This is Mediaweek’s Innovation 20 list for 2025, celebrating the creative pioneers and problem-solvers redefining Australia’s media and marketing future.
The Innovation 20 recognises the leaders, teams and organisations whose ideas, technology and execution are transforming how stories are told, how audiences engage and how brands connect. From emerging platforms and data-driven strategy to creative experimentation and product design, each honouree represents a bold step forward for the industry.
Every leader recognised has demonstrated that innovation isn’t just about new tools or trends, it’s about curiosity, courage and the ability to turn fresh thinking into real-world impact.
The Innovation 20 forms part of the Mediaweek 100, spotlighting those who are not just adapting to change but actively driving it, setting the pace for what comes next across media, marketing and technology.
Luca Lavigne
Chief Operations Officer and Chief Product Officer, Mamamia
Luca Lavigne has redefined innovation within an independent publisher proving that AI can be both a commercial asset and a cultural catalyst.
Lavigne has led the creation and rollout of Mai, Mamamia’s internal GPT, a generative-AI co-pilot now embedded across editorial, commercial and operations teams.
Mai assists with transcribing and summarising interviews and preparing campaign insights and sales proposals. The result is one of the first fully operational deployments of generative AI across an Australian newsroom and sales organisation.
Under Lavigne’s guidance, Mai has delivered measurable results. A roughly 30 per cent uplift in deal values year-to-date, faster production cycles, and improved collaboration between creative and commercial teams.
Just as importantly, he has built an ethical and transparent framework for AI use, ensuring that automation enhances human creativity rather than replaces it.
Lavigne’s cross-functional leadership spanning product design, technology and culture has positioned Mamamia as a pioneer in AI-enabled publishing.
His work is showing how a local, independent company can compete with global media giants by combining smart systems with authentic purpose. In doing so, he has set a new benchmark for how product-driven innovation can empower both people and performance in Australian media.
Patrick Whitnall
Managing Director – Australian Influencer Marketing Council (AiMCO)
Patrick Whitnall is redefining what innovation means in the influencer industry.
As Managing Director of the Australian Influencer Marketing Council (AiMCO), he has built the frameworks and technology standards that have transformed influencer marketing from a creative niche into a transparent, data-driven media channel.
But it his innovative approach to representing the influencer community that has seen him champion education and brand-safety.
Through AiMCO webinars and events, he has worked directly with regulators. He has hosted ATO and intellectual property webinars, as well as sessions with experts on superannuation, contracts, and crisis PR. These were attended by more than 800.
In consultation with ABAC, TGA and AHPRA, he ensured that members’ perspectives were included in national policy updates, while
working groups extended this influence into long-term education.
His ability to align creativity with accountability has started to re-engineer how marketers view influencer partnerships.
Claire Patterson
Director, Product & Business Operations, Paramount+ (ANZ)
Claire Patterson is steering the commercial edge of Paramount+’s streaming transformation in Australia and New Zealand, building a platform designed for flexibility, growth and deeper audience connection.
In 2025, Patterson led the rollout of Paramount+’s multi-tier subscription model introducing ad-supported, ad-light and premium, ad-free plans to capture a broader spectrum of viewers while unlocking diversified revenue streams.
Her work has enabled advertisers to access premium streaming inventory programmatically in Australia for the first time, through a partnership with Magnite that gives brands direct access to Paramount+’s ad tier.
By bridging creative, product and revenue domains, Patterson is helping define how streaming platforms can evolve responsively and commercially.
Cameron Price
Co-founder & Chief Executive Officer, LeadStory
Cameron Price is redefining how audiences interact with news and information, transforming video from a one-way broadcast into a two-way conversation.
As CEO of LeadStory, he has led the creation of Ask with fellow co-founder and CTO, Cheyne Wallace, the world’s first conversational video-search platform.
Ask allows users to query and receive answers directly from within news footage across more than 800 million devices globally. The platform uses advanced AI to index, summarise and respond to natural-language questions, turning passive viewing into interactive discovery.
In 2025, LeadStory secured US$2.75 million in seed funding to expand Ask internationally, building partnerships with global broadcasters and integrating the technology into smart TVs, connected vehicles and publisher ecosystems.
