Media

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.

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.

Former GroupM stalwart and one-time Maxus Australia boss Dave Gaines has built a USD$400m-billing independent agency in New York that doesn’t make any money on media mark-ups. He thinks audience metrics may face redundancy – as do media buyers – and agrees with former UM privacy chief Arielle Garcia that the data underpinning the promise of personalisation at scale is woefully inaccurate. But marketers and their peak bodies are doing little to change the status quo. Act fast, warns Gaines, or get fleeced by machines as well.

Lee Stephens, the former boss of Australia’s first listed digital agency e-mitch – a spinoff by the late Harold Mitchell’s Mitchell & Partners – and onetime boss of Carat ANZ is back in the media agency game with a plan to do it differently. Meerkat is an unlisted public company to facilitate better equity management for execs and employees and the agency is moving to channel planning and buying based on the best “media moments” for a target audience or segment. Meerkat will also eschew sector specific targeting algorithms from the likes of The Trade Desk for custom-built versions for Meerkat clients. 

It is a mistake to pit the priorities of online safety against those of online privacy, and many of the people who do so represent the interests of giant digital platforms that promote the idea of a decentralised open web, despite having enclosed and centralised control of that same global infrastructure. That was a key message from Privacy Commissioner Carly Kind, eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, lawyer and human rights activist Lizzie O'Shea, and UNSW Criminology Professor Michael Salter at SXSW last week. The "data extractive business models" of digital giants came under heavy fire and limiting those models was described as the best way to limit privacy and safety harms by removing the economic incentives that underpin "surveillance capitalism."

Greenhushing versus greenwashing: How companies tout their sustainability progress is increasingly a binary argument as they balance the risk of saying nothing at all with regulatory and consumer retribution for ego marketing or making claims they can’t evidentially back up. Which is why the AANA’s CEO Josh Faulks says its newly updated Environmental Claims Code was so important to get into the advertising industry’s hands sooner rather than later.

Foxtel's aiming to beat OzTam to market with its own trading currency – with the two set to land days apart. That could prove bumpy for media agencies. Foxtel Media boss Mark Frain, while piling pressure onto the incumbent currency provider, hasn't ruled out bringing everything back together. But only under a "very different operating model". In the meantime the pay TV firm turned streamer is going all-out to align new partners: Measurement firm Beatgrid, IPG's Magna and Wesfarmers are running tests on reach, frequency, incrementality and brand lift, while Amplified Intelligence and OMG are building a major video streaming attention and context amplification study for the Video Futures Collective.

Omnicom Media Group’s CEO Peter Horgan announced he would leave the firm next year, after tripling the business over a decade and carving out a market position around media transparency. But he says advertisers have now lost interest – and "integrity" is no longer “a halo” for OMG’s agency brands OMD and PHD. The disclosure comes as industry rumblings have media agencies returning to the opaque practices of a decade ago that triggered a global firestorm around the digital media supply chain and undisclosed incentives, rebates, strong-arm tactics and arbitrage deals with media owners on unsold advertising inventory. Horgan accepts cooling advertiser sentiment to transparent media trading has impacted the business – but scotched rumours of his exit being partly over frustration of intensifying control and intervention by US headquarters.

Travel is now surpassing pre-pandemic levels – even amid an economic crunch – and airports are looking to up their CX act with millions in Capex outlay to refine the terminal experience. JCDecaux has taken the wrappers off a new ‘connected journey’ media buying proposition across Australian airports for brands plus new program options that go beyond the screen. With the final arrival of Move 2.0, it’s not just the OOH provider’s CEO who sees a more compelling full-funnel narrative in his sights – agencies are welcoming on the flight to better outcomes for brands.

Job cuts, restructures, depressed spend and corporate reputation firefighting. It's hardly a surprise that free-to-air networks have toned down the upfronts razzle dazzle – and some agency execs welcome a more tailored conversation. But could the shift put TV's recovery narrative at risk just as streamers are hitting the ads accelerator? OMG's Kristiaan Kroon reckons it might. Foxtel Media's Mark Frain sees things the same way. He's still planning to go large.

Seven Network confirmed former Amazon Media ANZ and holdco agency CEO Henry Tajer has been engaged to advise the broadcaster on building out its commercial strategy following a sweeping cost-out and redundancy program in June that included the exit of long serving Chief Revenue Officer Kurt Burnette. Tajer has been meeting with media agency group executives in recent weeks.   

Stealth layoffs among marketing teams and media and agency groups since March were all signals for the crunch now hitting the advertising market with SMI reporting a 6.3 per cent decline in spending from the media agency sector and its largely blue chip and mid market clients. The restaurant sector led the retreat with a 24.2 per cent cut in spending in July – even the mighty McDonald’s and the powering KFC are said to be facing a material tightening in customer spend. But a digital ad decline of 10.6 per cent in August has been questioned by agency groups – a revised figure is expected.

