“Less social media. More Snapchat.” That is the tagline to Snap’s latest marketing campaign . The company, founded in 2011 as an image-sharing app that deletes the pictures after a short time frame, has evolved into a more comprehensive product and clearly wants to separate itself from the perhaps toxic connotations of the label “social media”. One area where Snap looks increasingly distinct from its competitors like Facebook, which has wound down its support for news over the past year, is in i...
Mar 25, 2024•32 min•Season 4Ep. 24
The Media Leader columnist and Creativebrief editorial director Nicola Kemp joins Omar Oakes and host Jack Benjamin for this candid discussion of the biggest stories in media and advertising this week. In recent days, there has been a renewed push to ban TikTok in the US, the BBC is considering adding ads to podcasts when they are accessed on commercial sites, the government has disallowed newspapers to be purchased by foreign governments and United Talent Agency’s Michael Kassan has left the co...
Mar 21, 2024•41 min•Season 4Ep. 25
In a special edition of The Media Leader Podcast, editor-in-chief Omar Oakes and reporter Jack Benjamin report live from last week's Connected TV World Summit in London. The pair discuss a number of topics in the world of TV that cropped up at the conference, such as the development and increasing popularity of FAST channels, the importance of TV operating systems to creating discoverability for broadcasters, and how media planners and buyers should be considering TV and the broader medium of "v...
Mar 18, 2024•19 min•Season 4Ep. 23
It is a challenging environment for publishers. That is no secret. Numerous publishers have had to lay off and restructure staff in recent months and, as traffic and revenue have been impacted in part by changes made by search and social media companies, as well as consumers continuing to move away from print, things have at times seemed quite dire. But when industries face challenge, it is always met with innovation. Publishers are actively exploring and testing new ways to create unique conten...
Mar 14, 2024•37 min•Season 4Ep. 22
Yannick Bolloré, chairman and CEO of Havas and chairperson at Havas' parent group Vivendi, speaks to Omar Oakes about the company's financial earnings, in which it turned around a €1bn loss the previous year, and why Vivendi is considering creating four distinct "cousin companies", centred on Havas, Canal+, publishing and distribution. The interview also reveals: Bolloré's view on how Vivendi companies will integrate Why he has committed to lead the company for another 11 years His media hero an...
Mar 11, 2024•22 min•Season 4Ep. 21
Host Ella Sagar welcomes editor-in-chief Omar Oakes and reporter Jack Benjamin to examine the past week in media, including TalkTV's decision to come off linear TV, Reach's "better-than-expected" earnings and Global appointing Simon Pitts as its next CEO after Stephen Miron. The trio also discuss Isba's plans for spinning off Origin into a separate company, ITV selling its 50% stake in BritBox International to BBC Studios, February's box office and Apple's €1.8bn fine from the European Commissio...
Mar 07, 2024•40 min•Season 4Ep. 20
Consultancy in some form may become part of a media practitioner's career at some point, but how does it work in reality? Rachel Forde and Marco Bertozzi, co-founders of consultants' collective The Zoo.London, join Ella Sagar to talk about founding a company, misconceptions about consultancy and the senior brain drain in media. For Forde, the days when consulting was seen as "something to do in-between jobs" are gone and consultants have "a really super smart way to work", focusing on projects t...
Mar 04, 2024•38 min•Season 4Ep. 19
Host Jack Benjamin welcomes columnist Nick Manning and reporter Ella Sagar to examine Warner Bros Discovery's latest earnings, Reddit's forthcoming IPO and why agency-client relationships at holding companies have become less transparent over time. On digital publishers making cuts and lay-offs, Manning said: "One thing that is a shame for all of us is that content costs money and good content costs even more money. And those companies who get the most advertising revenue are the ones that do no...
Feb 29, 2024•41 min•Season 4Ep. 18
Ed Couchman, head of sales for the UK and Northern Europe at Spotify, joins Ella Sagar to talk about the company's long-term advertising ambition, its podcast and audiobook strategy, Apple's app practices and how kindness should not be seen as a weakness. He underscores the commitment to CEO Daniel Ek's goal of generating 20% of revenue from advertising and describes a "longer-term aspiration" for Spotify's advertising sales. Couchman says: "We do want in the long term for the ad sales to reach ...
Feb 26, 2024•25 min•Season 4Ep. 17
Host Jack Benjamin welcomes editor-in-chief Omar Oakes and reporter Ella Sagar to examine Thinkbox's new members, headlines from the consumer ABCs and what is happening with GB News and Ofcom. The group also discusses why every media channel should have a Clearcast, BuzzFeed exploring a licensing deal with The Independent and Apple's potential fine from the European Commission. Highlights: 3.47: BuzzFeed's licensing deal with The Independent 8.05: Thinkbox's new members – Amazon, Disney, Netflix...