Price’s vision is grounded in journalistic integrity. By surfacing verified video as evidence, Ask tackles misinformation while unlocking a new form of engagement for audiences and advertisers alike.
Under his leadership, LeadStory has also built FAST channels in multiple markets (e.g. Samsung TV Plus) and struck early deals such as powering Mercedes-Benz’s in-car video news system.
With roots in Australian TV journalism, Price has channelled newsroom insight into breakthrough technology.
His work positions Australia as a leader in AI-driven media innovation showing how the next chapter of storytelling will be interactive, intelligent and built on trust.
Seb Rennie
Chief Commercial Officer, SCA
In 2025, Rennie moved innovation from roadmap to rollout, sharpening the national sales story and turning LiSTNR’s tech edge into practical advantages for buyers.
The standout was the launch of LiSTNR Precision Plus, a real-time targeting and optimisation layer that uses first-party data and AI so planners can adjust audiences mid-flight instead of waiting for post-campaign analysis.
It put digital audio in the same optimisation bracket, buyers expect from video and social, and gave SCA a clear point of difference on briefs.
He also expanded LiSTNR’s addressable footprint by bringing new regional partners onto the platform and enabling dynamic ad insertion across fresh inventory.
Commercially, those product moves showed up in the FY25 results as group revenue grew, digital audio as LiSTNR crossed into positive EBITDA for the first time.
On the front line, sales teams, with Rennie at the front, had a simpler “why now”. Live optimisation, first-party audience targeting and clearer outcome reporting.
Aimie Rigas
Director, Audience Growth, Nine Publishing
Aimie Rigas is at the forefront of the shift toward insight-driven journalism embedding data science into editorial decision-making and subscriber strategy across Nine’s mastheads.
Her work is changing newsroom culture. Data dashboards built by Rigas’ team now inform daily editorial conference discussions, helping identify topics that convert readers to subscribers, optimal posting schedules and content formats that deepen engagement.
Her team’s influence is visible in the broader transformation of Nine’s publishing division.
Inside newsrooms, Rigas has helped bridge the divide between data and editorial teams.
She and colleagues have introduced fortnightly “audience insights” sessions open to all editorial staff, helping demystify analytics and surface collective understanding about engagement metrics and content strategy.
Her impact in 2025 is felt not just through the analytics but through culture change.
By integrating data, creative instinct and audience insight, Rigas is helping position Nine’s mastheads for durable growth where quality journalism and commercial sustainability are no longer opposing priorities.
Zara Curtis
Chief Content Officer, Mamamia
Zara Curtis brings over 20 years of experience in media, marketing and content leadership to Mamamia, where she is charting a new editorial trajectory anchored in purpose, equity and audience impact.
She joined Mamamia in September 2024 from IAG, where she led customer experience, brand and social impact.
As CCO, she is tasked with setting strategic content direction for growth, guiding a team spanning social, editorial, podcasting and video.
In 2025, under her leadership Mamamia evolved toward a “house of brands” model that emphasises vertical content ecosystems tailored to audiences.
The company has shifted priorities to deepen engagement rather than lean solely on the Mamamia brand identity, launching new content verticals and recalibrating how it allocates creative and investment resources.
Curtis brings a strong commitment to alignment between editorial purpose and audience trust.
At her announcement she said she is inspired by Mamamia’s mission “to make the world a better place for women and girls,” and pledged to help deepen engagement across platforms with authenticity.
Curtis is shaping content that is not just scaled, but meaningful, representative and capable of fuelling influence.
John Purcell
Chief Technology Officer, QMS
John Purcell oversees QMS Media’s technology and innovation agenda, guiding the company’s evolution from static outdoor infrastructure into a dynamic, programmatic OOH leader.
In 2025, under Purcell’s leadership, QMS has accelerated its programmatic capabilities.
All of the QMS digital formats, including 3D and high-impact digital screens, are now available for programmatic buying through integrations with Broadsign, Vistar and Hivestack.
QMS calls this approach “programmatic DOOH,” enabling advertisers to activate digital inventory with targeting, dynamic creative and real-time triggers.
A landmark proof point came in April with the Garnier 3DOOH campaign executed on QMS’s Emporium Melbourne digital site.
