This first appeared in the AdNews 2019 Annual edition. Subscribe here for your copy.
One certainty looms large when considering 2020 and the new decade: while life and business will go on, it’s unlikely that next year, as with every year in the media, will be one as usual.
One prediction I’ll venture upfront: expect a strong, uniquely Australian flavour.
From a big-picture perspective it’s likely the past decade of media growth will taper, setting 2020 up as a year for agencies, clients and media companies to reset their models and priorities.
This may spark consolidation.
Content leaders will be big winners, as will those who’ve used the growth years to build brand portfolios and develop a range of partnerships.
That’s because our business is, in the end, a people business. Effective relationships in our game are as fundamental as they’ve ever been.
At a more micro level, market share will be the key metric.
And the dynamic closely associated with both market share and content is trust.
In a febrile world, trusted brands with reputations for looking after customers and clients can only get stronger. Trust is a competitive advantage.
And despite, or perhaps because, of our increasingly global world the focus is more and more on what’s happening locally, in our backyards.
Local, trusted content will increasingly be a key differentiator for Australian media.
This means regional media can expect some time in the sun, with advertisers overdue to reconsider its offers. As the Boomtown initiative makes clear, some 36% of us live in regional Australia, yet it accounts for barely 10% of advertising budgets. Something has to give.
It’s no coincidence News Corp Australia’s highest-growth digital mastheads are in regional areas, and we’ve recently unveiled seven digital-only mastheads in local markets where we’ve never had a previous presence. More will follow.
One factor above all will shape the year ahead and the long-term future: the federal government’s response to the ACCC Digital Platforms report.
The report gives cause for optimism that the era of digital platforms freeloading on others’ intellectual property is ending, part of a fundamental shift underway internationally.
The public interest case that the aptly named FAANG stocks be torn of their bite remains overwhelming, having damaged Australian media and our ability to serve our communities with reliable information.
The time for these disruptors to be disrupted is upon us.
Anything less than a ban on digital platforms using a publisher’s content without at least the major news publishers also agreeing on a fair price is profoundly insufficient.
If such a response kicks the year off, then 2020 may be neatly bookended by the opportunities emerging from the prohibitively expensive Australian delivery market for local retailers to also turn the tables on big tech.
Once factored in, the attractive price points presented by online shopping fade fast to false promises, allowing room for local retailers to bite back.
This development would be positive for media, nicely rounding 2020 off as the year when strong Australian traits were reaffirmed in key parts of our cultural and business lives.
Bring on the twenty-twenties.
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