​The Australian online advertising market hit $8.8 billion expenditure in 2018, an increase of 11.6 per cent on 2017.

Want to reach someone who wants to buy a car, rather than just kick the tyres? Or pick up some home and garden equipment, rather than just seek inspiration? Maybe you should be looking up a tree.

All the latest martech and adtech news this week from Outbrain, Engagio, RollWorks, Zoho, Delacon, Domo, Freshworks, 90 Seconds, PubMatic, Lotame and Lytics.

Brands taking more accountability for their data, and the growing programmatic market locally are just two of the reasons Adform recently decided to open its first Australian office.

Brands have immediately suspended advertising and the industry is calling for fresh reassurances from digital platform providers around brand safety after allegations that YouTube’s recommended algorithm has been used by paedophiles to connect and promote their activities.

Unless you are a millennial or a Gen Z, it’s unlikely you would have heard of the latest You Tube fad to go mainstream and be grabbed with both hands by marketers. And yet, if you watched the superbowl ads, and pondered the reasoning behind Zoe Kravitz whispering into different microphones while tapping a beer bottle, then you have, in fact, been exposed to ASMR.

An investment into data-driven social media marketing has seen South Australia Tourism Commission lift online engagement, grow average visitor spend into the Festival State – and importantly, prove marketing ROI.

​In the wake of Google’s 50 million Euro fine, the Cambridge Analytica data scandal, and an increasingly educated and concerned consumer, experts are stressing Australian businesses and brands, marketers, and ad tech businesses can no longer afford to assume having generic consent policies in place for data use are adequate.

When Google first demonstrated its Duplex service in mid-2018, it stunned the world by making relatively complex bookings over the telephone using a system that sounded very close to how a human might sound. It also breathed new interest into a technology that has become both increasingly prevalent in consumer devices, and an increasing source of frustration – the voice-based user interface.

The digitisation and transformation of marketing, power of the personal, building and retaining customer trust, and striving for online retail relevancy are just some of the big themes to dominate the news this year.

Fragmented audio and ineffective targeting led National Australia Bank (NAB) to implement one of the first and largest programmatic digital audio campaigns in Australia.

Bringing email marketing in-house is not only helping Flight Centre improve its speed to market, it’s also the trigger for a more insights-led approach to customer communications.

All the latest martech and adtech news this week from HubSpot, AppNexus, Adform, Verint, LivePerson, Flamingo Ai, BigCommerce, and Animoca Brands.

If there's one thing about marketing that can be said to be constant, it's that it always changes. With new technologies, such as voice, AI, machine learning, virtual reality, augmented reality, natural language processing and facial recognition, about to become mainstream, it can feel as marketers, that we are always chasing our tails.

​Many companies across the marketing ecosystem, including private equity players, have been sold the dream marketing is now a science, Rakuten Marketing’s global CEO, Stuart Simms, says. But it’s not exactly true.

The ACCC’s preliminary Digital Platforms Inquiry report has scored a big thumbs up from the marketing and media industry, with several praising the watchdog’s extensive investigation and “engaging” recommendations.

Category innovation and progressive thinking lie at the heart of the Mondelez International business model, its director of marketing for chocolate, Paul Chatfield, says. But at a time when consumers seek emotional brand connections more than ever, no brand can afford to abandon its heritage or roots.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has called for more regulatory authority to investigate, monitor and report on how Facebook and Google are dominating news content and advertising services as well as capturing data about consumers in the digital age.

Australia’s ad spend is expected to grow by 4.4 per cent to $17.2 billion in 2019 off the back of strong display advertising investments and as TV records its first growth in six years.

Whether your brand is responsive and entrepreneurial in market, engages in strategic brand building or invests in digital or traditional media channels, consumers are going to increasingly want to “talk at you”, UM’s CEO, Fiona Johnston, believes.

Going from zero to 99 per cent digital advertising spend in just a few short years is an excellent illustration of how the marketing and advertising climate has changed significantly in such a short period of time.