The Media Leader Podcast

One of the core themes of this year has been the adaptation of consumer behaviours. Everyone wants to understand how Gen Z consumes media, how AI is changing search habits and how different platforms address different emotional needs.With change comes a whole lot of uncertainty and, by trying to address new consumer behaviour, you risk losing what works and what makes your brand special.So it’s useful to have the ear of behavioural scientists to help make sense of it all.Lea Karam and Patrick Fagan are two behavioural scientists working in the media industry. Karam formerly worked as part of Mediaplus UK’s Behave before founding her own consultancy this year called Mindscope. Fagan is a consultant for brands and political campaigns and has lectured at institutions including University College London.The pair discuss some of the most pressing issues facing brands and media owners today from a behavioural perspective, such as whether attention spans are truly shortening and why we still use social media even when we all seemingly agree that so much of it is toxic.As Fagan remarks: "I don't think crack addicts have a very good perception of crack."Highlights:10:02: Making content psychologically effective16:14: Gen Z and the difference between attention spans and "filtering spans"22:38: How opaque algorithms are ruling our communication35:51: Why we still use social media even though it's perceived negatively44:32: When do we hit subscription fatigue?49:06: What is AI doing to our brains? Are we becoming worse critical thinkers?Related articles:Adapting to shifting media consumption habits — with TikTok, Spotify, Global and BBC‘You need a human compass’: Lea Karam opens behavioural consultancyFrom ChatGPT to Dr Who: how human AI and behavioural science can improve campaignsAre all ‘views’ created equal? With TikTok, DCM, Total Media and Mindlab---Thanks to our production partners Trisonic for editing this episode.--> Discover how Trisonic can elevate your brand and expand your business by connecting with your ideal audienceVisit The Media Leader for the most authoritative news analysis and comment on what's happening in commercial media. LinkedIn: The Media LeaderYouTube: The Media Leader

Denise Turner has worked in media research for more than three decades for a number of agencies and trade bodies. This summer, she succeeded Belinda Beeftink as research director at the IPA.Turner sits down with Jack Benjamin to discuss her new remit and how she views the state of media effectiveness as media owners move towards providing outcomes-based measurement for clients.She is also serving as head judge of the 2026 Adwanted Media Research Awards, which are now open for entries.The awards champion the best researchers in the industry and Turner shares what will be front of mind for her when she judges entries later this year.Deadline for submissions is 1 October, with the late deadline on 10 October.Highlights:2:02: Turner's top priorities as IPA research director7:25: Measuring brand consumption in a fragmented ecosystem13:24: The challenges of outcomes-based measurement20:01: Core research topics for the IPA going forward24:47: Adwanted Media Research Awards: what does Turner look for?Related articles:Adwanted Media Research Awards 2026: Open for entriesData and measurement are starving brand investmentNow is the moment for broadcasters to take control of cross-screen TV measurementHow Lantern will bring outcome measurement to TV — with Sameer Modha and Matt Hill---Thanks to our production partners Trisonic for editing this episode.--> Discover how Trisonic can elevate your brand and expand your business by connecting with your ideal audienceVisit The Media Leader for the most authoritative news analysis and comment on what's happening in commercial media. LinkedIn: The Media LeaderYouTube: The Media Leader

