Hopes for 2018

So here we are, at the start of a new year. Will the media roundabout slow so that we can all draw breath; or will it speed up, throwing those without a firm grasp off?

Here goes with my hopes for 2018.

I hope advertisers continue the process of taking back control of their media activities. As well as making or at the very least monitoring buys I can see greater efforts to link their business metrics to media spend. Clients will continue to correct the historic error they made delegating all spend responsibilities to their media agencies with the minimum of involvement or supervision.

I hope the network media agencies (who will otherwise surely lose out in the age of the more informed and engaged advertiser) get their act together. The industry needs the biggest to be better.

That means restoring trust through their planning capabilities, and justifying why that’s something worth paying for. With many changes at the top of the networks maybe 2018 will be better than their dreadful last 2 years.

I hope for continued success for the independents. The business needs a flourishing independent sector. It would be good for the business if one of them could land a multi-national against the might of the networks. I suspect they might.

I hope (not for the first time) that ‘collaboration’ becomes the key media agency word of 2018. The agencies need to focus on their core strengths and recognise that the likes of Iotec, Neustar and the management consultancies offer something they can’t. The opposite is true too, of course.

I hope ‘context’ becomes the key media measurement word for 2018. We all know that reading something in a newspaper or magazine is different from scanning a social media platform; that viewing something on a proper TV set is a different experience from viewing the same thing on a phone. It’s time to recognise these differences in every way – including how we quantify exposure. …

… read on at bjanda.com

Originally posted by Brian Jacobs on The Cog Blog at BJ&A
4th January 2018