Media 2025 Wave Six

The media and advertising landscape is in the ‘next phase of its evolution’ as global media leaders now look to data, AI and a more collaborative client-agency approach to navigate an era of rapid change and drive efficiencies in transformation. Transformation is progressing, creating stronger, more strategic partnerships with brands and their agencies.

Independent global media advisors, MediaSense, launch their latest research study, Media 2025: Wave 6 – a continuation of 10 years of landmark research, capturing industry insights and perspectives from both brands and agencies.

The report confirms the continued journey organisations are on to transform their organisation. They are seeking greater customer centricity, integration and speed – powered by data, technology and of course AI.

But while the appetite is there, Wave 6 reveals that a transformation journey is not plain sailing – and for many, it is still in its infancy:

• 68% of global marketers say they are either midway or towards the end of their transformation
• 51% believe their organisations have become more consumer-centric over the last 12 months
• 26% of brands feel confident that they have generated incremental effectiveness as a result of their current transformation

The report also highlights opportunities to establish stronger, more strategic partnerships with agencies. Although there is desire to change an agency relationship as a result of transformation, the resulting appointment is now proving to be more secure, strategic and integrated:

• 50% of respondents ‘very likely to change’ an agency model based on business transformation
• 40% believe their agency model has strengthened as a result of their transformation

Demand for in-housing continues to cool with a shift in emphasis from execution to expertise, and internalising key capabilities that drive competitive advantage. Hence the focus has been on building capabilities across measurement, data, shopper/retail and media strategy. Accordingly, 48% of respondents said they had become data-driven, with 31% now seeing greater value from overall tech and data infrastructure.

Findings also cite 2024 as the year to ‘finally, get to grips with measurement’, with 54% of advertisers marking ‘measurement and insight’ as their top priority for the year ahead. With just 17% believing they have become more agile in their decision making, marketers are still held back by inadequate legacy media measurement, self-serving platform metrics and a host of new but unproven measurement currencies.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning will naturally form part of the answer (45% identified as a key area that AI will disrupt) but the largest discipline set to be affected by advances in generative AI is content strategy & development (62%).