Future of Media: Key takeaways

Craft Media London doesn't buy or make ads. The agency provides clients with comms strategy, filling the hole that exists between media and creative agencies, but nothing else. Given the agency's neutral position, we thought it'd be fun to ask Craft's co-founders, Sally Weavers and Jenny Jones, to weigh in on a bunch of the biggest media debates of the year. And we were right — it was a lot of fun. In this episode of the MediaCat UK podcast, Weavers and Jones give 2025 a score out of 10 and discuss fragmentation, AI and influencers, as well as full-jaw replacements and Angel Delight. NB: We had some issues with the sound recording on this podcast: the volume sometimes drop, and it sounds like the guests were recording from a broom cupboard. We were, however, in the same room.

The state of social media depends very much on the perspective you take. Financially speaking, it's in rude health. WARC predicts that brands will spend $300bn on the channel in 2026, which would represent something like a quarter of global advertising expenditure. It's no less prevalent than it was, either. According to Ofcom, 60% of news consumption now takes place on 'online intermediaries', which includes social media platforms, as well as online news aggregators. And yet... A great many people who post or lurk on social media would argue that it's passed it's peak. There's no longer one platform that sets the agenda in the same way that Twitter did in the years before Elon Musk acquired it, for example. And public feeds have increasingly become colonised with video content from professional (or aspiring) creators. There isn't much data that proves social media has become less social, but in 2023, Instagram's Adam Mosseri seemed to confirm it in an interview, when he said: ‘Your friends don’t post that much to feed’. Against this backdrop, we chatted with Beth Thomas and Michael Corcoran, a former campaign operations manager at TikTok and the head of social at Ryanair, respectively, who have co-founded a new consultancy called Slice Social. Listen to find out whether 'enshittification' has irreparably worsened social media, how marketers can make the channel pay, and which brands Thomas and Corcoran are doing it right (and neither of them say Duolingo, which makes a nice change).

Nick Manning has got principal-based media buying in his sights. The former media agency co-founder — who has begun a movement to help the industry ‘get its mojo back’ — has published a paper on the money-making practice, called A World of Pain. Principal-based media buying is sometimes presented as a win-win-win situation for everyone involved: agencies get extra income, advertisers get cheaper media, and media owners don’t have to hustle so hard to sell their inventory. But that’s not Manning’s view. In this 45-minute podcast, Manning talks to MediaCat UK's editor, James Swift, about why he thinks, in the long-run, everyone loses out when agencies become re-sellers of media. Main image by Alexander Grey on Unsplash

For this podcast MediaCat's Opinions Editor, Mike Piggott, spoke to Dan Calladine, head of media futures at dentsu, and Grace Letley, head of strategy UK at iProspect, about dentsu's new report, The Year of Impact: 2025 Media Trends. They went through the report, section by section, discussing the rapid evolution of the media landscape and how they now believe the industry to be moving into the algorithmic era of things. The discussion touches on AI-powered media solutions, micro-moments and forging stronger connections with customers, niche communities, CTV and live sport, media publishers boosting shopper capabilities, and localisation and personalisation issues for global brands. We hope you find this podcast insightful. The report In its fifteenth year, dentsu’s latest media trends report delves into the trends that are shaping today’s media landscape. It details how 2025 will drive towards a fully addressable, shoppable, and accountable media ecosystem, marking a shift into what is being defined as the 'Algorithmic Era of Media.' The report explores the ten trends that will shape this era — including the tangible value of generative AI, the new territories for storytelling, and the quest for quality across the media value chain — and how brands can harness them to drive tangible impact and growth.

