20.

Apocalypse not now: Google’s cookie rug pull points to ‘deprecation by default’ but market has already moved on – and regulators are lining up

After four years of messing everybody about, Google finally pulled the rug on cookie deprecation in July. Brand, media, agency, and regulatory leads told Mi3 they see deprecation happening by default, and trouble brewing for Google either way – not least from the antitrust trials that followed. But there are now significant questions about how Google implements consent opt-ins or opt-outs, and risks of marketers getting caught out by ignorance of where cookies and pixels and other "secret" identifiers operate as Australia's privacy laws move into a new regime.

19.

70% of business transformations fail, says McKinsey. Digital transformations are worse, says Gartner: Guess where marketing, CX, and digital leaders are being asked to take charge? Challenges and success stories from the front line

One of those really long Mi3 headlines that says it all. Andrew Birmingham's CustomerX channel unpacks hard lessons learned at the front lines of innovation and transformation from companies including Blackmores, Compass Group, Country Road Group, Uber, The Iconic, Village Roadshow, Kmart and Kennards Hire. Plus crucially, this piece identifies the qualities boards are seeking from transformation leaders.

18.

Cartology plots next growth surge with OOH, BVOD push as trade-marketing-agencies align, but boss Mike Tyquin warns on market ‘crush’ and $450m TV leakage forecasts

The rise of retail media continued in 2024, with a flurry of players breaking cover and even banks getting in on the action. That followed predictions by Morgan Stanley that retail media would eat $1.1bn-$1.5bn of Australia's traditional publisher revenues by 2027.  Woolworths' Cartology got there first and boss Mike Tyquin warned at the start of the year that the rush to capitalise on media’s fastest growing category could backfire without three critical foundations in place. He also questioned the numbers being thrown around by analysts – reckoning they don't take into account the 'off network' partnerships retailers will strike with publishers to target shoppers outside of retailer's owned properties and platforms.

17.

Synthetic customers meet synthetic CMOs (and CFOs): Evidenza clones Sharp, Ritson, Binet & Field to build annual marketing plans in minutes; Mars, EY sign-up

This is where the effectiveness “revolution” collides with the AI-spawned efficiency uprising. The founders of Mark Ritson-backed AI marketing outfit Evidenza claim their “synthetic customer” tech – which starts with creating AI copies of target customers – creates 95 per cent accurate customer responses. I.e. it mimics company CEOs, CFOs, CTOs, CIOs and CROs with strong correlation to the real thing. “It can imitate essentially anyone by gathering and synthesising massive amounts of data,” per Weinberg. Evidenza claims it can also synthesise marketing strategy, science and the “pantheon” of effectiveness gurus, like Byron Sharp, Jenni Romaniuk, Karen Nelson-Field, Les Binet and Peter Field. Which means marketers can ask them what they ‘think’ of their plans. As Ritson put it: "Once you've got unlimited free data, qual and quant, it opens the door for the real game, which is artificial intelligence marketing and brand planning." Hence he thinks key marketing and planning functions are about to get automated.

16.

Think twice before abandoning linear TV: Three-year study shows advertisers swapping out for video go backwards

An analysis of more than 500 Australian brands spanning three years found that most advertisers who jumped ship to VOD lost market share – with share of web traffic and search plummeting almost immediately. What does this mean for advertisers as linear TV audiences decline? Especially those that have almost entirely swapped linear for VOD over the last year thinking it will do the job. Risky strategy, per Adgile Media boss Shaun Lohman, who at the start of the year unpacked findings that run counter to the narrative brands are being fed.

15.

Chrome deprecation slashes publisher CPMs by 30 per cent, brand KPIs could follow – but Google’s plan facing major competition hurdles as brands, supply chain warned Australia’s privacy overhaul poses bigger threat

At the start of the year Google was still going to kill third party cookies. Ahead of that it ran an experiment with 1 per cent of browsers, circa 30m within Chrome, running cookie-free. New York-based ad network Raptive ran the numbers and told Mi3 publishers could expect a 30 per cent fall in ad prices, or CPMs, based on its early data – with similar negative effects for advertiser KPIs. Google's about-face kicked all of that into touch – but experts said Australia's privacy overhaul would (eventually) have far deeper implications.

14.

Kmart delivers 20X improvement in engagement that results in sales while tripling its addressable online customer base from 2.5M to 7.5M in two years – here's how

Wesfarmers-owned Kmart has massively increased its consent-based addressable customer set, and built a model that has powered 20x improvement in engagements. It's also pumped sales while helping quantify just how personalised content performs versus non-personalised (hint: twice as good). Plus, it answered the vexed question of whether category upsell or category expansion was the best strategy to pursue (it's the latter). CIO Brad Blyth unpacks how they did it, the tech used and where next in pursuit of AI-powered efficiency.

