Future of Media: Havas MG boss reflects, media trends aplenty and change at Snap/BuzzFeed
This is an extract from The Drum’s Future of Media briefing. You can subscribe to it here if you’d like it your inbox once a week.
The media trends reports are coming in thick and fast, particularly thick. So my last few weeks of this hell-year are committed to digging in and working out just what happened.
We all hope to start 2021 making up lost growth, vaccine in hand (or arm) with crystal clear objectives.
Havas Media boss reflects
Having ridden out his first few months as Havas Media Group UK/Ireland chief executive, Patrick Affleck is enthused by the hardiness of his media agency in the face of chaos - but there are more challenges ahead he warned.
He's aware of the systemic crises facing society (and naturally marketers) and shared how HMG is evolving to meet these issues. It was a chunky chat, and I'll admit, quite unusual to hear a chief exec talk so frankly about real-world issues and feasibly connect them to media strategy. But isn't that the point?
What struck me is that he said many clients haven't firmed up marketing budgets yet.
There's too many variables ahead; Brexit, vaccine roll-out, recession, being some. If we don't nail this vaccine roll-out, Q1 could be another lost quarter.
Sorry.
Media trends
GroupM and our friends at Media Voices were out the gate with media trends reports this week.
I deep-dived the GroupM report and pulled out some snackable bullet points. If you want a feel for 2021 budget predictions check this. Growth will return, caveats apply.
Meanwhile, Esther Kezia Thorpe of Media Voices condensed its new report, which was more about lessons about how publishers rode out the storm.
A stat about the media's representation of race struck me as the most interesting. "By October, magazine covers in 2020 had featured Black subjects three times more than the previous 90 years." Let's hope this is the start of more people seeing themselves reflected in the media they consume.
Snapchat Spotlight
Huge change at Snapchat. It remains a closed-off messaging app for friend-to-friend comms (unlike TikTok that broadcasts to the world) but it is moving closer to its rival with the release of Spotlight.
Looking like TikTok's For You feed, the stream is adding a competitive element to its user-generated content with the allure of a $1m a day fund for the best clips. Of the 4bn Snaps sent a day, the elite will feature. There's undoubtedly a huge amount of creativity in this walled garden, this is Snap's way of opening up and chasing some of that out-of-app rep that TikTok's enjoyed.
Natalie Carder, head of paid social at Zenith, talked us through it.
BuzzFeed/HuffPost
BuzzFeed's been no stranger to collaboration and acquisition, however, the HuffPost-acquisition took me by surprise, knowing how tough a year the title had (although things are looking up for the streamlined business).
Nat Poulter, chief operating officer at Jungle Creations, donated some words to us weighing up publisher value vs what they can actually create.
"The digital dream prophesied by many never happened," she wrote. "Any publisher totally reliant on display advertising is going to have a hard time staying afloat. It simply doesn’t pay."
BuzzFeed, as a late entrant to programmatic display, should be protected from these issues, with sponsorships, branded content, subscription, programming, affiliates and commerce playing their part. But now, it also has the opportunity to make better use of the Verizon Media ad network from whom Buzz salvaged the troubled news title
Other stuff
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4 things you need to know about Channel 4’s digital-first strategy [All4 audiences jumped 27% through 2020]
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Reach ‘exceeds market expectations’ but print decline reverses digital gains [group revenues slumped 13.9% in the five months to 22 November]
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Virtual need for speed: why Porsche has invested in esports during a pandemic [“Esports played a major role in driving our growth this year" - new audience]
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Now TV recreates Love Actually doorstep scene to push festive ‘Greetings Gram’ [book a doorstepping from Martine McCutcheon]
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Every community manager ran the same monolith tweet [what's the point?]
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Take down anti-vaccine conspiracy posts or face consequences, ministers tell social media giants [trouble ahead, mark my words]
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Spotify says it’s dominating the podcasting market because of a million-plus tiny podcasts [it's micro-influencers all over again]
Well, that’s this week’s round-up. If you missed the last one, I have summarised it here.
Got a tip, a correction, a complaint, want a chat? I'm at john.mccarthy@thedrum.com or @johngeemccarthy on Twitter.