For this podcast MediaCat's Opinions Editor, Mike Piggott, spoke to Tom Gent, founder and Head of Creative at award-winning content agency, Founder Creative. With a career spanning two decades in the media and entertainment industries, Tom has done a lot. He’s worked for the BBC on a plethora of sports content, produced Top Gear for a year, directed a film for UEFA, and worked as Global Creative Director for video games publisher, Electronic Arts. He now has clients on his roster, including McLaren, EA, Mercedes and mobile gaming studio, Supercell. Mike spoke to Tom about the early days working for MTV on Pimp My Ride UK, getting into creative producing with his work on sport for the BBC, and winning BAFTAs for work on the Summer Olympics and Formula One. They also discussed how, during his time at EA, he managed to work with legendary composer Hans Zimmer on video game FIFA, blending the virtual and physical worlds, working with football stars like Ronaldo. Tom also talks about how music is fundamental, in terms of creating compelling video content, evoking emotion, and linking narrative. He reflects on what's changed with the media and entertainment industries over the last twenty years, and how this has impacted briefs from clients in terms of formats of content and delivering video content across multiple platforms, as well as proving effectiveness of content in terms of client briefs. Finally, they end by discussing Tom's time working on Top Of The Pops and Top Gear — and how the focus for his agency going forward is on gaming and sport clients; which is where Tom expects growth, and believes this is where the industry is ultimately going. We hope you enjoy this podcast.

For this podcast our Editor Mike Piggott spoke to Bob Sheard, co-founder of brand design agency FreshBritain. They discussed how Bob got into brand design, and how he was quite possibly the first man in Yorkshire to own a certain pair of adidas trainers. They talk about how he got into buying and selling denim, and how he was once brought on board to 'unfuck Levi's'... in the words of the client. The discussion then moved onto how Bob loves the 'elegant decay of denim' and the preloved fashion market, and how imperfection in products are actually a good thing. They discussed how Gen Z and Gen Alpha are becoming more defined by what they do rather than what they own, and how Bob is working with Central St Martins to create pathways for more creatives to work their way up to the boardroom. They talk about brand design being on the cusp of massive change, how brands need to shift from making things to selling intelligence, experience and knowledge. And finally Bob shares how he once told Noel Gallagher he couldn't have a free pair of trainers.

In this podcast MediaCat's Opinions Editor Mike Piggott spoke to Simon Akers (founder and partner at Archmon) and Jaz Poke (Business Development Director EMEA at Omnicom Media Group), co-founders of new industry initiative, Neurodiversity in Media (NDIM). They discussed how the initiative got started and why there is a need for it in the industry, NDIM's Manifesto and what change and action they'd like to see from industry leaders, and how there is simultaneously both more understanding of neurodiversity in the industry right now, but also still a lot of neurodiverse ignorance to overcome. If you work in the industry and would like to get involved and understand ways you can get your agency or brand involved, see Simon's post here, or head to their Substack and subscribe. Featured image: Hiki app / Unsplash