13.

Marginal gains plan: Ex-Initiative, Huge global boss Mat Baxter invests in $120m Australian marketing analytics startup Mutinex, appointed APAC CEO

Mat Baxter, former global boss of IPG’s Initiative and Huge, joined marketing analytics disruptor Mutinex in May as its APAC CEO after investing a chunk of his own cash. While co-founder Henry Innis said he and Baxter would "blow shit up," some questioned whether two mavericks could work together. Five months later they got their answer as Baxter exited. But arguably that's the whole point of Mutinex's approach – find out what's working, what's not and make changes to drive growth.

12.

Dreaming big: BYD’s Australian distributor hires first marketing chief, new CEO, plots advertising offensive in bid for 6x growth in two years, overhaul Toyota by 2030

BYD is powering in Australia via distributor EVDirect – at the start of 2024 it had sold 15,000  cars with virtually no ad spend, instead focusing on earned and owned media. But after hiring a new marketing leader and CEO, more models dropping, and a new media agency partner recruited, EVDirect is readying to go all out as the automotive brand majors battle for EV share. It's aiming to overtake Hyundai within two years – and Toyota by 2030. Can it really build that dream?

11.

Talent raid: Initiative's Mel Fein, Sam Geer and Chris Colter join Accenture Song for full-service media offering

After initially steering clear of traditional media buying and instead managing a tight digital media unit, Accenture Song in May lopped off the head off IPG Mediabrands' star performing unit, convincing Initiative's Melissa Fein, Sam Geer and Chris Colter to jump ship and build a full service machine. Six months later, amid suggestions it had been slow to market and will "have to buy somebody", Accenture said it's "on track" and played down suggestions it will need to acquire a media agency – though didn't rule it out. 

10.

'Everything works on paper': Big scalps go as Dentsu ANZ transformation splutters, CEO Patricio De Matteis emerges after 16 months with new plan

Dentsu's bid to transform globally has caused "shrinking pains," per analyst Brian Wieser as key execs departed and business units were smashed together. Locally it's been an extended period of flux for the holdco, with CEO Patricio De Matteis tasked with restructuring and remoulding while trying to keep all plates spinning. As with all holdcos, there's been job cuts – including big names. It's been anything but easy. 

9.

Work 25% faster, 40% better: Harvard study finds consulting giant BCG's staff using ChatGPT outperform on every measure – and underachievers get biggest boost

Mi3's top story of 2023 is still getting a lot of reads as all industries get to grips with what AI means for their business models, staffing levels, productivity and bottom line. This piece, based on a Harvard study with some expert input, was an early marker of what is rapidly becoming the norm.

8.

Marketers ‘prefer arbitrage’ as Publicis, Omnicom power ahead of holdco posse; Dentsu ‘shrinking pains’ persist as fault lines sharpen on agency networks versus integrated master brand, IT services and data M&A: Madison and Wall’s Brian Wieser

The drums are beating louder on principal-based media buying, whether it is distorting the market and potentially hollowing out the foundations underpinning agencies as independent advisors objectively serving clients. Mi3's February interview with Madison and Wall founder and one-time WPP global business intelligence chief Brian Wieser had a contrarian take to those that suggest agencies are putting profit motives before clients' growth objectives. Wieser said a lot of marketers see principal models that allow agencies to make enough money to cover the other services they need that procurement has vetoed as the least worst approach – and "accept, if not sometimes prefer that model" to the alternative. But there's a lot more than principal media in this podcast interview – and with major holdco M&A on the cards, it's well worth a revisit.

7.

Sir Martin Sorrell on the $9bn valuation wipeout of his new world holdco S4Capital – and why Publicis, Omnicom, Havas are ‘premier league’ players – Dentsu, WPP, IPG ‘second division’

Three years after Sir Martin Sorrell issued a mea culpa (he couldn't transform WPP fast enough) via Mi3's podcast, he issued another a few months back as S4 Capital's market cap cratered: "We have not been running it [S4] as well as we should be." Sorrell also lamented internal fiefdoms and silos, suggesting S4 has too few people who manage to traverse them. But then he turned to more natural pursuits: Where rival holdcos are going wrong, as well as Accenture Song’s dive into media, a move peculiar to Australia, he argues.  

6.

