WHAT DIRECTION WILL THE MEDIA IN THE REGION TAKE AND WHAT GLOBAL TRENDS CAN WE EXPECT IN OUR MARKETS?
The region has never been closer to the world when it comes to media trends. Big changes are happening almost daily in the global media world, but they are happening here too, in proportion to the size of our markets. The whole world is talking about personalization, which is successfully applied in the region thanks to the skilful use of artificial intelligence and machine learning. The content has been consumed non-traditionally for the last few years, primarily thanks to the contribution of streaming services that revolutionized this medium. IP signal and 5G network will enable even more flexible consumption of media content, the struggle for original content continues, there will be a lot of investment in production, in addition to personalized messages and data-driven insights that put the user experience on a pedestal. It will be interesting to observe the media scene in the coming years. When it comes to advertising, it achieved steady growth of 5.5% both in the world and in the region last year, and we expect the trend of increasing media investments to continue.
TO WHAT EXTENT ARE THE BOUNDARIES BETWEEN TRADITIONAL AND ONLINE MEDIA BEING REMOVED TODAY, AND ARE THE MEDIA GOING IN THE DIRECTION OF DATA-DRIVEN COMMUNICATION AND INNOVATION?
The world is unstoppably moving in the direction of dataism. Even the communications industry, as one of the links in the ecosystem of continuous data generation, is trying to cope with the vast amounts of that very data. It is the biggest global challenge of the 21st century. I think as a system, we started to understand the importance of data-driven communication on time. It is already helping us to better understand the consumer, and I hope that our insights and expertise will pave the way for the transformation and modernization of the media themselves in terms of better use of data. Last year, we established the Data Science department and together with other sectors of United Group, we are working on many data-based media and communication platforms. The future of the media is in an ever-expanding offer, but also a greater personalization of content, as well as personalization of advertisements that will be marketed to users, regardless on the platform they are on. That future is really not that far away at all. We expect it to come to life in our region very soon as a long-awaited innovation, in the true sense of the word.
AT WHAT POINT CAN WE EXPECT THE ONLINE MEDIA TO “CONQUER” THE BUDGETS OF CLIENTS IN THE REGION? WHAT IS THE CONDITION FOR THIS TO HAPPEN?
It is interesting to look at data across European countries – in England, investments in digital are close to 60%, in Russia 53%, while in Sweden advertisers only spend 17% of their budget on television as opposed to digital, which makes up 62% of the media total. As much as we as professionals want to see the global trend apply in the local market, it is evident that we are TV-centric markets and as long as consumers determine their dominant channel, advertisers adapt to them. We can be pleased with the double-digit growth in digital advertising compared to last year. Mobile advertising grew by about 45%, online video by 53%, and social media advertising by 42%, which are encouraging figures overall. However, regional markets are still TV-centric and will remain so for a few more years. It is important to say that the media mix is always adapted to the consumption of media by the target group, and as long as the consumption of TV content is at such a level, we cannot expect TV as a media to relinquish the leadership position it holds. Digital dominance in the region is still years away.
ONE MEDIA TREND WE CAN EXPECT IN 2020.
Increasing media personalization and data-based communication.