In this podcast MediaCat's Content and Social Media Editor, Svilena Keane, speaks to the founder of The Empowered Author and Meet The Booktokers, Samantha Missingham. They discuss the evolution of book marketing and the idea behind the newly-launched platform, Meet The BookTokers. This interview has been shortened for clarity and length. Hi, Sam. Please introduce yourself to our readers My name is Sam Missingham, and I'm the founder of a new community called Meet The BookTokers. I also have another community called the Empowered Author. My background has always been in marketing in magazines and then marketing in books. So, I started working in business to business and consumer magazines, on magazines such as Marketing Week and Design Week. I also worked on consumer magazines about cars, weddings, photography, gardening and all kinds of things. But I guess they all have something in common; which is actually about building a community around content as the number one thing. And then secondly, trying to convince that community to spend some money on your content in a number of different ways. How have you seen book marketing evolve over the last two decades? Book publishing is one of those industries that has had a healthy and robust book selling. We've had physical bookshops, we've had some chains, and we've also had independent booksellers who've always done really well. The digital transformation of the book industry, which started in about 2009, gave tons of opportunities but also some huge risks that book publishers had to get to grips with. When Amazon came along and successfully implemented its ebook platform, that was the starting point. They started with print books, but once they went into digital, publishers feared that the whole industry would go from a physical to a digital-only world. We then also had Apple coming into the market with their iPhones and their iPads, which opened up a whole potential of apps, and book publishers thought everybody was going to read book apps or ebooks. At the time, some of the deals going on for ebooks were for just 20p. That is not a great model for a book publisher. Book publishers have one revenue stream, which is the money from selling their books. So if suddenly your books have no value, it's not a great outlook for you when you start putting that into the future. So, publishers panicked and tried lots of things that failed. They're not good at innovation on many levels, while Amazon was busily innovating and doing incredible things for books. The marketing that happened for books was actually about marketing to booksellers. So that would be a whole strategy of how to communicate to the likes of Waterstones or your independent booksellers to sell as many books as possible. The difference between a bookshop and any online retailer is that a bookshop has a finite number of books. Now, if I put this into context, on Thursday (10 October) we had what is called Super Thursday in the industry, which is when the most and the biggest books are published because it's the run-up to Christmas. On that day, 1,900 new books were published. But what do you think about trying to get 1,900 new books into a bookshop? You have to think they are only going to stock the books that they think are going to do the best. What would you say we're seeing today? I used to work at Harper Collins, so I'm using them as an example. Harper Collins will have a number of different imprints. In those imprints they have a marketing person or a team, not very many people at all, and most of the marketing happens for a publication date. But the marketing stops at or close to publication. So you will have quite a lot of energy put into your book, it will get to publication day, and then it will tail off really quickly. But of course, if you've never read a book then it's a new book to you, and that's always true. So if you have never read an Agatha Christie book and you read it for the first time, it's new to you. I use Agatha Christie as an example because she is still the most sold author in the world. Because they do a small number of literary estates where they do continual marketing. And also, her books have been converted into theatre and into films all the time. When I worked at Harper Collins, my job was called Head of Audience Development — different from book-to-book marketing. My job was to come up with ideas across all of our books, and try to connect readers collectively to our books. I ran virtual romance festivals, where I did quite fun things using online tools, and I also did the same with sci-fi. I joined forces with the BFI who were doing a sci-fi film season and I said, 'If you like a sci-fi film, chances are you will like a sci-fi book. And if you like a sci-fi book, chances are you’ll like a sci-fi film'. This makes a lot of sense for us to join our audiences together. So I did a really fun campaign with the BFI, and I ended up with Margaret Atwood doing a chat online. I also did a big event with the Game of Thrones author. Publishers do book marketing; they don't do audience development. And you see from the likes of Amazon and Waterstones and other retailers that their job is audience development. My personal view is publishing doesn't really do that very well. We have the best industry and produce a million things covering a million different topics that excite a million different types of people, but we can't communicate how extraordinary that is. We're not selling boring things. We're selling these little portable bits of magic. You've recently launched a platform called Meet the Booktokers, bringing together BookTokers, authors, and publishers. What's the idea behind this community? I am a complete nerd about publishing. I used to work on The Bookseller, which is the trade magazine about the publishing industry. When I worked there, it's when the transformation of the industry was happening. I launched something called Future Book, which looked at the transformative opportunities of innovation, but also strategically how digital would impact a business. I love innovation. I love anyone that does creative book marketing. I've seen that a great conversation happened early stages on Twitter. A new author could speak to a librarian in a different part of the country and a bookseller could speak to a literary agent. It was also bit of an opportunity for authors to talk about their books — this never really was a massive driver for book sales, but it definitely did sell some books. Lots of authors then used Facebook to keep their author community in one place. But again, I wouldn't say this was a massive driver for book sales. Instagram, ditto — beautiful aesthetic images of books but the nature of how you have to put in links meant that you didn't necessarily sell. Then, TikTok came along — and we know that TikTok has been driving tons of book sales for a number of reasons. TikTok obviously has a shop and you can link out to your book sales to buy it from somewhere else. Also, booksellers have started to see people coming into their shops and saying, ‘I saw a fantastic fantasy book on TikTok, do you stock it?’ Even though on BookTok, every type of book is talked about, it seems to have lent itself to fantasy, romantasy, romance, and spicy books. No one who could have predicted that, but that is how it's trended. The way BookTokers talk about books seems to really connect with people because they do it in all different types of ways. It might be a book haul or talking about books that they really enjoyed in their childhood or that have certain themes or characters. There's a multitude of ways that people talk about books, which often reflects how people talk about books in the real world. And it seems to really resonate with the audience to the point where they act. So, I was thinking, we know that BookTokers are selling books, and that BookTokers are talking about our books all the time, but authors and publishers are not taking advantage or connecting with them. There's a massive missed opportunity here for all of us who are publishing 1,900 books and more a day. We need to find other ways to get these books into BookTokers' hands. That's what Meet The BookTokers is about — BookTokers sign up to the site and tell me all the different things about what genres they like, and then publishers and authors can post their books onto the site and say, this is what my book is about. Finally, what's your vision for the future of Meet The BookTokers? Is there anything that you'd like to share about what you'll be doing in the coming year? I guess I do have a big vision, but I am also very glad for it to just grow organically. When I was talking about the big BookTokers and the big publishers, and they already have established relationships — I'm not that interested in those people. What I am interested in is the huge number of BookTokers who might just be starting out and want to build relationships with authors and publishers. I'm much more interested in facilitating that relationship. If I can get a really steady flow of books going to BookTokers and Booktokers talking about them and then selling books, then everything about my site works. That's where I'd like to get to. I am still only three and a half weeks in, so I'm still at the very early stages, and I have 450 BookTokers who have signed up, which I'm thrilled with. I'm so delighted with that. Obviously, I would like significantly more to sign up, but I know that that's a slow process and I don't have the money. So it's all going to be growing organically. As long as I can feed myself and my daughter and keep a roof over our heads, that's my short-term goal. I'm feeling my way with it, and it only works if everybody moves forward happily and feels like they get value from the site. I'm also a great believer that some things are going to happen that I'm not anticipating. Featured image: nam mau / Pexels

