Unpacking 2016 media trends

With steady advances and innovation in media, marketers have countless opportunities to connect with consumers if they heed the trends that will influence the industry in the year ahead. There are four main trends shaping the media landscape this year, writes Marketing Week’s Mindi Chahal, including the shift from volume to value in social media and the rise of digital and video-on-demand services.

First up is the continued dominance of digital, which is fighting to win spend from television – TV remains at the top in terms of media adspend. “The advance of technology is sweeping all of us towards a media consumption future that nobody could have imagined even 10 years ago,” confirms Omnicom Media Group Africa CEO Josh Dovey.

“The rise of video-on-demand services like Netflix is starting to have a serious impact on viewing habits as the latest technology allows the consumer to decide exactly what and when they watch,” he says. Video-on-demand has gained popularity worldwide for enabling subscribers to pay for content that they want to consume, rather than paying for large packages of content that they will never watch.

Mobile remains a game changer and a particular trend for 2016 is the maturing of mobile strategies as brands work to better understand what consumers do on their mobile devices. Mobile strategy success, as with digital, says Chahal, lies in the right content and in future this will largely be image-based content as phones get bigger and bandwidth improves. Visual storytelling is therefore going to become a key trend.

However, warns The MediaShop’s group managing director, Chris Botha, bear in mind that digital in South Africa is still relatively small, and that social media and mobile make up only perhaps 2% of adspend. “In the digital world, things like an increase in ‘paid social’ over organic social will take front and centre this year, as well as the burgeoning of search agencies,” he predicts.

A further trend for the year ahead is ‘moment marketing’ by using live events to link online and offline activities – but, Chahal says, aligning the content and context is critical as meaningless content created for the sole purpose of shares, likes and follows will not resonate with consumers and will not deliver on brand objectives.

In social media, the focus is on value, meaning each channel must be used for the correct type of interaction, suiting the way consumers use that particular channel.

Overall, concludes Dovey, media agencies need to be at the forefront of these trends to find effective communication channels. “In summary, 2016 will be like 2015. Everything is changing.”

The big take-out: Relevant content reigns in media trends, whether digital, mobile or social, and marketers need to adapt their approaches to connect with consumers on each channel.