Jack Benjamin hosts a live panel where three media strategists field questions about common challenges in advertising.

Speakers:

Jackie Lyons, chief planning officer, Havas Media Network UK

Raj Mahon, director of client partnerships, MiQ

Amy Caven, head of media and strategy planning, Boots

This was recorded at our Future of Brands event in April. You can watch it on the Adwanted UK YouTube channel here.

Do you like this AMA format? Let the editor know what you think: omar.oakes@uk.adwanted.com

More from Jackie in a previous episode: The Future of Marketing – episode 2

The podcast is about to take a short summer break before returning in September.

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Sue Unerman, global chief strategy officer at Brainlabs, joins Omar Oakes to discuss leaving WPP's EssenceMediacom after 34 years and "reinventing" herself at a very different agency.

Unerman is well-known across the industry and beyond as a progressive thinker and media strategist, thanks to the books she has written as an author about workplace culture and inclusion.

She is a Cannes Lions Creativity for Good winner and 2024 Glass Lions judge, a fellow of the IPA and has co-authored three bestselling books: Belonging, The Glass Wall and Tell the Truth. A fourth book, A Year of Creativity, is due to be released next month.

Highlights

Unerman on… AI: "Businesses that are built on AI, rather than businesses that are kind of importing AI as a last-minute thing, are going to have some advantages."

Unerman on… strategy: "What has changed is the ability to gather signals and understanding and intelligence about the right time, the right place, the right message, the right person, has gone up exponentially, and finding a way to digest and see the signals in all of that data and all of that noise. That's the task of the strategist."

Unerman on… her new book: "There has been a lot more promotion of both people and techniques that fall within the left-brain bucket, the analytical bucket. And the right-brain techniques and ideas around creativity tend to get a bit squashed by left-brain thinkers."

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Reporter Ella Sagar and deputy editor Maria Iu look at the stories that mattered most in media and advertising this week.

The pair discuss new culture secretary Lisa Nandy's in-tray, Ofcom’s ruling on BBC spin-off stations, Meta's view that news is "substitutable" and Paramount Global’s merger with Skydance Media.

Highlights

0:26: What you need to know about the new Labour government

3:54: Ofcom delays early launch of BBC Radio 2's "pop nostalgia" service

8:30: Industry reaction to Meta saying news is "substitutable"

12:15: Paramount Global and Skydance Media merger

14:30: Bundling could be "consolidation lite"

16:57: News round-up: Channel 4's chief revenue officer will depart at the end of the year; Spotify has added a comments feature for podcasts; the UK and Ireland June box office is up 7%; The Independent has been having “more than half a dozen serious conversations” with global publishers about partnerships; and latest IPA TouchPoints data showing 38% of Brits "are not coping" on their current income.

Related links

Big changes ahead in media under a new government

Ofcom delays launch of BBC Radio 2 ‘pop nostalgia’ service

Paramount ends merger saga after reaching ‘definitive’ Skydance agreement

Disney bundling found to lower churn in US

Channel 4 sales chief Veriça Djurdjevic exit: CEO’s letter to staff in full

June box office up 7%

The Independent’s CEO eyes publisher partnerships beyond BuzzFeed

Google's EMEA president Matt Brittin spoke to Omar Oakes at the recent Cannes Lions advertising festival to discuss how the online advertising and media behemoth is approaching AI and how it's being discussed with advertisers, publishers and media agencies.

Plus: ever wondered what it takes to become a senior exec at a massive tech company? Brittin's background and career journey may surprise you.

The Media Leader Podcast's production partner is Trisonic.

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DEI, EDI, D&I – no matter the acronym you use, it is undeniable that conversations around equality, equity, diversity, and inclusion have been increasing across the board in recent years.

But how does talk translate to action within the media industry? Shez Iqbal is a mentor at Media For All and head of publisher partnerships at Criteo. He joins the podcast alongside host Ella Sagar and guest Jack Benjamin to chat through the nitty gritty of diversity, equality, equity and inclusion in leadership in media and advertising.

Iqbal is also a host of his very own podcast, 'Leadership in Colour', which showcases outstanding leaders of colour sharing their personal journeys, offering valuable insights and advice, and highlighting their current projects.