Pinterest aims to put clear air between itself and rival platforms under pressure globally over mental health and algorithm-induced anxiety and the prospect of teen bans locally. It’s simultaneously making a play for more full-funnel ad dollars as performance media acquisition costs soar, doubling in the last four years and threatening unit economics, especially for ecom pureplays. The platform called out rivals at this week’s annual showcase, with global CEO Bill Ready talking up a “positive business model centred on emotional wellbeing rather than engagement via enragement”, and throwing down the gauntlet to Meta, Twitter and TikTok to use its third party-developed tools to gauge negative impacts on users. Local MD Melinda Petrunoff said it’s been private by default for under-16s for more than a year “before this was a discussion”, and advertisers are buying the positive vibe. Now it’s pushing performance and commerce capability – and the likes of Mecca, Pandora, Adidas and Walgreens are converts.

Google's fast-tracked legal battle with the Justice Department has ended faster than anticipated, just three weeks in, with Google putting up a remarkably weak fight, according to some observers. Tactical? Maybe. Whether it decides to appeal a guilty judgement – if given – will be telling. 

YouTube is out to prove its breadth of niche long-form content gets audiences more engaged than they might be elsewhere. It's hired Kantar to help make a solid case that this so called 'flow state' makes audiences more receptive to new information – i.e. advertising. And it's also making some bold claims about how YouTube reduces ecom returns. But Neuro Insight's Peter Pynta queries whether such macro level observations go deep enough, and importantly, whether they can really be applied to advertising. From those deciding where spend goes, the feedback was mixed. Buyers are not yet convinced that it translates to all-important advertising effectiveness – and some say YouTube's jamming in plenty of ads that might break that flow state.

The blockbuster Google ads antitrust trial looks likely to end weeks early after the testy judge launched a series of attacks on the search giant’s witnesses yesterday. The inability of the tech giant's legal team – full of the most expensive big name lawyers corporations can buy – to match the Justice Department's case blow for blow left onlookers baffled.

NIB and University of Tasmania are two Australian organisations that have begun squaring up to the sustainability reckoning coming to marketers, agency and media publishers as legislated climate reporting ratchets up a notch and Scope 3 emissions become front and centre. With media and marketing emissions estimated at a whopping 59 per cent of total group emissions at NIB, marketing this year adopted GroupM’s Project Alpha reporting tool to start accurately measuring and optimising campaigns with immediate double-digit reductions effect. At Uni of Tas meanwhile, 30 per cent-plus reductions just by tackling the low-hanging fruit of digital advertising optimisation – largely programmatic display and made for advertising sites. Meanwhile switching out clicks to conversion metrics not only won over the c-suite, it’s cementing the education provider’s global number one position for climate action with prospective students, and led to a 264 per cent increase in conversions in early campaign trials.

Seven's new structure raised more than a few eyebrows when it landed in June, as did the big name cuts that came with it. But despite new Television and Digital divisions appearing to erect silos, national TV sales boss Katie Finney says Seven's commitment to converged trading remains unchanged. In fact, she says little has tangibly changed across the sales structure, aside from PNLs and reporting lines – intended to streamline delivery for partners. She’s in market tasked with assuring advertisers and agencies that Seven is now better set to manage shifting market dynamics. But the restructure isn't all Seven has to address, in what has been a year marred by controversies and murky allegations. Finney says the business is taking on "the good, the bad and the ugly" from partners and staffers alike, while CEO Jeff Howard is taking a zero tolerance stance on bad behaviour.

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.

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. 

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. 

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.

Retail media may be the fast-rising star among advertising channels, but too many brands remain fixated on ROAS as the single metric. There are several reasons, starting with a tight economy, but a lack of technological sophistication is also a problem for many brands, according to panelists at an IAB event last week which included Roger Dunn, global head, retail media & performance media, Diageo, Hope Williams, head of ecommerce at Kinesso, and Andy Ford, head of data intelligence and measurement for Coles360.

IPG Mediabrands Chief Data & Technology Officer Clay Gill has jumped camps to join supply side platform OpenX as APAC Regional VP for Buyer Development. The move, he said, was due to a fast and material swing away from Demand Side Platforms by agencies and holding companies as they realise SSPs are closer to publisher advertising inventory supply with faster, more transparent visibility, control and reporting of digital inventory. It also will see downward pressure on the transactional fees and taxes many intermediaries feed off in the billions traded daily in digital media globally. 

The first tranche of Privacy Act reform finally hits parliament today with serious breaches of personal information, child protection and automated decisioning transparency top of the list. But the marketing and advertising industry remains severely short on how to move forward as key areas of reform, including the ‘fair and reasonable’ test for how to use personal information, targeted advertising, consent models and SMB exemptions get kicked down the road.