James Swift

Atlanta

Contributor at Wicked Horror

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Articles

An argument for the Long-Tail Lion

1 week ago | mediacat.uk | James Swift

It’s high time the ad industry acknowledged the barbarians* at its gate and gave small businesses their own category at Cannes Lions. GroupM estimated that global ad spend surpassed $1 trillion for the first time in 2024 and, in our hearts, I think we all know big brands weren’t the ones driving that growth. There is no research — at least, not that I’ve seen — that breaks down global marketing spend by size of advertiser, but you can glean what’s going on well enough from other data points.
Sacrifice for frequency

2 weeks ago | mediacat.uk | James Swift

The virtues of frequency are sometimes forgotten amid the lust for reach. Greg Newman, a strategic business consultant at Craft, makes a strong case for remembering them — especially when you’re dealing with smaller brands. Cheap, low-quality impressions may be abundant, he says, but fragmenting media means it’s no longer possible to ‘cost-effectively reach massive swathes of people in a high-attention way.
'You don't have to be huge to get the best inventory anymore'

3 weeks ago | mediacat.uk | James Swift

Mediaocean covers a lot of ground in the ad industry. Its ad infrastructure covers planning, buying and measurement for all media. Its adtech serves all digital channels, and it works with every major ad group and almost every Fortune 500 company (or at least it claims to). So who better to answer a broad barrage of questions about the state of the digital media ecosystem than Mediaocean’s chief marketing officer, Aaron Goldman?
UK Home SVOD penetration: Q1 2025

3 weeks ago | mediacat.uk | James Swift

Over two thirds (67.5%) of UK homes had access to a subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) service in the first quarter of 2025, according to Barb. According to the research board’s Establishment Survey 20.1 million UK homes had access to a streaming platform in Q1. Netflix: 17.4 million UK homes, or 59.2% of homes. Only 28% of UK Netflix homes (4.8 million) were subscribed to the platform’s advertising tier, however.
A good (media agency) death

1 month ago | mediacat.uk | James Swift

Another media agency brand bit the dust last week, and the founder is ‘pumped’ about its demise. On Thursday, The Beyond Collective announced that it had merged Yonder Media with Above+Beyond, Frontier and Collective Studios to form a single agency, called Beyond. But unlike the so-called sunsetting taking place within WPP, this consolidation had nothing to do with balance sheets or shareholder demands, says Ed Cox, the founder of Yonder Media and now a partner at Beyond.
Channel 4 goes to Spotify: 'It’s non-cannibalistic'

1 month ago | mediacat.uk | James Swift

Channel 4 has announced that it will become the first UK broadcaster to distribute video programming on Spotify, as it continues to seek new revenue streams and build its brand among younger audiences. Starting this week, Spotify users can stream content from Channel 4.0, the broadcaster’s digital-first platform aimed at 13- to 24-year-olds, including Minor Issues, Hear Me Out, and Secret Sauce.
Shelter's MP-chasing social housing campaign

1 month ago | mediacat.uk | James Swift

Homelessness charity Shelter is employing a media strategy built around the daily routines of MPs and civil servants, as part of a campaign urging the Government to invest more in social housing. The ads show hand-written notes from members of the public explaining to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, why they want more social housing, and are placed where Whitehall types are likely to encounter them as they go about their day. Yonder Media devised the media strategy.
The Trade Desk's open-web forecast

1 month ago | mediacat.uk | James Swift

The sun is finally shining on the open web, according to The Trade Desk’s CEO, Jeff Green. The first quarter of 2025 was a happy one for the ad-tech company. In Q4 2024, it missed its financial targets for the first time since going public and was punished pretty severely by investors. But on Thursday’s earnings call, Green got to tell analysts that his company had blown past expectations with revenue of $616m, a 25% year-on-year increase.
A future without cookies is not exclusive to Google

1 month ago | mediacat.uk | James Swift

Google’s decision to give up on reforming cookie tracking has been greeted mostly with derision by the ad industry. It’s been five years since Google first articulated its plan to remove third-party cookies from its Chrome browser, 13 months since it delayed implementing the changes for the third time, and nine months since it watered down its ambitions, from all-out deprecation to an ATT-style prompt that allows users to opt out of tracking without having to navigate the privacy settings.
Media Inc: M&A darwinism

2 months ago | mediacat.uk | James Swift

The M&A market in media, marketing, and martech has always favoured the bold — but 2025 is shaping up to favour the adaptable. We’re now entering what I’d call a Darwinian phase of dealmaking: where only the most strategically fit businesses survive, and often, that survival depends on who you partner with — or sell to. Let’s not sugar-coat it. The latest IPA Bellwether report paints a sobering picture — UK ad budgets are tightening, and core media investment is flatlining.