“I think that coaching is something that should be available for everybody," said Iqbal. "We definitely have an issue—and the All In Census definitely showed it—we’ve got an issue within the industry where people might come in at certain levels and hit at maybe the middle-management and then leave. But I do feel like with the support of coaching, actually we can let them or allow them to have a better plan and route to the top.”

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This episode was edited by our production partner Trisonic.

Listen to Shez Iqbal's 'Leadership in Colour' podcast here, or wherever else you get your podcasts.

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Host Jack Benjamin is joined by editor Omar Oakes and reporter Ella Sagar to discuss the latest news around the media industry.

Key headlines covered this week: Twitter is being rebranded as X; 'Barbie' and 'Oppenheimer' both had exceptional opening weekend box office performance thanks in part to impressive marketing campaigns; Hollywood remains on strike with no end in sight; earnings season is upon us; and NME is relaunching its print edition.

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One of the key questions we are always asking industry experts, be it in our reporting or at our conferences, is what makes for effective media? Is it all about excellent creative? Is it about perfect placement? Or is it, in the words of Succession character Kendall Roy, all simply about harvesting eyeballs?

Mike Follett, managing director at Lumen Research and a regular columnist for The Media Leader, is back on the podcast to discuss the key factors that make media effective, and where attention fits within the conversation. He is joined by The Media Leader editor Omar Oakes and reporter and host Jack Benjamin.

On the broad topic of effectiveness, Follett said the industry needs to admit what it does and doesn't know about the way media and advertising works.

“We assume that we know absolutely how these things work, and we have some numbers to back us up here," he said. "But in all honestly, we don’t. That’s the real truth. We don’t have the complete picture of how this stuff works. And I think admitting that is the smart thing to do, and pretending that we do have a 100% picture of the world, that’s crazy.”

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Taboola has built a multibillion-dollar business by making it easy for publishers to recommend content to other parts of the web in exchange for a fee. Now, as thoughts about generative AI dominate conversations in media, the company has just launched Taboola Generative AI which aims to "revolutionise" how publishers create personalised ads.

CEO Adam Singolda spoke to Omar Oakes about the company's beta test of this AI tech, which began in February and has just been rolled out formally to all English-speaking Taboola partners. Singolda and Oakes spoke during Cannes Lions in June, so the pair also chatted about goings-on at the Croisette.

In addition, Singolda has some frank advice for anyone who wants to start their own business.

This is a bonus episode, distinct from our usual Thursday show. We're generous like that.

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What does the future of digital publishing, and in particular, digital news publishing, look like? Raymond Snoddy, the former presenter of BBC News Channel’s NewsWatch and a longtime columnist for The Media Leader, and Richard Reeves, MD of the Association of Online Publishers, join the podcast to discuss.

Digital publishing has been in a near-constant state of development and transition since it began supplanting traditional press two decades ago. But with the recent dissolution of BuzzFeed News, the bankruptcy and sale of Vice Media, and ever-quickening developments in generative artificial intelligence, today’s digital publishing leaders perhaps have their hands full now more than they ever have.

In a wide-ranging conversation, the pair spoke to Jack Benjamin talked about publishers' progress in defending their intellectual property from "scrupulous" tech vendors and large language AI models, the challenge of making hard news appealing to young people, and the importance of consumers' trust in news.

On the increasing popularity of comedic news content on short-form video platforms, Snoddy said: "The only hope for legitimate news and ultimately the survival of legitimate democracies is to keep focusing on trust, accuracy, meaning, explanation... if the world is totally dominated by the funnies, we’re all in a very serious position indeed.”

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“You’ve got to do a different job on pricing.”

That is the core theme of the new book Madison Avenue Makeover, according to its author Michael Farmer.

Farmer, a former consultant, is also the author of Madison Avenue Manslaughter, which the Financial Times called a “damning critique of the modern advertising industry”.

His latest book, a sequel, addresses attempts by Huge CEO Mat Baxter to transform the IPG agency and restore its dynamism. But as reporter Ahmed Elkady writes in his review, the raison d’etre of Madison Avenue Makeover is to serve as the industry’s guide for what another paradigm of agency relationships could look like.

Farmer previously spoke to editor Omar Oakes in a 2022 interview in which he discussed whether the industry had made progress since Manslaughter‘s release in 2015. Now, in a new interview with The Media Leader, the strategy consultant returns to explore the themes and key takeaways of his sequel.

