Being asked for predictions on the forthcoming year is a challenge in any year.  This time it’s even worse.  Where do you start…?

Having a government performing more u-turns than a stunt car driver doesn’t make predicting the coming year easy in the slightest.  Added to this the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the energy crisis, the food supply chain into the UK, the rise in interest rates, countless industrial strikes and high inflation – all of the above are having an impact on the growing cost of living crisis, UK landscape, and similarly on the media landscape as well.

With many clients indicating a tightening of their collective belts, the first quarter of 2023 looks a sorry state with agencies predicting a range of -5 to -15 y/y revenue in the Broadcast market.  With linear TV impacts skewing increasingly older, agencies are looking at widening the AV landscape to include channels that will help halt this trend.  Increased consideration for Outdoor TV, connected TV and cinema may well continue.  The addition of SVOD channels such as Netflix to the BARB data will prove interesting to many searching for answers to the questions that linear TV now struggles to provide.

But what are the other key things to look out for from my perspective?

• Measurement continues to take a high priority within media and marketing as agencies, clients and media owners alike look to justify ROI and understand their audiences and customers more than ever before. We will be addressing this further in the new year to reflect how C-Screens can justify the aforementioned.
• Attention marketing seems to be a new “buzz” word (its new to me anyhow), as brands look to move away from just measuring effectiveness in impacts
• Content will become ever more important as media companies jockey for the crown jewels of programming. Where large volume event TV plays an increasingly important role. For 2023 we have the Women’s World Cup (June), the Kings Coronation (May 6^th) and the Rugby World Cup (October-November) to drive these numbers.
• TV Inflation should calm down, particularly in H1, mainly affected by the perceived drop in TV revenue rather than an increase in impacts. 16-34 impacts will continue to diminish
• Collaboration between agencies, media owners and data companies needs to improve in order to deliver on the marketing objectives of many a company.
• The talent crisis driven by some of the ridiculous staffing decisions made by companies during the COVID pandemic have led to a huge shortfall in upcoming talent, creating added pressure to wages as companies promote them for fear of staff resignations. These shortfalls are placing huge pressure on the remaining staff.
• Crystal Palace making it into Europe is more of a hope than a prediction, but a man can dream hey?

The one certainty I do have is that the coming year is going to be full of uncertainty.  At least I’ve got one of these predictions correct.

By Steve Chambers | Commercial Director