Sydney Marketing Technology Summit 2027

Beat the rush and join us early for complimentary barista-made coffee and breakfast.

As AI-generated answers and AI Overviews increasingly intercept the customer's search journey before a brand's own website is ever clicked, this opening keynote confronts the fundamental shift underway in how marketing teams need to think about discoverability, and what marketing technology needs to look like when the search engine is no longer the primary audience.

• How AI-generated answers are changing the economics of organic visibility, and why traditional SEO metrics increasingly fail to capture whether a brand is actually reaching its audience.
• The practical, structural changes marketing and content teams are making to improve how AI systems surface and represent their brand, distinct from traditional keyword and backlink strategies.
• Which martech investments still earn their keep in an AI-mediated discovery landscape, and how marketing leaders prove ROI when the customer journey itself is harder to trace.

Despite years of calls for marketing technology consolidation, most stacks continue to grow rather than simplify. This keynote examines the structural and organisational forces driving continued sprawl, and what it actually takes to reverse the trend rather than just talk about it.

• The incremental decision-making that leads to bloated stacks, even among teams who genuinely intended to consolidate.
• Beyond licensing fees, how fragmented tooling quietly degrades data quality, slows execution, and makes AI initiatives harder to deploy consistently.
• Lessons from marketing teams who've genuinely reduced stack complexity, and the organisational conditions that made it possible where others have failed.

As marketing leaders face pressure to rationalise bloated technology stacks built up over years of point-solution adoption, this panel examines the real decisions being made about what to keep, what to cut, and what replaces the tools that don't survive the review.

• Beyond cost, what factors are determining which tools survive consolidation and which get eliminated.
• Real trade-offs organisations are experiencing between flexible, best-of-breed architectures and unified platform consolidation.
• How marketing operations leaders are handling the internal disruption and retraining that comes with retiring tools teams have built workflows around.

Facing a dramatic drop in organic traffic as AI-generated search answers began satisfying customer queries before they reached the company's website, one marketing leader rebuilt their content and technical SEO strategy specifically to improve visibility within AI-generated answers rather than chasing traditional rankings alone.

• How the team realised traffic decline was happening despite stable or improved search rankings, pointing to a structural shift rather than an SEO performance issue.
• The specific content and technical changes made to improve the likelihood of being cited within AI-generated answers.
• How the team developed measurement approaches for brand presence within AI answers, since traditional click-through data could no longer tell the whole story.

A hands-on, interactive session working through a real marketing technology scenario as a room. Details announced soon.

Facing budget pressure and a sprawling, overlapping technology stack built up over years of incremental tool adoption, one marketing operations leader led a consolidation effort that significantly cut costs while maintaining, and in some cases improving, the team's actual capability.

• How the team discovered significant overlap and underused licences across the stack before making any cutting decisions.
• The framework used to distinguish tools that could be eliminated outright from those that needed to be merged into a single platform.
• How the team navigated internal resistance from colleagues attached to specific tools, and got alignment on the new, leaner stack.

Facing looming dependence on third-party data sources that were rapidly disappearing, one digital marketing team built a first-party data capability from a standing start, creating a sustainable foundation for personalisation and targeting independent of external signals.

• How the team identified what value proposition would genuinely motivate customers to share first-party data directly, rather than assuming goodwill alone would suffice.
• The practical integration work required to capture first-party data through natural customer interactions, rather than creating separate, friction-heavy collection moments.
• How the team validated that first-party data could support personalisation and targeting effectively before fully weaning off third-party sources.

With cookie deprecation, privacy regulation, and fragmented customer journeys making precise attribution increasingly impossible, this panel explores how marketing leaders are adapting measurement practices and rebuilding credibility with finance in an environment of permanent data uncertainty.

• Comparing the practical strengths and limitations of media mix modelling, incrementality testing, and first-party data strategies as attribution alternatives.
• How marketing leaders are communicating confidence and uncertainty honestly to finance stakeholders who are used to exact attribution numbers.
• What it's actually taking, organisationally and technically, to build first-party data capability robust enough to reduce dependence on third-party signals going forward.

