Podcast reach and share continue to grow, albeit slowly, aided by need-state differentiation and increasingly online, on-demand media habits.

The ad market remains small with the long tail of podcasts difficult to monetise, but an industry move into video—on both YouTube and Spotify—offers substantial reach and monetisation opportunities.

Publishers and broadcasters see podcasts as an essential brand extension enabling greater reach, whilst successful podcast networks have tapped into more relaxed, commercial formats.

From the depths of 2023, advertising expenditure on legacy media rose moderately in 2024, on the back of an uptick in real private consumer expenditure thanks to lower inflation and reduced costs of credit—the outlook for legacy media is about the same for 2025.

Online stands apart from legacy media due to the growth of ecommerce—driven by both goods (over 26% of retail sales) and services such as travel, as well as intense competition among platforms (Amazon, Shein, Temu)—with double-digit growth in 2024 set to continue in 2025.

Television remains the most effective medium for brand advertisers—despite the decline in viewing—with broadcasters’ digital innovation and SVOD ad tiers providing greater targeting alongside the mass broadcast reach.

Broadcasters have made considerable progress in becoming platform agnostic over the past three years, delivering innovative ad propositions offering greater targeting, flexibility and measurement. 

They would welcome the opportunity to work with advertisers to explain the complexity involved in delivering linear and digital campaigns. 

Broadcasters believe that although TV advertising is transitioning to digital, legacy share deals and reliance on pricing relative to ITV1’s station average price (SAP) continue to hold the market back. Potential amendments to CRR may allow for a smoother digital transition, benefitting the entire ecosystem.

The Creative Industries (CI) are part of the UK’s emerging Industrial Strategy to power up output growth instead of relying mainly on consumer spend. Film & TV production is a prime example of a longstanding and successful industrial strategy that could be widely emulated.

Media’s contribution to economic growth is mainly in the form of a broad regional spread of skilled jobs created by a mixed ecosystem of commercial and not-for-profit entities, such as the BBC PSB Group and Channel 4, alongside 25,000 charities devoted to culture and recreation.

Media adds more than economic value to the UK by uniquely creating (unmeasurable) societal values through cultural products and services, anchoring a common language and identity at home, and conveying a vibrant and inspiring Britain to the world.
 

On 4 June 2024, Enders Analysis co-hosted the annual Media and Telecoms 2024 & Beyond Conference with Deloitte, sponsored by Barclays, Salesforce, the Financial Times, and Adobe. 

With over 580 attendees and over 40 speakers from the TMT sector, including leading executives and industry experts, the conference focused on how new technologies, regulation and infrastructure will impact the future of the industry. 

This is the edited transcript of Session Four, covering: artificial intelligence, the new phase of online advertising, and closing remarks. Videos of the presentations are available on the conference website.

As viewing moves online, broadcasters’ on-demand players make up a growing proportion of viewing, becoming central to their future strategies.

However, even though SVOD viewing might have begun to plateau, BVOD growth cannot yet balance the decline of linear broadcast.

Of this shrinking pie, 2023 saw most of the major broadcast players increase their viewing shares.

Meta's China risk is overstated: the spend from Chinese advertisers is diverse and resilient to everything short of a full-blown trade war. 

Apple (and Tesla) are in the more precarious position of selling directly in-market, and face sharpening domestic competition.

Amazon's exit from selling in China still leaves it exposed: its marketplace strategy is built on Chinese sellers, whose potential routes to market are proliferating with local platforms going global.  

The UK’s ‘zombie’ economy—largely flat since March 2022—is due to the cost-of-living crisis weighing on households, with this exacerbated in 2023 by the rising cost of credit. Real private expenditure growth will be weakly positive in 2024 before strengthening in 2025 as headwinds recede

Our 2023 forecast of a nominal rise but real decline in display advertising was realised, with TV’s revenues falling while digital display rose. Advertiser spend online is justified by the channel’s size and growth, worth an estimated £406 billion in 2023

For 2024, much lower inflation and mildly positive real private expenditure growth points to 3-4% display advertising growth, with a stronger recovery anticipated in 2025

A new era is starting for the big consumer tech companies, as they venture outside of their traditional comfort zones to bet on future growth—most obviously in AI, and then cloud, gaming, headsets and video.

Competition in the tech space is intensifying as incumbents go head-to-head in new revenue growth areas also populated by insurgent startups—their M&A watched closely by competition regulators.

Fat profit margins have ensured vast financial resources are available to pour into competition, but hitting the right targets for consumer engagement is key to success.

On 18 May 2023, Enders Analysis co-hosted the annual Media and Telecoms 2023 & Beyond Conference with Deloitte, sponsored by Barclays, Financial Times, and Salesforce.

With over 550 attendees and over 40 speakers from the TMT sector, including leading executives, policy leaders, and industry experts, the conference focused on how new technologies, regulation and infrastructure will impact the future of the industry.

This is the edited transcript of Session Three, covering: public service broadcasting and its path to a digital future. Videos of the presentations will be available on the conference website.