium Paramount+ inventory. That ad tier inventory is currently limited but, he claimed, is climbing in line with its broader streaming subscriptions, estimated by Telsyte to be up 18 per cent in the 12 months to June – the fastest growth in market. Elsewhere, the network has caught up to the competition on shoppable CTV, and Big Brother returns.