Top trends for 2012
James Grant, UK country manager at VINDICO, explains why he thinks 2012 will be the year of connected TV, technology and formats, and premium content…
When I’m out hitting the streets with my wares, I often get asked the same questions – what does VAST stand for? Isn’t ad-serving just a value-added commodity these days? What’s important in the wider market at the moment? Excellent, I can answer all of those.
The last one especially is a question asked a lot this time of year as the industry tries to predict the New Year trends.
Following last week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas – usually a good indication of what’s going to dominate the consumer agenda in the coming year – there seemed to be a real swing of opinion regarding how much innovation had actually been showcased.
The FT were positive in reporting that overall there were more than 20,000 new products launched at the show, but John Harlow in The Sunday Times was bemoaning the fact that the geeks had not managed to “rock our world” and there was a lack of game-changing products.
However split the opinion, one agreed upon outcome of the show seems to be that connected TVs (possibly including the much-talked about iTV from Apple) are going to be a big part of 2012 – and I couldn’t agree more. Here are the top trends I think will feature heavily in 2012:
Connected TV
Current figures suggest that approximately 10% of UK households have a connected TV (although, not all of them are set-up). I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that the UK might reach 20% within the next 12 months. I can see three drivers for this aggressive prediction.
1 – The Olympics. TV sales are clustered around big events and the Olympics is the biggest event the UK has had for years.We will see an uptake in new TV’s.
2 – Apple. It’s a not a rumour anymore, they are building a TV screen of some description and inevitably it will shake up the existing market… that’s what Apple do. It will also be desirable and whether they need a new TV or not, people will buy it.
3 – Price. New TV’s are not such an expensive outlay as they used to be. The cost of production is always coming down and the manufacturers are desperate to get share of the living room before Apple actually turn up. The global downturn has also led to a glut of stock that needs to be shifted.
This little cocktail will, I suspect lead to a lot of new web-enabled TV screens in lounges up and down the country… now we just need to plug them in.
Technology and Formats
Now, given who I work for this one may seem a little self-serving (pun intended), but I do think it’s set to feature heavily – 2012 is the year when we will see clients prepared to experiment with formats. There are a number of format options appearing with the publishers.
Channel 4 already sell format options, so do YouTube. I also expect ITV to put their format options out to market – and on the agency side Vivaki have been working with clients on their Pool project. The time has come to start exploring the creative options (and results) available with video. The re-purposed pre-roll is so last year.
Premium Content
YouTube have kicked this trend off early and I expect to see more publishers tying in premium content to their overall video offering. There is a reason the broadcasters have so many streams – they have great content that people want to watch.
The business models are likely to still be challenging, which is probably why YouTube is the first publisher outside of broadcasters to spend significant sums, but we can expect to see (and hear) a lot more about the great premium content we could watch online through various publishers.
So, whether you think CES was a showcase of the best gadgets, or a damp squib with nothing new to offer, what is clear is that on these shores and in this market it’s going to be a very busy year – but I don’t think any of us would want it any other way!