Mi3 Audio Edition LiSTNR

Five years ago media ecologist Jack Myers made a prediction in the second ever edition of Mi3: By 2025 media would be largely automated and almost totally AI-informed and just a quarter of sales would remain with people and ideas. It happened faster than even he thought. Now Myers predicts that within 12-18 months max, most media planning will be entirely machine-led. By 2030, he reckons “80 per cent or more of all media planning and buying will be done without human intervention or without the necessity of humans”, with major implications for jobs. Meanwhile, AI is already being turned in on itself to spotlight where the money is being wasted amid a “programmatic backlash”. The “machines are actually checking on machines,” says Myers, “increasingly, humans are out of the mix.” He forecasts an incoming wave of consolidation across major media companies and a “collapse of the programmatic marketplace”. For agencies, “the re-emergence of consolidated agencies”, i.e. creative and media back together, “is the big story of 2025-26”. Myers thinks generative AI will force that toothpaste back into the tube. “So I believe in 2024-25, we're going to see massive consolidation, massive contraction, and then in 2025, 26, 27 a rebirth of the advertising business.” But 2025, he warns, will be tough, with a “reasonably massive cutback in spending as marketers work out what is working, and what is not”.

Plus Myers – who likewise called out retail media’s impact early – sees a “can of worms” for the sector as journalists and analysts uncover instances of arbitrage of non-retail inventory within some retail media networks. He also has reservations on the surge by media owners into data clean rooms – Disney alone is operating 100-plus – “Who is cleaning the data? Who is validating that it is clean?”

Meanwhile, Myers thinks Accenture’s “quiet” ascendance to become a top tier digital media buyer likewise warrants greater scrutiny.
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IAG Chief Customer & Marketing Officer Michelle Klein returned to Australia last May after more than a decade abroad and embarked on arguably one of the most ambitious – and interesting - corporate customer experience transformation programs in this market for a long time.

Such was the complexity and need for top tech and creative talent across every customer touchpoint for NRMA Insurance – think digital channels, apps and websites, retail customers, communities large and small, mass and personalised communications and customer acquisition and retention – that Klein opted for one external partner to work on everything with her team. It’s what Accenture Song’s ANZ boss Mark Green says is a ‘lighthouse project’ globally for the firm – backed up by New York-based Global CEO David Droga and Creative Chairman Nick Law. Droga says his firm has spent the past decade bringing global tech and creative capabilities together and he says NRMA Insurance will be an international proof point on why end-to-end CX programs need more creative thinking and execution, not just an off-the-shelf tech template, particularly as AI continues its march into commerce and society. 

“Like all these new technologies, it sets new horizons where everyone gets so excited about what the technology allows us to do that we put aside our creativity for a bit of awe in what that technology allows. Then when we realise that everybody can do exactly the same thing with that technology, everyone's like, ‘oh, we need to innovate with that, where's the tech, where's the creativity?’”

Klein agrees the killer combo is tech with creativity and innovation, done differently. Some of the new program will be ready for the Paris Olympics in July when NRMA Insurance will make much of heading into its 100th year. But like her broader mantra on reinventing CX across every touchpoint for NRMA Insurance, the Olympics will do likewise. “It's not just linear TV, this is a fully integrated…program,” she says. “What I love about this partnership with Nine is that it will reach almost the entire population in a way that they've thought through every channel, every touch point.”

So here’s how Klein, Droga, Law and Green see the grand plan unfolding and how they’re measuring success.
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Julie Nestor was one of the earliest Australian marketers to leverage owned media at scale, first at Optus and American Express and now – via Hilton Hotels and eBay – at Mastercard. The APAC marketing chief says owned media helped Optus get beyond mobile and into broader media and communications – and moved the needle for Amex, both in bringing on more merchant partners and driving customer loyalty, retention and spend through personalised offers.

Now she says it is “by far” Mastercard’s most efficient channel via the ‘Priceless’ platform, with priceless.com both monetised and serving as the engine room for Mastercard and its main business partners – i.e. the big banks and their customers. Hence the firm continuing to invest heavily in owned media – everything from offsetting paid investment into its Australian Open partnership to building gaming platforms for banks and fintechs in Asia, to helping Ukrainian refugees find homes. But while owned media strategies today are increasingly sophisticated, the fundamentals remain the same as at Optus 20 years ago – which back then leveraged analogue customer bills to cross-sell. “Be where your customers are and where you are going to get most attention,” says Nestor.

Likewise, understanding the value of owned channels is key. Nestor worked with specialist owned media consultancy Sonder at Amex and again at Mastercard. Quantifying “real dollar figures” with “measurable numbers” both internally and externally to partners, she says, is critical in maximising leverage and underlining “how marketing supports a business to grow revenue”.

