Latest / Leading Local Insights / Numbers & Narratives: BIA Execs Break Down the Latest Forecast

Transcript

Numbers & Narratives: BIA Execs Break Down the Latest Forecast · Leading Local Insights

• 0:34
  SPEAKER_03: Hey there, Mike Gertie with BIA Advisory Services, where for 40 plus years we've delivered the most accurate and up-to-date media spend forecast in the United States.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_03: Down to the market level, 18 different media types, 90 verticals, and we have just had an update.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm joined today by some really sharp analysts and leaders in the industry to talk through what you need to know about this most recent update.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_03: So, Rick, if I'm a CEO in media, what is the biggest takeaway from this latest media update?
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: Probably the first thing is take a breath.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, wow, okay, things could have been a lot worse.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, what we're hearing and seeing and putting into our forecast is uh local ad spend is going to be up.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that varies across the verticals and the media channels, of course, but generally people are going to be spending more local advertising, which is good.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um across some of the core um categories, what we're hearing from our media clients, it's good.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so spending is up.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: There are some indicators we look at to help us frame this a little bit.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: That gets a little bit curious.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: We're seeing data that consumer spending is up.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, spending is typically related to advertising.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: The more revenue, the more advertising spend.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: But if you look at some of the consumer surveys, uh like the University of Michigan or the conference board surveys, consumers are kind of negative.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like they say one thing, but then pull out their pocketbooks and wallets and act a different way.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: So what does that mean?
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's that's something we're keeping a close eye.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, uh even year, it's a midterm year.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: So those media that get some political spending, particularly uh broadcast TV, it's a beautiful, it's a beautiful season.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they like that.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: And some of the indicators coming out from some of the economic studies are yeah, fourth quarter, maybe even into fit into um 2027, maybe better than we think.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, stock markets up and down, policies come and go, tariffs and so on and so forth.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: But overall, if you're a CEO, it's like, oof, you know, we dodged affable at least.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_03: Well, Sanan, you built the numbers.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_03: Does does that is that backed up in the data?
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_03: Does that uh make sense to you?
• 2:45
  Senan Mele: Yeah, it does, especially uh when we think about 2027.
• 2:50
  Senan Mele: But before going there, I'm going to talk a bit about the big theme uh this year, which is political.
• 2:58
  Senan Mele: Because uh the midterm is on track to match or even top the last presidential election in in terms of political ad spend, which is something we've never seen before in the midterm.
• 3:11
  Senan Mele: And most of that money uh we know it's going toward broadcast TV and streaming.
• 3:17
  Senan Mele: But when we look at what happens in 2027, we notice that the political dollars is going to roll off.
• 3:26
  Senan Mele: And score local business um will keep growing nonetheless, enough to more than replace um the decrease in political ad spend.
• 3:38
  Senan Mele: So overall, we see that the total 2027 markets, including political, is slightly um higher than um the total 2026 markets, and that does not happen unless the core um businesses um are actually growing in terms of ad spend.
• 4:00
  Senan Mele: So to recap what we are seeing, 2026 huge political years, but those dollars are going to significantly decrease in 2027, and what is going to be leading the growth then will be uh the core business.
• 4:16
  Senan Mele: And that's how we see 2027 as a whole slightly higher than 2026.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_03: Awesome.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_03: That makes sense.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_03: So um when I think about media companies, there used to be traditional and then digital, but really everybody now has a mix of traditional and digital as a whole.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_03: So, Rick, how should leadership balance those two uh from you know a leadership perspective?
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's interesting because the answer used to be think about the traditional funnel.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: So top of the funnel is uh kind of regional frequency, awareness, um, interest, drive that down to intent purchase and repeat purchase.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: The funnel became the matrix, became the web, became, I don't know what.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: So it's kind of all over the place.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, some people will argue that connected TV can be a full funnel play, uh, just digital.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: And even just a couple of years ago, people would say, well, connected TV is audience extension.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's for people you can't reach on broadcast TV or other media.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: If you look at some of the recent audience data, um, streaming arguably uh outperforms in terms of viewership, linear TV, uh broadcast and MVPD.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so it's really a mix.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: The digital plus the traditional traditional um has its role.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, just listening to holding company, agency people, media sellers, um, they don't want to give up that reach that TV has.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, certainly not in political, as we're seeing now, uh, but in a number of other categories too.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, you know, I can target, but I don't want to miss somebody in market by doing too much targeting.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: So doing the digital plus the linear makes a lot of sense.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: And here's where like TV groups and some of the owners of traditional media have an advantage.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: They have local sellers on the street with direct accounts, they have their own inventory they can sell and they can resell the digital inventory that everybody else is already selling, but through their brand, through their relationships, and in that local market context, it makes a big difference.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_03: That makes a lot of sense.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_03: Um, Sanan, where do you see that showing up most clearly from the data?
