Sitemap - 2023 - Unmade: media and marketing analysis

End of the year: How News Corp ended up as the ASX's biggest media winner

BOTW: The Brag's curious new owner; What a Paramount merger means for Ten; The ABC sacking playbook

Connected: How Scott Lorson steered Fetch TV to Australia's prime streaming aggregator

Finding the positives in the last radio ratings of the year; Why is Kerry Stokes creeping up the Seven register?

Start the Week: Big moves in publishing at Nine, Schwartz and LadBible; The year of carnage, AI and retail media

Cocky little chancers, and an ABC data dump

An update on Unmade's plans for 2024 and how you can be part of it (by giving us money)

'I don't even think we're at the early adopter stage': AI agency founder Jeremy Somers on the disruption ahead

ARN setback takes Unmade Index down

Start the Week: The year of the ad streamers; Retail media's $1bn grab; ABC podcast data at last; What now for Seven?

BOTW: James Warburton, the lucky general; Amazon moves in; Where's your reputation, Alan? (It's behind you)

‘You're all battering each other’ - Why LBB’s Matt Cooper wants to focus on the positive in adland

Tuesdata: Where the free to air networks won and lost in 2023

Start the Week: Bed wars; Ten's off season Bachelors strategy; Sky News' streaming play

BOTW: What if Elon is (slightly) correct about advertisers?; Media's $1bn+ inflation hole

How the couch won on Black Friday; Uber to look at attention metrics; Pureprofile's new deal

Nick Smith on taking the helm at News Corp's content agencies Medium Rare and Storyation

The free-to-air networks get their way. Again

Tuesdata: Why Optus faces a long journey to reputational recovery

Start the Week: Media redundancies; End of the Millionaire era; Nine closes in on Melbourne Cup

Your call matters, and other lies; Why is Seven's share price tanking?

Who will win the post-linear spoils when the transmitters turn off?

Nick Rynne on leading Seven's new streaming bet with community sports service Streamer

An epochal day in Australian radio as ARN locks in Sandilands and Henderson for another 11 years, and Christian O'Connell for five more

How an ad about rejecting unloved Christmas traditions echoed around the world

Start the Week: TV lobbies at war; ACCC's Plan B if Meta drops news; Hamish McLennan and OpenAI boss in the exit lounge

BOTW: How the ACCC may fight Meta; the boss of OpenAI gets fired; why The Cat lost out

REmade winners; The Amazon conundrum; keeping pace with The Warehouse Group

The hour that decides an agency's fate: Jonathan Pease on how to win the room

The moving parts behind the battle for Australia's audio companies

Racist, sexist, ageist and misogynist: Adland's most offensive banned ads in the last quarter

Start the Week: Seven gatecrashes the radio war; Google plots cutting off search in Australia; Michelle Rowland gets cosy with gambling lobby

BOTW: Somewhere over Slaughterhouse Pinnacle; PR fails; Sorrell in decline; Is Seven getting ready for M&A?; Enter The Cat

Final word on Upfronts season: Investment bosses give their verdict; and SBS boss James Taylor sets out his stall

Unmade member exclusive: Don't forget to grab your complimentary ticket to Compass

Tuesdata: Have sports rights become too expensive for the networks to afford?

Start the Week: Nine retains The Ashes; Media bosses step up platform lobbying; Consumers cut their streaming spend

BOTW: Adland's big beasts on the move; Playing the NPS game

Still looking for the bottom

'Still massive advertising dollars in linear': How Paramount is balancing a streaming future with Ten's broadcast present

A bundle of wrongs: Why communications teams needs a veto on legalese

What does it take for a business publication to succeed in Australia?

Start the Week: Curtain closes on Upfronts season; what's to come at SBS?; Catalano enters SCA bidding saga; Seven's new masthead

BOTW: Slow TV, FAST channels and fast news

The night Foxtel broke up with the television establishment

The Unmakers: 25 years of Abe's Audio

Whale tales and couch comfort as Ooh Media and Paramount share their 2024 plans

Tuesdata: The verdict on SXSW Sydney

Start the Week: SCA seeks alternative buyers; SXSW Sydney report card; Performative good

Bonus: The Unmade x TV Blackbox crossover - Live at the Seven Upfronts

BOTW: SXSW finds a new home in Sydney; The verdict on Seven; ABC defensiveness

Netflix has lots more advertising juice to squeeze

(Re)defining retail media

Streaming is the real reason ARN Media is plotting a breakup of Southern Cross Austereo

How the pollsters got it right on the Voice

Start the Week: SXSW kicks off; ARN closes in on Kyle & Jackie O deal; end of Upfronts season

BOTW: The referendum post mortem begins; Selling cars and cinema to Indecisive Dave; Ten's footy fail

Can we pay it forward in retail media?

