TV gets a win; Our AI conference program unveiled; Unmade Index hits a record low
Welcome to a midweek update from Unmade. Today: We share the program for our HumAIn conference; the media laws update jumps a key hurdle; and The Unmade Index sinks to yet another record low.
Unmade’s paying members support our analytical journalism. In return you get access to our full archive which goes behind the paywall after two months. You also get discounts on tickets to our events, including next month’s HumAIn, our retail media conference REmade, and a free ticket to our annual Compass series.
From theory to practice: Here’s the HumAIn program
Cat McGinn, humAIn curator writes:
Since December 2022, when we first recognised the need for a local community of practice to examine the AI transformation for media and marketing, the pace of change has only accelerated.
Our first HumAIn conference explored the potential of AI in marketing, when only a few pioneers were experimenting. Today, the risks have multiplied: shadow AI, AI washing, and a struggle between tech-led innovation and a regulatory framework playing catch-up. This tension between progress and safeguarding customers, brands, and livelihoods defines the AI landscape.
For next month’s edition of HumAIn, we're focusing on the real, not the speculative. We want to support a culture of collaboration and transparency, to acknowledge that these technologies do not come with a handbook. We're all in an experimental phase, adapting to constant shifts even the AI creators can't fully predict.
This year's speakers and organisations are ready to share their processes – successes and failures – to aid our collective learning. They’re sharing the scribbles in the margins, what has worked, and the insights they gained along the way. We are all learning together, and by pooling our knowledge, we can navigate this transformation more effectively.
We’re delighted to today share the program in time for attendees to makes up their minds about attending before next week’s earlybird discount deadline expires.
HumAIn Principles working group
In a breakout session before the formal conference begins, 30 industry leaders will take part in a HumAIn Principles working group to create a framework for AI implementation in the Australian media and marketing industry. The discussion will be held under the Chatham House Rule.
Opening - Ed Husic -Minister for Industry and Science
sexy/boring: the real story of AI-powered creativity for brands
The founder of the world's first AI creative agency, Jeremy Somers, will set out the way marketers need to think about AI-powered creativity. From ideation to campaign execution Jeremy will explain the process of using AI to create work for global brands including Tommy Hilfiger, Yahoo!, Converse, 4AM and Fenty.Jeremy Somers, Founder, Not Content
From zero to one: AI for marketing
In an emerging sector, things are always moving fast...but never this fast. Whether you've been watching from the sidelines or actively experimenting, you'll have felt the exponential pace of change accelerating. Entrepreneur Stephen Hunt will walk through the basics of what AI is, a short history of how we got to this watershed moment in 2024 and why it's so important to embrace it. He will share tips, tricks and hacks through real case studies.
AI read the news today, oh boy!
This session brings together a diverse group of experts in the fields of AI technology, journalism, ethics, and digital media innovation. They will explore AI's profound impact on news production, distribution, and consumption. The discussion will cover the potential benefits, approaches and the guardrails news organisations must consider.
Melanie Withnall, Head of News and Information, Southern Cross Austereo
Michael Davis, research fellow, Centre for Media Transition
Shaun Davies, responsible AI consultant
Ricky Sutton, author Future Media
The AI Upfronts
This fast-paced pitch session shines a spotlight on the innovators and pioneers shaping the future of AI for the media and marketing world. The four pitches:
AirStack.ai: An AI platform for risk free handling of brand assets, customised AI tools designed specifically for creative, media, content, and brand teams. These tools are developed to protect organisations’ intellectual property and brand guidelines, and offer secure and effective integration into existing workflows. Presented by Tom Pitney, founder - AirStack
The CMO Chatbot: A personal assistant in your pocket that knows what campaigns you have live, how many sales you are getting, what products are performing best and what marketing actions you should take this week. Presented by James Dixon, Chief Digital Officer - Atomic 212
Heatseeker is the copilot for results-oriented marketers.It gives teams the ability to test their assumptions about messaging, positioning, and campaign strategy before they invest significant funds into a go-to-market strategy or digital campaign. Combining AI and real market engagement, Heatseeker automates social media test generation, execution, and analysis. Presented by Fiona Triaca and Kate O’Keefe - Cofounders, Heatseeker
Leonardo.ai: Australian image generation startup Leonardo.Ai aims to empower creativity with AI. Launched in December 2022, it has quickly reached 12m users worldwide. Last year the company raised $47m to fuel its growth. Leonardo.Ai offers a content creation suite powered by generative AI which provides customers with the ability to train custom models on their own intellectual property. Users are creating 4.5 million images a day. Presented by Jessie Hughes -senior creative technologist, Leonardo.ai
The VC View
Leading local venture capitalists will reflect on the pitches, trends and direction of travel in AI innovation and share their expectations for the industry.
Andrea Gardiner, CEO - Jelix Ventures
Annie Liao, founder - Build Club
Emily Rich, co-founder - M8 Ventures
Auto-nomous agents: driving conversions with AI
In this session, Carsales Mediahouse, AdFixus and Nissan reveal how they have used AI to power up performance in targeting audiences and increasing conversion rates across their platforms. The panel will share a deep dive into the data and technical considerations needed to prepare for the transformation, and the steps to success.