Elkady sat down with Farmer to speak in detail about its development and key lessons for the industry. A partial transcript of the conversation has previously been published, and now you can listen to the audio in full.

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Media industry professionals have been in something of a crisis.

Declining mental health, uncertainty over hybrid work policies, slow-moving DE&I policies, and still-large disparities between men and women in career progression and pay. These issues are not necessarily unique to media, and there have been improvements made over time in many areas, but there is doubtless more our industry could be doing to improve the lives of its workers.

So, how should we unpack all of these challenges? Columnist and Creativebrief editorial director Nicola Kemp returns to the podcast to discuss, alongside reporter Ella Sagar.

“The Covid pandemic has created a toxic storm of stress," said Kemp. "And I think that is really having a huge impact on the workplace right now. We might have stopped writing those headlines on the Great Resignation and moved on to the Great Regret, but the reality is a lot of people are still planning to leave the roles they’re in in the next 12 months.”

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Future's new CEO Jon Steinberg is keen to build things.

In his career he has helped create two new media start-ups in BuzzFeed and Cheddar, but in his new role as CEO of Future, he has taken charge of numerous media properties continuing to transition from print to digital.

Steinberg joins the podcast in an interview with editor Omar Oakes. The pair discuss changes Steinberg is bringing to Future, the value of attending Cannes Lions, the state of the digital publishing industry, and how developments in generative AI will change editorial processes.

“Digital subscriptions is a huge opportunity for us," said Steinberg. "This will be a long process, building a digital subscription business. As you’ve seen with The New York Times, or The Washington Post, it’s not something that happens overnight, and that’s one of my long-term goals.”

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Why are media and creative so siloed?

That was the question implicitly posed by our editor Omar Oakes in his latest column. Referencing industry veteran Laurence's Green's speech at a recent Thinkbox conference, Oakes questioned Cannes' reason for appearing separately as both a celebration of creativity and as a tech and media industry conference.

Oakes and Green both joined Jack Benjamin on The Media Leader Podcast to unpack the argument. In a wide-ranging conversation, the trio also spoke about the importance of creative in driving effectiveness, the industry's struggles to promote sustainability and pessimistic trends in digital news consumption unveiled by this week's release of the Reuters Institute Digital News Report.

"The mood music in the industry is firstly, can we just have that richer mix of work," said Green. "Yes, reward the purpose stuff, but find a way to the great stuff that pays the mortgage. But also, can we just make sure that we're not using our creative skills to greenwash rather than using our creative skills to more profoundly change business. Those are the things that are in the ether around Cannes this year."

The episode kicks off a new panel format for the podcast, which includes a 'quick hits' section covering recent stories from the around the industry.

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Andrew Cole, board member of Liberty Global and one of the original backers of GB News, talks to Omar Oakes about shaking up the status quo of TV measurement and trading.

Cole's new venture, Digital Audience Data, seeks to get all major telecoms operators in advanced economies to jointly share data for a "more accurate" TV measurement system than legacy ones such as those operated by Barb and Kantar Media in the UK.

He also talks about his track record working with Steve Jobs and Apple on the iPhone's launch and how his career has been built on "disrupting" legacy systems.

And, amid rumours of GB News following in TalkTV's footsteps by going online only, Cole answers questions about the rationale for launching the channel in 2021 – a move that attracted calls for an advertiser boycott before it began programming.

Further reading:

UK telcos plot audience measurement and ad sales platform

Telcos can transform the UK ad industry for the better

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"There's so much change all the time in terms of new channels popping up, the way ID and privacy fit together and create challenges; there's just so much to constantly be on top of and ahead of."

AudienceProject's UK commercial director Martin Bentley was one of several Future of Brands conference delegates reflecting on the biggest challenges and opportunities facing the media industry in the near future.

Speaking with reporters Jack Benjamin and Ella Sagar at London conference in April, Bentley, as well as Neil Robinson, EMEA advisory for media, tech, sports, and entertainment at Salesforce, Nick Henthorn, UK VP of sales at InfoSum, and Mark Cross, engagement director at JICMAIL, also gave personal takeaways and learnings from the event.

This episode was edited by our production partner Trisonic. For more on our events, including our upcoming The Future of Media conference, check out our events portal.

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Are people even paying attention to the ads they are being served? That question has opened up a can of worms for an industry that is intensely concerned with return on investment.