Sonder ran an owned media valuation audit for Mastercard across 10 markets, benchmarking metrics such as “click-throughs, time on site, sell-through” against “our $10 billion rate pool, which gives us a single source of truth” for owned asset value, per co-founder Angus Frazer.

Having worked with the likes of ANZ, Amex and Mastercard, Sonder’s Jonathan Hopkins thinks the finance sector is about to show the retail media sector just how powerful owned media can be – given its “unparalleled data” and massive footprint. “It’s the tip of the iceberg,” says Hopkins. “They are already way ahead of other companies.”
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Marketers and media companies had just about got to grips with audience fragmentation brought about by social media and online video. Now the next big wave is coming fast from global streamers piling into TV’s heartland with ad plays because their subscriber growth has maxed out. They’re targeting the young with localised reality shows, comedy and romantic dramas, and the old with documentaries and crime while taking aim at live TV’s biggest bastion by bidding for sports rights. That hasn’t always worked out for the likes of Amazon, which has pulled back from Premier League rights acquisition in the UK. But it has Disney and Fox Sports worried enough to try to get a combined sports platform off the ground in the US and over regulatory hurdles. Ampere Analysis veteran analyst Guy Bisson thinks similar collaboration from broadcasters locally may be required – and could be good for audiences. Across the piste, Bisson breaks down where audiences are going, how much time they are spending on each channel, and where the money’s headed – with Australia ahead of the global tipping point on streaming versus TV consumption, but not yet in terms of TV-video ad dollar reallocation.

For broadcasters, the push by Amazon, Netflix and others into ads kills the old TV versus online video debate and removes the moat around ad-funded quality long form video. “It's no longer about ‘should I do TV, or should I do online?’ It's, ‘I can do everything I can do on TV on streaming’, says Bisson. He thinks broadcasters can compete on reach, targeting and content but need to accelerate streaming-first pivots to regain and retain audiences that definitely want free streamed TV versus the new pay TV – and strategically steal what they can.
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Meta’s News Media Bargaining Code rug-pull lit up the media sector and has government, regulatory and lobbyist wheels spinning – some would say belatedly, given all the warning signals. Circa $70m in publisher cash - some argue it could be $100m - from Meta will no longer be on the table later this year, leaving Google the only game in town for a newsmedia sector already seriously pressured. Smaller publishers fear Meta pulling news from its feeds in Australia – as it did when Canada attempted to strong-arm the social media giant into paying news publishers – will lead to potentially existential audience and revenue hits. And there could bewidespread carnage if the Federal Treasurer ‘designates’ Meta, as is probable, forcing the tech giant into an independent arbitration process which by law means it will have to pay what thearbitrator rules between one of two fixed bids from Meta and media companies. Many argue Meta’s concerns for Australian designation means it will set international precedent for other countries to hunt billions more for newsmedia and lead to a full-scale exit of Facebook and Instagram in Australia rather than pay and trigger a costly global movement. Here’s everything you need to know on a delicate power game in which a sovereign government can't blink against a global tech giant, leaving Meta few options but to exit Australia entirely if it chooses to break Australian law and not pay. The world’s eyes are back on Australia - for bloodsport and money. And that’s before the podcast panel gets to AI and IP rights and remuneration.         
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Domino’s and Asahi are both using Mutinex’s GrowthOS platform to make very different media investment decisions, faster, in a fluid market. Both have buy-in across the business after unlocking the impact of media investment on sales. Both are now taking the platform beyond media and into decisions around seasonality, pricing and planning. “It’s not just a marketing tool, it’s a finance tool, ultimately supporting you how to maximise your investment across the portfolio,” says Jemma Downey, Group GM of Commercial Excellence at Asahi. “We definitely have an intention of looking at how we can ingest the data from our trade promotion and our trade optimisation tools to look at price elasticity.”

Asahi has been using the GrowthOS platform for four years. Over that time it has “significantly changed” its channel allocation, per Downey, with the ROI data accelerating its shift from TV to digital video while answering questions around the effectiveness of social channels. “Social delivers the highest ROI on average across the board,” she says. Asahi is now also “far more fluid” with its investment approach.

Domino’s Group Digital Strategy Manager, Blake Rand, likewise has executive buy-in with the pizza giant also using the platform beyond media and into pricing decisions. In terms of media channel allocation, GrowthOS has also thrown up some interesting insight – like the power of old-school flyers through letterboxes. Easy to see as “antiquated”, says Rand, “but we're still seeing a really high commercial impact from that investment”.

Both Rand and Downey are moving towards predictive media budget and channel allocation. Mutinex CEO Henry Innis thinks that development will further underline the platform’s credentials – because brands can save Mutinex’s forecasts. “Anybody in the business of predictive analytics who doesn’t give you the functionality to save those predictions so you can hold them to account,” per Innis, “is probably lying about how predictive their model is.”
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