This episode was produced in partnership with Sky MediaAfter another big summer of sport and the kick-off of the 2025/26 Premier League season, Jack Benjamin is joined by Sky Media's new director of digital advertising, Pippa Scaife, and director of transformation, Dan Cohen, to discuss how brands can make the most of live sport.In the UK, if you’re a football fan — or, indeed, a fan of practically any major sport — it’s likely you have a Sky subscription.And amid a fragmented AV media landscape, sport has emerged as both a highly important opportunity for brands wanting to reach large audiences all at once and a key way to tap into dedicated communities and fandoms.Scaife and Cohen speak about the role Sky's new Sports Marketplace plays in democratising live sport for smaller advertisers, how brands can tap into sport beyond just on the telly and rapidly emerging opportunities in women's sport.Highlights:1:20: How fragmented viewing has made sport a multichannel experience7:04: Opportunities in women's sport and reaching female sports fans14:15: Sky Media's Sports Marketplace: democratising sports advertising24:53: 2026 in sport: Olympics, Paralympics, World Cup — how should brands be preparing?29:03: Making the most out of sponsorship opportunities: shoulder content, commentary, communityRelated articles:Expanded programmatic capabilities at Sky Media ‘will democratise live sport’Sky Media: Brands shouldn’t miss their chance to connect with women’s sport fandomGet in the game: why Havas Play thinks brands should be doubling down on women’s sport Sports programming on the rise across global SVOD services---Thanks to our production partners Trisonic for editing this episode.--> Discover how Trisonic can elevate your brand and expand your business by connecting with your ideal audienceVisit The Media Leader for the most authoritative news analysis and comment on what's happening in commercial media.LinkedIn: The Media LeaderYouTube: The Media Leader

Next month, The Media Leader will head up north for The Future of Media Manchester – part one of our two-part flagship event series, with the other held in London in November.While there, we’ll be looking to unpack an industry in flux. How is AI changing the media market? What’s next for social platforms? And for brand discovery? How can we supercharge investment outside London?Ahead of the conference, Jack Benjamin caught up with one of the speakers who offers a unique view on our industry.Professor Andy Miah is chair in science communication and future media at the University of Salford. He is a bioethicist, an academic and an expert on how technology is shaping our media environments and, in turn, who we are and how we interact with each other in society.Miah and Benjamin discuss the ways in which AI has the power to transform media (for better and for worse): how AI slop is taking over our TikTok feeds, the ethics of chatbots and whether business incentives are aligning with social incentives for technological change in media."The ethics of it certainly can't be left to the platforms to decide," says Miah. "We certainly don't want to restrict innovation to such an extent that it cannot progress, but I think we have the beginnings of a global conversation on how to regulate AI."Highlights:2:37: How new technology is shaping media consumption: optimism and anxiety6:42: Antidotes to enshittification? Content creation, hype cycles and monopolism15:36: How the AI transformation is impacting "the fundamental building blocks of society"30:25: What is artistically great in 2025? AI slop, the attention economy and the race to the bottom36:36: The ethics of chatbots and the beginnings of a regulatory framework for AIRelated articles:In an AI search era, brands must go where LLMs goMark Zuckerberg champions ‘superintelligence’ as Meta revenues jumpAI search presents ‘existential’ challenge to publishersTikTok stakes claim as ‘home of search’ as it launches more AI ad tools---Thanks to our production partners Trisonic for editing this episode.--> Discover how Trisonic can elevate your brand and expand your business by connecting with your ideal audienceVisit The Media Leader for the most authoritative news analysis and comment on what's happening in commercial media. LinkedIn: The Media LeaderYouTube: The Media Leader

We’ve entered a new era of search.Google’s dominance is being challenged: social platforms like TikTok and Reddit were already upending traditional means of information and product discovery, and the rise of large-language models for search has created an entirely new and nascent market.Google itself is leaning into the new era with its Gemini model and AI Mode search experience, which launched in the UK last month. But there’s also OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Perplexity’s Sonar and many others.Due to the nature of these models giving conversational, descriptive responses to queries, users are clicking on a lot fewer links. Google denies this – without providing hard evidence to the contrary – but publishers and brands alike have reported sharp declines in referral traffic. How will they navigate the future of the web? Paul Bland is the chief digital officer at Havas Media Network UK. The media agency last week launched a new tool aimed at helping brands get more visibility over how and when they show up in AI search, and ideally then optimising that behaviour.Bland discusses how AI search will make upper-funnel brand strategies more important and why publishers would be wise to lean in to the new era of search even if it puts them at a disadvantage.Highlights:2:08: How the search market has changed in the AI era5:38: Havas's new Brand Insights AI tool: how brands will work to optimise their visibility on LLMs12:10: Implications for declining click-through rates18:38: Generative engine optimisation: how marketing strategies must adapt26:40: Publishers at riskRelated articles:AI search presents ‘existential’ challenge to publishersHavas Media Network launches ‘generative engine optimisation’ toolOpinion: AI isn’t killing search — it’s evolving itThe future of branding: Influence LLMs to protect your share of market---Thanks to our production partners Trisonic for editing this episode.--> Discover how Trisonic can elevate your brand and expand your business by connecting with your ideal audienceVisit The Media Leader for the most authoritative news analysis and comment on what's happening in commercial media. LinkedIn: The Media LeaderYouTube: The Media Leader