The campaign combined full-motion 3D visuals with programmatic delivery, allowing creative to be optimised in flight. The result has been positioned as a milestone example of how creative scale and algorithmic precision can coexist in outdoor media.
His innovation focus spans creative, platform and measurement. He has guided the expansion of dynamic creative systems that adapt display based on time, context or audience movement, and has championed alignment of programmatic DOOH with broader cross-screen buying workflows.
Purcell’s work is repositioning QMS from a traditional billboard operator into a technology-powered media platform.
He is turning once passive inventory into responsive, measurable screens, helping outdoor media command performance, creative power and transparency in the 2025 media landscape.
Ryan Ferguson
Managing Director, Australia & New Zealand, Snap Inc.
Ryan Ferguson is leading Snap’s next phase of growth in Australia and New Zealand, driving a bold agenda that fuses creativity, technology and measurement to redefine how brands connect with Gen Z audiences.
Appointed Managing Director in December 2024, Ferguson has quickly become the face of Snap’s evolution in the region, overseeing commercial strategy, client partnerships and innovation across one of the world’s most engaged social platforms.
Ferguson brings deep expertise in ad technology, automation and data-driven storytelling.
In 2025, he has accelerated Snap’s regional rollout of AR-commerce and AI-powered creative tools, helping advertisers translate brand stories into immersive, interactive experiences.
These formats are not only redefining engagement but establishing new standards for how social advertising drives measurable outcomes.
Ferguson is also championing transparency and collaboration across the media ecosystem. He has forged new partnerships with agencies, tech platforms and measurement providers to ensure performance metrics, safety and attribution are held to the same standards as traditional media channels.
Under his leadership, Snap ANZ is repositioning itself as a creative-technology leader where innovation, accountability and cultural relevance intersect.
Ferguson’s strategic vision and commercial discipline are enabling brands to experiment confidently with AR and AI, while setting a new benchmark for how social platforms can influence both culture and commerce in 2025.
Clive Dickens
Founding Partner, Meliora
Clive Dickens is launching Meliora as a next-generation AI advisory and venture platform, bringing decades of media, tech and transformation experience into the generative-AI era.
In June 2025, Dickens formally unveiled The Meliora Company, based in Sydney with teams in London and Los Angeles, with the ambition of helping telecom, media and technology (TMT) businesses not just strategise, but embed AI across operations, product and growth.
Meliora is structured around three pillars: Advisory, Ventures and Creative IP, allowing it to advise clients, back high-potential early-stage AI startups, and support creative innovation.
Since launching Meliora, Dickens has been vocal about how many consultancies fall into “transformation theatre”, grand plans without operational follow-through.
In his view, Meliora distinguishes itself by diving into the “messy middle” of execution, not just providing decks. “We’ve procured the hardware, worked with the engineers, reviewed the code,” he said in a recent interview.
Meliora’s Ventures arm is already active. In partnership with NextGen Ventures, Dickens has helped deploy around A$1.5 million into several generative-AI startups in 2025, including Relevance AI, Fluency A and Blunge AI. His investment approach is aligned with his advisory posture: backing founders with ambition and technical foundations, not just capital.
In 2025, Dickens’ impact will be measured not by clients he advises, but by how deeply his methods shift how media and tech firms embed intelligence into their core systems. His leadership is helping make Australia a credible player in the global AI transformation movement.
Caroline Oates
Head of Programmatic Sales & YouTube ANZ, Google
Caroline Oates is shaping how advertisers in Australia and New Zealand bridge brand and performance goals through video and AI-powered formats.
In 2025, she has become a central figure in the rollout of Demand Gen, Google’s new AI-driven multi-format campaign product that spans YouTube, Shorts, Discover, Gmail and beyond.
At YouTube Brandcast 2025, Oates introduced a slate of CTV-first advertising formats underpinned by predictive AI models, emphasising how the new formats connect creative, intent and measurement in a unified approach.
These formats include immersive Masthead on CTV, 60-second non-skippable ads, and Shoppable CTV allowing direct commerce interaction on screens.
Under Oates’s leadership, YouTube’s advanced ad stack is now accessible programmatically via DV360, giving agencies end-to-end scale, automation and cross-screen reach.