Westpac's 'In the Moment' was a $70m+ real time decisioning flop; the bank tried again in 2023 with a tender for an off-the-shelf solution, then ditched it – as Big Four rivals go all-in

Little did Westpac's Executive Management Team (EMT) realise in 2019 when it ignored the advice of its own staff who told it to buy the Pega decisioning engine that five years later its choice would leave the bank trailing rivals in what has emerged as a key competitive capability — real time interaction management, often referred to as real time decisioning. Instead the EMT backed a management decision to accept a pitch from EY to build the bank a decisioning solution from scratch in a project code-named In the Moment. The circa $70m project failed and much of the work was written off in 2021. However, due to the commercial terms of its agreement with the bank, EY owned the IP and has subsequently launched EY Data Cloud IQ. Tech editor Andrew Birmingham unpacks how the bank was left without tech it needed – and instead effectively funded EY's product.

5.

Ex-UM privacy chief lifts lid: Google has 'captured' trade associations and holdcos, personalisation-precision a 'fallacy' based on 'garbage' data reaching 'fake people'

Former UM privacy chief Arielle Garcia knows the $700bn global digital ad industry is founded on trading “useless, garbage data” because a) she spent a decade in media ops and compliance and b) she’s accessed her own profile from adtech vendors. The result? 500 laughably contradictory audience segments where she is simultaneously woman and man, below and above the poverty line and works in food service and defence contracting. Now director at ad watchdog Check My Ads she’s going all out to prove to marketers the “fallacy” of the “precision illusion”, shine a light on warped priorities and incentives between advertiser, agency and big tech – and the industry associations she says have been “captured” – and help publishers survive an extinction level event as Google pushes deeper into AI powered search and ad placement. Garcia says everyone else – including holdco bosses – are “afraid” to speak out. 

4.

$700bn delusion: Does using data to target specific audiences make advertising more effective? Latest studies suggest not

Following former UM privacy chief Arielle Garcia's takedown of the "garbage" data broking sector, Brand Traction's Jon Bradshaw challenged the $700bn industry to provide proof that data-driven targeting actually makes advertising more effective – or in fact makes it worse. He's packing counter-evidence, three deep, recent studies that show: broad reach beats targeting for incremental growth; that the cost of targeting outweighs the return; and that second and third party data does not outperform a random sample. First party data does beat the random sample – but contextual ads massively outperform even first party data. And they are much, much cheaper. Now, says Bradshaw, let's see some counter-evidence from those making a killing.

3.

Vale Lisa Ronson: Former Medibank, Coles, Tourism Australia CMO dies

One of Australia’s top marketers died last month in a tragic accident. Lisa Ronson, who joined Medibank as CMO in July, was on her country Victorian farm in Ullina near Daylesford when an accident involving an all terrain vehicle [ATV] occurred. A collection of industry tributes from marketing, media and agency peers mark a life cut short.

2.

‘Really mediocre outcomes’: Oxford Uni professor says Byron Sharp and Ehrenberg-Bass’ marketing science rules no longer hold – 1,000 campaigns, 1 million customer journeys as evidence

Associate Professor Felipe Thomaz, of University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School, suggests Professor Byron Sharp’s best known book, How Brands Grow, is a misnomer – it’s actually about how big brands keep big marketshare, not how they got there. He also says it’s based on flaws within Andrew Ehrenberg’s earlier work, primarily static markets and a requirement not to differentiate. Thomaz suggests that’s why FMCG firms adhering to those rules were caught napping by more nimble differentiated start-ups. Optimising media for reach alone no longer works, he suggests, because all reach is not equal – and used bluntly won't deliver business outcomes. “There is a missing dimension,” per Thomaz. He’s out to prove it with a peer-reviewed paper that analyses 1,000 campaigns and a million customer journeys via Kantar and Wavemaker. The upshot? “None of it holds … I'm seeing that 1 per cent of campaigns are actually getting exceptional money, while the vast majority are choosing to get some really mediocre outcomes.” But there's potential upside for marketers, media agencies – and media owners – that grasp the category-specific implications. Which is probably why this story and podcast rapidly went global.

1.

Ex-Google chief Eric Schmidt says AI's impact over two years will be profound – but warns 'there's not enough electricity in the US' to meet OpenAI's US$300bn investment ambitions

Eric Schmidt was CEO for 10 years, then Chairman of Google (and then Alphabet) for almost 10 more, marking him as internet royalty. Which makes his views on the unfolding AI revolution especially worth hearing. To that end, he says the changes wrought by large language models (LLM) like ChatGPT over the next two years will be more profound than most people realise. "Much bigger than the horrific impact we've had from social media." But there are some serious longer-term impediments he suggests, starting with money and power. I.e. not enough of either to go around.