Open models, unsettled economics
Open models are changing the price of intelligence and where control sits. The rapid shift in usage is another reason to question whether AI's economics have settled.
Topics
Business and the data economy
How value is created and captured online, and what changes for marketing, advertising, commerce and publishing.
Ads won't be the backbone of the AI economy
AI will reach for the internet's familiar business model. I expect the more durable money to come from trusted information and transactions completed on our behalf.
A guide to advertising identity
How identifiers, devices and matching shape targeting and measurement across search, social, the open web, streaming and other advertising environments.
My submission on the draft Privacy Bill
In Marketing We Trust's submission on the draft Privacy Bill has been lodged. We are awaiting further advice from the Attorney-General's Department, with practical implications for digital marketing to follow.
THE ICONIC documents a limited Australian UCP integration
THE ICONIC’s help page, dated 9 July, describes a limited Australian UCP integration: selected own-label products, a single-item purchase, linked accounts and Google Pay. Retailer documentation. The page gives its sta…
Your martech stack is a collection engine. The OAIC just said so.
The OAIC's APP 3 rewrite explicitly names AI inference, enrichment, scraping, and observation as collection events. The 'we didn't realise' defence has been retired.
Google just made your cookie banner the most important config
Google is removing Signals as a control on Google Ads cookies and IDs from 15 June 2026. Your cookie consent banner becomes the primary thing between user data and Google's ad business.
ChatGPT shopping shifts its emphasis towards discovery
OpenAI says the first version of Instant Checkout did not give merchants the flexibility it wanted. It is putting more emphasis on product discovery while allowing merchants to use their own checkout experiences. Open…
Web iv is the intelligent and agentic web
My thesis on the next era of the web: intelligent systems acting on our behalf, and the need to return value to the people who create it.
ACMA is enforcing, and the SMS Sender ID Register is coming
Over AUD 5.4 million in combined spam and gambling self-exclusion penalties. The SMS Sender ID Register becomes mandatory 1 July 2026. Unregistered sender IDs will be labelled Unverified.
The OAIC is looking at your marketing data practices
The regulator has explicitly named advertising technology, AI, and excessive data collection as priority areas for 2025-26. The first compliance sweep is underway and the first civil penalty has been imposed.
UCP checkout begins rolling out in AI Mode and Gemini
Google says UCP-powered checkout is rolling out for US shoppers buying from Etsy and Wayfair in AI Mode and Gemini. Shopify, Target and Walmart remain on its coming-soon list. Google’s update. This moves the record be…
The economics of AI are yet to be determined
AI feels cheap. It feels cheap because investor capital is subsidising it. Four structural forces are converging that reframe the trajectory as an open question with significant downside.
ChatGPT advertising: what has changed and how to respond
ChatGPT has announced plans to test advertising in the U.S. This does not change current marketing in Australia, but it indicates where conversational AI is heading.
Google announces the Universal Commerce Protocol
Google has announced UCP, the Universal Commerce Protocol, with retail and platform co-developers. The ambition is a shared language across the shopping journey. Checkout for eligible US retailers in AI Mode and Gemin…
UCP: timeline and simple guide
Track the Universal Commerce Protocol from its January 2026 announcement through specification changes, Google rollouts and country-specific developments.
Your marketing systems are a ransomware target, the 72-hour reporting obligation
The Cyber Security Act 2024 requires ransomware payment reporting within 72 hours. Marketing databases, CDPs, and CRMs are targets. Marketing teams need to be in the incident response plan.
Digital ID opens to the private sector from 30 November 2026
15 million Digital IDs. 80 million verified transactions. From November 2026 the private sector can apply to participate. This is the new identity layer.
What the OAIC's privacy sweep signals for marketers
On the surface, the OAIC's first compliance sweep looks narrow. It is not. The regulator is shifting from reactive complaint handling to proactive market enforcement.
AI in marketing, what Australia's standards-led approach means for your team
No standalone AI Act. Standards-led, not legislation-led. But the automated decision-making disclosure obligation is binding from December 2026, and the ACL already applies to misleading AI outputs.
Stripe packages the work of selling through agents
Stripe has announced Agentic Commerce Suite, bringing product discovery, checkout and payment integration into one offering. Merchants connect their catalog and choose the agents they want to support, while keeping th…
Why Australia's under-16 social media ban could backfire
The intent is sound. The mechanism is blunt. Once minors present as adults to evade the ban, the safety systems that protect them stop working.
Signal loss is accelerating, and waiting for legislation is the wrong play
Marketing effectiveness is being eroded by a structural decline in signal quality across the major platforms. The performance impact is happening before the regulatory impact.
Artificial testimonials and their impact on trust and compliance
AI-generated avatars presented as genuine customers erode trust and risk breaching Australian Consumer Law. A note on what this means for marketers and platforms.
Your measurement infrastructure is already degraded
Google kept cookies, but modelling, consent choices and browser protections still leave measurement gaps. First-party data and server-side collection need to work alongside other ways of measuring effectiveness.
The agentic layer: how autonomous agents reshape the web by 2030
By 2030, the transactional layer of the web will be dominated by autonomous agents negotiating with brand APIs. Websites won't disappear, but they'll become backend infrastructure.
ACP launches with Instant Checkout in ChatGPT
OpenAI and Stripe have introduced the Agentic Commerce Protocol alongside Instant Checkout in ChatGPT. The initial experience lets US users buy from US Etsy sellers within a conversation. Shopify merchants are describ…
ACP: timeline and simple guide
Track the Agentic Commerce Protocol from its September 2025 launch: who is behind it, how it works, specification changes and evidence of adoption.
The fair and reasonable test, and why consent alone won't be enough
The proposed second tranche of Privacy Act reforms would introduce a test that is separate from consent. Having consent will not be sufficient if the use fails the test. This is the single largest structural risk to performance marketing in Australia.
The Data Value Quadrant
A practical model for evaluating how data is used in marketing. Plot consumer value against data sensitivity. Decide what to proceed with, what to redesign, and what to retire.
The CUV Framework
Consent, Utility, Value. A simple, repeatable method for evaluating whether a data use case is ethical, valuable, and legally defensible.
The ACCC is coming for ad tech, digital platform competition reform
Australia is preparing an ex ante competition regime targeting dominant digital platforms. Ad tech and app marketplaces are first in line. Penalties up to 30% of turnover.
Consumer Data Right expansion, data portability is coming to lending
CDR is expanding into non-bank lending from mid-2026. The competitive dynamics of financial services marketing change when customer switching friction drops.
Privacy Act Tranche 1, the foundation shift
The first structural overhaul of the Privacy Act in decades is staging in through December 2026. Three changes matter directly to marketing and analytics teams.