Two leaders of the attention economy, Lumen Research's Mike Follett and Amplified Intelligence's Karen Nelson-Field, joined reporter Jack Benjamin for a discussion on the positives, pitfalls, and recent developments within the evolving space.

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Are ambitious marketers suffering from a 'Steve Jobs complex'? Is Sir John Hegarty right to say that marketers and most marketing is simply "boring"? Is there any point doing "purpose" in marketing"?

These are among the key questions answered by a trio of media and advertising leaders who joined The Media Leader editor Omar Oakes to discuss the state of marketing and key themes from The Future of Brands.

Craig Tuck, chief revenue officer at Ozone, Rachel Forde, former UK CEO of media agency UM, and Chloe Davies, head of social impact at ad agency Lucky Generals, joined Oakes in front of a live audience at the Future of Brands venue in central London.

The panel discussed key learnings from the event's invite-only brand leaders' club, in which some of the UK's top brand marketers discussed their challenges and how to improve the conditions for sales and advertising, as well as key insights from Oakes' interview with advertising legend Sir John Hegarty.

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Lee Brown, head of advertising business & platform at Spotify, speaks to Omar Oakes about how the global audio giant hopes to significantly grow its advertising revenue in response to founder Daniel Ek's "20% challenge".

Brown had been on a salesperson hiring spree, but then the digital media market slowed down and the company began making layoffs like most of the big tech giants in recent months. Ek, meanwhile, admitted Spotify had over-invested in podcasts in particular, after acquiring big names such as Joe Rogan and Barack Obama.

Brown speaks candidly about how Spotify has ambitions to build ‘the world’s #1 audio network”, as well as its strategy around talent, technology and content. He also pulls no punches when it comes to how digital audio should be measured and how it should be traded by media agencies and advertisers.

This interview was recorded at The Future of Audio Europe in London in March 2023. For more on our events, including our upcoming The Future of Brands conference, check out our events portal.

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"Reframe the problem," says renowned marketing consultant and author Richard Shotton in his new book on behavioural psychology and its impact on advertising and media.

In his new book, The Illusion of Choice, Shotton describes the various psychological biases (16-and-a-half, to be precise) that influence what we buy.

Reviewing the title in The Media Leader, VCCP Media's joint chief strategy officer Steve Taylor called it a page turner and an “antidote” to “a sea of increasingly ineffectual sameness” in marketing.

Shotton came on The Media Leader Podcast to discuss the book, and how knowledge of psychology can be a benefit to any media professional.

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The Media Leader's new columnist Nicola Kemp joins Omar Oakes to talk about the progress women have made in making media a more equitable career and the barriers which still remain.

Kemp, who is editorial director of Creativebrief, warns if we want to stop women from being edited out of the media industry, we must be honest about addressing burnout and "fake flexibility".

What advice does she have for women in media and what more can leaders do?

Read the first in her new monthly column: "Face the truth: women are still being edited out of the media industry"

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Have you ever thought about moving across the pond? Two media industry Brits that have recently made the jump over into the massive, frenetic media environment in America—more specifically, the Big Apple. They’re eager to share what they feel is different about the media industry Stateside as compared to the UK.

Wayne Blodwell is the founder and CEO of digital advertising consultancy TPA Digital, formerly known as The Programmatic Advisory, as well as a podcast host in his own right for The AdPod. His new monthly column for The Media Leader, ‘An Englishman in New York’, debuted in February. In it, Blodwell discusses the challenges and opportunities that the American media market offers.

Making her second appearance on the podcast, Amy Williams is the founder and CEO of purpose-powered ad platform Good-Loop, which she began in 2016 to help brands do charitable work at scale. Williams moved to the States earlier this year, where she hopes to grow Good-Loop.

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We're back for Season 2 with a banger!

Advertising legend Sir John Hegarty speaks to Omar Oakes in the first of a two-part interview - the second of which will be at our Future of Brands event in London (25/26 April).

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Jamie Barnard, former Unilever in-house lawyer and CEO of privacy and data governance platform Compliant, joins Omar Oakes to discuss what he learned from his time at the coal face as a large global advertiser grappled with data privacy and media ethics and how he is now trying to help brands develop ethical media policies for an advertiser-funded internet.

Merry Xmas + see you in the new year for Season 2!

