New, new, digital media trends for 2012

Dominic Finney, director at digital consultancy FaR, says newer trends show how innovation in digital and convergence in media are changing the way media will be planned, bought and measured in the future…

At the beginning of the year FaR gathered some feedback on what would be the key trends for 2012. As you would expect ad exchanges and data were seen as consistent priorities across the market place. With the focus being to continue the scaling up of trading on ad exchanges and the further development of data – as this has come to be seen as a core driver of value in this market on both the buy and the sell side.

But what was more interesting were the new, new trends that the market predicted would emerge in 2012. And the two that seem to have had relatively limited market coverage so far, given there potential impact on the market, were the impact of new trading models on the wider media market and the growing demand, especially within agencies, to properly understand paid, owned and earned media.

With regards to evolution in trading models this is being driven by new trading models in the digital market place (in the first instance). With the most notable example being the rapid growth of the cost per engagement model, which has emerged predominantly in the video and social marketplaces, where a sizeable number of media owners are selling their inventory on a cost per engagement / view model.

On one level this is fueling the demand for a wider set of media owners to provide this type of trading model, as clients find the model an effective currency for trading against, especially in terms of brand engagement as the user typically self selects the branded content for viewing.

This trading model looks to be one of a number of new trading models that are addressing demands in the market, such as the rise of biddable display media and data trading, which show that new models and ways of trading inventory types are emerging across the whole of the digital landscape. The impact of these new trading models, beyond addressing a specific market need, will be to challenge the dominance of more traditional trading models and fuel the demand for greater choice.

However, the more long-term and more fundamental impact could well be, in the words one of one industry insider, how these “will change the trading model of the UK’s most powerful and used media channel”.

At the moment it has to be said that from a broader structural and media perspective, we are quite a way away from feeling the immediate impact of this development. However, the pace of convergence between media certainly means that this trend is only going to get stronger and that each of the respective mediums’ trading models will be influenced and compete with the other trading models. This is why the market is already seeing a number of traditional media operators review both their trading and audience counting methodologies in preparation for a more converged trading marketplace.

The emerging trend of wanting to understand paid, owned and earned media isn’t completely unrelated to the emergence of new trading models. In many ways the CPE trading model was developed as an effective way to demonstrate the value of advertising within social media environments. And it is this same demand to demonstrate the value of earned media that is a key factor in the drive to understand paid, owned and earned media.

The market clearly sees the potential value of earned media but is yet to be convinced that the value has effectively been demonstrated in terms of understanding how audiences engage; what the true value of that engagement is; and through establishing industry recognised reporting metrics and audience planning tools.

This is why you are seeing and will continue to see, on both the buy and the sell side, an increasing focus on demonstrating and proving the value of earned media and how it works in relation to owned and paid media. This will see the establishment of further industry metrics and more sophisticated audience planning and campaign reporting tools, which enable the market to fully understand and measure activity that runs across paid, owned and earned media.

What these newer trends show is how innovation in digital and convergence in media are changing the way media will be planned, bought and measured in the future. And as such it has never been more important that the market has the optimum tools, metrics and standards in place in order to ensure we respond to these emerging trends in a way that is positive for the growth of the whole industry.

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