Watch: Media agency clients nervous about being ‘behind the curve’, says Wavemaker UK CEO
The Year Ahead 2024
“Clients will keep knocking our doors down about ‘Why are we still on telly? Can’t we be on more of TikTok?'”
The year ahead, according to Wavemaker UK CEO Kelly Parker, is going to feature more “noisy” conversation around AI and clients worried about being left behind amid advances in tech and measurement.
Speaking to The Media Leader at The Year Ahead 2024, Parker said: “I think a number of our senior clients are nervous that they might be behind the curve, particularly those in categories like consumer packaged goods, where TV plays a huge role and always has done.
“[TV] is effective and is brilliant, [but] budgets aren’t increasing; budgets are staying the same or declining.”
Asked about what will happen in the market this year for media accounts, Parker predicts a higher volume of large advertisers putting business up for review. Earlier this month, Unilever announced a review of its global media (handled by Wavemaker’s sister WPP agency, Mindshare).
“Last year was relatively quiet in terms of big UK ‘whoppers’,” Parker said. “We might see three or four big, hotly contested whoppers in the UK go up and then there will always be the medium- to small-sized ones ticking along.
“Last year was very driven by global and Europe — for us, anyway. I think we’ll see a bit more UK action this year.”
The Year Ahead, hosted by The Media Leader and Adwanted Events, is an annual get-together for UK media and advertising’s most influential people.
Adwanted UK is the trusted delivery partner for three essential services which deliver accountability, standardisation, and audience data for the out-of-home industry.
Playout is Outsmart’s new system to centralise and standardise playout reporting data across all outdoor media owners in the UK. SPACE is the industry’s comprehensive inventory database delivered through a collaboration between IPAO and Outsmart.
The RouteAPI is a SaaS solution which delivers the ooh industry’s audience data quickly and simply into clients’ systems.
Contact us for more information on SPACE, J-ET, Audiotrack or our data engines.
Media Jobs
Hello. We have downloaded cookies on your device. Some of these cookies are essential for the website to function. Others are non-essential and are used for analytics and advertising.
We need your consent for these types of cookies.
To withdraw your consent or change your cookie choices, please do this through your browser settings.
Otherwise, click OK to accept and continue.AcceptPrivacy policy