Life in Programmatic Digital Out-of-Home
00:19:16 · Dan Larden, Jon Mundy
[00:19:16] S2: And they're a massive part of it. But I do think what you're saying is also true in that there is I think there is a premium retail media ecosystem which is sort of developing in its own right and very interesting for big brands and for big supermarkets and for people like yourself who have really great quality infrastructure on performance. And then there's this other world, is developing, which is fast direct to consumer shopping, which is also retail media, like it or not. And I think that's really interesting because I think Unilever, they've just lost 30% of their workforce. And I'm not saying that it's directly related to the fact that you've got lots of these different B2C challenges coming up who are now selling similar products to them, but it's not hard to say that it's a little bit linked. So I do think you've got this very interesting. In the next ten years and probably beyond, gonna have the brands are gonna have to really figure out, okay, how do I make use of this incredible brand? And how can I make use of this the out of home piece and the traditional broadcast bit, but make it more sophisticated and retail and data driven? Because you know that the person that's doing the DTC challenger, who's just set up their TikTok shop in half an hour, they're not gonna be a buying out home. That's what I think is a very interesting conversation. And you'll definitely be part of that conversation, I imagine, a lot because it's it's a premium retail media ecosystem, which definitely has out of home versus this [00:20:49] S1: But it's fascinating.
00:20:49 · Jon Mundy, Dan Larden
[00:20:49] S1: But it's fascinating. [00:20:50] S2: This challenger piece on the digital side.
00:20:51 · Jon Mundy
[00:20:51] S1: But it's fascinating. You you talk about you talk about that, you know, you look at... I was just walking past one of our screens earlier, as you do all the time. But... And there was there was a bloody great ad for Shein, the the the Chinese online retailer that has grown... The fashion retailer that's grown out of nowhere, it seems, in the last couple of years. And they're spending very big money with us right now, advertising in the run up to Black Friday and talking about that. And, you know, the the the the retail... The fascinating thing about retail is that it is constantly evolving, that there is the ability for anyone to pop up and start selling something to go into Shopify or Amazon Marketplace and start selling. And the logistics are there and managed and everything can be done. And equally, you know, there's there's there's there's huge evolution in the way the supermarkets are working. And, you know, the way that, you know, the department stores have sort of somehow changed. You know, John Lewis is still running, but you've seen the sort of demise of Debenhams and HMV and other stuff in the last few years. It's it's just a very interesting space as it changes. And I think what we're seeing as a as a media owner is is, you know, we're we're on the back of a huge year. We've seen massive growth in revenue. The iPhone is probably stronger now than it has ever been. Our malls are doing brilliantly. We're seeing massive traffic in those foot traffic in places like Westfield and Bluewater is through the roof. And those sites are, you know, where we're seeing, you know, retailers where we're seeing and where we've got some the most successful large format and small format out of home placements we've got in the country. So it's it's really interesting. It is a it is a very, very fluid ecosystem. I think it's probably almost as exciting as programmatic digital out of home, but I can't say that because I'm contractually obliged to say that programmatic digital out of is the single most exciting media format in the world. But aside from that, it's quite cool.
00:22:56 · Dan Larden, Jon Mundy
[00:22:56] S2: I'm lucky in that my job that I get to work on both. So, you know, I can I can say that both are equally exciting? Okay. [00:23:02] S1: Listen, Dan. It's been really good. We could talk all day, but we probably shouldn't. Probably should follow this up in the pub. But I think it would be good to sort of... To to to wrap this up with bit of a sort of viewpoint on... And we talk about everything evolving, all that sort of thing and different changes and that sort thing. But are there... Be good to get your take on any particular trends you're seeing right now amongst brands you're working with that you represent and what you think are the really exciting areas for the next twelve months?
00:23:36 · Dan Larden
[00:23:36] S2: I'll spuriously say the thing that we're probably gonna be working on next year and tie it back to retail media in some way. But I think the the most exciting thing we'll work on at the moment, and I think, again, we are completely governed by the brand's priorities. So I think we did a survey. There's definitely gonna be a bigger emphasis on bringing media and creative back together. And there are lots of different reasons for that. I think efficiency being one. And because of this world that we're in where costs are having to come down and teams are having to shrink. But actually, I think there is also a premise within digital that the creative and the media process is too far away from each other, which is leading to very poor consumer interactions with brands and poor consumer experience, really. So I'm quite excited for that as something that will probably underpin quite a lot of what we do next year. I think the brands I think we surveyed 150 of our brands or something, and I think 80% of them said that bringing media and creative back together was a high priority. I think bringing that back to retail media, again, I'll sort of circle it back to my original point really. Think this is exciting and it's booming because of this ability for brands to reorganise themselves. And I think they're going to reorganise themselves by channel and at a little bit of a higher level. And I think that incorporating media and creative into that is going be very exciting as well. So I think more to come on that from us.
00:25:12 · Jon Mundy, Dan Larden
[00:25:12] S1: I think that's that's that's absolutely right. And I actually think that for us, a big focus at the moment is on creative as part of the media buy. And I think it's something, you know, we had the recent few state of the nation survey survey annual report released a few weeks ago. And I think one of the things that came out of that was shocking was that everyone talks about dynamic creative and that sort of thing. But very few people actually do it. And people aren't really thinking people aren't really thinking about creative as much as they need to when they're buying media. And it's something we focus on. It's one of our sort of five pillars of the business is the importance of creativity. We have a huge amount of research and data on it, And it does tie back to retail because good creative drives retail, drives sales, drives engagement and whether it's whatever platform it is, but particularly on out of home. So, yeah, media and creative need to be very tightly put together. So, well, I think that probably wraps us up for the day, but thanks so much for coming in. It's been a delight. We'll have to think of a subject for a third one. [00:26:22] S2: Maybe that could be the media that media creativity and data. Maybe