Author: admin

Smaller, higher touch niche publishers are theoretically prime targets for large blue chip brands chasing authenticity, trust and community connection. So it was telling that Mastercard, Uber and Hello Fresh were among the handful of brands that sent marketers to connect with independent publishers via a speed dating format representing millions of Australians at the Digital Publishers Alliance upfront last week. Holdcos often get fully-earned stick from Mi3, but (bar Dentsu) they were out in numbers. Not that it really matters to the publishers – most are going direct for the bulk of their business. But for marketers seeking engagement, agility and a hands-on execution that delivers connection beyond reach, here are a dozen or so of Australia’s independent publishers that Mi3 met on its speed dates that claim big numbers. Some rival, even top, mainstream mastheads and streamers with crazy engagement rates and a proximity to their market that platform players definitely cannot match. For Mi3’s (independent) money, they’re likely worth a punt – and perhaps a chunk of marketers’ experimental budgets that typically go to the shiny and new.   

Just before Covid, WPP began a 10-year longitudinal study seeking insights from some of advertising’s smartest minds about what was coming down the track. AI barely warranted a footnote. It’s now aiming a wrecking ball at what has been the most reliable, forecastable line item in the marketing budget: search. Both B2C and B2B marketers are feeling the tremors and early but sharp declines in click throughs. While industry scrambles to shore up visibility in a world of zero-click traffic, a bigger shift is looming on the horizon: Bot-on-bot commerce – a future where machines act, negotiate and triage on behalf of consumers. Some like Deloitte and Salesforce see a $200bn-plus opportunity. Others see the bots fighting other bots to shield us from the incoming tsunami. Others think the whole thing is more fiction than science. Either way, marketers still framing AI as a future problem risk missing the moment, warns Mindshare CEO Maria Grivas.

Ex-agency exec turned futurist Tom Goodwin thinks the AI hype machine is overblown and that the web is unlikely to become a bot-to-bot commerce engine any time soon. But what can be automated probably will be automated, – and he told ADMA’s global forum that those too focused on measurement, attribution and “average-vertising” over human instinct and craft already risk “training ourselves to be more robotic”. But Goodwin does think AI could yet deliver the promise of one-to-one personalisation, for good or ill, and that “AI for discovery of a recommendation” could be the future of search. Salesforce SVP & CMO, ANZ Leandro Perez disagreed with Goodwin’s take on AI agents – and said retailers are already moving.