https://www.newslocker.com/en-au/profession/advertising/en-auCopyright (C) 2026 newslocker.comWed, 21 Oct 2026 23:45:00 +0200 Think about how you make big decisions in real life. Before booking a trip, buying new tech or trying a spot in town, what’s the first thing most of us do? We dive straight into online communities to see what real people are saying. 
We often put far more faith in unbiased advice from strangers online than in the opinions of our own friends and family. Why? Because out here, you can connect with people who have walked through your exact situation. Whether it’s a rare caree]]>https://www.newslocker.com/en-au/profession/advertising/the-missing-middle-why-marketing-needs-a-validation-layer/Wed, 21 Oct 2026 23:45:00 +0200https://www.newslocker.com/en-au/profession/advertising/the-missing-middle-why-marketing-needs-a-validation-layer/ For most of my career, success in content was measured by the size of the crowd. At McDonald’s, I worked in social media when follower counts were the scoreboard, and at Canon I managed digital communications for a brand people already loved. What the scoreboard didn’t show – and what big brands didn’t always understand – is that the size of the crowd matters less than what happens inside it.
An audience watches you. A community talks back]]>https://www.newslocker.com/en-au/profession/advertising/with-b2b-content-cultivating-community-matters-more-than-building-audience-numbers/Wed, 21 Oct 2026 04:11:00 +0200https://www.newslocker.com/en-au/profession/advertising/with-b2b-content-cultivating-community-matters-more-than-building-audience-numbers/ For most of advertising history, marketers have tried to understand audiences indirectly. They used demographics, surveys, behavioural segments, purchase histories and, more recently, digital traces. AI is now changing that relationship.
The next generation of systems will not simply analyse what audiences have done. They will increasingly infer what people are feeling, intending, hesitating over and perhaps even becoming vulnerable to in real time. That creates ext]]>https://www.newslocker.com/en-au/profession/advertising/when-ai-can-read-the-audience-who-controls-the-influence/Wed, 14 Oct 2026 07:56:00 +0200https://www.newslocker.com/en-au/profession/advertising/when-ai-can-read-the-audience-who-controls-the-influence/ Australia’s proposed social media algorithm opt-out has already sparked plenty of speculation about what happens if users start switching off personalised recommendations and returning to feeds dominated by the accounts they actively follow.
Most of us know that personalisation is far from an incidental social media feature. It is the core product experience, as the platforms have become great at understanding what people are interested in, and then showing more of it.
If peo]]>https://www.newslocker.com/en-au/profession/advertising/an-algorithm-opt-out-option-makes-relevant-content-more-important-than-ever-before/Mon, 05 Oct 2026 03:00:00 +0200https://www.newslocker.com/en-au/profession/advertising/an-algorithm-opt-out-option-makes-relevant-content-more-important-than-ever-before/ Buyers lean on AI-generated answers more and more these days, but when a business realises it’s not featuring in those results, the instinct is almost always to go and ‘fix’ the website. 
They rewrite the copy, sharpen the messaging and tidy up positioning. It is a logical reaction, although it’s usually only half the answer, for reasons that have less to do with the website than with the machine user now reading it.
Buyers use AI to take the]]>https://www.newslocker.com/en-au/profession/advertising/when-the-buyer-is-a-machine-that-thinks-like-a-human-what-breaks-the-tie/Thu, 01 Oct 2026 02:39:00 +0200https://www.newslocker.com/en-au/profession/advertising/when-the-buyer-is-a-machine-that-thinks-like-a-human-what-breaks-the-tie/ The event will take place on 24-25 February 2027 at the InterContinental Melbourne The Rialto.
With the marketing function of most businesses now under more pressure than it has faced in years, boards want proof that marketing spend drives growth, not just brand awareness. 
AI has moved from a talking point in strategy decks to a tool reshaping how cu]]>https://www.newslocker.com/en-au/profession/advertising/content-marketing-mag-is-the-official-media-partner-for-cmo-summit-2027/Wed, 30 Sep 2026 02:27:00 +0200https://www.newslocker.com/en-au/profession/advertising/content-marketing-mag-is-the-official-media-partner-for-cmo-summit-2027/ AI can’t recommend what it can’t reach. Strictly speaking, it can. That’s the problem.
