Five years ago media ecologist Jack Myers made a prediction in the second ever edition of Mi3: By 2025 media would be largely automated, almost totally AI-informed and just a quarter of sales would remain with people and ideas. It happened faster than even he thought. Now Myers predicts that within 12-18 months, most media planning will be entirely machine-led – and by 2030, “80 per cent or more of all media planning and buying will be done without human intervention”, with major implications for jobs. Meanwhile, AI is already being turned in on itself to spotlight where the money is being wasted amid a “programmatic backlash”. The “machines are actually checking on machines,” says Myers. He forecasts an incoming wave of consolidation across major media companies and a “collapse of the programmatic marketplace”. For agencies, “the re-emergence of consolidated agencies”, i.e. creative and media back together, “is the big story of 2025-26” with generative AI forcing the toothpaste back into the tube. “So I believe in 2024-25, we're going to see massive consolidation, massive contraction, and then in 2025, 26, 27 a rebirth of the advertising business.” But 2025, he warns, will be tough. Plus Myers – who likewise called out retail media’s impact early – sees a “can of worms” for the sector as analysts uncover instances of arbitrage of non-retail inventory within some retail media networks. He also has reservations on the surge by media owners into data clean rooms – Disney alone is operating 100-plus – “Who is cleaning the data? Who is validating that it is clean?”
It’s taken a couple of years, but the LinkedIn-backed B2B Institute’s mission to flip business-to-business marketing’s focus from performance to brand building – encapsulated by the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute penned 95:5 rule – is starting to land, crucially in the boardroom and exec leadership echelons. LinkedIn’s polling of B2B CMOs and CFOs suggests most are planning to spend more on brand this year and are beginning to grasp that rational, product-focused messaging doesn’t cut it. The likes of MYOB, Canva and MailChimp are setting the creative standard, reckons LinkedIn’s Global VP of Customer Science and B2B Institute Global Head, Melissa Furze. But there’s still a long way to go, as Adobe’s APAC and Japan VP of Digital Experience Marketing, Duncan Egan will attest. Adobe, he admits, is challenged with brand awareness – or more accurately, category awareness, when it comes to being known as a CX company versus its Photoshop legacy. He’s hoping to change that with a full-funnel push – and convince the sales-focused short-termists that brand both fuels demand and ultimately speeds conversion.