Agency models; Macro trends; social media regulation and the music industry!

Speaker 0 · 0:00

Hello. Welcome to the Media Unfiltered podcast. What a fascinating week. We've had Easter, yet we still had a lot of developments throughout the week. And I just wanna sort of reflect, Ian, and start with this Ascension stuff. Obviously, we we put a post out, during these to break, and the response and feedback has been has been really interesting. And I think the the story centered on when I had the opportunity to visit the Accenture team in Sydney and their sort of test marketing, if you like, an agency model that was, you know, let's say, a model like fifteen, twenty years ago. And, you put out a post talking about the value of agencies and, you know, when when a market or a category reduces price or change their product, it actually changes the product of the entire market. There was a few good responses to it, wasn't it? And it was interesting. I could see the indie side where they're saying, well, we've been doing this for ages, and this has been happening. And some clients value it, some don't. I mean, how do you wrap that sort of conversation up? And, obviously, Accenture has also been in touch with us as well to to say, you know, obviously, thanks, but there's also a larger play here with technology and data. But do you wanna just sort of reflect on some of the commentary, and, and do you have a do you have a a different point of view now on on that particular,

Speaker 1 · 1:15

topic that we addressed last week? Well, I think the main piece still holds the in terms of luck. The advertising market is is changing the way that the agents has applied before in terms of what is effectively a cost plus model. In the days of AI, they're quite frankly that that economic model is unsustainable. And I think the point with that post was to say what Accenture is doing in terms of moving to a new model is genuinely very, very interesting. I think, as you say though, the wider sort of, point here about how then that feeds in, not just about the economic model in terms of of moving more to a subscription like service, but what else they can actually offer as well to clients is potentially the most interesting part here. Because if you think of what what Accenture is, obviously, it's a big technology focused group. I mean, that's where Accenture has historically made its money. Big IT operations, transformation projects, but really focusing on on processes and operations. If they can bring that to their clients as well as the normal advertising sort of agency services, then that's actually very powerful because advertisers increasingly want outcomes. We all know that. That's increasingly the way that the advertising world is going. The problem is, though, when it comes to outcomes, that is quite frankly that outcomes are not always easy to measure. Right? And this is why you get quite a lot of debate at the moment in the agency world. There's there's how is it that we measure outcomes? How do we get compensated for this and etcetera, etcetera? Well, you know, think about sort of outcomes. What you really need, you need infrastructure to measure outcomes accurately. You need actually enough scope across the client's business to influence those outcomes. And then what you also need as well is a balance sheet that can absorb the volatility of performance linked fees, which you will naturally get. If you think about the players in the agency space, yeah, the big benefit, the sort of secret weapon that Accenture has is has all three, which is not necessarily the case for the HoldCoast. Over the HoldCoast, what they have and, again, this is not a criticism. You know, they are their profits still very much driven by their media businesses. And, you know, that reflects what's been happening over the past thirty years in terms of capability, client demand, etcetera. But the simple fact here is is that if you get a new model now that effectively is repricing media, and what it's doing is shifting the competition from actually buying efficiency, which is what the the the media buy buying model has effectively been focused on over the past decades. So one that really sort of focuses on business outcomes, then, you know, that I mean, it strikes to the heart of the HoldCo's business, but also as well, sort of it it means that all the place in the market have to have, yeah, a significantly different level of skills than they've had in the past. And, also, as well, try to monetize those services that perhaps weren't monetized before. And I'm thinking areas such as strategy, also as well on a wider basis, things like creative. And going back because in in the post that put out last week, the analogy that I made was was between MiFID two, which was the banking regulation in Europe that demanded that extra research be separately priced instead of being bundled. And what was interesting there was that if you looked at at the banks that most successfully rode that pricing reset, essentially, the major investment banks. Why? Because they could absorb that pricing reset. Yeah. What did they made, you know, significant profits in other areas such as trading, investment banking, and so on. You know, the ones who actually suffered were the ones who essentially the smaller, more focused houses that didn't have that diversified revenue base. And I think it's a similar sort of thing here. Yeah. With Accenture, what they can do is that they can effectively subsidize agency economics from the existing revenue base that they get from consulting services. The issue for the agency HoldCo's is that their profits tend to be concentrated within the media space. And that, you know, the risk there is it constrains the actions that they can take. Now that doesn't mean that the hold goes will lose. They have a hell of a lot of strength. You think about actually the infrastructure they built up over decades. You think about the relationships. You think about the talent. You think about the knowledge that sits within the agency groups. But the big challenge they're gonna face is that you've got a historic profitability model that's increasingly has been built on media. The foundations of how that profitability have been built are now being fundamentally challenged by AI. And now what you've got is the major pricing reset through which the agencies are somewhat vulnerable because, actually, they lack the balance sheet capability and the revenue diversification from other areas that can help support that transformation through. And I think for the agency groups that, for me, that's the core sort of strategic issue that they're gonna face over the next decade. You know, I've said this before. You know, one of the one of the biggest issues with what's happening in terms of the agency pricing models over the past, you know, thirty plus years is and Michael Farmer has shown this in his data, is as the unit economics go down sort of per unit, essentially, what it means is the agency services are treated as a commodity. But a bigger problem from that is that because agencies agencies seen as commodity, so is the product that they sell, I. E. Advertising. In an age of AI, where efficiency is is rampant, what the agencies have to do is really sort of transform that to where advertising is seen as an investment. It's not seen as a commodity, and their own services within within that are also seen as a premium product, not something where what counts is the lowest price. If it can get past that, that's absolutely fantastic. It brings them to to a much better place for their businesses and their share prices. The problem is, though, this sort of period of transition and the ability to get through it.

