As we begin the new year, Media in Canada is reaching out to media leaders to take stock of the trends that will shape the year and the opportunities that media will offer advertisers. Today, we feature Dentsu CEO, Media Practice Christine Saunders. Check out New Year Predictions from Initiative’s Helen Galanis and Publicis’ Derek Bhopalsingh and return tomorrow for more.
What’s one thing you hope the industry plans to start doing, one thing it needs to stop, and one thing you hope it changes in 2025?
My hope is that advertisers continue to invest in impactful creative and experiences, which are key to helping media deliver value and engagement with consumers. These need to continue to be human-centric and focused on building brand connections while standing out in busy consumer feeds.
Stop creating tension between upper and lower funnel media tactics but rather look to full funnel planning. If marketing teams or even agency remits are separated, find ways to work more collaboratively and make sure that measurement frameworks and tools work to bring the data together to make informed decisions on where to spend advertising dollars.
One area of change that I hope happens in 2025 is for the industry to re-imagine the pitch process. The CMDC is taking the leadership on this to help foster a healthier, more sustainable pitch ecosystem.
What do you think was the most seismic change of 2024? What is your New Year’s resolution to adapt to that change in 2025?
I think one of the biggest changes we experienced in 2024 was that we went from talking about AI to really starting to use it to impact the entire media value chain, from dynamic scenario planning to predictive insights to real-time optimizations across channels. Making things happen in a practical and impactful way is why I continue to love media and what we do – we adapt, we change and beat best practices through constant experimentation, continuously improving without fear. We have a lot to do in 2025, but I am confident that media will continue to be a strategic driver of business growth in the new algorithm era that we are entering.