'Know my role, play my role': Russel Howcroft on learning his new craft of radio

Media magic, in just 279 lines of code

Tuesdata: The books that influenced the marketing industry’s thinking class

Start the Week: Seven claims the year; News publishers ask for more cake; Market Herald chases rebrand

BOTW: How the platforms ghosted news; Say it ain't so, Joe; Media companies see 40% decline

REmade: A second wind for retail media, and Colin Lewis explains Amazon

'The world's most secretive democracy': Peter Greste on Australia's press freedom problem

Maybe the monthly SMI numbers point to a TV problem, rather than a market problem

'A weaker media ecosystem': Why publishers are pessimistic about the next round of News Media Bargaining Code talks

BOTW: Meet Google's Bard, the gaslighting liar

An angry decline for X

'It's not doing what I aspired': How programmatic pioneer Brian O'Kelley is trying to fix his mess

The Australian experiment

Tuesdata: Media market faces a chilly Christmas

Start the Week: Foxtel loses patience with anti-siphoning; Ads come to Amazon's Prime Video

BOTW: Cantankerous egotists, phonies, zeros and bastards - a curious week for the old guard

Rupert Murdoch may no longer be the boss of News Corp, but he's still the proprietor

'Setting up an ad network is the smallest part': Retail media evangelist Colin Lewis explains how Australia took the lead

Kylenomics

Tuesdata: Woolworths wins the engagement battle as Coles returns to the red hand

Start the Week: Kyle and Jackie O push for $200m deal, Amazon tries to siphon TV ad revenue

Upfronts and an unkind seagull

YouTube is Australia’s most profitable video company. It wants even more TV dollars

'Brief once, personalise everywhere': How Avid Collective is trying to become a native content engine

Why don't creatives understand small business?

Tuesdata: How Amazon Prime Video has been winning the battle for new Aussie subscribers

Start the Week: Countdown to Facebook news oblivion; Dissecting Nine's Upfronts: Retail media, AI ads and the price of Olympics sponsorship

BOTW: Small earthquakes and fake cakes

Upfronts are always big and glitzy. Nine's was consequential too

'We were doing AI before it was sexy': Sonnant's Tony Simmons on revolutionising audio content

Maintaining the rage bait of the new content pollution

REmade Retail Media News: Collaboration and margin salvation

Tuesdata: As Alan Joyce quits, Australia's biggest brands face a reckoning on trust

Start the Week: What to expect from Upfronts season; payday for Clems shareholders; How much is online news worth to Google?

BOTW: Daggy ads; TV's 22% revenue hole; and why the Yes vote is in trouble

Qantas burned its goodwill with price gouging; now ACCC court action will trash the brand

'Just a little too arrogant and authoritarian': Barrie Cassidy on how the ABC reacts to criticism

Volatility in the radio ratings; Our retail media program revealed

Tuesdata: How Seven's James Warburton is once again Australia's top paid media exec

Start the Week: Harsh words for TMH management; Telstra's second streaming horse; Ita's farewell and Anderson's second term

BOTW: TV's pain is worse than it looks; First impressions of Scire's Capital Brief

Grubby boardroom shenanigans at The Market Herald laid out by the Takeovers Panel

'It will create tons of new jobs': Marcel's global president Arpit Jain on AI's impact on agencies

Unmade is two

The data economics of Matildas Mania

Start the Week: A rubbish start to earnings season, Ooh's profit fall; and a twist in government's anti-siphoning laws

BOTW: The results week where it all went wrong (and that doesn't mean the Matildas)

Bloodbath on the Unmade Index continues

Seven sets course for an unremarkable decade

Most stocks taking hits on the Unmade Index

Tuesdata: Job vacancies fall across the communications industry

Start the Week: Matildas mania; Uplift in Tassie tourism; Is outdoor company QMS in play?

