SMG Media Futures 2015 Forecast and Key Findings

Dianne Richardson, Executive Director Product Analytics & Emerging Capabilities from Starcom is our guest writer and has summarised some of the key findings from this report. Since 1985, SMG has been conducting Media Futures, to advise advertisers on critical media trends and calling out the winners and losers for the coming year.

SMG Media Futures has evolved over time to cover the ever increasing diversity of the new media landscape and to reflect the changing pressures of marketers in this fast paced, evolving consumer and technology world.

Despite the continued transformation and disruption, the industry has seen flat to little growth. Long gone are the days of double digit ad spend growth. We are experiencing a major shift where traditional paid media spend is being diverted to owned and earned media assets, with clients expected to increase their investment in these areas by 11.5% in 2015. This shift means we no longer talk media channels but media assets.

Growth is being driven by innovation and diversification in the areas of precision marketing, agile and dynamic content, data, mobility and social. This year the growth curve has moved even further to social and mobile, with advertisers expecting to accelerate their investment in these areas by at least 20% in 2015.

In 2015 clients will increase their advertising investment in social assets, driven largely by the availability of new ad formats and options. For example Facebook introduced new video ad formats last year, Instagram are now offering advertising options and Snapchat are looking to commercialise their platform in 2015.

Store proximity emerges as the new battleground to influence point pf purchase. Mobile based precision marketing and addressable targeting is poised to take on traditional approaches such as point-of-sale. There is an increased acceptance among consumers to allow location sharing when using an App and push notifications, thus enabling advertisers to influence decision near the point of purchase not just at it. This is an important shift in a space that has been traditionally owned by retailers and in-store promotions.

The changing roles of marketing in an asset driven landscape sees clients faced with ‘whole-of-business’ pressures. Clients have greater access to more techniques to measure marketing effectiveness and justify increase in marketing investment. There is increased pressure to deliver more agile marketing approaches as new technologies allow them to understand more about their customers in real time. Dynamic creative capability to delivered tailored, more contextually relevant messaging is an approach more clients are intending to utilise in 2015 (56% of advertisers, up from 39% last year).

As the market continually evolves and marketing assets continue to shift, SMG Media Futures will continue to provide a deeper understanding of the new landscape and the opportunities and challenges that it presents to clients.

Read the full report here.