Markus Dollmann - Senior Data Scientist carsales
Vanya Mariani, Commercial Director of Media - Carsales Mediahouse
Marko Markovic - CEO, AdFixus
Trust Issues
The session will discuss strategies for AI adoption in organisations, guidelines and safeguards for using AI-created content, navigating copyright complexities, how to build trust with customers and audiences when using genAI; the creative opportunities and productivity benefits, issues of content authentication, how to protect brand assets and how the panellists are approaching transparency and disclosure.
The panel:
Sarah Yassien, Director of Corporate Strategy, SBS;
Gavin Chimes, Executive Creative Director, Howatson + Co
Aaron Michie, Head of Marketing Operations, Foxtel
The Great DebAIt: Two teams will debate the proposition: “AI is media's extinction level event.”
HumAIn is in Sydney on May 28. Discounted earlybird tickets are only available until next week.
Remaking the media laws… a little bit
Tim Burrowes writes:
When media law changes, it does so slowly.
Yesterday the latest revisions went through an important step. The Senate committee reviewing the government’s proposals for changes to the anti-siphoning and prominence rules, broadly backed them (with some dissension from the Greens). With little sign of opposition from, erm, the Opposition, that means they’re likely to make it into law.
As is the usual transactional process when it comes to media law in Australia, the committee has looked at the submissions from all the parties and made recommendations to balance out the interests of anyone who has a news bulletin that might influence their voters. That means the TV and radio broadcasters get most of what they want. Less so the subscription sector and smart TV manufacturers.
The single most crucial issue is the anti-siphoning legislation which supports the principle that Australian’s should not have to navigate paywalls to see “nationally significant sporting events”.
That list of nationally significant sporting events has now grown by 30% to 2,500. On average across the year, that means we have a “nationally significant” sporting event every three-and-a-half hours.
That's a big win for the free to air networks. The legislation helps contain the price of sports rights as they don’t have to bid against the streamers. And they can then onsell some of those rights. That’s why Foxtel does the heavy lifting from Seven West Media in their AFL and cricket deals. It also explains why Stan benefits from being part of the Nine stable.
The legislation also cuts off a potential loophole of content streamed rather than broadcast. Now it will all be covered. However, the standalone streamers will not be allowed to buy up all the rights and then make it free. Only the free to air TV players get first run.
One small area where the subscription players see a win, is that all bets are off one year out from the event. Before, the anti-siphoning provisions only expired six months out.
Tthe legislation also tidies up what was for now a minor issue but will become more important. The BVOD (broadcast video on demand) services of the likes of 9Now, 7plus and 10 Play will now be regulated in the same was as their broadcast offerings. Finally the Australian Communications and Media Authority will need to start taking notice of the internet.
That means the free to air players will have to follow the time-of-day rules on serving up alcohol and betting ads on BVOD, for instance.
The prominence rules - which say that smart TV manufacturers have to make the free to air channels and their BVOD services easy to find - is another victory for the local team that becomes important over time.
However, in a small win for the TV makers, they will have a year to start doing so, and existing TV sets won’t be covered by the law.
Incidentally, the radio industry has seen a similar result, getting in on the slipstream of the TV lobbying to get similar prominence protections
But there’s a reason why so much of the conversation focuses on free to air television. It’s still a potent, culturally relevant force. There is still no other medium where an advertisers with a big story to tell can rapidly reach a mass audience at scale.
This week, the latest series of Nine’s Married At First Sight wrapped up. It was a guilty pleasure juggernaut once again, and a rare growth story.
With the removal of availability of much of OzTam’s data, its harder to make direct comparisons, but according to Nine’s data, MAFS was up 1.5% on last year’s broadcast numbers, by 9.6% on BVOD and 4% on Total TV.
Most impressive (as it is supposed to be) was the Total TV average audience metric, with the Sunday, Monday and Wednesday episodes all averaging over 2m.
While TV still delivers that kind of reach, the legislators will continue to take it seriously.
9.45 update: We corrected the Total TV number after previously saying it was reach.
Unmade Index hits another low point
The Unmade Index sank to a record low of 561.6 points yesterday, as the media sector continued to struggle to generate belief from the investment community.
Since opening on 1000 points at the start of January 2022, our index of locally listed media and marketing stocks has lost 43.8% of its value.
Yesterday’s fall of 0.56% took the index below its previous low point of 562.6 points, hit just over a month ago.
Among the larger stocks, Seven West Media took the biggest hit of 2.63%, returning to its previous low of 18.5c and a valuation of $284m. ARN Media lost 1.7% to land on a market capitalisation of $269m.
Time to leave you to your Wednesday.
We’ll be back tomorrow with an audio-led edition of Unmade. I’ll be talking to consumer psychologist Adam Ferrier about the contribution of the late Daniel Kahneman to the field of behavioural economics
Have a great day.
Toodlepip…
Tim Burrowes
Publisher - Unmade
tim@unmade.media