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JC Decaux's co-CEO in the UK, Dallas Wiles, tells Omar Oakes why the outdoor media company thinks 2023 will the year of the public screen. He reveals why, contrary to what many predicted, people have not fled cities during the pandemic and we have already arrived at "the new normal".

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Omar Oakes and Maria Iu digest the big stories of the week and Les Binet talks to The Media Leader about why he's created an AI version of himself. 

Binet, group head of effectiveness at Adam & Eve/DDB and a renowned ad authority, talk to Oakes at Cannes Lions about his long history with AI, his Cannes diary and his battle against the industry's "shiny object" syndrome.

Highlights:

2:30: What will change in media and advertising under Labour?

7:20: What analysts are saying about the economy under Labour

10:00: Commissions from Netflix and Amazon are up – confidence returning to TV?

12:30: Fox launches Tubi in the UK – is the market saturated?

15:10: London's most attention-grabbing bus shelters – where and why?

16:45: What to do about election leaflets posing as fake newspapers

20:00: Les Binet interview

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The basic relationship between reach and business results has "eroded dramatically", Zenith UK chief strategy officer Richard Kirk argues in an opinion piece for The Media Leader. In some cases, this fundamental principle of commercial media no longer exists, the Publicis Groupe media agency has discovered.

Kirk speaks to Omar Oakes about why the relationship between audience reach and an advertiser's sales has broken down, why 'Right Reach' is a better predictor of success, and what this means in practice for media planning and buying.

Read Kirk's Strategy Leaders column: We can better manage media fragmentation by measuring ‘Right Reach’

Strategy Leaders features on the Thursday edition of The Media Leader‘s daily bulletin with thought leadership, news and analysis dedicated to excellence in commercial media strategy.

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Kris Boger, general manager, UK, global business solutions at TikTok, talks to Omar Oakes about how and why this social media platform is going big on commerce, what advertisers and agencies are asking TikTok as they try to make sense of this platform, and whether questions TikTok parent Bytedance’s Chinese ownership are fair.

Find out more about our upcoming event in London The Future of Audio and check out the outline agenda.

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Amy Williams, founder and CEO of ethical advertising platform Good-Loop, tells Omar Oakes why creating more sustainability is akin to ending the practice of 'fast fashion' and how the industry needs to change to make advertising and media production carbon neutral.

We go into more depth about how to confront the climate emergency in advertising and media in our webinar with The Guardian, featuring the newsbrand's environment editor Fiona Harvey, the Conscious Advertising Network, Purpose Disruptors, Heineken, Deliveroo and Essence, discussing practical steps to get carbon neutral and how to avoid messaging pitfalls.

If you missed FVTA Global this week, where were you? Check out our reports on the key sessions with the global advertising bosses at Netflix and Disney+, each of which are now offering cheaper, ad-funded tiers on their streaming services.

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Dave Randall, Future's commercial director, discusses with Omar Oakes why using first-party data well is so important to the publisher and how its audience data platform Aperture has developed. Dave and Omar also discuss how 'specialist interest websites' and TV stand out in a Future survey about trust in media, and how a modern publisher establishes 'church v state' lines between editorial and commercial when journalists are asked to write sponsored content.

Our own 'church v state' disclaimer: this episode is sponsored by Future. The conversation topics were agreed in advance but the conversation was recorded and edited by The Media Leader's editorial team without intervention.

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Mudit Jaju, global ecommerce lead at Wavemaker talks to reporter Ella Sagar about how the retail media ecosystem has changed since the pandemic, who does retail media really well and what new partnerships between ITV and Channel 4 and retail media partners mean for the industry.

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Nick Manning, founder of media agency Manning Gottlieb OMD and media consultant, talks about his recent column in which he argues advertisers can no longer be passive observers as their spending funds a media ecosystem which is suffering from a "crisis of trust".

Notes:

Nick's column: "How advertisers should deal with the crisis of truth in media"

The editor: "We will champion talent, sustainability and trust in media"

Join us on Weds 30 November for a special presentation we're running with The Guardian: "Confronting the climate emergency" - Omar Oakes speaks to industry leaders, activists and The Guardian's environment editor about how advertisers and media companies should respond to the climate crisis with practical steps and priorities.

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England footballer Jill Scott — part of the Euro 2022-winning team — speaks to talkSPORT reporter Jordan Jarrett Bryan at our recent Future of Media event in London.

