The changing media and marketing landscape

The Nudge Vision Critical breakfast overview of the changing media and marketing landscape took place on Wednesday, 5 August at the Cullinan Southern Sun Hotel.

The brief read: "More devices, more channels, more content; less attention, less cut-through, less connection." It's a fitting overview as the current environment where change is often the only constant makes understanding how your customers consume media ever more difficult, having a snowball effect in turn on an increasingly complex environment and the problem of trying to stay relevant.

Luckily it's not all doom and gloom, as there's hope that new approaches to customer intelligence helps brands be more strategic with media and ad spend. This has the ultimate outcome of improving ratings, relevance and revenue.

© Ndul – 123RF.com

Dave Duarte, CEO of Treeshake, kicked things off with a demonstration of affirmative hands to his question of whether the phone is the first thing we look at in the morning. It's an undoubted 'yes' as we increasingly access information through our smartphones and trust what we find out from our friends more than that of any other information source.

Following a breakfast and networking session, Mike Stevens, EVP and EMEA MD of Vision Critical, set the context for the presentation by expanding on five global media consumption trends, as well as the challenges they pose and implications for consumers.

First trend: Mobile
"This one is a mega trend", said Stevens, with the tipping point and huge digital share locally expected this year. Earlier in 2015, Google even modified its page rank algorithm for mobile-optimised sites. The search giant is also driving mobile engagement through its Google Spotlight Stories, which is a new form of immersive entertainment and media just for mobile. When it comes to US Millennials, last year they confirmed that their smartphones never leave their side, South Africans are showing similar behaviour. Here, for first time the share of time when engaging in digital media has tipped towards digital... Sadly, advertising is not quite keeping up with the shift, with the majority of ads mainly sinking that money into TV.

Second trend: Video
There's been a shift in the way people want to consume information. It's a move away from lengthy text-based reams. We've seen a shift from a billion video views per day to 4 billion in Q1 of this year alone on Facebook. This push to video is stimulating new behaviours. One of these is Twitch, where gamers are streaming themselves playing games - not just a handful either, it's around 45 million per month doing so. Interesting for advertisers to note is that vertical video is also starting to take hold, largely thanks to SnapChat, with a new ad format developing for consumers to hold phones vertically. This simple shift is highly effective as it means people actually complete the video view 9x more than they do with horizontal format. This opens up new ways of creating content, and we have the launch of Meerkat and Periscope to thank for the rise of people broadcasting the banality of their own lives.

Third trend: Programmatic media buying
When you feel hunted online by something, chances are strong that you've been 'cookied' and retargeted against something you once expressed interest in online. Now we have real-time bidding for this prime online space. Just watch how a page loading in Google Chrome shows how you are being bounced around. With programmatic, we simplify the steps between different platforms to show exactly how much a media spot is worth. Stevens admits this is sufficiently confusing that no one can actually claim to be an expert. It's a fast-changing, data-driven context that's now forming strategy for the industry. At the end of the day it's much more than an algorithm for ad placement, it also takes into account online behaviour like abandoned online baskets and recommendation engines.

Fourth trend: Native advertising
Look at a site like Buzzfeed for examples of how this works best. It incorporates links into articles that take you to a certain site or branded content without you really noticing. The category of native advertising has expanded to also include vlogging and 'broadcasting yourself, your life'. That's why teens are now having their moment and raking in the revenue. What makes them stand out is that they're doing this in such a way that it maintains trust and generates revenue - that's not to say it's easy though, as many get it wrong.

Fifth trend: Participation
Short, snappy content like listicles are having their moment and driving online sharing. Buzzfeed is again a top example of this, as it's got the distribution method to scale. The trend also links to that of sharing and the rise of user-generated content, like getting users to share their comments and ideas and actually participate in the final outcome of a content item.

Stevens then asked how the market research world responds to these trends. He says one of the main changes is shorter and faster consumer feedback, especially as consumers are attention- and time-strapped. Take Google Consumer Surveys as an example - it lets you ask a single question with 24-hour turnaround and infers the answer in an automated, cost-effective way. It's operational in ten countries at the moment.

There's no doubt that traditional market research is too long and too expensive. Marketers need to change with the times and rather capture the feedback where people are - on mobile. This, in turn, creates an insight community of consumers who really engage with your brand and want to share their experience and comment as part of their continuous relationship with the brand.

For more on Vision Critical, visit their website or follow their Twitter feed.