It’s been a snappy start to the newly crowned Cairns Crocodiles, writes Taylor Fielding CEO TFM Digital in the first of his diary from Far North Queensland.
IMAA indies were treated with a couple of early hours access to sponsors Pinterest as part of our welcome drinks – a fantastic precursor to the main festivities. A massive congratulations to Sam Buchanan, IMAA Board and Leadership team as the indie involvement feels bigger and better than last year.
There’s a grander feel to the whole event in 2025, with attendance figures up almost 50% y-o-y. Over 2,500 of the industry’s finest minds have headed north for lashings of learning and never-ending buckets of networking.
Winning mentality
Kicking off the morning we had the irrepressible force that is Ariane Titmus. We queued around the block to hear the Aussie swimming legend offer insight on her climb to reach the pinnacle of the sport. Together with her coach, Dean Boxall, her intense work ethic was delved into – the binary mindset of ‘outstanding or dog sh*t’, offered her the foundation to push on and overtake the very best in the world, previously undefeated Katie Ladecky. Her relentless conviction has driven her to success “…it’s up to your mental capacity and your willingness to put yourself on the line, your body on the line, to actually get that last little 1 or 2 per cent out of you physically”.
Socially minded
Melinda Petrunoff, MD at Pinterest explained the growth of the visual discovery engine during her morning session, with news that the platform now reaches 8.6m Aussies (with 11% growth globally). Pinterest Predicts now promises 80% accuracy for future trends for your boards. And a lot of what she spoke about lined up with the recent BCG research, categorising four modern customer journeys into streaming/scrolling/searching/shopping.
An important focal area was breaking the hold of Google/Meta duopoly in this country, where 70% of digital advertising budgets head off shore. It’s an interesting point and clearly a focus for the visual platform whose involvement in this event earmarks the importance of advertisers to its ecosystem. It’s a contrast with Meta, a company that presented in our local market from a deck that was unbranded and left guests feeling uninspired last year. There’s only one Meta rep for the entire independent media agency sector of thousands of planners/buyers.
One of the hot topics speaking with other agency leaders is AI and Zuckerberg’s recent comments around Meta being able to do everything a business needs. Technology is advancing for sure, and there are improved options, but the consensus from agency leaders was one of skepticism, given the hallucinations in basic functionality we’ve all experienced. Unless there is a human with expertise running the campaign, it will remain to judge effectiveness with the shallow metrics Meta reveals in its own reports.
Off broadway
Away from the main stage, masterclasses and tutorial sessions feel broader this year. There’s great value to be found from presentations like VIOOH’s Breakfast, JC Decaux’s supply side platform (SSP). Ryan Sullivan, Partnerships Director ANZ at VIOOH, spoke about the prediction that 35% of campaigns will be bought programmatically by the end of next year, and Australia has the 4th largest digital out of home (DOOH) market globally.
Sadly there was no Q&A, as I was keen to ask with 92% of media professionals citing DOOH as the most creative channel, and almost a third of media now being bought programmatically, why is it still so hard to buy across DSPs? Is it a tech issue? Where is the resistance? Ideally we want it to be traded like any other programmatic channel, at a local level it’s hard when we need to go through three DSPs.
There are some great figures there regardless with 75% of OOH revenue coming from DOOH, an industry that is going to grow from $1.2 billion in 2023 to $30.1billion by 2032.
Lunch and learn
Our lunch-time panel at Quantcast featured Slingshot Media / UM / Salter Brothers Hospitality looking at whether the ‘Increase in CTV will kill TV’. Overall most agreed with the contention, but it will be slow, while there remains a big reliance on TV.
The wider discussion was around AI, its impact on creative teams, and the move to use it within measurement. Slingshot’s CEO Simon Rutherford commented on the creep for AI into performance type creative (statistic/copy), which has made it quicker/better/faster, however bigger brand channels will still demand that human creative oversight.
Brand and agencies are using AI at the brand planning stage – about finding the right talent/locations – using more for execution rather than producing the creative.
For us at TFM Digital, we’ve seen AI enhance our team’s capability with SEO, another tool to improve output, accessing relevant research faster to create compelling search engine optimised copy.
AI bridging the gap between OOH and DOOH measurement may be one area this is headed. Many I’ve spoken with agree with the sentiment that we’re in an AI Winter right now, with leaps in technology becoming less headline-worthy. Lots of interesting applications are making the technology functional and we may not witness a leap akin to the past few years for another decade. Does government need to play a wider role in this area? Perhaps on for our new Communications Minister to have high on her to-do-list?
Happy snappers
I, along with others I’ve spoken to, can’t wait for the ‘Hatchlings’ as well as the main ‘Crocodile’ awards later in the week. Elsewhere the Pinterest tattoo parlour is back and very much in dope demand.
There’s a real buzz around the place, and we’re seeing a lot of the same faces from last year, which proves the event has become a fixture that many are planning for months in advance. Dare I say, much like Cannes Lions in the Northern hemisphere. Any further comparison between Rattle&Hum becoming the late night destination, on par with the Carlton Hotel Rooftop may have to wait another year…