BOTW: Foxtel's soft landing; No sign of the times for Nine; Football fever

With an earnings season reckoning looming, The Unmade Index finally breaks through 700 points

Thinkerbell's Jim Ingram and Adam Ferrier on the measured magic of life after PwC

The Coles big red hand is back. Customers will see through it unless margins are trimmed too

End game approaches for gambling ads

StW: TV lobbying machine hits Canberra; earnings season predictions; Editor suddenly exits Mumbrella

BOTW: The whole 'television is dead' thing; The power shifts at Nine

Craig Hutchison's Sports Entertainment Group hits historic low point on the Unmade Index

The Great DebAIt: Is the rise of AI a threat to marketing jobs, or merely a useful tool?

REmade topics revealed; Here come the REmade Awards; Teresa Aprile on the instore revival

How the tech giants stack up in earnings season

Start the Week: Foxtel's next move; DDB doubles down on digital; ARN woos Kyle and Jackie O; Seven's Logies gamble a hit

A TV for ants? When cookies collide with muddled funnel thinking

A forest of green on the Unmade Index

Private Media's Will Hayward on the chase for growth, information niches and the mental health cost of fighting Lachlan Murdoch

Radio turnoff for the Unmade Index

A bullish forecast for the Aussie podcast landscape

Start the Week: Grim outlook for marketing industry; Media's 'biggest horror decisions'; Netflix loses local grip

BOTW: The biggest job in radio, but is it an impossible one?

Investors still think Netflix subscribers are worth $1300 each. That's crazy

'I love to prove the naysayers wrong': Scire founder Chris Janz on launching a subs-led business publishing challenger

From miraculous to taken-for-granted: How AI is already changing every aspect of the media and marketing world

Brands behaving (not too) badly: Big players on extended run of staying on Ad Standards' right side

Start the Week: HumAIn highlights; ABC loses under-55s; New start for Clems; Scire's hires; World Cup sponsors revealed

BOTW: Radio industry needs to clear up DAB+ misunderstandings; The index bounces back

Will Australia have a shared cultural moment around the Women's World Cup?

'The critics are saying they're going to give us six months': Trying to make sense of Disrupt Radio

Radio industry hits the half way point - what we learned in the new metro numbers

ABC radio is struggling to reach the masses; new data suggests the Canberra power brokers are not tuning in either

Start the Week: Will the market support a Credlin-Abbott podcast?; The intriguing thing about Domain's Review reboot

BOTW: How Four Pillars became an Aussie brand success story; Why Meta's Threads might - might - just work; The AFR's smart brand extension

'It would have been annihilation' Nick McKenzie on Nine's high stakes defamation battle with Ben Roberts-Smith

Nineteen minutes inside Sir Martin Sorrell's head

Tuesdata: How Toyota is outspending auto rivals; K&J speculation adds $11m to SCA's market cap

Start the Week: Will Kyle and Jackie O move?; ABC board gets to grips with radio woes; Twitter meltdown

BOTW: Our winners (and losers) of the financial year

The Unmakers: An adland return for Justin Drape and Michael Canning, with Exceptional Alien Studio

Why the radio industry is still insisting that DAB+ is a smash hit medium

RE:Made: The next wave of retail media players are coming; The silos are going

The true costs for agencies of pitching for business they probably aren't going to win

Start the Week: Recriminations over ARN's SCA share raid; Call for total betting ban looms; Australia's platform laws get global pickup

BOTW: Meet Unmade's AI friend; Are ThinkTV's job cuts economic or strategic?; Why ARN raided SCA

Introducing TimBot

What to expect from the new CEOs at Havas as James Wright and Gayle While take charge

Bloody Ritson; What we now know about ad fraud; ARN's cheeky SCA investment

What compels Australians to pay for news?

The first AI radio host?; Fast food ads under threat; the ABC job cuts; a key appointment for SBS streaming

BOTW: Supermassive alien upstarts; The Guardian does the right thing on betting ads (what took so long?)

