Misplaced brand safety concerns are robbing advertisers of a million listeners a month, with a stickiness in true crime podcasts that most media channels would kill for, according to IAB and Neuro-Insight. Agencies are seemingly behind the contextual curve, per their latest research, and are yet to put the clues together – despite new evidence staring them in the face. It’s a mystery Neuro-Insight boss Peter Pynta is determined to get to the bottom of.
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National Australia Bank CMO Suzana Ristevski to lead Google’s A/NZ marketing team
National Australia Bank CMO, Suzana Ristevki, is exiting the bank after a seven-year tenure and joining Google to lead its marketing efforts across A/NZ.
Australia Post inks deal with Salesforce to drive digital transformation
Australia Post and Salesforce have announced a multi-year, multi-product partnership aimed at supporting the postal service’s digital transformation strategy. The deal includes the implementation of artificial intelligence (AI) across Australia Post’s entire organisation.
Are Media appoints former Big W, Woolworths marketer to newly created role
Are Media has appointed former Big W and Woolworths marketer, Carly Bowra, to the newly created role of Director of Marketing. Bowra will report directly to Are Media CEO Jane Huxley and join the Executive Leadership Team, effective immediately.
Digital audio advertising on the rise, two thirds of agencies look to increase spend in 2024
The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) Australia’s Audio State of the Nation Report has revealed that 90% of agencies utilised audio advertising in 2023, with 83% including streaming digital audio advertising as a significant or regular part of their activity.
Demand for soft skills in AI work environment: LinkedIn Workplace Learning Report
LinkedIn has published its Workplace Learning Report, highlighting the importance of soft skills like communication as the employment landscape is transformed by artificial intelligence (AI).
Mentorship rewired: Why ex-GroupM chief, McDonald’s and ANZ CMO Mark Lollback is creating a ‘global village’ to build more successful modern execs – big hitters on board
Ever wanted to design your own personal board? Talk under the cone of silence to someone who’s already been a CMO or CEO in the same industry or agency landscape and who actually relates to your struggles without the commercial rivalry? Share high-performance team or startup strategies, transformation plans or simply nut out your next career move with someone who has been there, done that? Or provide your talent with a way to develop and grow so you retain them for longer, and have a happier, more productive workforce? Maybe you’ve just been fired and need help mapping out the next strategic move. That’s what GroupM chief and McDonald’s and ANZ CMO, Mark Lollback, believes he can fix through his new venture, Global Mentorship – with some big names on board. Here’s the plan.
Performance enhancer: Asahi toasts 23% paid media efficiency gains, 46% click cost plunge, 20% cheaper CPMs, hits 50% click throughs – now ‘all 23 brands want to get on board’
It sounds like the holy grail of media spend: More efficiency, more effectiveness, more strategic thinking and more brand benefits. And that’s what Asahi believes it’s getting through its new investment into a marketing intelligence platform. During this week’s Salesforce World Tour in Sydney, the FMCG giant was touting KPIs including a 46 per cent drop in cost per click, 20 per cent CPM reduction, 33 per cent lift in 3-second view rates, 17 per cent higher engagement rates on media assets and 50 per cent click through rate in the first few months of having a unified marketing intelligence platform in place across three brands. In the next month, it’s expecting even more as all 23 brands in the Asahi portfolio benefit from the new approach to paid media investment and reporting.
Ritson-backed NZ brand tracking start-up Tracksuit lands $20.5m Series A funding round for US, UK expansion, hits $142m valuation – sights on Qualtrics, Ipsos, Kantar, Nielsen, YouGov
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).
Marketers ‘prefer arbitrage’ as Publicis, Omnicom power ahead of holdco posse; Dentsu ‘shrinking pains’ persist as dividing lines sharpen on agency network brands versus integrated offers, IT services and data M&A: Madison and Wall’s Brian Wieser
When it comes to principal-based media trading, AKA arbitrage, “we can argue about the pros and cons but collectively [marketers] are saying that they kind of accept, if not sometimes prefer, that model,” says Madison and Wall founder and one-time WPP global business intelligence chief Brian Wieser. It’s no coincidence that two of the “most aggressive” proponents of buying ad inventory from media owners and on-selling it to clients with handsome markups saw their respective media businesses notch double-digit growth in 2023. Publicis and Omnicom also have the most bullish growth forecasts for 2024. Yet their broader business strategies and models are almost polar opposites and Wieser sees a structural fault line widening across the major holdcos – unified businesses that sideline individual agency brands like Publicis and Dentsu versus the traditional multi-brand model at WPP, IPG and Omnicom. Both can work, says Wieser, but he thinks those with fewer silos are “more likely to thrive” and suggests very few marketers still care about conflict, one of the original reasons for holdcos running lots of similar agencies. Dentsu is tracking closer to Publicis on agency brand consolidation but the Japanese firm hasn’t executed like the French. One positive for Dentsu, per Wieser, is “it’s hard to imagine it getting any worse”. Regardless of the model, he sees a single key differentiator in determining holdco winners and losers as IT services firms streak ahead and the big platforms use generative AI to eat further into agency turf: Investment ambition, or lack thereof.