• 6:22
  Senan Mele: Yeah, um, from the data, I see that mostly uh in streaming.
• 6:27
  Senan Mele: Um, because when we take a look at co-local business, excluding political spend, we see that CTV OTT is the fastest growing channel in the forecast for 2030.
• 6:40
  Senan Mele: And the interesting thing is, especially for TV sellers, is that it's this sits right um between TV and digital.
• 6:50
  Senan Mele: So if your Orkshart is separating TV teams and digital teams, that's where money falls through the cracks.
• 6:58
  Senan Mele: Those teams will need to work together and kind of um share the advertiser information to leverage uh each other's strength.
• 7:09
  Senan Mele: TV teams uh providing additional buys, right, for um digital advertisers and and um digital teams uh leveraging uh TV teams uh as well.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_03: I mean it makes sense.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_03: They're basically sharing the audience, so they need to you know come together and share the approach, right?
• 7:32
  Senan Mele: Exactly.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_03: What's the biggest planning mistake that a CEO could make heading into next year?
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_03: Because next year looks like it's gonna be a lot different.
• 7:42
  Senan Mele: Yeah, yeah.
• 7:43
  Senan Mele: Uh planning into the next year, um, the biggest mistake will be uh budgeting off of political.
• 7:51
  Senan Mele: Um, and what I mean by that is we know that 2026 will have a significant amount of political spend, let's say the largest that we've seen in a while.
• 8:05
  Senan Mele: And um and 2026 does not have the same type of elections, it's not an election year like 20.
• 8:15
  Senan Mele: 2027 is not an election year like 2026 is.
• 8:20
  Senan Mele: So it wouldn't um help in terms of planning to forecast taking into account um political because it's going to significantly decrease in 2027.
• 8:34
  Senan Mele: So forecast forecasting, I'm sorry, forecasting off of the non-political um core business at spend will provide more realistic um results in terms of where the money is going, who the buyers are, um and making sure that your digital and streaming products are ready to catch for score dollars where they're actually going.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_03: Awesome.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_03: Makes sense.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_03: All right, Mr.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_03: Bolan, uh mobile, social search.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_03: We know that's where a lot of money goes.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_03: Uh AI is changing all three of those.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_03: So if you're a CEO, how do you look at that?
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_03: What what would you build?
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_03: What would you buy?
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_03: How would you partner uh to really stay ahead of it?
• 9:26
  Mike Boland: Yeah, I would answer that by saying that local media has has always had an advantage.
• 9:33
  Mike Boland: And it and it isn't necessarily competing on price, it isn't necessarily out-competing the online peer plays, the Googles of the world, the open AIs of the world.
• 9:43
  Mike Boland: Um, but it's you know, it's the hand holding, it's the consultative approach, it's the one-stop shop appeal of multi-channel campaigns across all of these places.
• 9:52
  Mike Boland: And I think that the mean the main point is that that value proposition has always been underscored in times of chaos and confusion and media fragmentation.
• 10:04
  Mike Boland: And right now, all of those factors are in hyperdrive.
• 10:08
  Mike Boland: We're talking about, you know, the advent of AI search.
• 10:11
  Mike Boland: Um, SEO, as we know it, just got turned on its head and the sort of playbook of remaining visible online.
• 10:18
  Mike Boland: Um, there's more competing search offers from Apple and Amazon and of course OpenAI.
• 10:25
  Mike Boland: And, you know, we spend a lot of time talking about all those, but I'll you know, simplify just by saying that, you know, local media companies can be that the you know the trusted entity that sort of defragments and demystifies all of that chaos.