'It's like addressing the United Nations of the creative industries': Colin Daniels, the man bringing SXSW to Sydney

Adland's inflection point

Tuesdata: The state of play in health insurance

BOTW: How long does AM radio have left?; Translating the ABC's five-year plan; TMH woes will drag on

Why JCDecaux's Steve O'Connor is bullish that programmatic will make a difference in outdoor

What we learned from Radio 360's first outing; AI Upfronts speakers revealed

Tuesdata: How poor communications turned PwC’s PR disaster into an extinction level event

Start the Week: Melbourne Cup in play; Business groups launch ad war; Cultural issues at the side hustle hurt Kochie's lap of honor

BOTW: TV's game of billion dollar bullshit; How inflation is challenging adland's optimism bias

BRS judgement is a vindication for the journalism but it does NOT mean the system works

How Zenith boss Jason Tonelli is tripling down on client ROI, and wants to return the Audit Bureau to relevance

Ooh Media leads The Unmade Index downwards as debt ceiling rally fades

Tuesdata: What the viewing numbers are telling us after a month of Total TV data

Start the Week: D-Day for defamation laws; TV revenues under attack; Kochie leaves Sunrise

BOTW: The podcast boom; If agencies want diversity they need to pay better; The ghost of Logan Roy

Why has the public stopped complaining about ads? ANZ joins humAIn speaker lineup

Ten years of The Guardian in Australia: Finding a niche next to Fairfax and News Corp

What if Optus gets out of streaming?

Tuesdata: The marketers spending their way through the cost of living crisis

Start the Week: A new Twitter clone from Meta; Coalition promises TV networks $46m tax cut; new hires at Scire; No love for subs

BOTW - The shoe edition: Adland's cobblers children, and a kick in the teeth over The Market Herald

Unmade Events

Introducing the RE:Made retail media newsletter

It doesn't have to be this way: why the marketing industry needs to get ahead of AI regulation

You don't need to be a (domain) expert to work here; good day for Seven shares

Tuesdata: TikTok the time bandit but Facebook has greatest global reach; SCA sinks to $190m

Start the Week: Google in the frame on PWC's tainted tax advice; Albanese turns up temperature on gambling ads; new local leaders for Snap

BOTW: Foxtel puts on subscribers as News Corp advertising turns 'insipid'; Glass houses; Yet another big AI week

Adland's carrot for growing up is here, but there needs to be a stick too

Qantas's fight with the AFR is off course for a progressive brand

The budget puts ABC and SBS on more stable footings - their recovery is now down to them

Tuesdata: How Publicis became the holdco to watch

Start the Week: Qantas goes to war on the AFR; Jules Lund returns to radio; ABC addresses digital leadership deficit

BOTW: Was VOZ worth the wait?

Now it's Paramount's turn to spook the investment market

Why Ooh Media saw a market wipeout; and our first humAIn speakers revealed

A pass mark for SCA's Grant Blackley? How the market reacted to Seven's profit warning

Tuesdata: Why most journalists don't read press releases properly (despite them being the main source of news)

Start the Week: Why it was time for Grant Blackley to go; a new start for the TV industry; Twitter's monetisation plans for publishers; Coles Radio up for grabs

Measuring up the marketing landscape; Why Meta rose and Snap fell; faking it with Kochie

A signal of who will survive the marketing world's AI transformation? Those already jumping in

Inside Ten's company accounts; SCA's unenviable new milestone

BOTW: The slow death of BuzzFeed News (and RN); Murdoch's double defeat; why outdoor wants TV's spend; a verified Tweeter no more

It's us. We're the baddies the public needs protection from

Tuesdata: BeReal burns out, TikTok takes top slot

Start the Week: Total TV finally approaches; Eddie for 3AW drivetime?; How streaming quotas will work; Google's speaker blunder

BOTW: Picking media stocks in a tough sector (why Ooh, Nine, SCA and HT&E get the nod)

How Kirsty Muddle is making the single-brand holdco a local reality, even if that means taking creativity off its pedestal

Tuesdata: How the public started paying attention to AI, but don't yet see the benefits

BOTW: Announcing The AI Upfronts; Has Elon gone after Substack?; SCA falls below $200m

The new adspend figures don't look good

Tuesdata: How Enero's shareholders had the worst quarter on The Unmade Index, while Domain was top

Start the Week: HBO to stream locally from next year; Nine's killer quarter; Betting ads crackdown Is AI just a toy?

