What we learnt from The Future of Brands conference...

Attended by over 1,000 marketing professionals on April 29th in London The Future of Brands conference conveyed how the world of marketing and media planning for brands continues to evolve at pace with AI representing many concurrent opportunities and fundamental challenges in a world where the vast majority of media platforms (bar linear TV) are now not independently audited.  The key take aways for SmartResponse:

• In 2002 95% of all media in the UK was audited by independent joint industry currencies (JICs) including BARB for auditing linear TV airtime. 

• With the rise and dominance of social and digital monolith media platforms over the last two decades (that manage their own reporting that is not independently verified) this JICs figure across the marketing industry is now only 16% with linear TV and a small number of the SVOD platforms maintaining their presence on the independently audited BARB panel.

• Connected TV still does not have a unified independent auditing audience measurement system other than Netflix and Prime who are on BARB (YouTube decided last year BARB was not for them!).

• Some brands have seen their search/PPC costs rise by up 250% in the last five years whilst their conversion rates have depleted with AI forecast to exacerbate inflation looking ahead.

• ChatGPT is now the fifth most visited website globally as the use of AI has become normalised for the worldwide population in the last few years.

• Targeting younger early adopting audiences has become increasingly fragmented across multiple platforms.

• The death of linear TV in the UK, as often reported in the press, is gravely overblown with independent research forecasting that linear TV audiences in an ageing population will reduce at an annualised compound rate of 3% over the next five years.

Thanks to the team at Adwanted and Sam Tidmarsh for another excellent event.