Adaptive Media: Why the next media model will be built around culture

By Josh Simons, Chief Executive Officer, Vinyl Group

The last two major eras of advertising solved different problems. Legacy media delivered mass reach. Social media added precision. Both were transformative, and both now have structural limits.

Broadcast was designed for a world of concentrated attention that no longer exists. Social platforms can still deliver enormous scale, but brands rent access to audiences through algorithms they do not control, inside feeds built around interruption. At the same time, generative AI is making content almost limitless. When supply becomes infinite, attention is not the only scarce asset. Trust, context and cultural authority become more valuable.

This is the environment in which Adaptive Media is emerging.

Adaptive Media is not a new ad format. It is an operating model that connects trusted cultural assets, audience and campaign intelligence, creators, technology, commerce and distribution. Its purpose is simple: to help brands move beyond buying impressions and become meaningfully part of the culture their customers care about.

The distinction matters. Legacy media was built to broadcast. Social media was built to target. Adaptive Media is built to understand and act.

The most valuable media businesses of the next decade will own both insight and activation. They will understand where culture is moving, identify what audiences are responding to, and have the assets and capabilities to act on that insight across editorial, video, social, creators, events, music, commerce and emerging channels. Each campaign can then inform the next. That feedback loop is what makes the model adaptive.

Why now? Cultural media is being reset by three forces at once.

First, many historically strong media assets remain sub-scale, under-monetised and capital constrained. They have audience trust and cultural relevance, but not always the technology, commercial capability or investment required to realise their potential. This creates a need for consolidation, but not consolidation for its own sake. The opportunity is to place those assets inside a system that makes each of them stronger.

Second, trust is becoming more valuable. The flood of AI-generated content is making recognisable brands, expert editors and credible creators more valuable, not less. Quality content creation is not a legacy cost to be managed out of the model. It is the foundation that gives the model authority and makes participation with audiences possible. As revered near-futurists Rohit Bhargava and Henry Coutinho-Mason argue in The Future Normal (2025), established brands and platforms may increasingly become de facto certification authorities as audiences gravitate toward content ecosystems they trust.

Third, technology is changing the economics of media. AI and automation can remove low-value friction, accelerate workflows and help teams make better use of audience, content, commerce and campaign data. But this is not an argument for replacing journalists or creators. The strongest model is human-led and technology-enabled. The point is not to produce more content for the sake of it. It is to give talented people better tools, protect quality and create more value from every idea, audience relationship and campaign.

This is the strategy Vinyl Group has been building towards.

Over the past three years, we have assembled a portfolio spanning premium publishing brands, digital advertising, creator platforms, music technology, events and commerce. The logic was never simply to collect mastheads. It was to build an ecosystem in which trusted cultural assets, distribution and technology reinforce one another.

Following the additions of Val Morgan Digital, Pedestrian Group and Time Out Australia, Vinyl Media's combined digital audience now reaches 55 per cent of Australians online, based on Ipsos iris January 2026 data. That national scale matters, but reach alone is not the thesis. The value is in combining reach with cultural depth, and then giving brands a single path from insight to action.

We are already seeing what that looks like in practice. Vinyl delivered more than 300 Adaptive Media campaigns last year. One example was Mentos Fresh Sounds, a multi-layered music discovery platform that combined sponsorship, editorial and social content, a dedicated campaign hub, video, creator collaboration and a live event. It delivered 9.7 million impressions and reached 7 million people, while generating 961 artist submissions against an expectation of 300. Video engagement reached 19.6 per cent against a 5 per cent target.

Those results matter because they demonstrate participation, not passive exposure. The more important commercial validation is that Mentos booked the platform again for 2026.

This is where the model begins to compound. Better cultural assets attract audiences. Larger and more engaged audiences attract brands. More campaigns generate richer insights and stronger case studies. Technology allows successful workflows to be repeated across the network without costs rising at the same rate. That, in turn, strengthens the platform for existing assets and makes Vinyl a more credible home for the next one.

For advertisers, the proposition is not simply more inventory. It is the ability to understand a cultural opportunity and activate against it through one connected ecosystem. For creators, it means more opportunities across a larger network. For media assets, it offers a path from sub-scale relevance to sustainable growth.

Adaptive Media does not replace legacy media or social media. It incorporates the reach of one and the precision of the other, then adds what both increasingly lack: trusted context, cultural participation and a feedback loop between insight and activation.

The next generation of media companies will not win by producing the most content or buying the cheapest impressions. They will win by owning trusted places in culture and using technology to make those relationships more valuable for audiences, creators and brands. 

That is the company Vinyl is building.

Mediaweek is owned by Vinyl Group.