How to bring creative and media together? It’s a question that has perplexed advertising leaders for years.The big money in advertising has been shifting away from creative and towards media; from the big creative idea to data-led measurement of a brand’s performance. But it’s also true that it’s almost impossible to succeed without both sides of the coin working in your favour.Barney Worfolk-Smith is chief growth officer at Daivid, an adtech company that provides creative data to clients, allowing them to measure what it calls the “constituent parts of creative effectiveness”: attention, emotional response, brand recall and more.Worfolk-Smith argues that creative needs to start being data-led, lest it fall into irrelevance as media becomes dominant. He also unpacks the implications of commoditising creative by turning our understanding of it into 1s and 0s.Highlights:3:58: Testing creative data to improve effectiveness — why winners are differentiated11:40: Influencer marketing's "painful adolescence": vanity metrics, eschewed brand guidelines, briefing process14:49: Implications of assessing creative at scale20:28: Getting creative and media to work more closely together by engaging with data25:52: AI anxieties: "the sloppening" is hereRelated articles:Creative process stifled by poor training and feedbackHow to hack the attention economy — with VCCP Media’s Will ParrishHavas Play Network’s CEO is on a mission to bring media and creative back together---Thanks to our production partners Trisonic for editing this episode.--> Discover how Trisonic can elevate your brand and expand your business by connecting with your ideal audienceVisit The Media Leader for the most authoritative news analysis and comment on what's happening in commercial media. LinkedIn: The Media LeaderYouTube: The Media Leader

This episode was produced in partnership with LG Ad Solutions.It’s no secret that TV is undergoing a transformational shift — both in terms of user experience and brand opportunities.LG Ad Solutions chief marketing officer Tony Marlow joins Jack Benjamin to discuss how the home screen has become more important for users and brands, the opportunities in CTV and FAST, TV's move down the marketing funnel via shoppable ads and how AI is set to reshape the media channel in the future.Marlow said: "At this point, we don't get a lot of marketers asking: 'Should I be investing in CTV?' What they're really asking is: 'How do I do it well?'"Highlights:2:31: How TV consumption has changed: AVOD growth, home-screen ads, shoppability and cloud gaming6:06: Addressing TV's discoverability problem14:42: TV's move down the funnel with "frictionless ways of buying"21:40: The future of FAST in the US and Europe amid "streamflation"29:13: AI's impact on the TV marketRelated articles:LG Ads eyes 'huge opportunity' for TV home screensWhy 2025 is a ‘transformative moment’ for CTVThink local: How SMEs could transform the UK’s CTV ad landscapeSmart TV home-screen ads will become mainstream CTV buy, say LG and Magnite---Thanks to our production partners Trisonic for editing this episode.--> Discover how Trisonic can elevate your brand and expand your business by connecting with your ideal audienceVisit The Media Leader for the most authoritative news analysis and comment on what's happening in commercial media. LinkedIn: The Media LeaderYouTube: The Media Leader

