BIA analysts analyze upcoming trends that will greatly impact the local advertising industry in 2024. They discuss a range of topics including local political advertising, the growing influence of AI, the emergence of retail media networks, the rise of social platforms like TikTok, the influence of consumer behavior on media, and the popularity of short-form videos. In this fast-paced roundtable discussion, the team covers key subjects related to business categories and media trends.
BIA analysts analyze upcoming trends that will greatly impact the local advertising industry in 2024. They discuss a range of topics including local political advertising, the growing influence of AI, the emergence of retail media networks, the rise of social platforms like TikTok, the influence of consumer behavior on media, and the popularity of short-form videos. In this fast-paced roundtable discussion, the team covers key subjects related to business categories and media trends.
Welcome to BIA's Leading Local Insights podcast. My name is Rick Ducey, managing director at BIA, and I'm very pleased to host this podcast with my colleagues as we look forward to 2024, and we make a stab at identifying the important trends and topics to watch in 2024. We all believe it's going to be an exciting year less impacted by the pandemic than any year in recent memory, we hope, fingers crossed and a year that will definitely drive more changes quickly in regards to the usual litany of digital audience targeting and much more that we'll get into in this session today. But first let me introduce my colleagues so you have a sense who will be online for you. Nicole Ovadia is our vice president of forecasting, Celine Matthiessen is our vice president of insights and analysis, Mark Dugan, director of data insights and client relations, Leyla Chatti, senior media analyst, and Suzanne Ackley, our senior research analyst. You probably know many of these people and you have a chance to hear from them and what they're looking at for 2024. To kick this off, before we jump to 2024, just a few words about this year. I was asked by a client recently to sum up 2023 in a few words. By the way, we're going to do this as fast, not a lot of in-depth talking. You're just going to identify an idea, say a couple of words about it and move on. In that way, you know things. What was interesting about 2023, we're still in 2023 as we close it out. Well, things like the digital media scorecard for businesses, and digital evolved from growth metrics to EBITDA. Digital companies are being called upon to actually show a profit margin, so that changes the way competition works with traditional media, which has been accountable to margins, not just growth metrics, so there's some leveling of the playing field there. Sort of interesting audience targeting continues as we have more and more data to add to the mix in planning and activating and evaluating media spending and allocations across platform the audiences are distributing themselves across different video platforms and advertisers want to find them wherever they are.
Rick Ducey:So that means finding them, measuring them and finding out what happens with my ad campaign. So that gets into attribution, which changes the expectations for media in terms of used to be performance media and per-inquiry ads on TV. Well, now we've seen that retail media networks the Kroger, the Walmarts and so on with their websites and their mobile apps and other presences that they have in store for digital displays. They create a lot of content that a lot of people traditionally have searched and now they're viewing a lot of display ads and video. So retail media outlets decided, hey, we can become media and we sell ads too. So that's been a fast-growing part of the extended media landscape.
Rick Ducey:As we go to paid media, publisher-driven to retail media, which is retailer-driven. Then, of course, we always focus on locally-target advertising. That becomes more relevant than ever, even for brands that have been putting a lot into national campaign activations. Local has the ROI, so they're going back into local and saying, geez, we've got to figure this out. We have more data and more options to activate media locally to target our audiences. Let's see what we can do. So that quick backdrop of 2023, let's have a bit of fun and take a look about what's going to happen next year. Like I said, I'll run this as a round table, so you're going to get to hear from everybody. Let's start with Nicole. How about political?
Nicole Ovadia:Wait there's an election next year, are you saying-.
Rick Ducey:Oh my God, wait, wait. One of the spider webs, please.
Nicole Ovadia:I think I need to redo all my forecasts. Uh-oh, no, just kidding, of course. So, yeah, I mean that was a great recap of 23. I'm so excited to be here having this conversation with all my colleagues. This is what we do all day, so I love that we kind of have the mic hot right now so you guys can hear us talking like we do. And, of course, every conversation we have about 2024 starts and ends with political, because it has to. So at a very high level, yeah, because we just want to keep this you know, just some major topics, but at a high level.
