Media & Advertising themes for 2025: #2: Positive Provocation

This is part 2 of a four part series exploring key themes shaping media and advertising businesses and their future in 2025 and beyond

Change can come from discomfort

As explained in theme 1, the primary existential challenge facing media companies not named Google and Facebook is access to demand. The gamification of attribution and the access to data that platforms possess is insurmountable. This creates a system where these companies can identify an action about to take place (from tracking millions of websites and billions of people), and find a way to get as many advertisements for companies in that category in front of that person to be able to claim they influenced the decision. 

It is like having a little ad for the product you bring to the counter of a store that appears just before you tap your Visa card on every payment POS system in the world and then Visa trying to take credit for creating the sale.

So if we acknowledge that this is the reality, and the gamification of attribution is a system that appears to benefit the platforms (billions in revenue) and their direct advertising customers (a report that says it was effective) then how do you compete?

The answer, in my view, is you absolutely cannot win by copying what the platforms are doing.

We have seen this copying behaviour generate low results for years. The imitation game never served the imitators.

A better approach is being bold and selling the benefits of a reinvigorated approach that uses technology, content and context to empower advertisers, whilst also shining a brighter light on the elements in the modern advertising ecosystem that are beyond broken. As outlined, the issue is access to demand more than anything else.

In 2025 I believe we will see progressive media companies creating positive provocation around the broken elements of the advertising system that need fixing.

Marketers deserve better advertising partners than those who demand their data for free, aggregate it, package it, and sell it to their entire competitor set to drive revenue and increase unit costs, and then ultimately each year ask for more and more of their advertising budget in order for the marketer to simply hold their current position. It is not advertising, it’s renting a finite pool of customers. And rental inflation is through the roof and the only business that is growing is the landlords. The core business of the platforms is customer rental. The weirdest thing is the advertisers who fund it gave their customers away for free.

The core business for everyone else needs to be fixing what is broken.

Keep advertiser data locked up and protect this valuable asset, don’t aggregate it and don’t use it ‘to improve advertising products’ (aka aggregation and packaging to sell). Don’t get into the game of behaviour interception where the focus is on identifying an already existing behaviour and placing an ad in front of it. Focus on behaviour creation. Use attribution and server to server technology but only for the use of the advertiser. Don’t take what the advertiser gives you in good faith to help understand efficacy and use it against them. And focus on the long game of creating customer salience, building an asset for the advertiser that provides sustained value and resilience. Don’t create advertiser/media relationships that are entirely predicated on survival.

So going back to the first 2 questions outlined (from Bain & Company) in the first theme.

1. Are you focused entirely on weathering the storm or do you have a plan to capitalise on today's opportunities? 

>> 2025 will be a period where media businesses move away from weathering the storm and trying to simply exist in a market where the current rules ensure their survival is jeopardised. The upside is the current state presents huge opportunities as the broken elements are visible to most.

2. Are you clear on which few core businesses you will drive to leadership or are you attacking on too many fronts? 

>> There is a defensible core in being the advertising partner that helps advertisers sell more stuff, not simply being the partner who managed to attach themselves to sales that were already going to happen. Drive new behaviours, don’t simply surveil existing ones and charge advertisers a rental fee to access them.

This is bold and provocative but required. It takes the credibility to pull it off and strategic choices in order to communicate it. But it has a sustainable runway in terms of being a proposition that can endure (and plays to the core of these businesses) and can be done if the right decisions are made.