There’s a lot going on at the BBC at the moment. A pair of scandals relating to a Gaza documentary and former MasterChef presenter Gregg Wallace have caused a stir. And the timing isn’t great a year before negotiations on a new royal charter, especially as a further 300,000 households have reportedly stopped paying the licence fee.But the Beeb’s commercial arm is in rude health, achieving record revenue and profit in its latest earnings report.To thrive in the next era of media consumption, the BBC is adapting to reach audiences where they are and stave off competition from streaming rivals and social platforms. And it's turning to ecommerce to drive new revenue streams off the back of its most popular intellectual property.Jasmine Dawson is BBC Studios’ senior vice-president of digital. She joins Jack Benjamin to discuss how the commercial arm is modernising its go-to-market strategy by cultivating fan communities and providing reliable measurement of engagement in a fragmented social environment.Highlights:3:06: Reaching "platform-agnostic" viewers to drive fandom6:46: BBC Studios' new ecommerce play11:53: Accurately measuring engagement – why views are "a false economy"16:12: Challenges in working with platforms22:41: Leveraging the creator economy and "acting like a creator"Related articles:Adapting to shifting media consumption habits – with TikTok, Spotify, Global and BBCTwitch CEO Dan Clancy: Why brands should reach ‘entertainers who happen to game’You wait weeks for BBC scandal reports to come along…---Thanks to our production partners Trisonic for editing this episode.--> Discover how Trisonic can elevate your brand and expand your business by connecting with your ideal audienceVisit The Media Leader for the most authoritative news analysis and comment on what's happening in commercial media. LinkedIn: The Media LeaderYouTube: The Media Leader

This episode was produced in partnership with Salesforce.AI is changing the world of media and marketing at a rapid pace. But how are brands using the technology to drive better business outcomes and efficiencies?In part two of a series of special episodes, Robin Tapp, chief intelligence officer at events giant RX Global, and Felicity Starr, regional vice-president at Salesforce, join host Jack Benjamin to discuss how pragmatic approaches to AI can enhance business efforts.The trio also discuss how work will be augmented by AI transformation, challenges and risks faced by businesses scaling AI use cases and what it means for the future of work.Highlights:3:31: The importance of centralised data architecture8:00: Hurdles to AI transformation and concerns over governance12:04: The potential of agentic tools — and the continued importance of face-to-face interaction17:12: What is exciting and daunting about AI? Labour impact, data security and model biasRelated articles:How Tottenham Hotspur FC is integrating AI — with Rob Pickering and Salesforce’s Felicity StarrBehave: Significant gaps exist between C-suite and employees over AI implementationCannes reflections: AI took centre stage, but didn’t address our industry’s profound questions---Thanks to our production partners Trisonic for editing this episode.--> Discover how Trisonic can elevate your brand and expand your business by connecting with your ideal audienceVisit The Media Leader for the most authoritative news analysis and comment on what's happening in commercial media. LinkedIn: The Media LeaderYouTube: The Media Leader

Everyone is fighting over slivers of attention.In an era marked by the massive popularity of short-form video, changes in behaviour around second-screening and increased but fractured media consumption, getting an edge over the competition could be the difference between someone spending three seconds looking at your ad as opposed to 1.5 seconds.Will Parrish is chief strategy officer at VCCP Media. Earlier this year, the agency, alongside attention expert Karen Nelson-Field and her team at Amplified, conducted a study into how having distinctive brand assets can be a game-changer for advertisers competing for those split seconds of attention on social platforms.Parrish joins Jack Benjamin to unpack key findings from the study, how they impact his understanding of the media mix, how brands should consider attention within their wider measurement toolkit and why there is no longer, to borrow from Lord of the Rings, “one asset to rule them all”.Highlights:5:12: Taking the temperature of the ad industry10:43: Findings from VCCP Media and Amplified's Hacking the Attention Economy research23:13: How attention measurement impacts consideration of the media mix27:19: Working with creative teams to understand the strengths and weaknesses of media environments38:41: Does attention have a perception issue with marketers?Related articles:Just 1.5 seconds is enough for ad recall, new attention study revealsEverything you wanted to know about attention but were too afraid to askPrincipal media in the age of attention metrics‘Fit for TV’ YouTube channels drive higher ad attention than non-premium video---Thanks to our production partners Trisonic for editing this episode.--> Discover how Trisonic can elevate your brand and expand your business by connecting with your ideal audienceVisit The Media Leader for the most authoritative news analysis and comment on what's happening in commercial media. LinkedIn: The Media LeaderYouTube: The Media Leader