Nicole Ovadia:For 2024, we're expecting political to be up 14% compared to 2020, which is the last presidential cycle. So that means it'll be about 11 billion dollars compared to 9.6 in 2020. So the trends within that are what's really keeping me excited about 2024. So, more specifically, yes, we all know there's a presidential election coming and it seems more and more likely that it's going to be Trump versus Biden. Of course, I think the one caveat I have in my forecasting is that if Biden doesn't get out on the road as much and he does a lot more of his campaigning, from the White House we'll see a lot more political advertising, especially from the Democrats, because they're going to have to buy the ads, you know, for the places that he couldn't physically or didn't or wasn't able to get to on his own.
Nicole Ovadia:So that's one trend is just keep an eye on what's going on for Biden, for political, and then the other trend which absolutely, Rick, I need to talk to you about is AI. So what I'm keeping an eye this is the first presidential election that we're having a conversation that includes AI, even though we've been talking about AI for a good year or two, so it's really interesting. So I'm wondering if content creation in terms of political advertising how is that? How is AI going to affect the content of the ads? But, even more than that, I'm expecting AI to really play in this cycle in terms of optimization and buying, buying better marketing, optimizing, especially those smaller elections, you know, whether they're more local or state elections. I really think that there's an opportunity here for AI to be included in this conversation for the first time. And, Rick, do you have thoughts on? I mean, you've been tracking AI since, like the Commodore 64 era, so what are your thoughts on AI and how it's going to be used in political this year?
Rick Ducey:You know, Nicole, you covered the high points. I'll just add a couple of thoughts here. You know AI has been around for eons, even pre computer, by some measures of history and computing. But it sort of kind of reminds me why do we have AI? And there's different kinds of AI. There's general AI, which is machines that can think like people and you can't tell a difference, the so called touring test, which machines arguably have passed. And then there's generative AI, which is what you're talking about, Nicole, which is okay, you can be smart, I can chat with you and you can answer back and maybe solve some problems. But with generative AI it's like here's some things we're trying to do. Can you create some content for me? So we see media companies, publishers doing that to really get to long tail advertisers as examples. We can't afford to produce all that video or all that creative content for advertising, messaging with people. But we can do with AI. Give some basic rules and it's often generating some really compelling video content and political same thing. You can generate political ads using AI, get that efficiency and that's come to market and it's maturing rapidly.
Rick Ducey:The thing with AI is because much more pervasive and highly engaging and impactful in society is what are we doing to ourselves here? So there's a lot of questions about that intrigue like an open AI. Just recently the EU has come out with a new policy, the artificial intelligence act, that looks at high risk AI uses and transparency and some rules about privacy and so on. With AI, as people have been chattering, the EU once again took leadership pair, as they did with data privacy with the GDRP some years back. So they have kind of set a new high watermark for what policymakers can do with AI. Policy always legs behind the state of technology, so it's a catch up, but a lot is happening with AI.
Rick Ducey:And then for social and media political, it's interesting to watch, like what meta is doing using AI to tag content that's generated for political ads. These social platforms use algorithms that can amplify and accelerate messaging and outreach into different communities extremely rapidly faster than 10,000 human editors can keep track. So adding a tool and a platform like AI maybe improves what we're seeing in a political social discourse space in this next cycle. We shall see. But speaking of social channels, tiktok and some of those other platforms are growing like crazy. They're very impactful. We see publishers moving into TikTok and finding revenue models that they can use to complement what they're doing with their traditional media, both in terms of audience and media spending. Tiktok has amassed a huge and loyal audience base and that's impacting ad spending, e-commerce and, of course, more and more attention away from some of the other platforms, including Meta. What's going on there?
