Future of Media: ITV Piers fears, Sorrell talks cookies, OOH's role in brand building

As Piers tears, media buyer shares fears

UK commercial TV broadcaster ITV has had QUITE the week. On Tuesday, its financials landed, total ad revenue was down 11% year-on-year (Q1 was largely unaffected by pandemic) but it expects recovery in April.

Then golden goose, divisive presenter Piers Morgan stormed off of Good Morning Britain after a gaffe-filled morning; a weird tirade about colleague Charlotte Hawkins' dress was followed by a clash with weatherman Alex Beresford over Morgan's coverage of Meghan Markle.

During the segment, Morgan said he ‘doesn’t believe’ that Merkel considered taking her own life when subjected to an onslaught of persistent and often racist media coverage. ITV, which itself has a complex relationship with suicide and has greatly embraced its duty of care and mental health output, soon announced Morgan's departure. This is after all the broadcaster that had a minute's silence for mental health during Britain's Got Talent.

While Piers pats himself on the back for the record ratings THAT episode attracted (a human can't turn away from a car crash), we enlisted top TV buyer Mihir Haria-Shah to explore the incident and what it means for ITV.

'Brand safety beats bland controversy', he writes here.

Sorrell on the cookie

Last week when I questioned anyone who'd listen about Google's latest privacy announcements, S4 Capital boss Sir Martin Sorrell's team crept into the inbox.

There was a good opportunity to understand how his new-ish ad network plans to navigate the disruption to third party cookies.

Listening to Sorrell, S4 seems built to thrive in chaos. "We thrive on disruption and what Google did is highly disruptive," he said.

Brands are going to need more consultation and help to get their data ducks in a row. Learn more here.

What vegan cheese tells us about brand building and billboards

It is no secret that the last year's lockdowns have not been kind to out of home advertising, but don't write the medium off yet. A few days ago columnist Samuel Scott saw vegan cheese brand Gaia running eye-catching out of home ads in his hometown of Tel Aviv, spurring him to explore the medium's strength in building brand equity.

"One good use of OOH is to make a brand, idea or person seem larger than life," Scott wrote.

Here, he laid out lessons for marketers about how outdoor can still be used effectively.

From around the web

• Under Fire Over Race, British Media Admit There Might be a Problem [We need to talk about Meghan's coverage]

• Society Of Editors Head Resigns After Claiming UK Media Is 'Not Racist' [Turns out SOME of the UK media IS racist?]

• An Inside Look at Roblox, the Gaming Universe That’s Exploded to 164,000,000+ Users [Metaverse, gaming, apps within apps, take a closer look inside this booming title.]

• BuzzFeed slashes HuffPost newsrooms as it readies for a public offering [Big cuts, big talk, from BuzzFeed, we've seen this before.]

• Teen Vogue Removes Sponsored Saudi Arabia Content [Not long after the nation showed its teeth to Jamal Khashoggi]

• T-Mobile to Step Up Ad Targeting of Cellphone Customers [The battle for first-party data will get fierce]

• 'WandaVision' has taken the throne as the top streaming original series in the US this week [Despite the soft finale and lack of set-up for future series]

• Announcing Conversation Settings for Ads [Brands can shut up responses in ads on Twitter now, that's a feature in Reddit FYI]

• 4 Big Questions about Google’s new privacy position [Former Brave browser exec Johnny Ryan digs deep into the FLoC]

That's all for this week. If you missed the last issue, read it here. And you can subscribe to our other briefings here.