Speaker 0 · 7:24

The the attitude in media that you can achieve the same or better results with less tries to be absolutely bonkers. It it it doesn't work in any other industry, so I don't know why it would work in media. And it's really devaluing what, we consider premium or quality media. Quality media is the word that we're gonna use from now on, not premium. I think we owe it to the market to, to do a perhaps a deeper dive. Maybe we'll find someone from Ascension who will come on, and we can sort of dig into their model with a little bit more detail. So why don't we do a little update on some of the macro financial trends? There's been some inflation data, actually, positive job, data as well from US and Canada. And then we've got issues with airports potentially running out of fuel. So do you wanna do, like, quick update on on what's going on from a macro level and and perhaps the impact on on our media market? Yeah. Sure. So, I mean, you as you say, there's been, like, you know, a mix a mix bag. I mean, if you look at US inflation, for example, you know, we just had the latest figures for March. I mean, that's up to 3.3%.

Speaker 1 · 8:25

You had a 21% increase plus increase when it comes to gasoline prices. I mean, interesting that inflation figure was slightly below what the analysts had forecast, but, nevertheless, you know, what you're seeing here is the the impact of the Middle East conflict now feeding through to the consumer. And, of course, you know, in The US, I mean, it depends market by market. But, obviously, in The US, gasoline prices, gasoline is a is a major component of consumer spend. If you look at what consumers are are expecting, they are expecting that inflation will remain elevated. The University of Michigan, they do a consumer confidence survey, but they showed that consumers are expecting that prices will go up by 4.8% over the next year. If you actually look at what that figure was a month ago, it was 3.8%. And you've also as well got a decline when it comes to consumer sentiment, you know, a record low in April. Now the caveat with that is to say that, yeah, if you look over the past several years, what you have noticed is, let's call it a growing difference between, let's call it soft economic statistics and this would be things like consumer sentiment and hard ones when it comes to things like jobs data, and so on. And if you look at the jobs data as you say, you know, in The US and, and in Canada, that was positive. The US, there was the caveat that actually the figures for February in terms of of payrolls we revised down. So because they often give an initial figure. So that is

Speaker 0 · 9:54

raising some concerns about what will happen. Can I can I ask the question, though, quickly about The US figures? Trump has got lackeys in posts, and he wants to manipulate the data anyway for positive public sentiment. Can you trust any of the data that's coming out of The US at the moment? Or do the financial markets, the global financial markets actually trust what's coming out from the from the Trump administration?