Celine Matthiessen:Yeah, Rick, I've been doing a lot of tracking, both personally and professionally. I can't tell you how many things that I've bought on TikTok thanks to the short form video that drives me to e-commerce, but also too, on Meta. Instagram is another example. So they do drive to e-commerce and also to other sites. We're seeing on social clips of premium content from traditional streaming players to drive interest in the movies they're coming out for the holidays and also to subscription services. I mean there's a lot of really great content coming out in December on a lot of the streaming services and we're seeing short form video used to drive to subscription deals.
Celine Matthiessen:Ad advertisers are spending more on social video ads and shoppable ads, especially with sports. Tiktok and Meta have held live sporting events and events around live sports, like the Super Bowl. Social can drive multi-platform impact. In fact, some advertisers who don't want to spend for traditional, expensive linear ads spend on social to drive the brand's site or app. Tiktok recently worked with Disney to hold content hub for the company's 100th anniversary to drive viewers to other parts of the Disney app, like Pixar and Marvel. But social isn't the only place short form video is having an impact.
Rick Ducey:It's interesting with short form video. We're seeing broadcasters and other publishers jumping in there. In our forecast, we put short form video into the digital categories Not connected TV, which we consider to include premium long form video, but the short form or so-called out stream video. That is a high growth area for social platforms. They have a lot of inventory and other platforms as well owned and operated inventory from publishers on their websites and mobile apps as well. It's a lot happening there too.
Celine Matthiessen:Yeah, definitely. Looping back to e-commerce, leila, we did a research paper last fall on RMNs, or, as we know, retail Media Networks, where you said that it would attract over 45 billion in spending. How does that impact, for better or worse local media ad spending?
Leyla Chatti:Yeah, so we did a paper from a local perspective, which is so important for a point of view. First, a quick definition of what retail media networks are. These are digital advertising platforms that are operated by e-commerce and brick and mortar retail platforms. Their main goal is to enable retailers to monetize their e-commerce websites and mobile apps, but offering advertising to brands and advertisers Retail Media Networks. They grew a lot in popularity very quickly, like think, for example, amazon and Walmart, and according to e-marketer, they're estimated to earn $45 billion in ad spend this year. Now what does this mean for local? Retail Media Networks play in local market, but at a national level. Most of the retail media network spending is at the national level and is mainly coming from trade budgets. That makes it difficult to determine how much of that media budget and local will be attributed to retail media networks really, but certainly we can overlay what we're seeing for local retail advertising.
Leyla Chatti:Our local retail forecast, which we do not include retail media network data, and then I just wanted to highlight that Contributes the largest portion to the total ad spend, at $25 billion in 2023. The money is there and there are emerging strategies that make sense for local sellers, like aligning CTV and TV video assets into a unified retail marketing campaign that can be deployed across different channels. So much more to come on Retail Media Networks as we'll be watching and analyzing more of these trends in 2024. I encourage everyone to download the report. They just visit our website and you can see more details in there. I'm going to turn the table to Mark. I know you've been working a lot on our data and doing deep dives into our forecast database. What are you seeing as the leading business categories to watch in 2024?
Mark Dugan:Thanks, Layla. To start with, we break out our automotive into tiers one, two and three. However, if we were to combine the three, they would be the top media spenders in both traditional and digital spending. The other top traditional spenders are legal services, supermarkets and other grocery stores and furniture stores. Now, looking over to the digital side digital spending real leaders are the number two spender behind automotive, followed by legal services and wired telecommunications carriers. The heavy spending in the automotive and legal services verticals place both of them in the top four advertisers for both digital and traditional, and I would also expect these two verticals, as well as others, to show some of their dollars from traditional media to digital media in 2024, especially during the higher and heavy political windows.
Mark Dugan:Now, having taken a quick look at the top verticals, I'd like to also discuss a few verticals that are currently affected by inflation. First, I'll start with restaurants, and consumers are going out to restaurants less often. However, they're looking for an experience. When they do go out, they are splurging, which is resulting in higher check prices. In the restaurant's advertising, they need to express the experiential nature of the visit so that they can bring in these consumers who are going out less.