Jill and Jordan spoke about her experience of dealing with the media as a women’s footballer, how media attitudes towards women’s football have changed, and how far away the women’s game is now with being seen as an attractive area for brands to invest in advertising and sponsorship. 

**As seen (sort of!) on ITV's I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!**

If you missed this year's two-day Future of Media conference, don't worry: we'll be back in 2023. Check out the agenda.

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Route Research CEO Denise Turner talks to Omar Oakes about how the outdoor media sector has recovered in 2022 after Covid-19 lockdowns in the UK and what the 'new normal' looks like as more people regularly work fro home.

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Omnicom Media Group’s head of futures Phil Rowley has recently joined The Media Leader‘s stellar list of regular columnists. His debut column argues that predictions can still be highly useful even when they’re wrong.

Rowley speaks to Omar Oakes about the science of predicting, whether predictions are getting harder and whether brands are becoming more conservative when it comes to innovation in media and marketing.

Of course there is a lot to say about what’s happening at Twitter under the rule of Elon Musk, as well as Meta’s huge investment in the “metaverse”.

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BARB CEO Justin Sampson discusses what's next for the UK TV measurement company as independent audience data for Netflix and Disney+ becomes available for the first time.

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Prioritising talent and creativity should be top of the list for media leaders this year, according to attendees at The Media Leader Summit.

The Media Leader reporters Jack Benjamin and Ella Sagar bring you highlights in a special episode from their conversations with senior figures around what the top focus should be for the industry this year.

Sustainability, measurement, inclusion, consistency and trust were also discussed as key topics.

Some of the winners of The Media Leader Awards' Leader of the Year category — Patrick Affleck, CEO of Havas Media Network UK and Ireland; Thomas Bremond, senior vice-president and chief revenue officer, international, at FreeWheel; Rob Edwards, head of media and digital at Arla Foods; and Dominic Williams, chief revenue officer at Mail Metro Media — share their thoughts.

We also hear from Cath Waller, managing director of advertising at Immediate Media, and Chloë Davies, founder of It Takes A Village.

Highlights

00:53: Dominic Williams on testing new things

02:56: Patrick Affleck speaks about people and optimism

06:10: Rob Edwards discusses the importance of measurement and creativity for advertisers

08:48: Thomas Bremond's views on sustainability and building the future of TV

11:14: Chloë Davies highlights the need for the media and advertising industry to "hold the line"

14:36: Cath Waller calls for more action on trust in media

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ITV CEO Carolyn McCall speaks to Omar Oakes about the launch of ITV's new streaming service ITVX, where it fits into her vision to digitally transform the UK's biggest commercial broadcaster, and what's next for ad-funded television as Netflix and Disney+ enter the arena.

This interview was recorded at The Future of Media, Mediatel's flagship conference, in London on 13 October.

The #Forgotten500k campaign sees media owners provide free ad space for a campaign to make an antiviral available on the NHS for immunocompromised people who don't respond to regular Covid-19 vaccines. Omar speaks to mSix&partners executive chair Jess Burley about why it's so important, campaigner Mark Oakey whose life and been put on hold for more than two years, and Dr Tony Pagliuca for a medical perspective.

Find out more about the campaign.

Hosted by Omar Oakes, editor of The Media Leader.

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The Media Leader Podcast features opinions and analysis about the media and advertising industry. Our mission is to champion excellence, inclusion and courage in media.

Reporters Jack Benjamin and Ella Sagar are back with a look at the stories that mattered most in media and advertising this week.

The duo unpack The Media Leader Awards, which saw Mail Metro Media awarded four gongs, including a Grand Prix for chief revenue officer Dominic Williams. They also discuss the importance of media in the run-up to next week's general election and the EU's potential action against Apple under the Digital Markets Act.

Highlights:

00:26: The Media Leader Awards and Mail Metro Media's aggressive AV strategy

5:11: General election run-up – whether fact-based political ads can be regulated, plus the importance of social media to this year's campaigns

14:57: Apple found in breach of the Digital Markets Act

17:40: News round-up: European Programmatic TV Initiative, UN framework for tackling misinformation and disinformation, contingency plans for the US TikTok ban, Bauer's Rayo app and Telegraph Media Group loss

Visit The Media Leader for the most authoritative news analysis and comment on what's happening in commercial media. 

