Leaders from GroupM and GroupM Nexus give their thoughts on the year ahead, looking at subjects including the impact of AI, retail commerce, cross-channel, and addressable creative.
Cross-channel
Andy Hickson, Managing Partner – Product at GroupM Nexus
In 2024 change will be the only constant. The public will continue to demand an increasingly curated and personalised media experience, from live to on-demand, including personalised & experiential. Media brands and platforms need to reimagine themselves at speed to bring new value to customers.
Growth will continue to be harder to come by, with integrated cross-channel planning and execution essential to success in 2024. Where real people are moving between media and locations, curating their own experiences, brands must match that movement with universally planned, targeted and programmatically executed media.
Impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Stef Jansen, Business Development Director, GroupM Nexus
AI will continue to revolutionise the media industry improving efficiencies and output across the board. From a content creation perspective, the use of AI will not only improve efficiencies in current production processes from a cost and sustainability perspective, but it will also help to lower the barriers to entry for brands looking to get on TV.
Jakob Kofoed, Global CTO, Acceleration
The ability to build and tune advanced AI models will become table stakes in 2024. To win the AI race, brands must focus on the quantity, quality and accessibility of data – as well as the organizational and cultural shift required to turn human decisions into machine decisions.
Retail commerce
David Fieldhouse, UK Head of Commerce, GroupM
The key trends we will see in 2024 centre around the growth of retail media networks, the increased use of retailer first-party data and the closer connection between social platforms and retail sales.
We are seeing retail media networks launch from a variety of industry verticals – those that think only of grocery will be left behind. The promise of first part cookie-less data will be realised and scaled across omni-channel ad buys for the first time which will be great news for retailers and our clients.
Finally joint ventures such as the one recently announced between META and Amazon will increase in 2024 closing the loop between social experiences and actual retail sales.
Evolved measurement
Chris Moodey, Director, Client Leadership, GroupM Nexus
While viewing continues to grow, it fragments and changes shape at equal pace. New platforms, walled gardens and custom content will continue to give brands opportunity to drive reach and growth. But with shifting viewing habits, consistently executing and measuring impact against target audiences is going to be critical yet challenging.
Expect new measurement processes to emerge that piece together the fragmented viewer landscape and provide the insights needed to continue driving reach and impact.
Addressable creative
Stef Jansen, Business Development Director, GroupM Nexus
As an industry, we have spent the last 15-20 years optimising the media placement by using data and tech to target the delivery of the ad message. Despite creative being a leading factor in driving advertising effectiveness, it has often been overlooked as a performance driver.
Addressable TV gives us the opportunity to re-evaluate this trend and deliver on its promise of right person, right message, right time. In 2024, we expect more brands to start looking at ways of enhancing their ad creative to drive performance.