Her work also involves evolving measurement tools that attribute video exposure to brand search lift and audience engagement.
Oates’s impact in 2025 is in delivering the tools and frameworks that let marketers treat YouTube and its video surfaces as both brand and activation platforms.
By fusing AI, measurement and creative opportunity, she is redefining how brands think about video in a fragmented landscape giving advertisers precision, scale and a more confident path from awareness to action.
Sam Kroonenburg
Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Cuttable
Sam Kroonenburg is building one of Australia’s most talked-about adtech startups, merging artificial intelligence with creative scale to transform how brands generate content.
Earlier known as co-founder of A Cloud Guru, which sold for over US$2 billion in 2021, Kroonenburg has returned to entrepreneurial life to launch Cuttable, an AI creative automation platform.
In mid 2024, Cuttable secured a A$5.5 million seed round led by Square Peg with participation from Rampersand and angels, intended to accelerate development and product launch.
Over the past year, Kroonenburg and his team have refined the “AI creative agency” model that underpins Cuttable.
The platform claims to generate hundreds of on-brand, performance-ready ads in minutes from minimal inputs, helping marketers and agencies dramatically accelerate campaign production.
By August 2025, Cuttable announced a top-up seed round of A$4.5 million, bringing total capital raised to about A$10 million. That infusion is being used to expand the global footprint, enhance AI models and onboard more e-commerce brands.
Kroonenburg also won recognition in 2025 with the Pearcey Victorian Entrepreneur Award, acknowledging his ambition to build technology in Australia with global reach. He is also a founding partner of Glitch Capital, a $50 million venture fund aimed at backing national tech founders.
Under Kroonenburg’s leadership, Cuttable is not simply reducing campaign-build time, it’s reshaping expectations for what creative tools can do in performance marketing. By weaving automation, brand safety and scale, he is helping redefine how creative, media and data collaborate.
Oliver Newton
Executive Head, LiSTNR Commercial
Oliver Newton is at the vanguard of SCA’s digital-audio innovation, overseeing the engineering and ad-tech architecture behind LiSTNR’s transformation into a performance-grade, programmatic media platform.
In 2025 Newton led the rollout of LiSTNR Precision+, a next-generation AdTech product combining AI-powered targeting, first-party data signals and real-time optimisation.
According to SCA, this “world-first” evolution enables brands to adjust campaigns mid-flight, dynamically reallocate impressions, test creative variants and optimise audience segments with live feedback.
Newton described it as transformative, saying: “With real-time data, AI-powered targeting, and a platform built in Australia … we’re giving brands the tools to make every advertising dollar work harder.”
Beyond Precision+, Newton’s team has expanded LiSTNR’s core ad-tech stack. They’ve built the underlying AdTech Hub, supporting dynamic creative optimisation (DCO), privacy-first Advertiser Data Matching via clean rooms, and deep audience insight models.
These systems layer behavioural signals atop base listening data to fuel smarter targeting and attribution.
Newton’s influence extends to culture and architecture. He has advocated for open standards, internal ownership of core infrastructure and tighter alignment between product, analytics and engineering teams. In his view, audio must deliver video-level accountability, which demands transparency, automation and robust measurement.
Under Newton’s leadership, LiSTNR has emerged not just as a streaming audio platform, but as a high-growth, tech-driven media asset.
His innovations are helping set the benchmark for accountability, flexibility and scale in digital audio, pushing SCA into a future where audio earns its place in high-performance media portfolios.
Hamish Turner
Executive Director – 9Network and 9Now, Nine Entertainment Co.
Hamish Turner is a key driver of Nine’s evolving “total-TV” vision, aligning broadcast and streaming under one commercial and operational rubric.
Since the restructure announced in mid-2025, Turner holds responsibility for the P&L of free television, multi-channels and 9Now under the newly unified Streaming & Broadcast division.
In his role, Turner is charged with integrating broadcast scheduling, digital distribution and audience targeting functions to deliver a coherent, cross-platform viewer experience.
One of his prominent strategic moves was orchestrating the launch of six BBC FAST channels into 9Now, giving Australian audiences free access to over 300 UK titles under genre-based FAST formats.