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Flash interviews from the Croisette with media leaders — what's it really like here, what makes it worthwhile for media people looking to sell and ink deals, where are the best parties and how do you stand out?

This is an epic episode — skip to your favourite part!

Highlights:

03:10: Chris Kleinschmidt, VP, advertising, TiVo

07:45: David Jones, founder and CEO, The Brandtech Group

15:30: Louise Johnson, CEO, Fuse (Omnicom)

19:35: Chris Volmer, managing director and managing partner, MediaLink

28:20: Anne-Laure Dreyfus, TV director, Egta

33:35: Marc Guldimann, founder and CEO, Adelaide

42:48: Jake Dubbins, Conscious Advertising Network

Thanks to TiVo for sponsoring this conversation with The Media Leader! While some of our coverage is sponsored, all of it is independently created by the editorial team when one of our journalists is involved.

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Editor-in-chief Omar Oakes, deputy editor Maria Iu and reporter Jack Benjamin look back on their time at the 2024 Cannes Lions, from the application of "meaningful" AI to the dominance of adtech, from media owner activity to Media Lion winners.

Highlights:

00:45: Impressions of the 2024 Cannes Lions

4:28: Media owner activity at the event – Amazon, Meta, Reddit, TikTok, Pinterest, Netflix — and what they're trying to sell to the global advertising community

13:20: The Media Lion Grand Prix and other award-winning work

20:03: Key learnings from the week – sustainability, the value of pacing yourself, the rise of the creator economy, cookies, bringing people into the tent amid a tough market

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It's Cannes Lions this week, so we've brought you a special debate about the future of bringing creativity and media planning together in advertising, featuring senior decision-makers at major brands and one of the UK's foremost media strategy consultants:

>> Olya Dyachuk, global media and data director, Heineken

>> Sebastien Bourne, head of media for north-west and central Europe, HP

>> Sally Weavers, co-founder, Craft Media

Omar Oakes asks them about how media and creative should reconcile in an industry where audiences are becoming more fragmented across digital media: how does "the big idea" get sold to advertisers when audiences are seeing different messages at different times? Recorded at The Future of Brands in April.

Stand by in the coming days for what the media vibes are from Cannes Lions as The Media Leader sends its biggest contingent of journalists to the festival this year – Omar's intro sets out what you can expect from us and why you should remember Cannes' "dirty secret"…

Who should we interview next? We're open to requests! Email omar.oakes@uk.adwanted.com

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Reporters Jack Benjamin and Ella Sagar are back with a look at the stories that mattered most in media and advertising this week.

The pair discuss how growth in the Chinese ad market has driven upward revisions in GroupM's mid-year ad forecasts, the industry's response to António Guterres' call for a global fossil-fuel ad ban and what Apple's WWDC announcements mean for publishers.

Highlights:

1:00: Unpacking GroupM's latest adspend report

5:02: UN urges fossil-fuel ad ban to muted industry response

9:20: OOH surpasses 5% market share threshold

12:20: Apple WWDC AI announcements

16:35: News round-up: BFI Imax anniversary, May box office, Bauer podcasts, Paramount's Skydance talks and BeReal acquisition

Where has the joy gone in digital advertising? And how can we get it back? 

James Chandler, chief marketing officer at the IAB, thinks that while the start of the digital scene was "an incredibly exciting space", the feeling of "joy and magic dissipated" somewhere along the way.

In a study with advertisers, the IAB found that this came down to two things: "unease" about the pace of change and a feeling of "futility mainly around creativity", where advertisers do not feel "they have got much agency" in a world of algorithms and AI.

Indeed, as Chandler acknowledges, in a seven-year career at the IAB, there have been "big moments" including brand safety, fraud and ad-blocking – all of which have had "advertisers questioning the integrity of the performance of digital".

So the focus should be on getting people to "rediscover" joy, fun and creativity in digital advertising.

Chandler joins Ella Sagar to discuss joy in digital advertising and highlights sessions from the recent Engage conference, including talks from former UK MD for Twitter Dara Nasr and EssenceMediacom's Geoff de Burca and Lindsey Jordan. 

Highlights

03:32: Why joy in advertising is so important and where it has gone 

07:15: What would a two-tier dystopian internet look like?

