This story first appeared in the 2024 Summer issue of Strategy Magazine.

The industry has had to move, adapt and evolve at lightning speed – especially amid economic hardships and unforeseen industry events. The last 12 months have brought immense change and growth. Now, imagine the next five years. There will no doubt be a shakeout in terms of which services survive, and the current media-verse may one day be seen as a distant relic.

Industry leaders came together to discuss how they think the evolution of media will play out, what it will take to maintain mass appeal, and which formats will attract ad dollars. The business is in transition, our roundtable aims to predict where it’s headed next.

To discuss where the industry is headed, Media in Canada and strategy brought together media leaders and marketers including Urania Agas, chief client officer, GroupM; Tracey Cooke, SVP, CMO, Nestle; Richard Fofana, EVP strategy, UM; Andrea Hunt, CCO, Carebook Technologies and President, Think; Robert Jenkyn, president, Horizon Media; Bob Park, CBO, GE Appliances; John Rocco, VP, head of global brand, Scotiabank; and Sarah Thompson, formerly president of media, Dentsu.

Jennifer Horn, editor and content director for strategy and Media in Canada, moderated the discussion. Also in attendance were strategy and Media in Canada publisher Lisa Faktor, associate publisher Neil Ewen, Media in Canada editor Greg Hudson and reporter Andrea Hernandez, and Globe Media Group creative studio and ad innovation managing director Tracy Day and group client director Shaenie Colterjohn.

This is the second of a three-part roundtable series running in Strategy and Media in Canada this week. Today, industry leaders look ahead to discuss the future of local media, AI and pursuing mass audiences. Part one can be found here. Part three will be published online on Wednesday.

Let’s look five years into the future. Will the pursuit of mass audiences remain crucial for advertisers?

Richard Fofana, EVP strategy, UM: I think “mass” is another word that we need to relook at the definition. When I hear the word, I think of specific channels, but I think we need to move away from “this channel does this one job and this channel does another.” But, to your question, what’s “mass” going to look like in five years? It’ll still be where the eyeballs are. However, the idea of getting all of this done in one shot, well, those days are gone. Can we get mass by precision targeting en masse? We are going to need to be more nimble about how we connect with consumers. And that’s going to require a little more complexity. But I think that’s something we should prepare to embrace. This is an opportunity for us to allow ourselves to live in a world where that complexity is part of how we operate, as opposed to trying to find ways that are simple or are a single solution.

We’re all seeing local outlets suffer, shrink and cease to exist from lack of advertising support. Why does it seem like there is still so much resistance when it comes to preventing the fall of local media?

Sarah Thompson (pictured above), formerly president, media, Dentsu: The business economics makes it hard; you’re giving away thoughtfulness for speed. And I think it takes a little bit of time to counterbalance that. I think we also bought into the contextual side of ad adjacency too much, when it’s simply not true. It keeps getting proven that your ad next to news is not going to lead people to think less of it. It’s really important that we’re supporting community-based journalism, because it’s what that community trusts and it’s where they spend the most time and attention, which is good for brands. But if that disappears, and you’re in an ad glut on a platform, then you’re just competing with every ad, and the ad load is just going to get exponential. It has to be a win for the advertiser. It has to be a win for the community. And it has to be a win for the media agency and everything that it does. But that trifecta pivoted, which has been the reason local media and local journalism has struggled in our country for the last decade.

Andrea Hunt, CCO, Carebook Technologies and president, Think: Thankfully, there are sizable brands that care about reaching those communities, but the harsh reality is that some ownership groups sit outside the country. I’ve been in meetings where the conversation stops west of Montreal; it doesn’t even go on a grid and you don’t get to advocate for local media because it doesn’t matter. If there was a way to be able to still do right by Canadians in a way that acknowledges the truths of the cost of reach, that’s where the magic is.

Thompson: I think that we will start to get to a stage, hopefully in the next five years, where you have more global CMOs challenging and questioning the media supply chain and the ethical side. You’re starting to see that happen right now with a lot of really senior seasoned leaders talking about this topic. My hope is that eventually Canada is the beneficiary of those conversations.

Is it going to happen in time?

Thompson: I mean, I’m always an optimistic. We have enough entrepreneurial minds that can find ways through this. The only way that it actually stops being scary is if you keep talking about and provoking the conversation. I’m not expecting everybody to suddenly pivot, or be a part of the CMDC and move all of their dollars – just welcome the conversation and the opportunity to at least discuss it and ask the question: where is the audience or opportunity that I’m not seeing?

What about artificial intelligence – what role will it play five years from now?

Urania Agas, chief client officer, GroupM: I don’t have a perfect answer of what AI is going to do, but it’ll certainly aid in the process. My fear with AI is that while I think it’s helping a lot today with many of our administrative tasks, they are also things that I would have done as a coordinator or as a project manager. They were learning opportunities. So we’re going to have to find ways where the next generation is learning with the use of AI, but also with the presence of mind.

Hunt: Right now it’s doing efficiency and optimization very well and very easily. But in five years, it’ll have that base and it will eventually become predictive. We’re going to be able to show what the system predicted this year and what it predicted last year, which was 100% right. I think it is both scary and reassuring to know that the future may become a little more certain. The data will eventually get there, it’s just not there yet.

Tracey Cooke (pictured above), SVP, CMO, Nestle: When it comes to critical thinking or creativity, there’s never been a better time for humans, because machines will only be machines. In the media ecosystem, there will be things that machines will do more efficiently and faster, but you’re going to need brilliant people to figure out what their brand or clients need. I get really excited about all this because I see the opportunities. And then the scary human part of it is that these machines need huge amounts of data, and they’re currently taking data that’s based on disinformation. It’s like a snake eating its own tail. We’re looking at AI in our company, but I think we need smart humans to realize the power of this technology.

Fofana: I think this is the opportunity for us to ensure that the structure around AI does have a cultural anthropologist stuck on it, or somebody who understands the creative part of our industry, and it’s ensuring that as things get rolled out, that it’s integrated into the solutions that we build.

Thompson: To me, it’s the most exciting thing. There are never-ending questions that I want to explore; but the limitation of exploration has always been time. We don’t actually have a lot of time to think about all the plausible options and explore all the potential questions because it’s so incredibly manual. From a strategist perspective, I can appreciate that I can query and build the appropriate investment plan for a client using AI. Instead of sifting through oodles of excel spreadsheets to come up with something that would take me two days. I love the fact that our secondary schools are now teaching how to do proper prompts, because that is a skill unto itself.