Media owners vote programmatic trading and content marketing as most important in future industry

However, three quarters of media owners surveyed said that agencies must help them develop a greater understand of new media technologies to help them capitalise on opportunities like programmatic, while 59 per cent wanted to see agencies experiment more with new advertising solutions and 52 per cent were keen to see more sharing of customer data.

The figures also showed that 85 per cent of media owners believe media consumption will increase over the next year, and a quarter of respondents predicting an increase of more than 20 per cent.

Unveiling the research, co-CEO of Starcom MediaVest Group Steve Parker said the study found that media owners were equally positive and frustrated by the factors they saw as most important in the future.

Tablets (52 per cent) and smartphones (49 per cent) were considered the most exciting platforms currently, although respondents said mobile apps (34 per cent), tablets (32 per cent) and smartphones (32 per cent) were the most undervalued by commercial partners.

Respondents voted rich media devices as providing the most important opportunities in industry (59 per cent), with better analytics for proving ad effectiveness second most important (55 per cent) and audience understanding (54 per cent) third.

“This year, in addition to re-examining the questions we posed to media owners in 2013, we also asked them about areas where we are seeing rapid growth such as content marketing and data driven programmatic delivery with over 60 per cent acknowledging the growing importance of both within a communications plan,” said Parker.

“The results also highlighted the significance of the consumer behaviour of mobility – driven by tech and that it is still considered as undervalued – the significant opportunity for the everyday partnership between clients, agencies and media owners is how we precisely deliver relevant content to the ever-growing mobile consumer.”

Respondents voted Twitter as the best social network for helping audiences discover and engage with content, representing a 70 per cent share of voice jump from the 2013 study. Nearly three quarters (71 per cent) agreed that content was most important factor when getting consumers to engage with media.