This move underpins how Turner is embedding new digital formats into Nine’s broader ecosystem.
Turner champions a strategy that draws from both broadcast discipline and digital agility. He is leading the roll-out of dynamic ad placement across live streaming, live-event syndication and multichannel programming, ensuring that content and monetisation adapt fluidly across platforms.
His work is also central to aligning measurement, reporting and attribution so that advertisers can assess performance across linear and streaming together.
His role straddles creative programming, tech integration and commercial execution. Turner’s influence helps ensure that what audiences see, when they see it, and how they transition between channels is seamless.
In a year when Nine is consolidating its platform strength, Turner is helping knit together the future of how broadcast and streaming operate, not as silos, but as parts of one connected viewer ecosystem.
Lewis Evans
Chief Product & Technology Officer (Consumer), Nine Entertainment Co.
Lewis Evans is architecting the next generation of Nine’s consumer platforms, bringing clarity, speed and audience-centric thinking to how people engage with content in 2025.
Over the past year, Evans has led sweeping upgrades to 9Now, focused on reducing load times, increasing stream reliability, and improving personalisation across devices.
His remit extends beyond streaming. Evans also directs product and tech development for Nine’s subscription brands, especially The Australian Financial Review (AFR).
Under his guidance, AFR’s digital platform launched a revamped UX framework with modular article previews, dynamic paywall metering and stronger support for text-to-audio conversion.
Evans has re-organised Nine’s product teams to be fully cross-functional pairing engineers, data scientists, editors and UX designers under “story squads” that own full verticals.
This approach accelerates iteration while keeping creative and editorial sensibilities alive in every technical decision.
His leadership matters because product experience is now a critical battlefield in media competition.
By integrating content, data and technology into a refined user experience, Evans is helping Nine stay competitive not just by what it delivers, but by how it delivers.
In 2025, his impact will be measured not just in features launched, but in sustained audience growth, loyalty and satisfaction.
Melinda Petrunoff
Managing Director, Australia & New Zealand, Pinterest
Melinda Petrunoff is leading Pinterest’s transformation into a commerce-capable platform in ANZ, turning inspiration into action with innovation, equity and strategic balance.
Under her leadership, Pinterest has seen strong momentum in shoppable advertising.
Clicks and saves on Shoppable Pins in Australia and New Zealand jumped 61 per cent year-on-year in Q2 2025, as the platform increasingly aligns itself with performance marketing.
Petrunoff has described that shift as moving Pinterest beyond merely a discovery engine into a full-funnel solution for advertisers.
She highlighted local results. A furniture brand’s campaign using static, carousel and video Shopping Ads delivered a 36 per cent lift in ROAS and a 48 per cent reduction in cost per session.
Petrunoff has also positioned Pinterest as a “positive corner of the internet,” focusing on inclusivity, safety, representation and policy clarity as pillars of user trust. She has spoken publicly about how the platform’s search and ad experiences strive to show diverse hair types and skin tones, avoid weight-loss ads, and prioritise mental health.
In ANZ, she continues to emphasise that Pinterest’s growth is “ageing down,” with Gen Z now comprising a sizeable share of users and driving brand interest in categories like home, fashion and travel.
In 2025, Petrunoff’s leadership is significant not only because of the metrics, but because she is helping redraw how a visual discovery platform can operate in the age of commerce. By combining shoppable experiences, audience insight and inclusive standards, she is redefining Pinterest as a place where ideas spark, and purchases follow.
Willie Pang
General Manager, Country Manager, Amazon ANZ
Willie Pang is re-defining how commerce, content and advertising converge in Australia, driving Amazon Ads’ evolution into a unified ecosystem that links retail, streaming and entertainment.
In 2025, Pang took a highly public stance at Amazon’s Australia Upfront, describing the Prime Video ad launch as transformative, “By combining our extensive library … with trillions of signals and advanced AI capabilities, we’re helping brands drive full-funnel campaigns at scale.”
That launch under Pang’s leadership put Amazon Ads ANZ in the spotlight, reflecting its ambition to not just compete as a retail-media network, but as a media partner across category touchpoints.
