“AI is your competitive advantage as an independent,” Pip Bingemann, Springboards.ai co-founder, told the IMAA’s Digi-Byte event yesterday.
The Digital101 e-learning course is the final training module from the IMAA Academy, and was unveiled on Tuesday in front of almost 200 independent agency staff and media partners at the inaugural event, held at Fortress Sydney.
Highlighting the fact that 52% of the Fortune 500 companies from 20 years ago no longer exist, Bingemann told the room that “Bigger ain’t better. It’s slower, it’s more expensive, more complicated, and it’s also why the big go extinct.”
“Big businesses either get bought, go extinct, or die. The tech world has been cutting jobs for the last two years – they’ve cut half a million jobs in the last two years, and I think part of that is because they realised that there’s been too much fat in those businesses. They saw AI as the corporate Ozempic.”
Meanwhile, the advertising world has been trending in the opposite direction, with the number of jobs growing in advertising and marketing.
“Half of the reason for that is because of the fragmentation of the landscape, but the other half, I think, is that within our industry there’s an anti-AI fear narrative that’s been circulating,” Bingemann said.
If used correctly – and that doesn’t mean spending 15 minutes playing with ChatGPT – Bingemann said that AI is a competitive advantage that will agencies “do more with less,” and to “move faster and be more productive, to pitch more.”
He predicted that the advantages of AI would be felt for indies over both the short and long term, due to the fact that the larger players in the market simply “cannot move as quickly as a small independent.”
“There is a huge, huge short-term advantage. The agencies that can adopt AI now, understand the value of it and how to use it – not only to pitch more, but to proactively go out and work – is a three to five year impact. For every client you win now, the average tenure is three to five years.
“From a long-term standpoint, I actually don’t think the holding companies are going to have the best tech, and the reason for that is that they’re not tech companies, they’re advertising companies. If they were good at creating tech, they wouldn’t be in advertising, if I’m brutally honest.”
The IMAA’s Digital101 offers an examination of the nation’s digital advertising landscape across five e-learning modules. The course begins with an overview of the digital space, the role and benefits of digital advertising, key channels and platforms, and insights into strategy, planning, and budget setting.
Additional modules dive into subjects such as programmatic advertising, digital video, digital audio, programmatic digital out-of-home, search engine marketing, social media, and display advertising. The course will also cover key developments in digital advertising and channels nationwide, ad verification and media quality, and Australia’s privacy laws.
Speaking about the Academy’s final e-learning module, IMAA board chair, Jacquie Alley, said she was “confident” the Digital101 module would leave participants with a comprehensive grasp of digital channels, formats, and strategies.
Jacqui Alley speaks at Tuesday’s Digi-Byte event
“Digital has become deeply embedded within nearly every aspect of Australians’ lives. A recent GWI study found that 96% of Australians are online every day, spending, on average, more than six hours with digital channels.
“As a result, advertisers are investing heavily in digital – brands spent $14.7 billion on digital advertising in 2023 alone, with expenditure increasing by 3.7% year-on-year. It just shows the proliferation of digital in society and why it’s so important for media professionals to have a sound understanding of the digital sector.”
–
Top Image: Pip Bingemann speaks at Digi-Byte