The Media Crystal Ball

It is difficult enough to predict how the media landscape will look next year but it is arguably even more difficult projecting how things will look five years hence. A recent Mediapost event gathered some of the best industry minds together to share their thoughts about the state of the media state in 2023. Here is what they predicted:

TV Will Always Be Here

There was optimism regarding the robustness of the TV and the advertising business. According to Tom Goodwin, EVP, Head of Innovation, Zenith, “We tend to think that TV or advertising is dead but it is here to stay.” Further, there was a feeling that even old media has the ability to adapt and reinvent for the new digitized media environment. “The money keeps shifting to online and digital,” stated Brian Hughes, SVP, Audience Intelligence and Strategy, MAGNA. However, he believes that this momentum will slow that down and flatten as “old school media reinvents themselves.”

Delight the Consumer … or Else

Since consumers will have greater power to choose the ads they want to see, those companies that engage people in a negative way may experience blowback. Barry Lowenthal, President, The Media Kitchen, said that, “Facebook will be the big loser’” in the next five years because they fail at the “fundamental human truth” regarding shame about envy. “Facebook peddles in envy. Most feel bad about themselves after seeing Facebook,” he explained, “and you can't sustain a business on envy.”  He predicted that unless Facebook reinvents itself, they will lose money. “It is better to drive to gratitude,” he concluded.

There is also the thought that unless companies respect the consumer by providing them with relevant messaging (without getting creepily intrusive), consumers may decide to opt out and withhold their data and their attention. “Consumers will be in control of their data. GDPR will precipitate that,” noted Natalie Monboit, SVP, Futures for Samsung, Starcom USA, who added, “There will be a shift to drop data when in doubt. Consumers will have more self-sovereignty.”

Streamlined Processes Through Technology

Whether it’s the continuing increase in the amount and type of available data, the introduction of blockchain protocol into the media business, the use of artificial intelligence or the boundaries of privacy, all these issues will impact how we conduct our business five years from now. Monboit noted that, “Blockchain could be the one thing that disrupts today,” and has the potential to change the business.

Finally, it is important for media companies to continue to take risks. Sam Olstein, Global Director Innovation, GE Corporation, concluded that the biggest challenge today is the mindset to avoid more risks. Spending money on things that don’t pan out is “never wasted because it laid the bedrock for the next entrepreneur to benefit from previous mistakes.”

This article first appeared in www.Mediapost.com

Tackling the Big Media Industry Issues at GABBCON 2018

Reaching the right consumer is getting much easier and at the same time, far more complicated. At the  GABBCON conference, issues like privacy and the right to be forgotten on the consumer side faced off with fraud, viewability and attribution challenges on the advertiser side. The playing field is not only changing, we may not be able to discern the best path to the goal posts. 

And in the spirit of the time, Gabe Greenberg, CEO and Co-Founder, GABBCON, made a concerted effort to enlist a diverse group of speakers to participate on panels. This resulted in an event that included new perspectives on media issues. Here are some takeaways:

Choosing a Consumer's Tattoo, Shadow or Twin

What is the best way to target a consumer? A panel moderated by Wendy Dunlap, Senior Vice President Digital Investment, Blue449 (previously Optimedia of Publicis Groupe), parsed out the various ways marketers can profile a consumer – whether a Twin, a Shadow or a Tattoo.  

Dunlap explained that a Twin is an individual’s digital representation formed by the aggregation and analysis of their behaviors, preferences and attitudes as expressed in the digital world.  A Shadow is an outline of a real-world identity but is prone to distortion and misrepresentation based on imprecise data signals in providing a complete picture. A Tattoo, as coined by Bethany Mach, Chief Digital Officer of Initiative, is a permanent marker of an individual’s digital activity that doesn’t go away but can continue to morph based on new information.  

“The replica of a real consumer is an amalgam of their various behaviors,” Dunlap noted. “A tattoo is a great metaphor,” she continued, stating that we should track “how it holds up over time and what we add to it” and “how it changes, “as more attributes are added to it or whether it fades away.” 

With Employees, Should it be a Right Brain or Left Brain Hire?

Throughout the day, panelists brought up the challenge of hiring the right people – those with that careful balance of right and left brain capabilities and experiences. And should new hires be from media or outside media? These are no small issues for the industry at a time when there is a need for both creative and analytical solutions and the knowledge of the past and the capabilities of the future.  

Mach stated, “I am looking for new types of people to work for me.  I want a data scientist or engineer.” However, filling media slots with left brain experts may be missing an important ingredient in discerning consumer motivations and behaviors. Shouldn’t we also be hiring anthropologists, Dunlap countered? “It’s good to have an analytical perspective but you also need a social science background,” she added.

Blockchain is Coming. Be Ready. Or Else.

There has been a lot of talk about how Blockchain will impact the Media industry but what exactly is Blockchain? Jonathan Steuer, Chief Research Officer, Omnicom Media Group, defined it, “as an ecosystem. It is a technology method that provides a secure chain of custody for any digital transaction, data, or personal attribute all the way through a system. Where it is where it came from and what aspect of it you can use.”

It was agreed that Blockchain should be embraced and not deferred. Natalie Monboit, Head of Futures at Starcom, warned, “It will hurt you if you are not involved.” She advised to start now by looking ahead and asking, “What is that big disruptive vision? What is the future state?  And then work backwards. You have to be in it in order for it not to hurt you.”

While some may feel that the future application of Blockchain is just another monstrous transformation to upend business as usual, there are those who look on the bright side. Monboit concluded, “Blockchain has potential to solve for fraud and clean up our industry. It unearths everything we understand about engaging consumers. It is a lot bigger than just solving for current issues in ad tech.”

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com