2012 was a comeback year for the Whybin\TBWA Group after something of an annus horribilis in 2011. It put Middle-earth into New Zealand, oversaw the biggest thing in banking with the surprisingly smooth National Bank/ANZ fusion, launched the Digital Arts Network by merging Shift and Tequila\, and its PR arm Eleven won a couple of PR agency of year awards. So chief executive David Walden, who sold a few shares and began the hunt for a successor, ended the year a pretty happy chappy.

Once again, online advertising continued its steady rise in New Zealand in 2012, hitting its high water mark in the last quarter. And as the head of Yahoo! New Zealand (which recently launched its year-in-the-making new homepage and mobile site) and the new chair of the local Internet Advertising Bureau, Laura Maxwell-Hansen is well placed to see where it’s heading next. Here’s her take on 2012.

Dow Design is on a mission to prove the commercial value of good design. And with a win in the TVNZ-NZ Marketing Awards for Fonterra, a finalist in the new Best Effect Award for Hellers, a number of big redesigns for big FMCG brands, it seems to be doing a good job of it. Founder Annie Dow and business development director Jenny McMillan speak their piece.

Following on from last week’s well-received column about why social media was like talkback radio, Jennifer Duval-Smith puts forward her views on why a combination of paid tools and manual monitoring is the best option for a consistent, timely and comprehensive overview of your social media chatter.

It’s been a watershed year for APN NZ, with the Herald’s shift to tabloid and the resulting campaign by DraftFCB, a new nzherald.co.nz, the launch of The Listener’s digital subscriptions and restructures of the IT, editorial and marketing departments. Chief operating officer Todd McLeay, the man who swapped the comparatively easy job of selling Lotto tickets for positioning a newspaper for the rather uncertain future, looks back on an eventful 2012.