By Paul Evans, Global CEO at Adgile Media
2020…..what a year?! You can nail me right here for probably the biggest understatement to be made about the year just gone.
From a personal perspective, having built up a successful independent marketing consultancy business, through to then taking on the opportunity to lead and shape an amazing TV effectiveness partner scale-up called Adgile, as their new Global CEO, I will look back at 2020 with a combination of pride and serendipity.
With 2021, I can only see an enviable mix of challenge, development, and huge growth potential in front of me – in whatever form it comes – and I’m looking forward to working with the amazing team at Adgile to navigate these known and unknown opportunities.
But as I reflect more broadly, 2020 really does fundamentally reshape what will come in 2021. Whether you consider, social, political, economic or technological aspects of our lives and industries, all bets are off – to greater or lesser degrees – in terms of predictions for change and impact as we look ahead.
For anyone that may have lost their jobs, or with enterprises that have closed their doors, I wanted to stop and call out my support to them, and wish them the very best that 2021 can bring. As they look ahead, it will of course be with more uncertainty and trepidation. However, I hope they also might view 2020 as a time of reset and as an acceleration of change – meaning 2021 can potentially feel more like a year of new opportunity and liberation.
And it is with this perspective that I can offer one form of prediction, masquerading as an assertive call-to-action for the part of the advertising industry that is closest to my heart – television.
As we have experienced, restrictions resulting from COVID19 have fundamentally changed audience behaviour across all media channels, with TV receiving the benefit of increased viewing time and attention.
Most commentators believe that this reappraisal of TV will continue to drive positive growth into 2021 and beyond, with an acceleration towards data fuelled, technology powered planning, buying and measurement.
With greater choice in TV content on offer, and a wider range of delivery mechanisms, 2021 must be a year where potential fragmentation is met with a response of true integration and harmonisation across the TV ecosystem – bringing together both Linear and On Demand television – in order to create the necessary conditions for effectiveness that brands and marketers demand.
2020 will be seen as a signal for the industry – a time where audiences pressed the button on their remote to vote for the brilliant, powerful content available on TV – critically, in all its forms. 2021 must be where the industry responds to the benefit of advertisers, eliminating the complexity and confusion that arises from silo “CTV only” operational systems and narrative to the market.
TV is the big screen for a reason, so let’s give brands and marketers the bigger picture!
