Media

Last week TikTok suddenly found itself front and centre of industry rumblings about the hushed absence and whereabouts of top Australian management and a noted larger presence of executives from Chinese-owned ByteDance parent headquarters in local market engagements. The extended absence of advertising boss Brett Armstrong and business marketing lead Denny Handlin fuelled speculation of a shake-up in the TikTok camp as it emerged both had left the company in a hushed manner similar to the quiet exit of Australian MD Lee Hunter last year. TikTok's ad business has rocketed to between $400m and $500m, with Australian user numbers at circa 9.5 million. But after massive hiring raids on media company execs over 2022 and 2023 with eye-popping packages, industry conjecture was firing last week about rising discontent and broader cuts in TikTok's local operation. TikTok has dismissed most of it in a response to Mi3.

Next week the Federal Court will rule on whether three separate Australian publisher class actions against Google alleging market manipulation – including advertiser bid rigging within its dominant online advertising exchange, which most publishers rely on for digital revenues – will need to roll-up into a single case. Google has hired top defence firm, Herbert Smith Freehills, to counter the incoming lawsuits. The lead lawyer on the Maurice Blackburn claim, Miranda Nagy, would not be drawn on the compensation sum for local publishers her firm thinks is likely but said it will account for "well over $10-12bn" in advertising volumes that publishers could have tapped over the last six years.     

Ecom pureplays are buckling under crunched unit economics and rising pressure from Temu, Shein and Amazon. Adore Beauty has flipped to omni, with queues literally out of the shopping centre for its first store launch this month. CMO Dan Ferguson says recently installed CEO Sacha Laing has outlined a crystal-clear strategy: physical stores, profit-powering retail media, ramping up owned brands and better gross margins while notching higher CLVs by priming more active customers. Here’s the plan – and what’s next for product, stores and a retail media strategy that taps an audience Ferguson says is “larger than most TV programs”.

Nine is going all out for digital video at scale in a bid to halt the leakage of ad dollars to global tech giants – and is plotting deals with local rivals, platforms and marketplaces to make it happen. Nine boss Matt Stanton also confirmed ads are coming to Stan – though gave himself wriggle room on timings – and that it is in talks about potentially sharing the same trading platform with Seven, though likewise no timeline has been set on deciding whether Seven’s Phoenix or Nine’s Galaxy would be king. Meanwhile the firm is bridging business units, processes and data to start walking the talk on tracking, targeting and personalisation across all its channels based on the trails and contextual signals audiences are dropping. Stanton said the ad market is in recovery – but that marketers and media buyers “should be piling in” far harder based on audience growth and what Nine can now do with those audiences from brand to demand.

Disney+ has told Australian subscribers to expect streaming ads from 26 March – but has not yet briefed local advertisers and buyers on rates or packages. Which suggests after two years of the market expecting an ad tier proper from Australia's third biggest streaming service – behind Netflix and Amazon Prime – that its announcement two weeks ago to bundle ESPN into the Disney+ platform has created an ersatz soft advertising launch. More SVOD (subscription video on demand) rivals meanwhile are jostling for a slowdown in advertiser budgets diverting from free-to-air TV and the market is set for another major global AVOD (ad-supported video on demand) announcement in coming weeks. 

Tony Kendall says ACM’s digital and data play is starting to mine fresh revenue seams and drink just a little of Meta’s milkshake as the platform refuses to play ball with news media on the media bargaining code. It comes as the regional and agricultural publisher announced today that weekday publishing would end for 14 regional mastheads – some 100 years old – and switch to advertiser-friendly “Weekend Collection” editions.

Out-of-home was the fastest-growing media channel in Australia in 2024 surpassing $1.2bn for the first time, according to SMI data last year. It's "loved" by marketers, planners and creatives alike but proving its effectiveness remains a bone of contention if simply reach and frequency provides the benchmark measurement for impact. And that bone only collects more teethmarks as MMM and diverse modelling methods raise questions about what channels really work short and long-term, and billboards continue to be stuffed with too many messages or poor creative that fails to generate brand recall or build memorability. Enter this week’s JCDecaux upfronts events in Melbourne and Sydney, and a fresh swathe of evidence to demonstrate how quality out-of-home environments and creative executions can drive significant brand and business gains through the funnel. Top of the list was global-first research from System1, which found 7 in 10 OOH ads aren’t working, and put forward seven practical principles for doing creative well in response. But there was also plenty of debate from Specsavers and UM on what makes up effective measurement, and how media agencies and marketers embrace MMM and emerging modelling methods to shift the dial from outputs to outcomes – with the hugely important caveat of avoiding garbage data in, garbage data out.

