Content, VoD and data will drive the post-pandemic media landscape

Sydney, 17 November 2021: Kantar today releases its global Media Trends and Predictions 2022 report with a definitive view of five key post-pandemic media shifts that will influence the Australian (and indeed global) media landscape in the new year.

1. Transparency in VoD viewership will transform media’s most dynamic market
   From audience attitudes to commercial models, media’s most dynamic market will see more transparency as more actual VoD viewing figures are published at a program level generating a host of transformations. Content owners and producers will command higher licensing and carriage fee negotiation rights than before. Streaming platforms for sport and e-sports will gain more traction with fans. Platform consolidation will continue, driven by the need to offer more (and better) content bundles to lure new viewers in a crowded marketplace. Sole subscription offerings will become scarce. The volume of deals will accelerate on 2021 levels as platforms, operating in increasingly overlapping ecosystems, will continue to merge and form partnerships.

2. Re-modelling of the commercial internet
   For media owners and advertisers, a serious recalibration of the commercial internet is now underway. Brands and agencies are experimenting with hybrid data strategies that fully encompass privacy, purposefully blending their owned consumer data with panel-based sources and other high quality – and fully consented – third party data such as socio-economic, past purchase behaviour, and attitudes about other brands. In targeting, expect a move towards contextual advertising. In campaign effectiveness, investment in direct integration-based measurement like Kantar’s Project Moonshot will ensure advertisers can independently measure ad campaign performance through a range of publishers.

3. Performance media and marketing balancing act
   Many brands adopted performance-based strategies to survive the pandemic, but we will now see increasing competition for performance marketing spend with the growth of social commerce, local retail giants becoming more sophisticated ecommerce ad spend players and metaverses gaining prominence. Kantar experts also anticipate a rebalancing of spend across performance media and brand building campaigns, more advanced cross-media campaign measurement and in-flight optimisation to boost efficiency as advertisers demand performance measurements on a platform-comparative basis.

4. New approaches to data
   2022 will see a renewed sense of value and urgency as the search for high-quality data becomes the fastest growing issue for marketers. Those with ambitious data strategies will have the upper hand. Brands will lean into their direct consumer relationships to make the most of and experiment with their owned ‘first-party’ data. Brands will enrich behavioural planning with attitudinal overlays and refinements and develop new methodologies to overcome the lack of competitive intelligence – all with the aim of developing the most rounded view of consumers.

5. Reshaping for COVID-era behaviours
   Brand offerings will need to reflect and shape the changed realities of consumer behaviour. Brands, products and services will need to meet new consumer needs for convenience, value, sustainability and innovation. The brands that invest in data, insights, people and marketing will flourish. The most successful brands will embrace the differences – diversity and complexity – of the audiences they’re seeking to reach. This presents a great opportunity for brands to develop in this recovery period: explore deeper segmentations and engage with communities beyond their existing audience.

“Content owners in Australia are set to benefit in 2022,” says Pablo Gomez, Head of Media at Kantar.

“The greater granularity of audience measurement data will benefit content owners and producers with more negotiating power than ever. Sole subscription offerings will become scarce, and premium content bundles will be key to luring viewers in a crowded marketplace. Furthermore, the bumper year of sport ahead presents a massive opportunity for media brands to unlock growth.”

“The Ashes, the Beijing Winter Olympics, Qatar Winter World Cup and the Women’s Euro championships are all taking place – and fans will go where the content is, so media owners must invest to ensure their platforms are as desirable as possible and offer a variety of strong content.”

“Marketers will need to get much closer to their own first party data and explore new routes to competitor analysis as cookies are phased out,” adds Gomez.

“There will also need to be a rebalancing of online and offline marketing spend, as digital effectiveness concerns will prompt ecommerce brands to branch out into the real world and investment in brand building advertising campaigns.”

Kantar’s Media Trends and Predictions 2022 Report is the go-to reference for media owners, advertisers and agencies with expert viewpoints delivering an unparalleled view of industry trends based on Kantar’s gold standard data sources.

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