• 10:39
  Mike Boland: And again, that's always been the case, but I think that messaging really resonates now.
• 10:43
  Mike Boland: So I would say really lean into that sort of role.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_03: Do you think that's also because they are in those instances selling somebody else's approach?
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_03: So it's almost kind of they've they've uh separated themselves from the situation a little bit.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_03: And if a local media company is still recommending Google search or OpenAI search, uh they really must mean it because that's not even their product.
• 11:12
  Mike Boland: Oh, yeah, and they got to do both.
• 11:13
  Mike Boland: I should have uh qualified it by that.
• 11:15
  Mike Boland: When it comes to the resold properties, in areas they need to compete.
• 11:19
  Mike Boland: They need to have that in the bundle to stay competitive.
• 11:22
  Mike Boland: But also their owned and operated first party stuff is also, of course, very unique because they're providing access to unique local audiences that may overlap in some ways with what you know the Googles of the World are reaching, but in other ways it's um it's a higher quality, higher premium.
• 11:41
  Mike Boland: Like when we start talking about video production, I think we're gonna talk about that in a little while.
• 11:45
  Mike Boland: But those owned and operated first party premium plays, too, need to be a key part of that bundle to differentiate it.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_03: Awesome.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_03: So that's our CEO perspective.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_03: That's the top-down view.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but there's only a couple of those.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_03: So let's talk about a more practical view.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_03: Anyone who's running a sales team or sellers, or just if you want to understand the sales approach in general, um, Mike, bring AI search down to the sales floor.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_03: What should the sales manager or a seller be worried about?
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_03: Like where is the opening there?
• 12:23
  Mike Boland: I think the opening, like if we're talking about down to like the rep level, you know, the guy knocking on doors or the girl knocking on doors um or just calling on their regulars.
• 12:33
  Mike Boland: Um, I think right now there's a lot of confusion out there for all the reasons I just mentioned, all of that just media fragmentation.
• 12:42
  Mike Boland: Like, let's just take one of those things I mentioned, um, SEO.
• 12:46
  Mike Boland: A lot of businesses sort of had their SEO game sewn up after sort of learning about it and applying it and advancing and optimizing it over the last decade.
• 12:55
  Mike Boland: Now suddenly that playbook, some parts of it are still valid, but there's a whole new set of rules to sort of surface in AI engines, in addition to surfacing yourself in traditional search.
• 13:08
  Mike Boland: Um, and then the other fragmentation I I mentioned, like it all leads to this sort of confusion um and disillusionment for a lot of local businesses.
• 13:18
  Mike Boland: So I think that sort of being that, like being like a comfort blanket, being more of a sort of educational or consultative role, um, and and what that boils down to is the practical advice to just know this stuff inside and out, learn it by doing, listen to podcasts about AI and how it's sort of um manifesting in a lot of these marketing channels and advancing things.
• 13:45
  Mike Boland: And, you know, the the the local businesses you call on, tap into that confusion there happening.
• 13:51
  Mike Boland: They're all feeling like, what do I do now?
• 13:54
  Mike Boland: And really just be that, you know, educational source for them.
• 13:58
  Mike Boland: And and and of course, like a sort of sell by not selling approach, just you know, be be a source of education on how the world is changing with all of these technologies.
• 14:06
  Mike Boland: And I think based on the sort of anxiety they're feeling about it, I think that by doing so, they'll be your best friend if you can sort of help demystify some of this for for them.
• 14:15
  Mike Boland: And I think that the result will be, in a lot of cases, that that will translate to to dollars in terms of their commitments and spend uh by just gaining their trust as a source of education for all this crazy stuff happening.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_03: I love that approach.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_03: I love it.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_03: And we and we need the trusted out there to to give good advice and to uh you know help those media dollars go where they're the most impactful.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_03: So, Rick, does that change the way a local media company looks at selling or looks at what they're selling?