The collective of independent media agencies held their annual 'IndiePendence Day' summit yesterday as they continue to push their credentials as a viable alternative to the global networks for advertisers small, medium and increasingly large. For most media owners, independent agencies collectively represent their first or second biggest revenue source and provide leverage against the muscle of the multinationals. Adam Ferrier, adland's resident consumer psychologist and founder of creative, media and stunt shop, Thinkerbell, poured some heat on his bigger rivals yesterday although some counter that indies are not as clean, accountable and transparent as their narrative would have it.  

The biggest sports rights deal in Australian history – $4.5bn over seven years, or $643m per season – starts in three weeks and the urgency from the two broadcast and streaming signatories, Foxtel and Seven West Media, to recover their outlays is at full throttle. Foxtel Group CEO Patrick Delany told an upbeat Fox Footy launch event in Melbourne yesterday that brand partners and viewers were about to see a “massive game changer” from a combination of Foxtel, Kayo and Binge although bigger audience and subscription gains would come in the second season based on its experience with the NRL. Brands that have signed-up so far include Toyota, McDonald’s, AAMI, LG, Harvey Norman, Bunnings, Sportsbet, and Coles. 

Some of the world's largest advertisers – including PepsiCo, Unilever, Adobe, L’Oreal, Nestlé, Honda, Samsung, Paramount+ and the US Department of Homeland Security are among those mired in allegations that their ads were served on websites containing child sexual abuse. Those accused of failing to spot the warning signs and involved in the supply chain include Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Outbrain and others along with ad verification services monitoring brand safety and ad industry standards bodies including the US-based globally influential Media Ratings Council and TAG. Now US Senators have waded in and want answers. Former UM privacy chief turned watchdog at Check My Ads, Arielle Garcia, thinks the fallout is only just starting.

Part 1: WooliesX learned the hard way that misconfigured customer data platforms can rapidly rack up unbudgeted costs. It's not the only Australian CDP user to experience 'bill shock'. Almost all the CDP customers Mi3 spoke with had similar stories. But WooliesX at least got its money back after Tealium 'forgave' the cost. Most customers are not so lucky as big vendors push the onus onto them to use the tools provided to manage blowouts. Meanwhile, the market has cooled from the "CDP bender" of two years ago amid heightened competition, tough macros and the zombie effect of Google keeping cookies alive. The good news is that the firms Mi3 interviewed in 2023 about their fledgling CDP integrations are now driving gains. Media costs are down and engagement is up, and brands who have weathered rocky implementation experiences say they have much greater insights into their customer behaviours. Plus, the process prepares them for what's about to hit with AI.

Gone are the days of the Spotify original slate – the audio streaming platform has switched its focus to video as the latest big audience draw. Dynamic ads have been fully wiped for the circa 40 per cent of Spotify users with a Premium account, ushering in a new hosting and monetisation system from which the business is eying an even greater share of both ends of the market. Some parts of the market view the move as a play for a piece of YouTube’s pie, though AUNZ podcast lead Prithi Dey says Spotify sees itself as just one part of creator’s multi-platform strategy – helping to diversify creator’s revenues streams at the same time as delivering on user demand for video content. It's a win for Spotify whatever way you paint it. Maybe creators too.

Tours operator Explore Worldwide bet big on true crime podcasts cutting through – and hit the jackpot. It ploughed 80 per cent of its podcast budget into the genre for its first campaign of the year in a bid to own a category some are nervous to enter – citing brand safety fears. The true crime spots – with tailored, contextually relevant creative – smashed expectations, beating typical industry benchmarks by 7x, with response rates that touched 7 per cent helping increase booked revenue by 25 per cent.

"We already share helicopters," an upbeat Seven West Media CEO Jeff Howard told an analyst earnings call yesterday as he signalled the three major commercial TV bosses at Nine, Paramount-Ten and Seven are aligned on more collaboration. But Howard stopped short on the possibility of the free TV majors combining revenues via the circa $60m investment Seven has ploughed into the tech build of Phoenix, launching in March, which unites linear TV, regional TV and digital assets in a multi-screen trading platform. The upward swing in sentiment from Seven's new chief over a turning ad market, stabilising linear TV audiences and share and audience gains at 7plus is a long way from the carnage last year when Howard axed veteran commercial chief Kurt Burnette and chief marketer Mel Hopkins as part of a broader cost-out program. He said he's not planning to hire another CMO – but sales is set for a shake-up.