Speaker 1 · 10:17

All politicians, you know, of any hue try to manipulate the data in other forms. I'd say that, you know, the administration is probably more open about it than other administrations have been, other politicians have been sort of throughout the world. But the the sort of massaging of official economic data we're trying to present it in the best light is a primal trick. I think if the markets are concerned about anything, it's more the facts of the quality of, quite frankly the quality of the statistics because either because the the official government body is not keeping up with the latest data collection trends and or because a lot of experience has actually lost the has left the the BLS. What we'd say is this is not just a US issue. The ONF in The UK, the Office of National Statistics, there has been similar concerns raised about the quality of that, of you know, when we look at it, yes, you know, the markets do generally trust it. And also as well, the markets, in a way, what they look for is really consistency. So as long as they feel there's not major volatility within these numbers, and they really can't explain that, they're quite happy to go on with the with this. I think a key thing also as well, and this is just to continue on the macro side, is what's happening now in in Europe. You know, with jet fuel. Yeah. There is talk that if the straight foremost are are not fully open in three weeks, then European airports effectively face, you know, systemic shortages of jet fuel. And it's interesting there. Crazy. Yeah. Because people think about oil as one product, but oil is not. You know, it's split out different types of of oil sort of through the refinement process and the type of oil that it is produced different products. You know, gasoline, you know, car gasoline, fuel, you know, for airlines, what's used in the petrochemical industry. If you look, for example, you take an example of The UK, The UK doesn't really have that much exposure to sort of most old products that come out that are derived from the Straits Of twelve months apart from jet fuel where it's over 40% dependent Mhmm. On that. And that you've already seen some countries, you know, Vietnam, for example, start to ration jet fuel. If the situation doesn't improve, then what you're gonna get is you're gonna get sort of, you know, potentially flights being canceled, prices going up. And, of course, what this lead to is consumers going back to what was talking about before with the con the University of Michigan consumer sentiment numbers, what happens is consumers start to change their behaviors based on expectations. And if consumers are thinking there is a shock coming down the road because of what's happening in The Middle East, we're gonna see increased fuel prices. There's gonna be a knock on effect because because inflation goes up, central banks may raise interest rates, which again has been talked about. Certainly in in European markets, The US, that's a very political sort of issue. That obviously has implications in terms of what they're paying, mortgages, feed through into things like rental prices. What this all means is that it squeezes the first of all, it squeezes the consumer and then also as well, it makes them a lot more risk averse. And that, of course, raises pressure marks for the possibility of companies within the sector and therefore, the knock on effect that it has on advertising.

Speaker 0 · 13:35

Yeah. Crazy. God's sake. The Trump administration has been an absolute disaster for global business, and he's supposed to be a business man. Well, we won't we won't obviously get I'm not gonna get I'm not gonna get Well, I I know you won't. I know you won't, but it it's been an unmitigated disaster. Let's be honest. And there's there's no clear path out of it, but we obviously

Speaker 1 · 13:54

hope for a swift end for all this uncertainty. But it's been uncertainty from day one. The only thing I would say about that, and as I said, I'm not gonna get into the politics of this. If you actually look at the GDP data, if you if you look at the main sort of economic data before this conflict, generally, what was happening was the world economy was holding up. Yes. There was the question mark that inflation is probably at more elevated levels, but, you know, quite frankly, a lot of that actually predates what's happened, you know, the Trump administration coming in, and it's got more to do with changing structural trends that you've got within the global economy. The thing with this, and we talked about this on the last the last podcast as well. For the administration, there is a let's call it hard stop here, which is the midterm elections in November. They will not want this impacting consumer sentiment going into those elections. Now usually with US US voters, they don't really pay a huge amount of attention to the elections. Usually, it's late summer. You know, we're in April. So there's probably three, three and a half months that they've got to sort of sort this out. And so what we'd say is there's always sort of a and Trump is obviously a figure that that sort of he brings sort of of, brings out strong emotions. There is the temptation to think what's happening now is gonna stir up the global economy. You know, things are gonna be things are gonna be terrible. What I would say is I would wait. I mean, it's absolutely true. If this thing this thing really does kick off, you've got the straightest furnace closed off because it's not just oil. Right? Helium for cooling semiconductors. It's it's in terms of fertilizer. Yeah. A lot of that, you know, the the planting season in most of the major geographies is closings, and the price to, fertilizer Price has risen in that. Yeah. Yeah. Perhaps the the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. So, you know, there is a there is a potential risk here, but I think, you know, what we gotta see is we gotta let's wait and see. Okay. The one cautious cautious optimism that something will change in the in the near term, which I'd like to hear. One final line on that, just to say, we've got the q one result season coming up. In fact, the results start next week. This will be interesting because it's when, particularly with US companies I mean, it's all companies generally. They will have to give guidance to the markets as to what they are thinking about the full year. Are they gonna change their full year guidance? Are they gonna implement cost saving programs? Are they gonna you know, what are companies thinking about this? So the next couple of weeks, obviously, depending on the conflict, it's gonna be, you know, we're gonna get a much clearer steer how companies are gonna approach this whole issue of what's happening in The Middle East. Yeah. Some q one results are already out, and we've had some interesting news,

Speaker 0 · 16:39

around that. We've we've had some also some m and a activity, Universal Music deal, for example. Do you wanna talk us through what that is and, why it was Ackman who, who acquired them? Yeah. What's what's going on there? Was it a good deal, good price? And what's the sort of or the bullet points on on that deal, and why is it important? I mean, it's a big deal. It's $64,000,000,000.