Mark Dugan:Areas such as travel and amusement parks are also affected by inflation, consumers are willing to cut back in other areas so they may still travel and partake in other experiential endeavors a little closer to home with the high inflation. Groceries are an area where consumers are looking to cut back. Even higher income consumers are bargain shopping at this point and buying more private label brands. And finally, I will touch on gambling and lotteries, where people will continue to spend money as an easy source of entertainment and a potential big payday. Suzanne, now that we've discussed the verticals, you've been keeping an eye on consumer behaviors. What are you expecting will change in terms of media usage in 2024 compared to the last few years?
Suzanne Ackley:Thanks, Mark. So keep in mind. Consumer media usage varies by demographics. Studies show Gen Z are more likely to turn to social media for local news, particularly TikTok, while local news sources like TV and radio are farther down their list, while baby boomers typically prefer traditional media sources. But in general, consumers are changing the way they consume video. E-marketer research shows time spent with live TV has been steadily decreasing, while time spent with mobile devices and TV connected devices has been increasing and, according to Nielsen, in July linear TV viewing actually fell below the 50% mark for total TV viewing for the first time. But then in September linear TV viewing was back up due to the return of live sports. But those numbers are still down from prior years. Linear TV no longer has monopoly on sports broadcast rights, with streaming channels like Amazon jumping in. We've had some conversations with local TV executives who disagree that linear versus streaming isn't quite as clear cut as that, because linear TV content also appears on streaming channels. So many consumers that have already cut the cord or never even had a cord are viewing linear TV content via streaming services like Hulu and live TV so many consumers that have already cut the cord One thing that local media such as TV and radio have to their advantage is local news, with newspapers disappearing at an alarming rate of about two and a half per week in 2023, according to recent studies, local TV and radio stations are essential lifelines for consumers looking for local news, especially those in smaller markets that have fewer media outlets.
Suzanne Ackley:But there's so much to unpack for media and its consumption, and it's continuously changing. In our forecast, we go deep into 16 different media, and next year we'll have our eye on CTV and OTT, mobile social, as well as TV and radio over the air. So, Rick, we've covered a lot already, so now I'm going to pass back to you and Nicole to wrap everything up. We said for our listeners.
Rick Ducey:Susan. That was great. Thanks, Susan, and thanks everybody. So, Nicole, it's up to you and me to kind of bring this home now, I'm sure, to still it down and look into 2024. What are a couple of things that you're excited about that we'll be doing in 2024? Coming out for our clients and for the industry?
Nicole Ovadia:I mean, this conversation has just made me so much more excited for 2024. And the one thing the most important thing in my world that's on updating the forecast. So right now I'm working on updating the forecast for 2024. That should drop in early February. And what I'm excited about is keeping an eye on these consumer trends everything that we just talked about for the last 15-20 minutes. So, for example, not only what is changing in terms of consumer trends as Mark referred to the experience over the material but also how consumers are changing the way in which they consume all of this material. Suzanne talked about streaming a lot, digital and social. So I'm excited about that. I'm excited about the forecast in February and the ways in which all of these trends that we're discussing will affect my numbers. Beyond that, because I think you said a couple of things.
Nicole Ovadia:So we're working on a couple of really exciting new products and services for next year, and the one that I'm most excited about right now is the media ranker, because I really think this is going to help everybody all of our clients identify opportunities from other media. So, for example, one of the things you and I talk about all the time it's great if TV over the air is the number one. So even political, of course, it's going to be the number one. Vertical in 2024 will be TV over the air. But if I'm sitting at a TV station, I'm a TV seller. That's great and all, but what else? What else are these politicians? What are they spending their money on? So this media ranker will show you all of the media. So basically it would say political and the top media is TV over the air. And then it would show you that direct mail is either second or third or fourth. And if I had that information and if I knew that they were spending money on direct mail, I would think to myself wait a minute, I have an email solution that's probably better than this direct mail solution. So that's going to allow me to be more competitive.