CRA stripped back its annual Heard conference this year, running straight at the channel's glaring audience-revenue gap with a strong bid to make commercial audio easier – and more enticing – to buy. The event was headlined by the launch of a new unified digital audio trading currency, the CRA Audio ID, that from June this year will pool local broadcaster's digital inventory in  one place – with linear eventually following. CRA brought in System1's Andrew Tindall to build on Mark Ritson's 2024 radio sell with new creative effectiveness research that gives advertisers the blueprint on how to "double the double" in ROI through sonic branding, and more upper-funnel campaigns. It's a line likewise backed by Analytic Partners.

Val Morgan is late to the party on its 2025 upfronts roadshow versus most of its media rivals. The cinema, retail OOH and digital publishing group, currently on a national tour, has cleverly repackaged a disparate collective of media channels into an integrated audience and attributon bundle which challenges mass reach and dabbles in marketing science with 10 initial Ehrenberg Bass-inspired category entry point "packs". It's also custom-built an audience and analytics platform, Validate, which brings a single view of audience segments and attribution across the three divisions. The group, with about $150m in revenues, delivered circa 15 per cent revenue growth last year against a tanking ad market and it's predicting double digit growth again in 2025.

While digital giants Google, Meta, and Amazon continue trousering the vast bulk of the online advertising dollars in the digital ecosystem, all are keenly aware the rise of AI offers an inflection point. And for Google in particular, a once monopolistic market is suddenly hyper-contestable, hence the need to assure investors that all the new AI innovations in advertising simply increase the opportunities to monetise new types of search. Meta's Mark Zuckerberg meanwhile, used the latest financial reporting presentations to crow about the depth of Meta's offerings across of "Family of Apps" with particular emphasis on Threads, the app it built specifically for Twitter quitters, which now has over 300 million users. But he was most excited about AI, and the possibilities offered by agents, where he expects Meta to lead in delivering personalisation at scale. And Amazon, which used to relegate advertising to the footnotes in its reports, now puts it centre stage. That's hardly surprising, it's a $US69bn business.

The massive makeover of the broadcaster audience measurement system is here - VOZ and VOZ Streaming between them serve as a 'total TV' audience currency across linear and digital and enables a single view and trading of all broadcaster BVOD audiences. The Trade Desk ANZ boss James Bayes says his global team see it as a 'remarkable' and 'world leading dataset' – but there are caveats. After years of working through the complexity of appeasing disparate broadcaster agendas, market stakeholders and methodological challenges, the broadcaster-controlled ratings body OzTam has given the market what it's asked for. Media buyers and adtech operatives, however, say the new solution is still falling short.

A landmark report by Delia Rickard puts Big Tech squarely in the crosshairs, demanding platforms be held accountable for the online harms they facilitate – and rein-in algorithms that pump ad takings by driving increasingly extreme content. The government agrees and plans to place the platforms in the same context as Occupational Health and Safety Law. Which means they will bear a legal duty of care and be forced to prioritise safety by design, conduct real risk assessments – and, if they fail, face financial penalties even the trillion-dollar titans of Silicon Valley will baulk at. With harsher penalties, increased transparency, and oversight mechanisms that actually bite, the era of digital platforms being treated as outliers and operating with impunity might finally be ending. 

Coles has confirmed to Mi3 that its first retail media boss Paul Brooks has left the business, linked partly to a decision to consolidate the unit in its Melbourne headquarters. Coles360 is also understood to be shifting its market strategy in line with US and UK developments where the focus is on replicating Meta and Google with self-service, targeting and analytics platform builds over sales team-led business development and bespoke media agency deals. 

French communications giant Publicis Groupe has acquired Australia's largest independent media agency, Atomic 212, in a move ANZ boss Mike Rebelo acknowledged was counter to many of his rivals steering away from media agency acquisitions because of structural shifts and challenges in the broader media sector. 

In podcast audience numbers, Nova's not going to overshadow rivals. But chief commercial officer Nicole Bence reckons the market recognises size isn't everything, and the network is banking on 'significance over scale' – packaging up deep and narrow audiences –  to outperform the broad and shallow . To back it up, the network is giving advertisers the option to buy on cost per lead and for advertisers with a strong call to action, Bence says it's delivering.

ARN has appointed departing Nine Chief Sales Officer Michael Stephenson as Chief Operating Officer in a new role which signals the company behind the Kyle & Jackie O Show is set to ramp-up its ambitions after a protracted and ultimately aborted takeover of rival Southern Cross Austereo [SCA].