Add more content here...

‘Marketers are unprepared for what is coming’: How Google’s AI search overhaul affects organic SEO for brands – and what to do about it

Plummeting top search rankings and click through rates following suit have marketers and SEO agencies worried. Commissioned by local and international publishers, UK-based Authoritas has been running the numbers on both publisher and brand search terms and how they compare with Google’s new AI-compiled amalgamated answers for the last year. AI Overviews isn’t yet in Australia, but it’s coming. There are potential upsides for brands, per CEO Laurence O’Toole. But the hard work starts now – because search is about to change forever and the millions sunk into SEO may soon be largely stranded.

Published
Categorized as Articles

GroupM forecasts modest ad spend growth amid economic uncertainty

GroupM’s mid-year ad spend forecast for 2024 predicts a 7.8% global advertising revenue growth, reaching US$989.9 billion and surpassing one trillion in revenue in 2025. However, at a local level, GroupM economists project a modest overall growth across all channels at 1.1% for 2024, with stronger growth expected in 2025.

Published
Categorized as News

Reclaiming kids from algorithms: Hyundai signs up to ’36 Months’ campaign, raising legal age to 16 for social media access – Nova’s Wippa and Finch’s Galluzzo urge more brands to walk purpose talk in likely hot election issue

Hyundai is the first brand – with some bravery – to have signed on to the 36 Months campaign to lift the minimum age for social media accounts from 13 to 16, launched by Nova Radio’s Michael ‘Wippa’ Wipfli and Rob Galluzzo, the boss of production company Finch. 36 months is the time a teen will reclaim from social media between 13 and 16 years. Galluzzo is “100 per cent certain” more brands will follow Hyundai to help create and fund the programs that rebuild a physical social network for teens that isn’t manipulated by the anxiety-inducing algorithms that have made young teenagers the product. Which creates the perfect platform for brands to walk all the talk about ‘purpose’ and ‘showing up in the right way’. “A brand can go to its board, and ask ‘how do we want to show up for these kids, these families, the community?’ If they don’t have an answer to that, they probably need to have a pretty big discussion about what they stand for as companies,” per Galluzzo.As of last Friday, Wippa and Galluzzo had landed 90,000 signatures, more than enough to have the petition head to Canberra. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has already endorsed the campaign, stating “what we want is our youngest Australians spending more time outside, playing sport, engaging with each other in a normal way, and less time online”. State and territory premiers have also backed the move – and Wippa thinks the upcoming election creates an opportunity for legislation sooner rather than later. “There’s some easy votes to be picked up from parents if you made this an election promise,” he says.Now 36 Months is building out three crucial pillars to use the time reclaimed from the platforms to better prepare young Australians for physical and digital life ahead. Here’s Wippa and Galluzzo on where next, and how brands can help repair the fractured civics they have inadvertently funded.

Published
Categorized as Podcasts

‘80% conversion rate, 25x growth’: Hoka taps experiential, content and authentic influence in bid to double sales and brand awareness

A commitment to building brand awareness coupled with running’s explosive popularity and a diversifying product portfolio have seen Hoka power 25x in under a decade: In 2015 it sold 40,000 pairs of shoes in Australia, today it sells more than 1 million. Now it’s aiming to double that. Local success is indicative of rapid global growth for the running and trail shoe brand, which reported a 34 per cent increase in sales in the last quarter to 31 March 2024, bringing quarterly revenue to US$533 million and global revenue to US$1.8 billion, up 29.7 per cent year-on-year. Hot on the heels of a successful five-day experiential-led campaign in Sydney with its Hoka FlyLab cube and content program, Hoka ANZ chief, Matt Adams, and Emotive founder and CEO, Simon Joyce, unpack what it takes to balance brand investment with commercial return – and take a proactive over reactive marketing approach. Once people try the shoes, says Adams, 80 per cent of them buy. 

Published
Categorized as Articles