Nicole Ovadia:So I'm not just going into the same clients and trying to compete for the same dollars from the same media, but this media ranker is really going to help you to be more competitive in the world around you and beyond just the media that you're selling. And then one more thing that we're working on even more is the share of wallet. So that goes a layer deeper and it shows your station, your media, your newspaper, whoever you are, and how you look versus the world around you, not just your competitors Sure, it'll help you at the competitor level but also all that other media. And then what is happening in all the other media digital, out of home, what's happening in email, what's happening in search, what's happening in TV over the air and it allows you to better strategize the opportunities for being competitive and going after dollars that you don't have right now. So those are two things that I'm really looking forward to in 2024.
Nicole Ovadia:And I think, Rick, you're probably looking forward to more trendy things, if you will, probably some AI. So what are you looking? What's gotten you excited for?
Rick Ducey:2024? Yeah, exactly, I mean. So AI is going to be front and center continually, and one place that AI will land in media we've talked about content in some other places where it lands will be in programmatic platforms. As more media become more available over programmatic platforms, both the so-called walled gardens and the open internet, I think that's going to be really impactful. Using all the data and running it through some AI kinds of algorithms, hopefully we'll make campaigns much more efficient, effective and the media able to deliver audiences at the right time and right place with the right message, and so on. So that does something I expect to see and we see a lot of publishers looking to programmatic to be a continually growing part of their sales channel. So a lot of publishers maybe have 30 or so percent of their transactions happen programatically, some higher than 50%, some aiming for 50%. So programmatic as a sales channel and all that goes with it really the point of it is to use data to plan, activate and measure media buying. That's going to grow again by leaps and bounds in 2024.
Rick Ducey:A second thing I'll mention is we often in our forecast talk about direct mail as having a huge component of the local share of wallet in media buying and we're going to do something about that in 2024. We're going to come out at the start of the year with a new analysis looking at the relative advantages of direct mail. And, nicole, you were talking about email. So I was talking to a TV station general manager the other day looking at an educational account, a community college that had been targeting its ads fairly locally but now they wanted to expand statewide. So if you look at, wow, okay, a direct mail bill for statewide looks pretty sizable compared to just doing it in a few zip codes. Maybe that's the time to look at email, to expand the campaign to further geography and within that further geography, use targeting criteria or terrier like on programmatic platforms and so on. So we've all often emphasized direct mail and the large amount of share of wallet it has. So we'll come up with a report looking at advantages of direct mail and email particularly and look for opportunities for our clients and others in the industry to try to get some growth, thinking about those to ying and yang media, if you will. So this has been terrific and insightful.
Rick Ducey:Thank you, colleagues, for your insights and your observations and the discussion. I know all the areas we'll dive into much more, and these are new topics that we come up with both in our podcast as well as our analysis and reports For our listeners today. Thank you for being with us. If you haven't already, please download our complimentary retail media network report that Layla mentioned. You can go to our homepage, www. bia. com, and you'll find a link to the page there. If you are one of our clients our BIA Advantage clients or otherwise one of our clients, please check out all the other resources we have for you, including the vertical advertising forecast reports of Mark you were kind of enough to highlight, and we have more updates coming out, of course, early in 24. And that will help you to continue your preparation for selling planning in 2024. Finally, thank you for tuning in.
Rick Ducey:This has been our second year of podcasting and our audience continues to grow. Thank you, it's a pleasure to be with you. We very much appreciate your time and attention and we don't take it for granted. We work hard to keep you with us. We look forward to welcome you again in the new year. Until then, we wish everybody happy holidays. We're always here to assist. If you need us, just email us, either individually If you have our emails, we're happy to take that or generally at info@bia. com. Thanks so much everybody. Happy holidays and have a great 2024.