On this week's episode, MediaCat's Head of Content and Partnerships Selin Ozkan and Content and Social Media Editor Svilena Keane take over the MediaCat Magazine Podcast to discuss Future of Media, Adwanted's annual conference looking into the future of commercial media. Selin and Svilena give an overview of the event, identify the trends from the talks and dig deeper into specific sessions.

In the latest MediaCat Magazine podcast our Editor Mike Piggott chats to the Global Head of Research & Insights at We Are Social, Paul Greenwood, about their latest report, Next Gen Influence — trends defining a new era of brand and creator collaboration. They discuss each section in detail, from 'relatable realism' to 'extreme influence'. They talk about cosiness, redemption arcs for creators, and creators moving through different stages of their lives, culture becoming flat and brands being weird and subversive to cut through. They also briefly touch on why Mike hasn't watched Geordie Shore (and why Paul thinks he's missing out). So listen out for that. This pod is forty minutes long, and filled with wisdom and insight from Paul. We hope you enjoy. More about the report A parent explaining the health benefits of ketamine. A Manhattanite it-girl, swapping ‘NYC’s best cocktail bars’ for Connecticut's best horse riding spots. A puppet show in which children’s dolls are sent to rehab for stealing a Marc Jacobs bag. One glance at the content made by today’s creators, and we see a culture in flux. Everything from tone, to topics, to production norms have changed in the decade since influence’s infancy. In the context of dramatic industry growth, creators and brands are having to keep pace with an increasingly professionalised landscape. But it’s not just the scale of the creator economy that’s changing — the wider tectonic plates of culture are shifting, and the values of creator culture along with it.   As the world’s leading socially-led creative agency, that’s been working with influencers since 2008, We Are Social has helped brands navigate the growth of the creator economy for the last 16 years — from its baby steps to its present existential teen-hood. To understand what’s coming next, it’s essential for brands and creators to have one eye trained on the next gen of influence. We’ve uncovered five trends illustrating what that next generation will look like.