Speaker 1 · 17:01

I mean, Universal Music Group is the biggest, biggest number one, so, music group globally. I mean, you've got the, you know, you got the Giants, them, sort of, Warner Music Group, Sony, Bertelsmann, went at more from music publishing side of things as well. It's not a done deal. I mean, if you look essentially at this deal, it's it there's limited cash that comes from this. The structure is effectively saying to existing shareholders, look. You know, what you should do is you should actually take, you know, shares in shares in a new entity. And the listing will will then move across The US, and I think the idea with that is that, you know, in The US, there'll be a high valuation of music companies than maybe was in in Europe. The price, you know, as I say, I mean, if you look at what happened to the Universal Music, share price, sort of it went up, you know, 25%, 25% plus off the back of this lease. But bear in mind, that share price had been you know, if you look over the past twelve months, that share price pre the deal had come down over 40%. So universal and a lot of that was to do with concerns over AI and the impact that would have on the music model. You had certainly investors concerned about streaming. What was the potential future growth profile there? Could the music companies actually move into other areas of monetization? Does this still get done? What it really depends on is Vincent Bollore. So the Bollore Group, if you look at their direct and indirect influence over, of Universal Music, and what do I mean by that? Well, the Beloit Group owns direct shares sort of within Universal Music Group and also as well that through their shareholdings in Vivendi, they also sort of, effectively control how Vivendi will vote on this matter. So you're probably looking around 32% of shares sort of are held by, you know, held by sort of, direct influence by Beloit, and then there's sort of in terms of voting shares, that'll be more. My feeling is is I think Beloit will probably my feeling is we'll need to be convinced more that it's gonna deliver value for his group. I think this structure of and because there's limited cash, what I think Ackman is gonna have to show is that essentially moving the the listing to The US will lead to a fundamental revamp in terms of the share price. I'm not too sure that happens. There's also as well questions about the management because if you look at the letter that Ackman wrote to Universal Music Group, it was a bit of a cure at seg, praising sort of solution grants in terms of of his stewardship, but also criticizing, some of the decisions they've made particularly over stakes. There's also talk as well. He wants to bring in Michael Ortiz in chair to Lucien Grant's been the CEO. That might not be a structure that Lucien Grant particularly wants even though, apparently, the two of them know each other very well. So I think this has got, I think it's got a lot to go. I think what it is really interesting, though, is that it does show how there's been a fundamental change when it comes to how view people view the music markets. And what you've got here is that you've got essentially particularly when it comes to the music catalog, I mean, you've seen multiple deals for artists, whether it be, you know, Bob Dylan, whether it be Singh, whether it be sort of Britney Spears, whether it be, you know, to, of The Police. You're all talking about sort of of the effectively private equity as well the labels themselves playing out these, the rights to music. And why is that the case? Well, quite frankly, you know, what you've got here is that again, in fact now, those assets, those rights being seen as a long duration income assets. In a way, they're becoming like government bonds. And the reason is is because partly because the royalties are predictable. You know, they tend to last inflationally centralized from with inflation. And the other thing also as well is the way of collecting royalties over the past fifteen years has significantly improved on here. And so I think what Ackman's probably taking a taking a bet on is investors are probably too you know, they're placing too much risk or they're they're sort of overcautious on, let's call it, UMG's normal business, which is signing about new new artists, which is expensive, Misty. You know? He probably thinks AI Life's saying that there's more upside rather than downside, which, you know, the markets are are certainly split about. The valuation, I mean, it's 20 times twenty twenty five adjusted EBITDA. You know? That's not that's not a bad valuation. But, again, the question here I mean, if you take what sort of, publishing assets going for, you know, the higher value catalogs will go into the twenties. The average in 2024 for publishers is about 16 times the the the NPS. So, you know, what is effectively saying there is UMG is is deserves to be valued like a premium catalog. And that's obviously an interesting bet from here. But I think that the biggest so if you wanna call it a bigger picture, I'd say it's this. What's happened is that music was very much before fifteen, twenty years ago in the creative industry bracket. People would, you know, they would they would see music as essentially, yeah, you know, we could own the music asset a bit like Edward Bronfman. Isn't it great we own a music label? We can go out and sort of hang out all these parties, know all the artists, you know, etcetera, etcetera. It's now really turned into is essentially a financial asset class. And Yeah. That's the that, I think, is the major shift. Well, it it's almost turning into sort