11.56: A rallying cry for creativity from EssenceMediacom strategy chief Geoff de Burca 

12.38: Former Twitter UK MD Dara Nasr on making the internet fun 

15:58: Holding a mirror up to society 

19.47: Key takeaways from IAB Engage

Jack Benjamin and Omar Oakes discuss the major media and advertising stories of the week, including the verdict in Google's US antitrust case, how social media companies have been implicated in the spread of far-right violence across the UK and the latest financial results for WPP, Amazon, Snap and Meta.

Highlights:

00:20: Google is a monopoly. So what happens next?

6:38: Elon Musk spars with Sir Keir Starmer; X sues advertisers

13:59: Meta earnings and the future of smart glasses

17:35: News round-up: Warner Bro Discovery sales; Evan Gershkovich goes home; US sues TikTok; July box office

Related links:

CMA urged to move against Google following US antitrust decision

Social media isn’t solely to blame for the shameful riots

Meta’s on a mission to become an advertiser’s one-stop shop

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Reporters Jack Benjamin and Ella Sagar are back with a look at the stories that mattered most in media and advertising this week.

The duo discuss what the pre-election period means for held-up government adspend, recent M&A activity by MediaSense and Mediaplus, and why the Evening Standard has fallen on troubled times.

Highlights:

0:40: How much government adspend has been put on hold during the pre-election period

4:39: MediaSense acquires PwC's media advisory

6:36: Indie merger: Total Media and Mediaplus

9:50: Why the Evening Standard dropped its daily edition

12:28: Takeaways from IAB Engage

14:25: The AA's new report on trust

16:30: News round-up: Election debate overnights, new leadership at Ocean Outdoor, plus The Washington Post, X's adult content and Netflix's gaming additions

Omar Oakes interviews Laura Jordan Bambach (co-founder, Uncharted) and Tom Curtis (ECD, EssenceMediacom UK) about the challenges of building collaborative partnerships, potential conflicts of interest and how agencies can be creative when planning where media is bought.

They discuss the evolving landscape of creativity and marketing, and the importance of taking a media-first approach to creativity and leveraging technology to create better assets and plan media more efficiently. They also highlight the potential for creative agencies to be sidelined in digital advertising projects and stress the importance of collaboration and integration in the industry.

Highlights

05:35: Curtis' unusual role as a media agency ECD and how creative roles have evolved at media agencies

07:19: Uncharted's emphasis on a collaborative approach

10:04: Why great leadership from the top is key to successful agency partnerships

16:04: How the market has changed alongside the way audiences consume content

Recorded at The Future of Brands, London (April 2024)

Who should we interview next? We're open to requests! Email omar.oakes@uk.adwanted.com

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Reporters Jack Benjamin and Ella Sagar are back with a look at the stories that mattered most in media and advertising this week, including and especially how the media industry has responded to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak calling for a general election on 4 July.

Highlights:

1:45: Media Bill becomes the Media Act

5:29: DMCC Bill also passes

7:30: Media bills that were not passed during wash-up period

12:55: What should be the top media priority for the next government?

15:32: Klarna cuts its marketing budget thanks to AI

18:20: News roundup: PayPal, Total Media Group, BuzzFeed, Daily Beast, Netflix

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Omar Oakes and columnist Nick Manning have a wide-ranging conversation about the recent ANA report into media agency reselling ("principal-based media"), where media agencies buy media at one price and resell it to clients at an undisclosed higher price – and why it's important.

This is an epic conversation that delves into why advertising is no longer well-integrated with content, why there is a talent drain from the industry, why it may be "inevitable" that major ad agency groups are broken up and what Nick is planning through the 'Who Cares" movement with Brian Jacobs.

Highlights:

3:18: What's so bad with principal-based media?

8:16: Why do media agencies do this?

19:07: What should be the auditor's role in all this?

36:12: What PM shows about the state of the ad industry

41:08: Impact on media owners

44:53: The demise of a "curated" advertising experience and Omar's epiphany

52:17: The impact on content creation and why we're bombarded with 1990s rehashes

63:38: The 'Who Cares" movement and what it wants to achieve

61:11: Do we need greater regulation to make advertising and media function better?

64:48: Should the major ad agency groups be broken up?

Useful links:

ANA calls for contracts and auditing shakeup over principal media ‘conflicts of interest’

Nick Manning: Why principal-based media is bad for the whole industry

Nick Manning: Who cares wins: The antidote to 'badvertising'

Omar Oakes: Squeamish about advertising? Get over it

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