If an AI system researching suppliers for a buyer can’t retrieve your current product pages, technical documentation or case studies, it may still answer. It can fall back on old model knowledge, review sites, cached material, competitor claims and somebody else’s version of your business.
I use AI heavily. That has made me less impressed by fluent answers an]]>https://www.newslocker.com/en-au/profession/advertising/are-your-b2b-customers-relying-on-incorrect-content-evidence/Thu, 24 Sep 2026 02:05:00 +0200https://www.newslocker.com/en-au/profession/advertising/are-your-b2b-customers-relying-on-incorrect-content-evidence/ Customer research had identified two major barriers to growth: the brand’s positioning was not resonating strongly enough with customers and its disconnected technology stack was creating a fragmented experience. These issues limited personalisation, red]]>https://www.newslocker.com/en-au/profession/advertising/mad-mex-rebuilds-loyalty-and-accelerates-growth/Tue, 22 Sep 2026 01:00:00 +0200https://www.newslocker.com/en-au/profession/advertising/mad-mex-rebuilds-loyalty-and-accelerates-growth/ That arrangement is quietly getting more expensive and less predictable. Cost per acquisition keeps climbing, algorithm updates can reshape organic reach overnight, ad accounts get suspended over opaque policy calls with n]]>https://www.newslocker.com/en-au/profession/advertising/owned-versus-rented-the-platform-dependence-risk-hiding-in-your-marketing-stack/Wed, 16 Sep 2026 07:24:00 +0200https://www.newslocker.com/en-au/profession/advertising/owned-versus-rented-the-platform-dependence-risk-hiding-in-your-marketing-stack/ A few years ago, we were very fortunate to knock down the old, decaying place that we had purchased 30 years ago and build a new home. We employed a young architect and gave her some basic guidelines around our budget, number of rooms, types of materials, etc.
She then started playing around with a few concepts and constantly fed back to us her initial ideas, to which we gave her specific feedback. 
As the process moved forward, the conversations became more interesti]]>https://www.newslocker.com/en-au/profession/advertising/why-marketers-need-to-switch-between-creativity-and-optimisation/Thu, 10 Sep 2026 06:57:00 +0200https://www.newslocker.com/en-au/profession/advertising/why-marketers-need-to-switch-between-creativity-and-optimisation/ It’s 2016. You’ve just finished that 50-page white paper your team has been preparing for weeks and you’re ready to send the gated landing page and EDM live. 
Now comes the best part, where you get to sit back and watch the downloads roll in with dozens of contacts the sales team can follow up on.
This approach was once the cornerstone of B2B lead generation in the golden era of the internet. It was a great formula – built for a time when clicking throug]]>https://www.newslocker.com/en-au/profession/advertising/your-lead-generation-focused-gated-content-works-against-you-in-ai-search/Thu, 10 Sep 2026 04:17:00 +0200https://www.newslocker.com/en-au/profession/advertising/your-lead-generation-focused-gated-content-works-against-you-in-ai-search/ Marketers have never had more ways to prove their content is ‘working’.
Views, impressions, clicks, likes, shares and engagement rates can all tell us whether we’ve captured attention. But there’s a more important question businesses need to ask: what happened next?
After more than two decades working across digital marketing and business growth, I’ve seen a growing disconnection between content performance and commercial performance.
A piece of]]>https://www.newslocker.com/en-au/profession/advertising/your-content-is-getting-attention-but-is-it-generating-revenue/Wed, 02 Sep 2026 06:45:00 +0200https://www.newslocker.com/en-au/profession/advertising/your-content-is-getting-attention-but-is-it-generating-revenue/ For 18 years I introduced myself as somebody from somewhere. The work was always credited and I was never sitting in a corner feeling unseen about it. Being the marketing lead at a brand people already love is a genuinely great place to stand: the brand answers the first three questions for you, and everyone in the room knows roughly what you are about before you speak. 
