On the eve of The Future of Media London, the ‘present’ of media is a mess of fake video, AI slop and endless content. Can we build a future where trust is not only measured, but traded?
Omar Oakes
Omar Oakes is a senior journalist, editor, columnist and event moderator with over a decade of expertise in the advertising and media industry. He was founding editor of The Media Leader, led its launch and US expansion, and built it into a leading industry publication. His TML column was nominated for the prestigious BSME B2B Columnist of the Year 2024 award. He is now a freelance writer and commentator and founder of oomph., a marketing consultancy for advertising and media businesses.
LATEST ARTICLES
The UK advertising industry continues to measure the wrong market. It’s time to stop ignoring the long tail and start helping it thrive.
Perverse agency-client incentives write media plans; evidence only gets to annotate, says Omar Oakes.
One side of the Atlantic is hollowing out what makes its media culture special; the other is fighting to preserve it.
Advertisers should be dismayed. Instead, Google’s victory in court proves how deeply our industry has normalised monopoly.
Social platforms promised reach. What they delivered was dependence, collapse and lost audiences. Media owners, advertisers and agencies now face the same trap with AI.
What does it say about confidence in our industry that we still have to give marketers guidance about how to run fair pitch processes?
TV has earned trust because its numbers are verified, scrutinised and benchmarked. Social media? Not so much. Google needs to decide where YouTube stands.
WPP’s new CEO has an extraordinary CV. But Rose’s appointment signals a deeper crisis in advertising: the people running it no longer believe it’s a creative business.
We ban smartphones from our kids, but design media plans that depend on them. If mobile screen time has now overtaken TV, isn’t it finally time to do something about this contradiction?