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

Global Programmatic Advertising Reaches New Heights

Programmatic advertising is taking the media world by storm. Its impressive growth on a global scale is changing the way international advertisers think about video advertising, ensuring a robust and profitable future for the media industry.

But what does programmatic mean for the world?

Global Programmatic’s Robust Growth
Global programmatic advertising is experiencing impressive year-on-year gains. In 2016, media agency Zenith projected a 31 percent growth in spend from 2016 to 2017 and forecasted spending of $64 billion in 2018. Once considered a remnant buy, programmatic has upped the ante. It offers advanced data segmentations and analytics that enable advertisers to purchase high-quality, hyper-targeted audiences in prime inventory.

“Programmatic advertising has risen to dominate the digital display market in just a few years,” according to the Zenith report,

Read the full article in the Videa blog.

Zenith Predicts Smartphone Penetration Will Reach 66% Worldwide

Forget your old flip phone.  The world is going totally smartphone, according to Zenith's Mobile Advertising Forecasts 2017, which was released today.  This impressive growth in smartphone adoption will pose both opportunities and challenges to advertisers and brands.

Among the findings in the forecast:  Western Europe and Asia Pacific continue to lead the world in smartphone ownership.  In 2018 66% of individuals in 52 key countries will own a smartphone, up from 63% in 2017 and 58% in 2016.  Those countries projected to have 90%+ penetration in 2018 include the Netherlands (94%), Taiwan (93%), Hong Kong (92%), Norway and Ireland (each at 91%).  Further, eleven markets will have penetration levels between 80% and 90%, all of them in Western Europe and Asia Pacific with the exception of Israel, where penetration will be 86%.  In terms of total number of users, China leads all other nations with 1.3 billion users, followed by India with 530 million users and then the U.S. with 229 million users.

While overall penetration of smartphones is reaching ubiquity to as much as 80% to 90% of populations in the world's most advanced markets, the actual rate of smartphone growth is projected to be only 7% year-on-year in 2018 compared to 10% growth in 2017, 14% in 2016 and 21% in 2015.

What does this bode for advertisers and brands?  "Brands need to design all their online communications for mobile viewing," says Jonathan Barnard, Zenith Head of Forecasting and Director of Global Intelligence.  "These communications need to look good on the small screen, grab the viewer's attention immediately and convey their messages quickly while their attention remains focused."

In addition to smartphone device growth, the importance of mobile will increase and will impact ad spend buying decisions.  The report notes that 53% of all Internet ad spend will go to ads viewed on mobile devices in 2017 and is forecasted to account for 59% in 2018 and 62% by 2019.  The amount of ad spend on mobile has surpassed that of desktop ads for the first time ever this year.  In addition, mobile devices are the primary means of accessing the Internet right now.  Users spend 70% of their Internet time on mobile in 2017 and this will grow to 73% in 2018 and 76% by 2019. "For most consumers and advertisers, the mobile Internet is now the normal Internet," posits Barnard.

Tablets, on the other hand, are losing appeal and projected to stabilize at 20% worldwide penetration.  China is distinctly unimpressed with tablets where their penetration is just 4.8% this year, compared to 85.4% for smartphones.  Tablet penetration is even declining in Thailand.  According to the report, tablets are usually household-owned as opposed to smartphones, which are individually owned, and the ability to attain a smartphone with a larger screen negates the need for a tablet.

The conclusion?  Mass uptake of smartphones and other mobile devices means increased contact between brands and consumers -- whether paid advertising in third party content, branded content exposure or stepped-up social media engagement.  It also facilitates new opportunities for consumers to connect to media content whenever and wherever they are and thus to broader brand experiences.

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com