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: I think so.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's a few different things.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I agree with all the points you made, Mike.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: They're really important as well.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: I I think um there's a lot of fragmentation in media channels.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: There's some shift from, as Mike is pointing out, and Sanan, you're showing that in your numbers, from referred search.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, media companies are losing half, maybe or worse, of the referred search, and that generated a lot of clickable opportunities to serve impressions that they've lost.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: As the market shifts from SEO, like you're saying, Mike, to people call it different things, but AEO, answer engine optimization, it changes your content strategy, it changes your marketing strategy on the on your um owned and operated properties, uh, and also some of the partnership properties that you aggregate and resell.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: So that makes a difference.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: Second point is uh local advantage relationships makes a big difference, particularly on the linear side, but the local can also make a difference with a pricing advantage that um is important, but maybe not so obvious.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: If you're an agency or a small business and you want to go by search, you want to go by social video, you want to go do something programmatically um direct, and then you say, Oh, I have to have a$50,000 a month account uh in order to book this.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, if you go to your local media seller, they can break that out.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: So you only need to have a minimum campaign of, say,$5,000 a month if you work with your local media seller, versus if you go to the platform direct, whatever platform it is, you know, maybe 10, 20 times that amount.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: So that that gives an advantage for the local seller.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then the other thing is just coordinating this all.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: It is complicated.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: I think businesses understand, I don't exactly know what TikTok is, but the guy across the street is killing it on TikTok.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's a content strategy, there's a buy strategy.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so being able to orchestrate across all these different media channels uh makes make makes a big difference.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: What content you use and so on makes a big difference.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then um putting this all together against metrics.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's not, here's what we're gonna do.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna buy you impressions, we're gonna get you a lower entry price than you would be able to get by yourself.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna manage um all of this and um kind of coordinate it for you.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: But what we're gonna do is talk about not delivering you audience, we're gonna talk about delivering you results.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: So it's its outcome, its performance, its attribution, its metrics.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: So when you sell in a campaign, how many swimming pools can you build in the next quarter?
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: You know, how many sales do you have to make to get to that build rate?
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: Let us put together a program that delivers that kind of outcome to you.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_03: I love it.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_03: I love it.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_03: And because you mentioned social media uh a bunch there, um, I'm curious, Mike, with social media companies that can sell direct to the consumer, how do local media companies actually compete in that space?
• 17:38
  Mike Boland: Yeah, I think you know, the video could actually be the unlock for that question and several other sort of challenges that we've been posing for the last 10 minutes.
• 17:47
  Mike Boland: Um, if you look at some of the challenges that I mentioned earlier, where local businesses are sort of disillusioned, they're confused, there's so many more options than there used to be, they're not ranking as well in search as they used to.
• 18:00
  Mike Boland: I think it's an opportunity to push them into some of these more premium channels that are sort of immune, for lack of a better term, from the impacts of things like AI search.
• 18:09
  Mike Boland: It's funny, if you know, we broaden that to like some of the larger publishers out there, I think like the New York Times and others, they're really asking themselves, like, wait a minute, we're losing a lot of traffic because people are answering questions or people are asking questions that are getting answered right within AI search.
• 18:24
  Mike Boland: So it's sort of intercepting our traffic.
• 18:26
  Mike Boland: What they've been doing is leaning into the things that AI can't yet touch, which is more premium, video, talking heads, podcasts, things like this.
• 18:35
  Mike Boland: If we bring that down to the local business level and you talk about video, it's something that businesses, especially small businesses, have always wanted, but it's been sort of cost prohibitive.
• 18:49
  Mike Boland: It needs a certain budget, it needs a certain sort of production rigor, and distribution channels are expensive.
• 18:55
  Mike Boland: And all of those barriers have come down.
• 18:57
  Mike Boland: If you look at the fact that on the creation end, generative AI, there's a lot of great tools out there to basically feed it a script, give it a composite of lots of pictures of you, and it can create a great sort of like talking head video.
• 19:11
  Mike Boland: And there's lots of different formats, and the creative is actually getting like scary good in terms of its photorealism.
• 19:17
  Mike Boland: So that's on the creative side, and the cost has come down to almost zero for creation.
• 19:21
  Mike Boland: On the distribution end, we simultaneously have all this great stuff happening out there where sort of all of this added supply through streaming and CTV inventory are meaning that likewise on the distribution end, the cost is coming down.
• 19:36
  Mike Boland: So both creation and distribution means that video is this thing that's suddenly available to all of these businesses that have always sort of wanted to be on TV.