He has also gained recognition as a thought leader in the industry. Pang is scheduled to deliver the keynote on “Retail Media 3.0” at the Remade 2025 conference, where he will unpack how Amazon is leveraging customer intent data, AI optimisation and connected TV to collapse the path from awareness to purchase.
Previously, Pang joined Amazon Ads ANZ ahead of the Prime Video advertising rollout, putting him at the helm during the platform’s critical transition to monetisation. Industry commentary has praised his work in bringing coherence and ambition to Amazon’s media offering, connecting the dots between shopping signals, streaming platforms and advertiser demand.
Under his leadership, Amazon Ads ANZ is growing in both scope and ambition, moving toward models where media, commerce and insight are tightly integrated rather than parallel. Pang’s strategic vision is pushing Amazon from being a powerful retailer to becoming a central pillar of Australia’s ad-tech future.
Suzie Cardwell
Chief Data, Product & Technology Officer, Nine Entertainment Co.
Suzie Cardwell drives Nine’s transformation from disparate digital silos into a unified, data-first media organisation.
In 2025, her leadership expanded significantly as Nine restructured its tech, data and product divisions creating two distinct units.
Consumer (streaming, publishing) and Enterprise (data & infrastructure). Cardwell now leads the Enterprise division, charged with powering Nine’s commercial, cloud and advertising platforms.
Her core achievement has been the development and deployment of Nine’s single view of customer system, built on Google Cloud Platform.
This consolidation moved multiple data warehouses into BigQuery, enabling real-time analytics and activation across content, marketing and advertising functions.
Through this unified identity framework, Nine now connects tens of millions of logged-in users with rich behavioural and consumption signals.
Cardwell has also been instrumental in rolling out Nine’s rebuilt data stack and expanding 9Tribes, the publisher’s audience segmentation and intender-modelling platform.
More than a systems architect, Cardwell has championed organisational and cultural change.
She has advocated for diversity in engineering and data teams, and helped bridge silos between editorial, commercial and tech functions to foster a more insight-driven, agile business.
As Nine embeds product innovation and addressable advertising into its core strategy, her work ensures complexity is transformed into scalable, client-facing value.
Matt Farrugia & Henry Innis
Co-Founders, Mutinex
Matt Farrugia and Henry Innes founded Mutinex in 2018 with a singular ambition.
To make marketing investment intelligible, optimised and accountable.
Today, their flagship solution, GrowthOS, is redefining how brands forecast, optimise and justify media spend at scale.
GrowthOS is the backbone of Mutinex’s proposition.
A marketing mix modelling platform layered with scenario planning, AI-driven insight and integrated data orchestration.
It provides brands with real-time sensitivity to market dynamics turning static analytics into a living decision engine.
The platform now supports more than US$7.5 billion in advertising spend globally and is trusted to deliver 15–25 per cent ROI lifts for clients.
Mutinex has also formed pioneering partnerships to push its measurement influence. One key case was the collaboration with UM Australia to automate media data integration into GrowthOS, offering clients like Optus faster, more precise modelling and planning workflows.
Their influence proves that Australia can produce category-leading martech exports, and that the future of marketing lies in precision, transparency and continuous optimisation.
Dan Krigstein
Director, Growth Intelligence Centre & Growth Distillery, News Corp Australia
Dan Krigstein leads one of News Corp Australia’s most strategic investments in data, insight and commercial intelligence.
Through the Growth Intelligence Centre and its research arm, The Growth Distillery, he has built a framework that turns first-party audience data into real-time insight for editors, marketers and advertisers.
Over the past year, Krigstein expanded The Growth Distillery’s reach with over 30 projects spanning sectors from travel to luxury, anchored by enterprise workshops, vodcast series and in-market activations.
The platform is designed to help brands forecast trends, monitor emotional drivers and refine marketing investment across audiences.
As Director of the Growth Intelligence Centre, Krigstein oversees the blending of analytics, behavioural modelling and News Corp’s own data assets to deliver continuous “mind and mood” updates on consumer behaviour.
His work has attracted attention externally. In 2025, he was named Chair of ThinkNewsBrands, succeeding Tory Maguire, reinforcing his influence in how news publishers and advertisers interpret digital measurement.
Through his leadership he has promoted a culture where analysts, editors, creatives and commercial teams share a common language of effectiveness.