Feb 22, 2024•37 min•Season 4Ep. 16
Milka Privodanova, head of Europe, Middle East and Africa at Pinterest, joins Omar Oakes to talk about the next step in the picture-sharing platform's journey as it reaches nearly 500m users and progresses ecommerce deals with Amazon and Google. Privodanova, who was known as Milka Kramer before announcing her name change in The Media Leader two years ago, is clear about how Pinterest can succeed as an ecommerce enabler while avoiding the "toxicity" that has plagued social media. She insists its ...
Feb 19, 2024•26 min•Season 4Ep. 15
As TikTok continues to develop what it says is a full-funnel advertising solution, such as through increased commerce capabilities, how it measures its advertising and drives effectiveness becomes increasingly important to marketers. TikTok’s head of client measurement for Europe, Israel and global gaming, Steve Lockwood, joins Jack Benjamin to discuss the company's approach to measurement and how the industry needs to rethink the practice for the contemporary era. Lockwood reveals, for example,...
Feb 15, 2024•37 min•Season 4Ep. 14
Former prime minister Gordon Brown, culture secretary Lucy Frazer, shadow culture minister Chris Bryant and Ofcom chair Lord Grade had lots to tell the UK media and advertising industry at the LEAD 2024 conference on 8 February. But what do senior industry professionals really think of what they heard from the politicians and what will likely happen next? Omar Oakes and Jack Benjamin discuss conference highlights from the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in London and get instant reactions f...
Feb 12, 2024•32 min•Season 4Ep. 13
Columnist Nicola Kemp joins host Jack Benjamin, editor-in-chief Omar Oakes and reporter Ella Sagar to unpack earnings results from swathes of Big Tech companies, including Meta, Amazon, Google, Spotify and Snap. The group discusses the big winners of earnings season and whether media has become too concentrated in fewer, more dominant players. As US senators ponder regulation of social media, Kemp and Oakes consider moral and business arguments for doing so. "We have this huge existential crisis...
Feb 08, 2024•50 min•Season 4Ep. 12
At The Year Ahead 2024, Charlene Williams, Pearl & Dean's group senior operations and business analyst, and member of our Future 100 Club, pleaded with industry leaders to renew their focus and care towards diversity, equity and inclusion. Was the message received? Williams discusses this on the podcast this week alongside host Jack Benjamin and special guest Sam Tidmarsh, Adwanted Events' head of conference production. The trio also delved into cinema's road to recovery after the Covid-19 p...
Feb 05, 2024•39 min•Season 4Ep. 11
At last month's The Year Ahead 2024 event in London, media's current and future leaders convened to discuss what is likely to happen in 2024 and what they would like to happen over the course of the year. Editor-in-chief Omar Oakes and reporter Ella Sagar were on the scene to interview a number of delegates. One key question they asked was: if you could wave a magic wand, what would you do to improve the media industry in the year ahead? Responses varied greatly. Some called for a creativity ren...
Feb 01, 2024•9 min•Season 4Ep. 10
The medium is the message. A well-known phrase in this industry, but how do you quantify how much that is true? Richard Kirk, joint chief strategy officer at EssenceMediacom, sat down with Ella Sagar to unpack what this means in practice through new research into "signal strength," which Kirk explained "is very likely to be an enduring thing that does not change much." Kirk also debunked some misconceptions about the correlation between time spent and actual cost of media with how special or tru...
Jan 29, 2024•38 min•Season 4Ep. 9
Columnist Nick Manning returns to the podcast alongside host Ella Sagar, editor-in-chief Omar Oakes and reporter Jack Benjamin to discuss the latest results from Netflix and why Omnicom's recent acquisition of Flywheel reflects the increasing importance of digital commerce and retail media. The group also looks at a number of recent industry reports, including last month's US Association of National Advertisers programmatic study, last week's IPA Bellwether Report and, out this week, the Adverti...
Jan 25, 2024•43 min•Season 4Ep. 8
Like other social media companies, Reddit has made big changes over the past few years as it seeks to become a more attractive digital platform for advertisers. These include a redesign in 2018, changes to its API last summer and a broader focus on sharing video content. A subset of Reddit users has at times decried such changes , even as they make Reddit a more commercially viable platform. Much like TikTok and Pinterest, Reddit is billing itself as the place for communities to form online. The...
Jan 22, 2024•30 min•Season 4Ep. 7
Cass Naylor, strategic advisor at Purpose Union and co-director of advocacy at Outvertising, returns to the podcast alongside host Omar Oakes and reporters Ella Sagar and Jack Benjamin to unpack 2024 predictions in media and advertising and what was said by industry leaders at The Media Leader 's annual Year Ahead event. They discuss their anxieties around AI-generated content spreading misinformation and disinformation during an election year, whether the ad market will remain strong throughout...