Speaker 0 · 22:33

of a a SaaS business, ARR type returns. You know, they're predictable, growing, and it's actually quite good to see because, obviously, the music industry struggled for so long to figure out a business model in the digital era, but it seems like they've, they've certainly got their act together. And, you know, you look at these valuations and you look at the, predictability of the income, they're great assets to hold to hold for a long time as well. Yeah. So couple of bits of news that came out this week, which was interesting, and I think it was last week, Rak from Channel four and ITV have said it that, they want a fair price from from YouTube. And then you have the TF one boss saying YouTube needs to be regulated like television. And I'm I'm thinking, well, I mean, the platforms need regulated in totality. Right? And, I mean, that's that's a sort of no shit Sherlock sort of type of thing. Whether they will or not is is another matter. And there's also a ton of pressure now on governments to take a proper look at social media. We know The UK are looking at, banning it for for young people, and you've got the testimony from Zuckerberg showing that very clearly he took no notice of experts and did what he wanted to do to drive engagement. Right? And these guys are, according to the the lawsuit in California, guilty of producing a product that was very addictive and dangerous for young people. So governments now are are under a lot of pressure to, to do something about it. So I think I think that you know, I was actually a little bit dismissive, when the TV community came out and talked about social media in a negative way to, you know, encourage brands to look at where they're spending their money. But, actually, the timing of it couldn't have been better. And perhaps it's having a bit of an impact because, you you know, the negative to the negative sentiment towards these social platforms is actually quite palpable. And and I think you think you know this that I work with a few clients directly, and they are starting to look at their meta spends particularly and do tests, switch it off in certain markets, and see what the impact is. Most of them are finding pretty minimal, to be honest, Ian. And, I think it will have a bit of an impact for them from from the larger blue chip companies. Whether that hurts them financially, I don't know, considering all their income from SMEs, but it's, it's a shift that we're starting to notice. But looking at this YouTube stuff, I mean, the broadcaster signed up these deals in the first place, and now they're going back and saying, we want better rates. I find that an interesting

Speaker 1 · 25:01

approach. What do you think? Yeah. I mean, with all this is happening. So, yeah, if I'm gonna sort of start off actually with the government sort of thinking, because I think potentially longer term, this could be the more interesting one. And then sort of switch back in terms of the the broadcasters. I think when it comes to government, what what again you are seeing here is this is gonna be gonna be a slow burn, but it's I think, potentially has a very powerful sort of, long term effect on these platforms. Because if you look at one of the core reasons for their success in the late two thousands and the twenty tens and indeed the early twenty twenties was that they very much operated under a laissez faire sort of regime, which is pretty much pushed by the Obama administration. Obama was very it was very was very sort of a, was very sort of sort of, very supportive of the tech platforms to essentially, you know, or, you know, gave them a lot of freedom and access. That is now changing. And if you look at what governments are saying, it's saying it's no longer a a boat winner. So so from that standpoint, I think that is, you know, that could be, you know, let's call it over the next five to ten years. That could be that could be a major issue. I think so that's for me, that's a slow burn that I think we've really gotta think about is governments are increasingly seeing you know, across the world, they're increasingly seeing it as potentially a vote winner

Speaker 0 · 26:32

to go after the tech companies. And that's a major shift. And we're seeing it again That's a that is a major shift. There's also a lot of things happening in The UK where behind behind closed doors, governments are seeing where at where where brands major brands are showing up in these environments in unsavory environments. Right? We can't share exactly what what has been seen and what has been shown. Government ministers are seeing this, and I think they need you know, they're they're alarmed. They are absolutely alarmed. We need quick action. But I think what you're saying is the important part is the consumer sentiment towards these particular platforms. If that changes and that

