Kantar Media recently released its annual Media Trends & Predictions report, exploring the opportunities and challenges surrounding the content and advertising ecosystems globally in 2025.
For 2025, the report focuses on the media ecosystem; content; data; people and skills; and redefining audience measurement.
New Digital Age spoke to Lucy Bristowe, CEO, UK & Western Europe, Kantar Media about the evolution of measurement for marketers and …
Why did Kantar Media conduct the new research?
It’s an annual report where we try to take a step back, zoom out and assess the progress that’s been made and the opportunities that might have opened up over the past twelve months. This time, we’re particularly interested in the multiple ways that clients are harnessing data, insight and technology to deepen their understanding of audiences. The report provides a chance for us to assess where the industry stands, where it might go next and how we can navigate the future.
Last year’s report was downloaded thousands of times across 100 different markets, so it has a wide footprint. I enjoy the fact that it’s tackling some complex themes, but is presented in a format that’s easily digestible for our clients.
From your perspective, what were the key findings of this year’s report?
There’s a lot in there but the themes that really stick out for me are around the importance of collaboration. I’ve been doing this for a long time and for years we’ve been talking about challenges in media around cross-platform measurement. This year’s report suggests that, for the first time, there’s a real level of optimism for the future. There are a lot of collaborative initiatives and innovation already underway and we expect that to accelerate throughout 2025. There’s a real will and desire for organizations to work together to tackle some of these challenges.
The report also highlights a positive story around global ad spend, which is great to see. We’re entering an era of collaboration, innovation, new techniques, new capabilities that will allow us to better measure the ever-diversifying media ecosystem. We see lots of reasons to be positive about the future.
What are the possible blockages or challenges to greater levels of collaboration?
That’s a good question. There does seem to have been a shift in terms of the willingness of organisations to collaborate and use their first-party data as part of that. Organisations increasingly realise that in order to solve problems and overcome contemporary challenges, they need to unlock their data and make it accessible.
Alongside that shift in mindset, there have also been big advances in the capabilities of technologies such as data clean rooms. That has given people the comfort, the confidence and the ability to share data in a secure and privacy-compliant way that wasn’t possible only a few years ago
Our report highlights the importance of developing the skill sets that we’ll need to operate this data and understand it. There’s a trend towards upskilling, with media companies like ours bringing in more data scientists to really interrogate our clients’ data sets and understand their full potential.
Did any of the report’s findings surprise you?
I honestly wasn’t prepared for the level of optimism that comes through in the report. When you’re working at the coalface every day, living and breathing measurement challenges and media challenges, you sometimes forget that there’s real progress being made and a positive story to tell.
We’re not hearing the word “fragmentation” as much anymore in relation to the media ecosystem. There’s a realisation and an acceptance that we need better tools and capabilities to measure the complex media landscape and those solutions will require more collaboration than we’ve seen in the past.
What are the big priorities for Kantar Media in 2025?
We will continue on our mission to deliver people powered measurement to the industry. We will continue to work in partnership with our clients, helping to tackle these huge challenges that we have in media measurement. We’ll be establishing new partnerships and collaborations with broadcasters, platforms, our advertisers and the wider ecosystem to help advance cross-media and cross-platform measurement.