Small-group, discussion-based sessions where you'll work through real marketing technology challenges with peers in similar roles. Roundtable topics will be announced soon.

Put your knowledge to the test in this fast-paced quiz covering real-world trivia, key concepts, and emerging trends. Compete for bragging rights — and a voucher — as the top scorer takes the crown.

With cookie deprecation eliminating a core input to their existing attribution model, one marketing analytics leader rebuilt measurement around first-party data and incrementality testing, restoring confidence in marketing ROI reporting that had been thrown into question.

• How the team moved past attempting to patch the old model and instead built measurement around a fundamentally different, less granular but more durable approach.
• The specific methodology used to triangulate marketing impact from multiple imperfect signals rather than relying on any single measurement method.
• How the team communicated the shift to stakeholders accustomed to precise attribution, and what it took to restore trust in a necessarily less exact measurement approach.

With privacy regulation, cookie deprecation, and AI-mediated search all fragmenting the data trail marketing has traditionally relied on for attribution, this closing keynote examines how marketing leaders are rebuilding the case for their budgets when precise, full-journey tracking is no longer possible.

• Revisiting the limitations of traditional attribution models, and why current disruption is accelerating a reckoning that was overdue regardless.
• Emerging approaches that marketing teams are adopting to demonstrate impact without complete journey visibility.
• How marketing leaders are reframing ROI conversations with finance around confidence intervals and directional evidence, rather than the precise attribution numbers that are becoming harder to produce.

As AI-assisted content production scales rapidly across marketing teams, this think tank looks at the governance question many organisations have avoided: who is actually accountable for quality, brand consistency, and risk when content is produced faster than traditional review processes can keep pace with.

• Concrete examples of how AI-generated content volume is outpacing existing brand and legal review capacity, and what's slipping through as a result.
• How some marketing teams are designing tiered review processes that maintain quality control without eliminating the efficiency gains AI was meant to deliver.
• Clarifying where responsibility actually sits when AI-assisted content causes a brand or compliance issue, and how that's shaping internal sign-off processes.

Unwind with your peers for a couple of drinks on us!

Beat the rush and join us early for complimentary barista-made coffee and breakfast.

As AI-generated answers and AI Overviews increasingly intercept the customer's search journey before a brand's own website is ever clicked, this opening keynote confronts the fundamental shift underway in how marketing teams need to think about discoverability, and what marketing technology needs to look like when the search engine is no longer the primary audience.

• How AI-generated answers are changing the economics of organic visibility, and why traditional SEO metrics increasingly fail to capture whether a brand is actually reaching its audience.
• The practical, structural changes marketing and content teams are making to improve how AI systems surface and represent their brand, distinct from traditional keyword and backlink strategies.
• Which martech investments still earn their keep in an AI-mediated discovery landscape, and how marketing leaders prove ROI when the customer journey itself is harder to trace.

Despite years of calls for marketing technology consolidation, most stacks continue to grow rather than simplify. This keynote examines the structural and organisational forces driving continued sprawl, and what it actually takes to reverse the trend rather than just talk about it.

• The incremental decision-making that leads to bloated stacks, even among teams who genuinely intended to consolidate.
• Beyond licensing fees, how fragmented tooling quietly degrades data quality, slows execution, and makes AI initiatives harder to deploy consistently.
• Lessons from marketing teams who've genuinely reduced stack complexity, and the organisational conditions that made it possible where others have failed.

As marketing leaders face pressure to rationalise bloated technology stacks built up over years of point-solution adoption, this panel examines the real decisions being made about what to keep, what to cut, and what replaces the tools that don't survive the review.

• Beyond cost, what factors are determining which tools survive consolidation and which get eliminated.
• Real trade-offs organisations are experiencing between flexible, best-of-breed architectures and unified platform consolidation.
• How marketing operations leaders are handling the internal disruption and retraining that comes with retiring tools teams have built workflows around.

Facing a dramatic drop in organic traffic as AI-generated search answers began satisfying customer queries before they reached the company's website, one marketing leader rebuilt their content and technical SEO strategy specifically to improve visibility within AI-generated answers rather than chasing traditional rankings alone.

