The Media Leader Podcast

Next month, Global CEO Stephen Miron will officially step back from his role after 16 years at the helm of one of Britain's largest media enterprises. When Miron joined Global as CEO in 2008, it was a £200m business with only one national radio brand. In March, he’ll leave an almost £1bn business, with numerous national radio brands, a digital ad exchange, dedicated listening app and substantial O...

Are audience-targeting practices too simple in an era of big data? Advertisers and their agencies tend to use demographics to target people across media channels, but perhaps that model is outdated. Natalie Bell is CEO of MG OMD. The Omnicom media agency is coming out with new research on how community-based targeting might be a new model worth considering and she joined host Jack Benjamin to prev...

At a Thinkbox event in September, ITV, Sky and Channel 4 announced Lantern, a new measurement panel aimed at tracking the short-term impact of TV advertising on sales. The goal for the initiative, which is aiming to fully launch in 2026 following a period of testing and requests for proposals, is to help provide TV with “the measurement it deserves” in an era when brands have increasingly demanded...

On 7 January, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced changes to its platforms’ content moderation policies that, he admitted, will mean the company is “going to catch less bad stuff” across Facebook, Instagram and Threads. Among the raft of changes, Meta announced it was halting its third-party fact-checking programme in the US and replacing it with a Community Notes feature. It also updated its hatef...

In November, a report from global advisory MediaSense found that an overwhelming majority of advertisers — three-quarters — are looking to make changes to their agency compensation model in the next three years. A similar number of survey respondents indicated that they are seeking to better align agency compensation to business performance, however it may be defined by the brand. According to Rya...

The new year always brings with it the inclination to not just future-gaze, but to consider how to future-proof. One media agency that has always billed itself as a future-forward organisation is Omnicom’s Hearts & Science and UK CEO Garrett O'Reilly joined Jack Benjamin to discuss the shop's growth strategy. O'Reilly discussed the challenges in scaling the business while remaining future-forw...

What’s really behind that view? Are all views created equal? What truly keeps our attention? Are consumer habits really changing that much? As marketers increasingly shift towards outcomes-based assessments of their ad effectiveness, behavioural research is likely to become more relevant to understanding how video ads can cut through to audiences in what has become a highly competitive environment...

On the surface, the global ad industry appears to be in rude health. GroupM upwardly revised its This Year Next Year global ad revenue forecast for 2024 and expects it to surpass $1tn for the first time – and that’s excluding US political advertising, which itself totalled $15.1bn. In the UK, despite uncertainty regarding the country's political and economic future, the ad market grew 8.3%, with f...

2024 is winding down and for their last weekly news podcast of the year, host Jack Benjamin and editor-in-chief Omar Oakes sat down to look back on the past year in media and advertising. It was a year in which digital giants continued to grow, retail media surged, OOH prospered and TV streaming services became largely profitable. It was also a year that saw Big Tech facing renewed antitrust effor...

Serial agency founder and digital media pioneer Pete Robins talks to editor-in-chief Omar Oakes about why he believes there's never been a better time to plan media. Robins is set to launch his fifth media agency,  Project5 – named after his belief that the industry has entered "the fifth age of media". Four-fifths of all media is delivered by a form of technology shaped by some sort of data,...

Sarah Prentice, head of media strategy and planning at Heineken UK, Rachel Coffey, chief strategy officer at Initiative UK, and Peter Rowe, head of media at NatWest Group, answer audience questions on planning. During the discussion, the trio debate what truly drives consideration, the role of AI in strategic thinking, how diversity, equity and inclusion informs their work in a practical sense and...

Are managers well-equipped to wear all the different hats we ask of them in today’s workplace? It’s a question worth considering in an era when, according to Nabs’ All Ears study, managers are increasingly being hired younger, report being undertrained and have become more responsible for the mental health of their team. Sue Todd is the CEO of Nabs, the media and advertising industry charity focus...

Radio production has changed a lot since Ken Bruce began presenting in 1977. And yet, when it comes to the basics of good radio – a close, one-to-one relationship with the audience – things haven't changed much at all. “For years, people have been saying to me, ‘Radio’s dead, dying. It’s finished,'" said Bruce. "Even in the 70s, they were saying that to me. And I thought, well, no – I don’t believ...