• 19:44
  Mike Boland: It's a great sort of vanity play for local businesses.
• 19:47
  Mike Boland: They love that and it's just great.
• 19:49
  Mike Boland: And I think that it again sort of sidesteps a lot of these other challenges.
• 19:52
  Mike Boland: So the opportunity could be to push them into video.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_03: Very interesting.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_03: All right.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_03: What are the business categories on this list for 2027?
• 20:07
  Senan Mele: Yeah, um, I'll say start with real estate.
• 20:11
  Senan Mele: It's one of the fastest growing categories that we track, and it keeps database for 2030.
• 20:18
  Senan Mele: And uh right behind it, uh healthcare and financial services, education is also a key is also um a slipper um that most uh most colleagues miss.
• 20:31
  Senan Mele: Um restaurant and retail are still growing, just not as fast.
• 20:35
  Senan Mele: So keep them as a steady uh-based business.
• 20:39
  Senan Mele: And almost every category is expected to grow in 2027.
• 20:44
  Senan Mele: So your client are not going away when the political dollar does.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_03: That's good because there's a lot of political dollars going away.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm I'm happy to hear there's businesses that are willing to fill that inventory gap.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_03: Uh Mike, how are they buying?
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_03: What are they looking for?
• 21:03
  Mike Boland: Yeah, so um they're increasingly leaning on digital.
• 21:07
  Mike Boland: I think a lot of the folks that the the verticals that Sainon just mentioned, um, and I would actually add home services and home improvement to that list.
• 21:15
  Mike Boland: A lot of them are deskless, right?
• 21:17
  Mike Boland: So their mobile device is their primary screen for checking on their performance, checking on their leads, checking on their booked appointments.
• 21:25
  Mike Boland: Um, and and it goes just beyond like ad and ad campaigns.
• 21:29
  Mike Boland: I mean, we're talking booking platforms, CRM, and like other key sort of marketing adjacent functions.
• 21:35
  Mike Boland: Um, and I think that it in that way, it sort of increases the addressable market for a lot of media companies.
• 21:42
  Mike Boland: Earlier, we talked about the sort of bundling and the one-stop shop appeal.
• 21:46
  Mike Boland: I think that there are a lot of other sort of operational functions that are that are growing in demand.
• 21:52
  Mike Boland: Like, for example, answering inbound leads and turning them into booked appointments is something that has been this long-standing pain point, especially in the world of home services, uh, because again, they're desk lists.
• 22:05
  Mike Boland: Um, and we're seeing a lot of agentic tools out there that are, that are starting to address that problem.
• 22:09
  Mike Boland: The dirty little secret has always been that local businesses don't have a marketing problem, they have an operational problem in a lot of ways.
• 22:16
  Mike Boland: They do all that work and spend all that money to make the phone ring.
• 22:19
  Mike Boland: And then I forget the exact stats, but there's some majority percentage of calls that go unanswered after all that work.
• 22:26
  Mike Boland: So I think that um to answer your question, in terms of both the sort of the pure ad side of things, but also some of These operational functions that are under a broader marketing umbrella are things that that there's a lot of opportunity to sort of bundle these things.
• 22:42
  Mike Boland: And and but to answer your direct question, it's it's it's all about I think they're moving towards digital because it it offers all of these sort of operationally streamlined and automated functions.
• 22:55
  Mike Boland: And that's like when we look at AI just panning back, it's sort of a double-edged sword.
• 22:59
  Mike Boland: It's causing a lot of the confusion and anxiety I mentioned earlier.
• 23:02
  Mike Boland: A lot of publishers are losing traffic.
• 23:04
  Mike Boland: But I think one of the places it really applies for local businesses is alleviating such a big pain point that they've always had, which is resource constraints.
• 23:12
  Mike Boland: The ability for some of these agentic solutions to basically give them time back, right?
• 23:17
  Mike Boland: I always say that, you know, selling um advertising or selling any solution to local business, you're not selling them that ad package.
• 23:24
  Mike Boland: You're selling them more time with their kids.
• 23:26
  Mike Boland: And I think that, you know, this sort of age of agentic functions is one of the first things that come along in a while that I've seen that really speaks to the pain points of local businesses in their resource constraints, in just letting them do more with less.
