The Media Business Still Loves Its Silos

Video-centric remains a fantasy, despite consumers showing how much the old definitions don't matter

First a few housekeeping things from me. I’ve been hosting the Next in Media (formerly Next in Marketing) podcast for roughly three years, and I’ve recently entered into a great partnership with Beet.TV to help bring the show to more people. I’ve had an awesome group of guests thus far, including this week’s featuring Instacart’s Ali Miller. I encourage you to check it out.

Second, are you going to Cannes this year? Brian Morrissey of The Rebooting has invited me to partner with him on what we hope will be a very cool event at the Kerv Cafe. When Brian first reached out to me about this, I didn’t remember him, but then he reminded me that we used to work together. Once he explained the idea, I was in:

• We’ll be putting out a daily Cannes email

• From June 19-21 at the Kerv Cafe we’ll be hosting a series of interesting conversations with leaders in our space, include a crop of sessions that Tuesday focused on video, CTV and the creator economy

• There will also be a cocktail party at a villa

• Hopefully, a publishing executive dinner (get in touch if you’re interested in sponsoring.)

If you’re interested in the event at the cafe, you can sign up here.

Now here’s a video, for no reason.

Now, the actual newsletter…

Ever since YouTube broke out in the mid 2000s, and web video became a real thing, nearly every media buying agency declared they are ‘video-centric.’

Meaning that regardless of the fact that often they maintain entirely different business units – sometimes whole companies – to buy digital ads and TV ads and even social video ads, agencies for nearly two decades have insisted that video is video. When then decide where to park dollars, the thinking goes, everything should be on the same level playing field, because consumers don’t make any distinctions.

Yet here we are in 2023, heading into an upfront where siloed ways of working, debates over processes and definitions, and territorial disputes appear alive and well - and may be holding the business back.

 “Still a huge problem,” said one industry veteran. “The power struggle is real and sometimes fueled by the sellers.”