Marketers have a huge appetite for "dynamic creative" - or automated, tailored messaging by the machines - but those that try to execute say it's still snagged. AmEx, BWS and Telstra are all trying, but just 2 per cent of marketing messaging is personalised to an audience. As the rest of the ad supply chain automates, is a serious bottleneck looming? Marketing and agency chiefs weigh in.

Media owners are being entirely out-played by media agencies and advertisers with better data and fleets of younger grads now informing planning and buying decisions, parked mostly behind screens, crunching datasets. The historical norm of relationship-based trading is now just 25 per cent of media transactions in the US, according to media ecologist Jack Myers, five years ahead of forecasts. But there remains one great hope for media - small data is on the rise. “Every agency is looking at the same data pools. But [all are asking] what can we take to our client that's unique, that's differentiate?” says Myers.

After losing 90 per cent of its revenue streams during Covid – and its marketing budget – The McGrath Foundation went completely digital. The Breast Cancer charity abandoned donations and adopted a purchase mechanic for its first virtual Pink Test campaign. The move smashed all expectations, delivering McGrath's most successful fundraising campaign to date and attracting new supporters to the cause.  

Never short of an opinion, Sir Martin Sorrell has actually admitted that he couldn't move fast enough to reengineer WPP when he was at the helm. He thinks the holding companies must all delist and go private if they are to avoid break-ups or obsolescence, though is holding his 2 per cent stake in WPP in the hope it sells for parts. In parochial Australia, he thinks groups without strong local leaders are asking for more trouble, while those taking the sales-marketing funnel high ground may find themselves flogging an analogue horse in a digital age (although, unusually, he's still undecided on where it lands). 

Global advertisers are finally putting their hands in their media measurement pockets in a bid to cut out “10 per cent plus” of wasted reach and frequency spend globally. They're backing a single source pilot for cross-media measurement and Australia has pledged to “fast follow” the UK-US lead on what is dubbed Project Origin in the UK. The upshot will be “seismic” according to Unilever’s VP, Global Media, Sarah Mansfield but insists it's not "a race to the bottom". It will cause “a lot of angst in some quarters,” acknowledges AANA CEO John Broome. Change is coming and media owners, agencies and measurement providers need to prepare, fast. Mansfield and Broome are joined by WFA Director of Global Media Services Matt Green and ISBA’s Project Origin Director, Richard Holtan who outline the shape of audience measurement to come.

OMD CEO Aimee Buchanan says managing hybrid working arrangements – the 'new normal' – is far more nuanced than giving staff three days in, two days out of the office. She questions whether industry is equipped with the processes and programmes to cope beyond an exceptional pandemic year. Meanwhile, Pedestrian Group chief Matt Rowley says the young risk mortgaging their future by missing out on networks that will shape their careers. AFL Media GM, Sarah Wyse, The Hallway CEO Jules Hall offer contrasting views on the way forward, while The Brand Institute CEO and Culture Garden founder, Karl Treacher, says any firm that still fails to grasp the value of culture is effectively dead.

The chocolate confectionery category has experienced “extraordinary” growth rates over the last year and Mondelez brands, including Cadbury and Oreo, were among the big winners. Mondelez senior marketing director ANZ, Paul Chatfield, says topping the company’s sustained investment in brand building with a 17 per cent media investment boost has paid off.

Ad fraud is “the ultimate white collar crime” and is woefully underreported, according to NY-based digital marketer Augustine Fou, who thinks verification firms and industry associations are only picking up a fraction by focusing on narrow targets like invalid traffic but missing the true picture. With $200bn of programmatic spend in scammers' sites, Fou advises marketers to emulate the likes of P&G, Uber and Airbnb: Pause some digital campaigns and measure not “vanity metrics”, but the resulting business impacts – if any. 

Sustained investment in brand marketing before, during and post-Covid has driven increased brand awareness and consideration for tradie marketplace Hipages while decreasing its reliance on performance media. CCO Stuart Tucker thinks industry must ditch an obsession with data and targeting and re-embrace more emotive advertising – or watch brands lose value.