• 23:40
  Mike Boland: And that could be ad management, it could be answering the phone, it could be booking appointments for them.
• 23:45
  Mike Boland: It's all of the above.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_03: I love it.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_03: I have some friends that have uh uh businesses, you know, electrical and plumbing, and I I echo what you said.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_03: It's uh they they get the calls, but routing them and uh and handling that so AI could be a huge benefit there.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_03: It's a great perspective.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_03: Uh okay.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_03: This is not a slight to any of you.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_03: You're the smartest people that I know, but we are going to try lightning round.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_03: I was gonna say one sentence, that's not gonna work.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_03: Let's do like your best at 30 seconds, okay?
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_03: What move would you make in the next 90 days based on the forecast and what you see heading into 2027?
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_03: Rick, we'll start with you.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: I think um first reset your digital expectations.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: We've been riding a growth curve.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it will continue to grow at a slower rate as a denominator gets bigger.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's harder to improve the numerator.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: So the percentage um, you know, year over year or term over term will get smaller.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: And it's getting more complex.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: How that spend happens in digital media channels is changing.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: So you need to reset your expectations around growth, where that growth is happening in the digital media channels, and also across markets and business verticals.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: When you're in digital, um, your sales force, look at that.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, um, training for digital um is sometimes underwhelming in spite of people's efforts.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: It does get complex.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're gonna try to orchestrate solutions for customers, you really need to understand that media.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: People on the traditional side, that's more relationship-based, like you were saying, Mike.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: But the digital, it's uh performance, it's attribution, it's efficiency, it's automation.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't know that and can't speak those terms and can't build a campaign like that, um, you're gonna get yourself in trouble with the client cross-platform.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's not a silo world anymore.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, campaigns, full funnel, matrix, web, whatever you want to call it, all the different media.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: I saw one study, it was 22 touch points marketers had for somebody on their purchase uh journey to buy a car.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: You want to be there, you know, for each of the touch points.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and for linear uh like TV broadcasts where we spend a lot of our time, it's not programmatic anytime soon for the traditional over the air.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: There's some available programmatically, but at least there's some efforts to automate it.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, holding companies, agencies are gonna go to where there's operational efficiencies these days.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: They have smaller staffs, they're being paid an outcome, not hours in.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: So the whole buy side has been changing the media channels and types of buyers and the buyer-seller relationship.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: That needs a reset in terms of how media CEOs and executives view the marketplace going forward.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_03: And that was pretty close.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_03: We'll call that 60 seconds, but that was a lot of really good information.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_03: Sanan, what's the move you would make?
• 26:33
  Senan Mele: I'll say uh plan 2027 on core non-political demand and put real estate, healthcare, and financial services at the top of every seller's list.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_03: I love it.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_03: Very good.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_03: And Mike, what would your move be?
• 26:50
  Mike Boland: So I would say for local media executives, make your sales managers and your sales teams and the reps smart on AI, right?
• 26:59
  Mike Boland: And learn by doing.
• 27:00
  Mike Boland: It's all about learning by doing.
• 27:01
  Mike Boland: If you don't already have, you know, a claw desktop enterprise account across the board, encourage them to use it.
• 27:09
  Mike Boland: You're gonna find that they will find operational internal efficiencies, but also more importantly, they will know it so that they can speak the language, they can speak fluently about it so that when they are out on the street talking to local businesses that are expressing some of those anxieties about what the heck do I do now, they can speak to it um intelligently and confidently uh and be that sort of consultative, sort of educational role that I espoused earlier.
• 27:36
  Mike Boland: Um, so yeah, make them smart on it and learn by doing.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_03: Easier said than done, but I think that's that's the aspiration, right?
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_03: So I love it.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_03: Uh guys, thank you so much for your time.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_03: Uh if anybody out there is interested in knowing where the media is moving in 2027, like I said, uh every single market across the United States, 18 media types, 90 plus verticals.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_03: And I can assure you, your local market probably doesn't follow the national trend, at least not down to every item.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_03: You need to see your local market to understand what is going on in that market.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_03: It's going to be different.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_03: Full update is on BIA Advantage.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_03: Our team can walk you through it.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_03: Give us an email, clientinfo at BIA.com.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks.