European ad/marketing news site Warc is predicting that in 2017, Artificial Intelligence (defined as the ability of computers to take on tasks that have previously required human intelligence to complete, such as speech recognition or interpreting data) will have a greater impact on marketing & advertising than the impact of social media.

The London-based executive director of the European Publishers Council, Angela Mills Wade, has written for M+AD a fierce defence of the newspaper medium – triggered by a negative blog by Sean Hargrave, editor of MediaPost UK, which (predictably) predicted the imminent demise of the daily print product.

The Young Global Awards (the healthcare division of the New York Festivals organisation) have issued their entry call for next year’s competition. The Young Globals honour creative excellence in healthcare advertising.

M+AD was so keen to get the news out to our readers about the oOh!media/APN Outdoor merger yesterday, that we published our scoop story (sourced direct from Australia) before the official NZ announcement arrived in our Inbox. Consequently, we did not have immediate access to executive appointments – and other information – that came with the merger.

APN Outdoor and oOh! Media are to merge – on both sides of the Tasman – to create a giant out-of-home and online media group operating across New Zealand and Australia.

Ogilvy NZ executive creative officer Regan Grafton has been appointed convenor of judges for the 2017 Axis Awards, to be held in Auckland in March. CAANZ has also today identified the jury presidents that will work alongside Grafton – Michael Redwood, Brigid Alkema, Shane Bradnick, Tony Clewett, and Christy Peacock.

The New York-based Andy Awards, which honour global creativity in advertising, have issued their entry call for 2017. The entry deadline is Friday 12 January.

Matters are coming to a head in the pitch for the Air New Zealand media agency account, currently being contested by three leading NZ agency groups.

Written for M+AD by oOh!media ceo Brendon Cook: It’s time the OOH industry retired the terms static and digital and moved to classic and dynamic. In the past year the Out Of Home industry has debated the best way to describe traditional billboards and their newer digital forms.