BOTW: Amazon's Aussie ad slice, Sorrell's S4 Capital grows; the week in AI

Hate the game, and the game is chasing earned media on April Fool's Day

The Unmakers: Simon Hakim on building an incubator for challenger brands; Plus, a dip on the Unmade Index

The killing fields of digital publishing

Tuesdata: Foxtel Group outspends its rivals in the battle of the streamers

Start the Week: TV industry's ratings system red faces; 69% think there are too many betting ads

BOTW: Time up, betting ads; What is Scire?; When to tell and when to sell

Turning up the heat on TikTok

News Corp's Michael Miller on reaching 1m subscriptions, negotiations with Facebook, the economic challenge of AI, and navigating advertiser boycotts

How workers move, now they've moved on

Tuesdata: How McDonald's is leaving Hungry Jack's for dead in the loyalty game

Start the Week: ABC to review its radio ratings decline; Dan Sinfield moves on from Meta; Anti-siphoning deadline approaches

BOTW: A new low for Radio National ratings; Your part in the AI debate; Job cuts at The Market Herald

Welcome to Planet K&J - population 1m+

Everybody knows that everybody knows about the villain edit; New low for SCA shares

Tuesdata: How the sheriffs are slowly taming the influencer Wild West

BOTW: When punditry meets politics; Radio becomes the top news source; Sexist robots

ACCC enters strange new worlds

What the retail media industry needs to do next

How broadcast TV became the third place viewing medium

Tuesdata: After five years in the market, Amazon is now Australia's biggest online retail player

Start the Week: How the TV networks are planning a premium video exchange; Web rankings redux; The rise of subscription video

BOTW: Adspend in retreat; Mutinex on the up; Meet Motio

Now we know what the podcast market is worth. And soon we'll know how many of the ABC's missing listeners are podcasting instead

Nearly time to turn off the transmitters. The viewing shift is happening faster than you think

What we learned from The Market Herald's update

Tuesdata: In which Guzman y Gomez tries to persuade Ad Standards that an ice cream ad talking about 'your mum' isn't aimed at kids

Start the Week: Local podcast spend revealed; Another HBO lifeline for Binge; What results season told us

BOTW: We're only humAIn; A PR who gets adland; Now Catalano focuses on auto

Nine's Sneesby gets better at navigating the awkward questions

The end game approaches for HT&E

Tuesdata: Unpacking Ooh Media's financial results; can the good old days of 2019 return?

Start the Week: Meta launches paid verification; Results season unpacked; How media companies are prepping for a downturn

BOTW: PWC leaks; Comeuppance for a radio predator?; Listnr takes the lead; Why Binge is better placed than Netflix to make ads work

Southern Cross Austereo has had its worst ever start to a financial year. Can Listnr change the trajectory?; And a bad day for Enero

Spinach's Ben Willee on the meaning of Nine's Olympics win, why it's okay to say the R-word, and loyalty in a fickle industry

Netflix's password PR problem won't last long

Tuesdata: Profits begin to fall as Seven West Media prepares for a chilly 2023

Start the Week: A Seven-HT&E merger?; Breaking Bad wins the Super Bowl; What to watch for in financial results season

BOTW: Foxtel's streaming numbers fall as News Corp makes job cuts; the Twitter algorithm finally snaps; A big drop on the Unmade Index

Why Nine is the only media company able to squeeze full value out of the Olympics

Ben Shepherd on why retail media is up with adwords as a media invention; how sales people can get his attention; and the 2023 outlook

The war for The Market Herald is not over

Tuesdata: How the social media platforms rose and fell over the last 12 months

Start the Week: Catalano and Janz both make moves; What to look for in the News Corp results; TV ad revenue falls

BOTW: Why are we waiting for Total TV data?; Retail media agenda revealed; Media stocks' big week

Why TV networks may regret pushing for streaming quotas; and time to give Triple J's transmitters to Double J instead?

A reminder of your code for RE:Made tickets

BOTW: The AI effect in the real world; Downfall of a wrong 'un; Radio innovation; The Google litigation

Find out who's speaking at our first conference; and The Market Herald goes into a trading halt

BOTW: AI's big idea for a supermarket slogan may seem familiar; no new ideas at TMH

Going big in retail media, and TMH wins more time on its big debt

BOTW: After missing out on AFL and cricket, what now for Ten?