57 per cent of all web traffic is automated and climbing as AI upends search, discovery and commerce. Marketers are watching page views tank – down 20-30 per cent in Australia this year – and scrambling for answers to a fundamental question: When a machine, not a person, discovers, compares, and recommends your brand, what exactly are you optimising for as currency moves from click to LLM citations?

The new reality is that a consumer can meet a brand, weigh it up, and walk away with a recommendation without ever touching the brand’s website, its own media, or any single thing that marketing controls.

Marketers, says Marie Joyce, GM of News Australia’s Suddenly, are concerned.

“There absolutely is a sense of panic. Their page views are through the floor. There’s a lot of pressure from internal stakeholders; they're also starting to see some impact on the bottom line as well.” Most, she says are, “unsure where to start”.

News Australia’s Head of Search and Emerging Platforms, Mike Cook does know where to start: “With an audit of how you’re showing up – and how your competitors are showing up.”

After that, Marie has a five-point plan – and it’s working for the likes of Chemist Warehouse, which notched “a 219 per cent increase in Google AI overviews, and a 283 per cent spike in AI brand mentions” for its House of Wellness media network.

In short? Give both humans and bots what they want in a single hit:

1. Implement the 50-word rule. “Give the answer in the very first paragraph of your content. Don't make humans or bots dig for it.”
2. Prioritise facts over fluff. “Swap out generic marketing speak for real data, hard numbers, and verified expert quotes.”
3. “Build a knowledge web and create one main authoritative page that links out to smaller, hyper-detailed sub articles. This layout proves to AI that you understand a whole topic, not just a key single word.”
4. Structure for machines: “Use listicles, FAQs, and tables. AI loves these formats because they are easy to ingest and serve up the answers quickly.”
5. Prove it with links: “Link out to trusted official government or industry websites and experts. This builds out immediate trust and data viability for both humans and bots.”

Simultaneously, per Marie, “stop chasing the volume game”, because ironically, the LLMs are now filtering out “AI slop” and upweighting quality, trusted content. “The rules of great content still apply”.

Those rules must be applied across all channels – including the ones marketing has little or no control over. Which means de-siloing across marketing, comms, corporate affairs, media and customer experience.

The good news for CMOs? Fundamentals remain paramount.

“What we're seeing now is the more interconnected these platforms can be the more beneficial it will be for brands. This is … going back to the old way of thinking on consistency of brand … across channels,” says Marie. “Those things that we know embed memory structure for humans also now meet the needs of bots.”

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Host: Andrew Birmingham - Editor - CX | Martech | Ecom

A year after Mi3 Australia began its agentic AI research deep dive – dubbed Inside the Tornado – that first wave of febrile experimentation has given way to what feels like the beginning of a Cambrian explosion as businesses embed AI agents into core operations, and realise measurable gains in areas ranging from pricing optimisation to creative production. But as adoption accelerates, executives say attention is shifting from the promise of autonomous systems to the practical realities of governing them, understanding and controlling costs and ensuring they do not drift off course – because they will absolutely drift of course.

Speaking with Inside the Tornado author, and Mi3 Tech editor Andrew Birmingham, T2 Tea marketing director Peter Randeria and Omnicom Oceania chief product officer Alex Pacey argue that the organisations moving fastest are not those taking the greatest risks, but those building the strongest governance foundations. Their message is clear: agentic AI can create significant commercial value, but success depends on the discipline to supervise it, redesign workflows around it and manage its rapidly growing economic footprint, as much as it requires corralling a still immature and rapidly evolving technology that even its developers sometime still struggle to understand.

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Host: Paul McIntyre, Editor-At-Large

Not all retailers are victims of scale.

North America is pouring billions of dollars into retail media, largely sponsored search and digital screens, making giants like Amazon, Kroger and Walmart richer and other retailers chasing scraps.

But luxury department store chain Holt Renfrew has carved out a higher-end niche in Canada, and its physical-plus-digital approach is pulling in new advertisers like Mercedes, as well as taking a larger share of endemic advertiser budgets as they bid to build brand and drive performance in a single hit.

Demand for both physical and digital inventory is running hot, helped partly by Holt Renfrew’s retail media operation three years ago moving to its own P&L under trade marketing boss, Ashlee Nickel – whose 16 years at the firm also span merchandise, buying and vendor marketing.

It means she speaks the merchandise team’s language as well as that of brands selling through the store.

That’s critical to avoid “conflict”, says Sonder’s Jonathan Hopkins.

“Media has been used as merch’s sweetie jar for decades, and that entrenched behaviour doesn't change overnight.” He argues retailers will increasingly struggle with their retail media ambitions unless they “create a cross-functional team with people from merch, marketing, finance, media,” all pulling in the same direction. Even then, he says, “give and take” is a pre-requisite. “Pick your battles would be my recommendation.”

Since the shift from top line co-op to standalone, Holt Renfrew’s profitable media revenue has changed how every program is priced, packaged, and pitched to vendors. In all, it’s packing 245 distinct media formats, all evaluated by Sonder.

It will soon have another – but given Holt Renfrew’s store environment makes even Apple’s look cluttered, a design challenge looms as the retailer mulls how to roll out a screen network that doesn’t damage that aesthetic.

Sonder’s Angus Frazer isn’t worried – subtlety is key, he says. “Retail media is not an excuse to ignore CX. Done well, it's an opportunity to improve CX and deliver on broader business objectives.” I.e. “highly profitable commercialisation”.

Trade marketing boss Nickel is now hunting more of them – in places where few retailers have thought to monetise. She’s already added in-store beauty carts and cafe menu takeovers to the inventory stack, and has brands queuing up for its in-store Montreal F1 Grand Prix weekend experience – and Holt Renfrew doesn’t even have an official partnership.

“One of the biggest opportunities in the space right now is looking beyond the obvious,” says Nickel. “When you start thinking differently about the retail environment, there are often opportunities that don't fit within a traditional media place.”

Outside of physical environments – and despite huge digital retail media spend, many are overlooking powerful channels – particularly email, say Sonder’s Frazer and Hopkins, leaving easy money on the table.

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