With so many of us watching on-demand content on the biggest screen in the home, connected TV and streaming platforms such as YouTube and Netflix are set to grow in significance for agencies and planners over the coming months, says Dan Calladine.
As head of the team that prepares Dentsu’s annual media trends report, he has taken soundings and collected insights from across the industry to get a clear sense of how the year ahead will unfold.
In Ireland that will include the advent of Netflix’s ad-supported tier, already growing apace internationally.
It behoves agencies to focus harder on streaming, whether by providers such as Amazon Prime or the catch up services of traditional broadcasters, if they are to reach key audiences.
After all, he points out, in the USA most new paying subscribers to services such as Peacock, Hulu, Discovery+, Disney+ and Paramount+ opt for the ad-supported tier. Max and Netflix are not far behind, with 40 per cent of new paying customers.
Prime Video went even further by making their ad-supported tier the default option and now boasts a global audience of more than 200 million viewers available for campaigns.
As streaming platforms strive to drive engagement from both viewers and brands, they will add more sports and more commercials, the report predicts, “making connected television increasingly look like broadcast television”.
The combination of larger inventory and automated or “programmatic” buying could open up the space to new advertisers looking to bring their stories to more specific and indeed niche audiences.
The price is right for retail media
Retail media is also set for growth. Amazon.ie is slated to open this year, making it more important than ever to understand how retail media works, “whether that means through current retailer sites but also things like Uber and food delivery, all of which will sell advertising,” says Calladine.
“It’s about understanding the power of advertising to people on these platforms through the incredible first party data they’ve got, because it’s going to expand a lot.”
Globally, Amazon’s online advertising business brought in $14.3 billion (€14 billion) in the third quarter of 2024, up 19 per cent year on year.
That’s driven by the fact that when a consumer searches for a particular brand, Amazon shows them adverts for alternatives, optimising the opportunity to sell to a consumer who is already in a shopping mindset, he points out.
Given that the same consumers is probably also signed up for Amazon Prime Video, logging on via the same email, advertising can be more effectively targeted across Amazon’s platforms, he says.
It’s why viewers around the world are already seeing big brands on the streamer showing very traditional, TV-style, brand based advertising.
A closed loop attribution circuit, in which a viewer “watches an ad and two minutes later that product is in their basket”, means streamers are in a strong position to prove advertising effectiveness too, he points out.
And, as with social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram which are increasingly investing in commerce, the quality of the data derived from retail media is top notch, including payment methods and addresses.
It’s the reason retail media is evolving fast and growing rapidly, currently at around 20 per cent a year, he estimates.
Just two years ago Google search revenues were greater than total Facebook ad revenues and total Amazon ad revenues combined. Now the latter easily surpass Google search revenues, he points out.
It’s why, according to Densu’s The Year of Impact report, convergence of the retail and media worlds will continue, with an increasing portion of media campaigns having at least a shopper component.
Nothing artificial about the rise of AI
Another area ripe for advancement this year is artificial intelligence, and in particular the widespread diffusion of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), which is set to become increasingly embedded in all sorts of services.
For agencies that haven’t yet got to grips with the technology, now is the time to start experimenting, toying around with various solutions to get a sense of what’s possible.
Familiarise yourself with the platforms and the sorts of things you can do with them, such as analysing data, he says, but also how it could help with any writing projects. Maybe ask it to structure a weekly schedule to ensure that you have enough time to prepare for meetings, Calladine continues. It is about experimenting with capabilities, seeing what the technologies are good at, and the ways to get the most out of the new capabilities.
As well as making your own life easier that will help prepare the ground for a deeper understanding of the impact AI is likely to have on the industry this year.
The report predicts “a barrage” of new AI-powered media solutions from platforms this year. By breaking out of the chatbox, GenAI’s influence will grow beyond tech enthusiasts to reach mainstream audiences at the same time making its way progressively across the entire media value chain to become a cornerstone of the media toolkit, it says.
As GenAI permeates the habits of both users and brands alike, it will “create more micro-moments, to deliver more one to one experiences”.
Already we have seen how quickly marketers moved to take advantage of AI powered tools developed by adtech platforms such as MetaAdvantage+ and Google Performance Max.
But while these are bound to their specific platforms, Dentsu’s research shows that more than a quarter of CMOs consider the integration of emerging technologies as the biggest challenge for their own organisation.
“We expect more brands to take the matter into their own hands in the next year, going beyond platform solutions to explore AI potential across the entire media value chain,” finds the report.
Opportunities abound
Big opportunities emerging as a result of this shift will include everything from the development of dynamic scenario planning for improved budgeting to tapping into a richer data pool to generate predictive insights on growth audience segments, to producing detailed media plans that better mirror the consumer journey, to performing autonomous, real-time optimisations across channels to maximise impact.
The best way for brands to burst the algorithmic bubble that keeps us served with similar songs on Spotify or cat videos on TikTok is to focus on storytelling, points out Calladine.
That includes leveraging the increasing authority of creators, influencers and fandoms as a way of reaching niche audiences.
“As they expand their stories to new spheres, brands can tap into powerful, fast-growing spaces. They can seize the connected television moment, as the advertising supported segment explodes and enables cross-screen storytelling,” finds the report.
But to do this brands must first evolve how they plan and optimise media for this emerging ecosystem where algorithms “act as gatekeepers” and where “creative and media will increasingly work as one”.
The Year of Impact – 2025 Media Trends is available to download at insight.dentsu.com