At Petal & Pup, I was the first full-time team member and grew the marketing team from just me to]]>https://www.newslocker.com/en-au/profession/advertising/lessons-from-a-chief-marketing-officer-turned-content-creator/Tue, 01 Sep 2026 06:34:00 +0200https://www.newslocker.com/en-au/profession/advertising/lessons-from-a-chief-marketing-officer-turned-content-creator/ I have learned over the years that your initial response can define your crisis.
Last Monday, hours after Victoria Police confirmed it was investigating an alleged sexual assault following an incident at the hotel where the Sydney Swans were staying, the club’s CEO Matthew Pavlich stood in front of reporters and said he was “shocked and disappointed” that they had “found themselves in this situation”.
By Wednesday, the story wasn’t just abou]]>https://www.newslocker.com/en-au/profession/advertising/what-the-sydney-swans-response-reveals-about-crisis-comms/Tue, 25 Aug 2026 06:14:00 +0200https://www.newslocker.com/en-au/profession/advertising/what-the-sydney-swans-response-reveals-about-crisis-comms/ Podcasting is the easiest form of content to start and the hardest one to succeed at. 
Truthfully, if you want to start a podcast, you can be recording inside a week. The gear is cheap and the barrier is low. Anyone with a phone and an idea can launch a show by Friday. What’s hard is staying good by episode 40. 
Starting a podcast has much in common with starting a second business. It needs the same intensity to get off the ground, and then it needs the same thing]]>https://www.newslocker.com/en-au/profession/advertising/podcasting-isnt-expensive-to-start-its-expensive-to-keep-going/Mon, 24 Aug 2026 06:10:00 +0200https://www.newslocker.com/en-au/profession/advertising/podcasting-isnt-expensive-to-start-its-expensive-to-keep-going/ Valenti oversees creative and marketing strategy at one of the world’s leading live entertainment companies, helping to connect brands with fans through live music experiences such as festivals and concerts.
In her role, she champions researc]]>https://www.newslocker.com/en-au/profession/advertising/episode-2-content-unpacked-with-erica-valenti/Thu, 20 Aug 2026 03:53:00 +0200https://www.newslocker.com/en-au/profession/advertising/episode-2-content-unpacked-with-erica-valenti/ The first casualty of the AI revolution is certainty, not jobs.
A year ago, if someone published a thoughtful article or a beautifully written LinkedIn post, our default assumption was that they’d probably written it themselves. Today, even genuinely original work is met with a shrug and a dismissive ‘ChatGPT probably wrote that’. I wonder how many readers have already thought that about this piece. 
This is a problem that leaders around the world are g]]>https://www.newslocker.com/en-au/profession/advertising/the-messy-middle-may-be-the-most-valuable-content-you-create/Tue, 18 Aug 2026 07:45:00 +0200https://www.newslocker.com/en-au/profession/advertising/the-messy-middle-may-be-the-most-valuable-content-you-create/https://www.newslocker.com/en-au/profession/advertising/tag-dcpr-amp-ddo-join-expanded-dentsu-partnership-for-une/Tue, 18 Aug 2026 05:27:00 +0200https://www.newslocker.com/en-au/profession/advertising/tag-dcpr-amp-ddo-join-expanded-dentsu-partnership-for-une/https://www.newslocker.com/en-au/profession/advertising/summer-treseder-moves-from-wavemaker-to-essencemediacom/Tue, 18 Aug 2026 05:26:00 +0200https://www.newslocker.com/en-au/profession/advertising/summer-treseder-moves-from-wavemaker-to-essencemediacom/https://www.newslocker.com/en-au/profession/advertising/tag-pushes-gate-into-japan-amp-apac-nigel-kenneally-to-lead-regional-operations/Tue, 18 Aug 2026 04:44:00 +0200https://www.newslocker.com/en-au/profession/advertising/tag-pushes-gate-into-japan-amp-apac-nigel-kenneally-to-lead-regional-operations/