Jan 18, 2024•50 min•Season 4Ep. 6
Cookies are deprecating on Google Chrome – finally – although they aren’t going away all at once. Just 1% of Chrome users have seen the cookieless future so far , with more to come over the next year. In response, many media agencies, media owners, publishers, adtech companies and, well, just about everyone wise in the digital media industry have been hard at work creating new advertising solutions to allow marketers to target consumers online without infringing on their privacy. One such compan...
Jan 16, 2024•35 min•Season 4Ep. 5
Columnist Nicola Kemp returns to the podcast alongside host Ella Sagar and reporter Jack Benjamin to review the past week's news in media and advertising. In her latest column , Kemp wrote about how the hustle culture is having negative effects on us all – especially caretakers. She implored media professionals to embrace the art of saying “no” this year. The trio discuss the column, as well as how and why ads are coming to Amazon Prime Video, plus the downturn in the TV ad market resulting in l...
Jan 11, 2024•44 min•Season 4Ep. 4
2024 is guaranteed to be a year of change for media and advertising, with higher interest rates, more AI and general elections in the UK and the US. What will it mean specifically for media agencies and agency networks, and what is the mood of the investment community in a world where debt is more expensive and cash becomes even more important? Editor-in-chief Omar Oakes interviews Richard Pinder, one of advertising's most influential executives in recent times, with 30 years' experience in a nu...
Jan 08, 2024•40 min•Season 4Ep. 3
Omar Oakes, Ella Sagar, and Jack Benjamin are back on the podcast following the holiday break to catch you up on all the news in media and advertising. They review the potential for a Warner Bros Discovery and Paramount merger , The New York Times ' lawsuit of OpenAI and Microsoft over alleged copyright infringement , and X's declining valuation. The trio also shares their predictions for what they think will and will not occur this year, including surprising takes on X and Threads, why 2024 wil...
Jan 04, 2024•41 min•Season 4Ep. 2
2024 is set to be another big year for large media agencies with many major global and UK accounts set to be reviewed by advertisers. But only one in 10 (11%) major multinational brands believe the current agency model fits their future needs. Even worse than that, one in four big brand marketers believe the current agency model is “unfit for future purpose”. Those are the tough findings from the World Federation of Advertisers and the consultancy MediaSense, whose Future of Media Agency Models ...
Jan 03, 2024•37 min•Season 4Ep. 1
Are social platforms good media to receive accurate news and information? Ramin Beheshti, founder and CEO of The News Movement, thinks so. Reporter Jack Benjamin discussed with Beheshti The News Movement's content and business strategy, how it looks to make money through diverse revenue streams, and whether short-form video is inherently a good medium for news presentation. More and more people, especially young people, continue to go to social media platforms with the explicit intention of usin...
Dec 21, 2023•36 min•Season 3Ep. 42
How hard is it for a traditional broadcaster to build a streaming service? “It’s a really easy thing to say, it’s quite a hard thing to deliver," ITV CEO Dame Carolyn McCall told editor-in-chief Omar Oakes at The Future of TV Advertising Global in London earlier this month. McCall reflected on the launch of ITVX, ITV's ad-supported streaming service, one year after its launch, and discussed what's next for the broadcaster as it seeks a more global footprint. ITVX now has 40 million registered us...
Dec 18, 2023•32 min•Season 3Ep. 41
What a year 2023 has been. The media industry has seen the expansion of generative AI, rising interest rates impacting businesses and in some cases media investment, a tough and transitioning market for TV, the 50th anniversary of commercial radio coinciding with a burgeoning podcast market, years of "efficiency" at major tech companies, a succession plan for Rupert Murdoch, and of course, Elon Musk dominating headlines for his tumultuous ownership of Twitter. In a special year-end episode of th...
Dec 13, 2023•43 min•Season 3Ep. 40
With more people turning to the likes of Instagram and TikTok for their entertainment, advertisers, including and especially luxury brands, have begun using influencers to help spread their brand messaging and sell their products in more ostensibly authentic ways. Working directly with such talent can be both a big creative boon, and a headache for brands and advertisers. Influencers are regularly flagged by the Advertising Standards Authority for breaking existing codes of conduct. That is why ...
Dec 11, 2023•32 min•Season 3Ep. 39
At The Future of TV Advertising Global event this week in London, there was an air of anxiety over the future of TV and whether the medium can stave off threats from Big Tech to reduce its prominence on media plans. Editor-in-chief Omar Oakes breaks down takeaways from the event alongside reporters Ella Sagar and Jack Benjamin. The trio discuss the challenges facing the TV ad market, how Netflix and Disney+ have faired in their first year after instituting ad tiers, and why broadcasters are maki...
Dec 07, 2023•45 min•Season 3Ep. 38