Patrick 'Paddy' Affleck aims to 'walk the walk when it comes to inclusion and courage in particular, his personal story is quite different from your average media agency CEO. That why he known as someone who likes to challenge conventional ways of thinking about this business. Affleck speaks to Omar Oakes about his personal journey from growing up on a commune in Devon and how it has shaped his at...

The newly promoted Jack Benjamin and outgoing editor-in-chief Omar Oakes discuss a flurry of updates about streaming service user numbers and how their "premium versus ad" strategies are evolving. They also discuss MediaSense’s latest acquisition, Spotify’s latest earnings, a Newsworks study on youth news consumption habits and more.  Highlights: 01:00: Takeaways from Barb's Establishment Sur...

Origin, the world-first cross-media measurement platform led by Isba, went live in September through the launch of beta trials with 35 major UK advertisers. While advertisers in the beta trials have signalled their excitement, Origin has been received with a more tepid response by some stakeholders, particularly in TV broadcasting and at some agencies, over its inclusion of non-Media Rating Counci...

Jack Benjamin and Omar Oakes unpick the media coverage and what's in store for the industry with another Donald Trump US presidency. They also discuss announcements from Origin and Barb, Sky’s big ad revenue miscalculation, GB News getting fined £100K by Ofcom and more. Highlights: 01:00: Hot takes about hot takes about Trump 12:30: Why Isba's Origin is starting to produce its own research 14:30:...

This year, most major digital players including Meta, TikTok, Google and Pinterest have developed AI tools to help marketers get more out of their campaigns with less effort. Such tools, which often target the long tail of advertisers at small and medium-sized businesses, have helped boost ad revenues in the third quarter at many major social media companies. One of the most interesting companies...

A conversation about the future of TV advertising featuring executives from Sky Media, Direct Line Group, Channel 4 and Samba TV. At our recent Future of Media Manchester event, this panel stood out for revealing key insights about how advertisers and broadcasters have made significant changes over recent years to make the most of digital tools and measurement. Moderated by The Zoo. London co-foun...

It's earnings season and the publicly listed agency groups have been more expansive about their "proprietary media" or "principal-based media" products. Jack Benjamin and Omar Oakes discuss why this is important to these companies' growth and what it means for advertisers that may or may not wish for their media to be bought this way. They also discuss Netflix's earnings and its future as an ad se...

On a panel at The Future of Media Manchester a few weeks ago, members from Stagwell agencies HarrisX and Goodstuff took the stage to unpack new research which found that advertising adjacent to quality news is brand safe — even against "hard news" subjects like war and politics. The research undermined common concerns that advertisers express about not wanting their ads to be placed next to hard n...

Reporter Jack Benjamin and editor-in-chief Omar Oakes unpack key themes from last week's Future of Media London 2024 event. The duo review some of the biggest sessions from the two-day conference, including takeaways from interviews with DMG Media vice-chairman Rich Caccappolo, LBC presenter James O'Brien, and Global CEO Stephen Miron. Oakes also describes the inspiring manifestos presented by mem...

Last month, ITV launched two ads that were created primarily with the use of generative AI. Made for new-to-TV small businesses Travel House and Sheepbridge Interiors, the spots feature AI-generated imagery and were created by augmenting ITV Commercial’s normal creative process by using licensed generative-AI image and video tools alongside ITV’s in-house voiceover artists. The result received a l...

Omar Oakes and Jack Benjamin review the big stories in UK media and advertising this week, including Amazon's UK upfronts, in which it revealed new ad formats for Prime Video, and Pinterest, whose lead marketer had some strong words to say about the digital media "duopoly". Omar is also joined by Wacl's president Karen Stacey and vice-president Claire Sadler to talk about why the female leaders' n...

Jack Benjamin and Omar Oakes report highlights from The Media Leader 's first outing in Manchester!  The Future of Media Manchester attracted around 600 people on 26 September and included ITV and Coronation Street 's "big sell", Manchester City FC's fledgling operation as an in-house production company and advertising consultancy and, of course, a special Manchester edition of "Who Wants to...