Billed as the UK’s biggest, buzziest and boldest marketing festival, MAD//Fest 2024 brought more than 15,000 brands and agencies together in London for three days of speakers, networking, brand innovation pitches, masterclasses, experiential activations, and more, all designed to connect and inspire festival attendees.
Carat sponsored the Pioneers in AV session, a platform for industry leaders to discuss the future of advanced video (AV) and its evolving landscape. Moderated by Matt Willifer, Chief Strategy Officer at Carat, the panel featured Will Gough, AV Product Lead at dentsu, Lauren Hawkins, Managing Partner, Carat AV, and Gag Sahota, Group Agency Director at MiQ.
Matt led the conversation with a series of questions:
Can you just give us a flavor of what you think the unchanging constants have been over time and what has changed recently and into the future?
I read that by 2030 all of TV will be digital. Clearly, that brings a lot of opportunities from the kind of things you can make to how you target people. On the back of this trend, what is the one thing you believe is absolutely paramount over the next five years?
When we were kids, everyone watched television in the same way. We fought over the remote control to watch different things, but fundamentally it was the same kind of experience for everyone. It feels now all of that's changed, Different demographics will have different behaviors facilitated by new types of TV and new content. What are some key opportunities for brands in this new TV age?
With the rise of shoppable ads, consumers can buy directly off the main screen. Obviously much has been written about potentially shortening the purchase cycle bringing brands and performance concertinaed together. It’s relatively nascent in the grand scheme of things. How will that evolve over the next five years? How do you think it will impact consumers in the ways they buy things? And what are the opportunities for brands in terms of how they sell?
Broadcaster video on demand (BVOD) has gained a huge number of fans but it also has some detractors who have recently felt it might be overpriced. What are your feelings about what BVOD specifically brings to the party and what might happen with its pricing over the next couple of years?
There have been some good recent examples of ad funded programming. Do you think we're going to see more integration of brands and companies into the content itself over the coming five years?
Let’s turn to AI (artificial intelligence). Can you sum up the full implications of AI for the future of AV?
To hear how the expert panel answered these questions, watch the video on demand here.
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