Planning for the 2018 asi International Conferences, Athens, Greece

Detailed planning is now underway for this year’s conferences, to be held in Athens on 7th 9th November. As ever, we want to hear from you of any work you are engaged in that would be of interest to share with colleagues. Equally, there may be work or developments that have come to your attention that you think should feature in this year’s agenda.

As a reminder of what was covered at these events last year in Nice, you can read Richard Marks’ account here. Richard also presented a summary to delegates attending the 2018 asi APAC Television & Video Conference in Singapore and you can see a video of that here.

Some food for thought arising from topics that we are currently debating ourselves:

·         Should online video be reported in the same way as linear broadcast TV or are they fundamentally different? If they are, what does this mean for broadcaster online video? Can a new set of metrics be agreed that acknowledge the differences between broadcast and online/social video?

·         Should radio currencies be capitalising on the current focus on audio and inviting streaming services like Spotify onboard because ‘a rising tide floats all boats’?

·         Are there any new technological game changers coming down the line that will fundamentally change how video and audio are consumed by audiences? Or is TV and radio innovation now primarily focused on exploiting the known opportunities in an always-on connected world?

·         Is VR likely to have any impact on mainstream broadcasting and content given that even 3DTV proved a development too far for viewers? Will 4K and beyond really be of interest to anyone other than tech geeks with huge TV sets?

·         Are we any clearer on what declining levels of young people consuming TV and radio (particularly linear broadcast) means for the long-term futures of those media?

·         We may be developing systems that measure content reach across platforms effectively, but how effective are they at measuring advertising? Does the future of industry currencies lie more in planning than trading?

·         Does simply counting exposure promote the notion that all screens and audio sources have equal value without reference to content? Does context matter? If so, of what relative importance are: the content the ad accompanies; the device the ad is delivered on; what else the viewer/ listener is doing?

·         How effective are the new advertising opportunities made possible by IP-delivered radio and TV services?

·         How useful can programmatic advertising be in a post-GDPR world which has decimated many databases? Can programmatic now only be used for an opt-in niche?

·         How has the growing use of voice assistants and the increased reliance on voice affected audio consumption? What role will voice play in content discovery for both video and audio?

·         What are the programming and advertising implications for genres like sport that are still massively skewed towards linear consumption?

These aren’t the proposed themes for the conference, just something to get your creative juices flowing. Do let us know what you think are the main issues at the moment, who you would like to hear from and most importantly any projects that you think would be great for us to share in Athens!

As usual we shall be publishing an agenda towards the end of August as people return from their summer break. In the meantime, we look forward to hearing from you as the response we get at this stage always ensures a conference agenda that remains focused and relevant to our community of interest.

We look forward to hearing from you and hope you will help shape the agenda to this year’s conferences. Just contact us via the website or email us at admin@asiconferences.com.