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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People spend “roughly a third of their time, or four hours a day, listening to audio, yet only 6 per cent of ad revenues are coming towards the medium,” says SCA Chief Commercial Officer Seb Rennie. The network is betting on a data-powered push for performance ad dollars to change that with today’s launch of LiSTNR’s AdTech Hub.

SCA has made huge gains – slashing cost of acquisition 60 per cent for its LiSTNR app – after embedding a CDP and overhauling its data capability. Now it’s aiming to do the same for advertisers with a new data clean room play that means advertisers can match their own first party data with SCA’s – alongside new dynamic creative optimisation and contextual targeting capability, says Executive Head, LiSTNR commercial, Olly Newton.

As a result, SCA can both build brand and drive conversion via tactical performance campaigns – and Rennie thinks a market-wide shift of budgets towards the latter may last beyond the current economic crunch. Either way, says Newton, “we’ve got a total solution.” The key is making it easy for advertisers to use. Hence SCA bucking the Big Tech trend of self-serve and ‘headcount rationalisation’ – instead creating a managed service to help advertisers navigate its new tools. Last month SCA “road-tested” the new data matching capability via Australia’s major ad holding groups.

“There’s huge appetite,” says Newton. “And it’s really just the beginning.”

Meanwhile, SCA has bullish forecasts for its own business as well as the broader industry. Per latest IAB data, Australia’s digital ad revenue growth was a subdued 3.7 per cent in 2023. Digital audio was up 20.6 per cent – and per 38.4 per cent growth in the December quarter, accelerating hard. “Momentum is building,” says Rennie. Now SCA has some sharper targeting tools to convert it.

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Future of TV Advertising international keynote Jon Evans is Chief Customer Officer at marketing effectiveness data firm System1 – and one of the world’s top marketing podcasters. He's on a mission to help marketers hold the line and sell-in emotional, creative campaign investment to rational, hard-nosed exec teams by better predicting its P&L impacts. While the media industry obsesses on the medium – optimising channel mix, ROI, CPMs, the value equation of the channel – fully half of the business outcome depends on the creative, i.e. the message, per System1’s analysis of 100,000 campaigns. But that message is getting lost says Evans. He wants to help CMOs avoid getting fired by arming them – and the C-suite – with the data to better predict how their ads and massive media investments will perform over the long term. Which just might counteract the accelerating rush to performance channels, with Coke the latest, as marketers seek any kind of validation in the face of exploding remits and intensifying short-term pressure. Plus, he has a toolkit for brand marketers and agencies that unpacks how to build mental availability, cut through and more predictable business results on which to base their media buys.

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Guinness (part of the Lion portfolio), UM, Vistar, Kinesso, and Thinkerbell have just landed Australia's first ever Programmatic Campaign of the Year award after a smart, highly targeted Out-of-Home push delivered 100,000 extra pints sold. The trick? Targeting blokes near pubs stocking the dark elixir when the weather turned cold – with only 2,000 of those pints as QR code freebies. After toasting 18 per cent revenue uplift as a result – and 15 per cent pub footfall boost, a “super happy” Lion is lining up more prDOOH, per UM’s Mark Ryan. But it wasn’t initially convinced.

While it wrapped in day-parting, weather and location data, plus dynamic creative via specialist DSP Vistar, IAB chief Gai Le Roy said Guinness won the award because the campaign was “strategy-led”, solving a business problem rather than showboating with “a fancy new toy”. Plus, “it had the magic of doing brand work and performance work” while driving a strong commercial return – not always the case with sampling.

JCDecaux launched the award to get brands and buyers up to speed on prDOOH as it plots a massive programmatic growth curve, per National Programmatic Director, Brad Palmer. He’s aiming to hit 10 per cent of DOOH this year, pointing to markets like Germany, targeting 50 per cent of total Out-of-Home revenues by 2032. As to where prDOOH can end up, especially as cookies crumble and privacy laws tighten, “there’s a wild ride ahead for prDOOH” per Palmer. “But we need the market to collaborate a bit further,” not least agencies. Le Roy, Palmer and Vistar’s Winston Stening unpack where prDOOH’s heading next.

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When it comes to principal-based media trading, AKA arbitrage, “we can argue about the pros and cons but collectively [marketers] are saying that they kind of accept, if not sometimes prefer, that model,” says Madison and Wall founder and one-time WPP global business intelligence chief Brian Wieser. It’s no coincidence that two of the “most aggressive” proponents of buying ad inventory from media owners and on-selling it to clients with handsome markups saw their respective media businesses notch double-digit growth in 2023. Publicis and Omnicom also have the most bullish growth forecasts for 2024. Yet their broader business strategies and models are almost polar opposites and Wieser sees a structural fault line widening across the major holdcos – unified businesses that sideline individual agency brands like Publicis and Dentsu versus the traditional multi-brand model at WPP, IPG and Omnicom. Both can work, says Wieser, but he thinks those with fewer silos are “more likely to thrive” and suggests very few marketers still care about conflict, one of the original reasons for holdcos running lots of similar agencies. Dentsu is tracking closer to Publicis on agency brand consolidation but the Japanese firm hasn’t executued like the French. One positive for Dentsu, per Wieser, is “it’s hard to imagine it getting any worse”. Regardless of the  model, he sees a single key differentiator in determining holdco winners and losers as IT services firms streak ahead and the big platforms use generative AI to eat further into agency turf: Investment ambition, or lack thereof.

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Some media companies are feeling the heat on what they describe as a tightening advertising market, particularly linear TV. But there's a very different story coming out of investor briefings in recent weeks at some of the world's biggest brands. Many brands are increasing their advertising and promotion and much bigger overall marketing budgets. Some of these listed CFOs and CEOs apparently agree with marketing’s brand building champions – at least at face value. L'Oreal's overall advertising and promotion budgets, for example, pumped 11 per cent in 2023. Its global CEO told investors the company had seen “spectacular productivity increases of up to 10 to 15 per cent” for L'Oreal brands that have trialled its proprietary AI tool called a BetIQ to measure and improve L'Oreal's advertising and promotion investments. It’s aiming to roll the tool out across 60 per cent of ad investments globally by the year-end.

L'Oreal is no outlier. Unilever, Diageo, Kellogg’s, Gucci, Mondelez, Ford and big insurance companies all told investors they're upping advertising and marketing budgets. Ironically, the main sector hacking ad spend is tech, the very platforms hauling in circa 60 per cent of that global budget growth.

Unpacking the apparent disconnect is Brian Wieser, a long-time US-based equities analyst who founded Maddison and Wall, on the listed marketing services holdcos such as WPP, Omnicom, Publicis and IPG, and an avid watcher of listed brand owners and what their CEOs and CFOs say about their marketing investments.

We’ve made this podcast a two-parter. The first takes on big brands and what’s happening with their ad and marketing budgets. Part two dives into media and the holdcos – where two of the big five are doing better than most for one key reason.

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