• How the team realised traffic decline was happening despite stable or improved search rankings, pointing to a structural shift rather than an SEO performance issue.
• The specific content and technical changes made to improve the likelihood of being cited within AI-generated answers.
• How the team developed measurement approaches for brand presence within AI answers, since traditional click-through data could no longer tell the whole story.

A hands-on, interactive session working through a real marketing technology scenario as a room. Details announced soon.

Facing budget pressure and a sprawling, overlapping technology stack built up over years of incremental tool adoption, one marketing operations leader led a consolidation effort that significantly cut costs while maintaining, and in some cases improving, the team's actual capability.

• How the team discovered significant overlap and underused licences across the stack before making any cutting decisions.
• The framework used to distinguish tools that could be eliminated outright from those that needed to be merged into a single platform.
• How the team navigated internal resistance from colleagues attached to specific tools, and got alignment on the new, leaner stack.

Facing looming dependence on third-party data sources that were rapidly disappearing, one digital marketing team built a first-party data capability from a standing start, creating a sustainable foundation for personalisation and targeting independent of external signals.

• How the team identified what value proposition would genuinely motivate customers to share first-party data directly, rather than assuming goodwill alone would suffice.
• The practical integration work required to capture first-party data through natural customer interactions, rather than creating separate, friction-heavy collection moments.
• How the team validated that first-party data could support personalisation and targeting effectively before fully weaning off third-party sources.

With cookie deprecation, privacy regulation, and fragmented customer journeys making precise attribution increasingly impossible, this panel explores how marketing leaders are adapting measurement practices and rebuilding credibility with finance in an environment of permanent data uncertainty.

• Comparing the practical strengths and limitations of media mix modelling, incrementality testing, and first-party data strategies as attribution alternatives.
• How marketing leaders are communicating confidence and uncertainty honestly to finance stakeholders who are used to exact attribution numbers.
• What it's actually taking, organisationally and technically, to build first-party data capability robust enough to reduce dependence on third-party signals going forward.

Small-group, discussion-based sessions where you'll work through real marketing technology challenges with peers in similar roles. Roundtable topics will be announced soon.

Put your knowledge to the test in this fast-paced quiz covering real-world trivia, key concepts, and emerging trends. Compete for bragging rights — and a voucher — as the top scorer takes the crown.

With cookie deprecation eliminating a core input to their existing attribution model, one marketing analytics leader rebuilt measurement around first-party data and incrementality testing, restoring confidence in marketing ROI reporting that had been thrown into question.

• How the team moved past attempting to patch the old model and instead built measurement around a fundamentally different, less granular but more durable approach.
• The specific methodology used to triangulate marketing impact from multiple imperfect signals rather than relying on any single measurement method.
• How the team communicated the shift to stakeholders accustomed to precise attribution, and what it took to restore trust in a necessarily less exact measurement approach.

With privacy regulation, cookie deprecation, and AI-mediated search all fragmenting the data trail marketing has traditionally relied on for attribution, this closing keynote examines how marketing leaders are rebuilding the case for their budgets when precise, full-journey tracking is no longer possible.

• Revisiting the limitations of traditional attribution models, and why current disruption is accelerating a reckoning that was overdue regardless.
• Emerging approaches that marketing teams are adopting to demonstrate impact without complete journey visibility.
• How marketing leaders are reframing ROI conversations with finance around confidence intervals and directional evidence, rather than the precise attribution numbers that are becoming harder to produce.

As AI-assisted content production scales rapidly across marketing teams, this think tank looks at the governance question many organisations have avoided: who is actually accountable for quality, brand consistency, and risk when content is produced faster than traditional review processes can keep pace with.

• Concrete examples of how AI-generated content volume is outpacing existing brand and legal review capacity, and what's slipping through as a result.
• How some marketing teams are designing tiered review processes that maintain quality control without eliminating the efficiency gains AI was meant to deliver.
• Clarifying where responsibility actually sits when AI-assisted content causes a brand or compliance issue, and how that's shaping internal sign-off processes.

Unwind with your peers for a couple of drinks on us!