Speaker 1 · 27:13

strengthens the hands of these governments to actually do something. Is that what you're saying? Yeah. And you can see that I mean, look at what's happening in The States at the moment in terms of the protests about AI data centers. You know, AI is becoming again a major factor when it comes to the, you know, potentially a major factor when it comes to the midterms. The the tech companies are being pulled into politics globally. And to be honest, this is not a new phenomenon. You go back over his you know, in history, you will see exactly the same thing play out. I mean, this is a Standard Oil sort of scenario from the from, the early late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. And, you know, remember with Standard Oil, eventually, that was broken up. Yeah. I'm not saying that will happen with the tech platforms, but you've got this same sort of populist reaction that is now driving sentiment. Just as in money will drive a lot financial decisions, when it comes to politicians, what will essentially drive decisions is votes. So for me, this is like the single biggest issue fundamental issue, I think, for the tech companies. I mean, yes, obviously, AI AI spend is fundamentally important. But, actually, you know, if you wanna sort of paraphrase to the Stalin's quote about the pope saying how many divisions does the pope has, I mean, you could argue how many how many divisions do does Meta have, how many divisions does Google have. Governments do sort of have the ultimate sort of ban hammer when it comes to power. I think on the broadcasters, and go back to this point of what you know, I mean, I I've mentioned before that if if, you know, the whole YouTube is TV argument, one one the sort of issues that then brings up is exactly what TF Warner says. If you are seen as a if you are saying you're a broadcaster, then you should be regulated as a broadcaster. And, again, I think that's going to be sort of a major topic moving forward. I think also as well when it comes to what Wack said at channel four, again, either broadcasters I mean, this is interesting because channel four was seen as as were the poster child for YouTube's deals with broadcasters, particularly in in the European market. So for channel four to make a public satisfaction as it were with the agreement, then it makes it makes marks a major move. I think one of the things we've gotta bear in mind is we don't know what YouTube's profitability is. That's not broken out within Mhmm. Alphabet's numbers. My guess is that probably YouTube probably isn't profit, but not by that much. I I mean, it makes $60,000,000,000 of of revenues.

Speaker 0 · 29:35

They're paid out profit. Yeah. They don't sure it is in profit. I'm sure it is in They don't pay anything for content. Right? It's it's basically a variable cost business. Right? Obviously, they've massive expenses to host all that stuff, but still, I mean,

Speaker 1 · 29:49

must be huge profits. Well, there's not I mean, it depends what you're looking at. You know? Because if you look at, for example, music, which is gonna be often not talked about, but it's gonna be a very significant part of YouTube's listening. If you look at Spotify, Spotify pays 70% away to the music labels, and that was the set standard. So for YouTube in paying anything significantly different, I don't think that's that's the case. You then, of course, then got the NFL rights that they're paying for. You then got because if you look at what Disney was saying when ESPN had a dispute with YouTube, the carriage dispute, again, some pretty hefty numbers that, Disney was losing on a per week basis. And I think, you know, this is the issue for this is the issue here for YouTube is that, you know, if all the broadcasters around the world start saying, you know what? We gotta pay us more, then then there's a question mark about the profitability of the platform. The one bigger question I think is is not being asked here. And I think, you know, this is this, I I I think, is a question that, you know, for YouTube, probably they need to ask themselves. So, certainly, sort of now and over the next couple of years, we talk a lot about the sort of YouTube versus TV debate. We don't really talk about is actually what is perhaps the where maybe YouTube should be going, which is YouTube versus TikTok. Mhmm. You know, arguably, that actually yeah. There was a case for saying that should YouTube be trying to convince advertisers that it's television and therefore get a show at the TV ad budgets, or should it actually be focusing its efforts on effectively taking more revenue share from TikTok? And I think the advantage that maybe it would have there is that particularly when you've got growing geopolitical concerns that are influencing government's behaviors, but also advertisers. You know, the sort of how TikTok sort of, targets consumers, the consumers that you know, the concerns you set over trust, whether there might be more fruitful strategy there. That, of course, is a decision for YouTube management. Yeah. I mean, TikTok's on a tear. Right? And they still are and,

Speaker 0 · 31:50

and doing incredibly well. I still question the, the impact, particularly of advertising. The influencer stuff is still very much in debate, and then some of it is hugely effective around, around beauty and other products. I still think that there's a there's a question mark there. Right? When you look at the, profitability studies and other studies, brands are we should do a we should do a a social media pod actually so we focus on the market, but there there's a lot of good data out there suggest that major brands are over investing by about 30% into social media. It'd be good to do a deep dive on that. In fact, we also discussed whether we should have a little focus on the radio market. We did a little bit on our home, and some of the our home guys got in touch. So maybe we should do a bit of a focus on some of these, other media channels, like, in a bit of a bit more detail and bring on some people. That's something for the for the future. Don't you think Ian would be a good idea for us to

Speaker 1 · 32:43

Absolutely. I think look. You know, areas like radio, areas like out of home, they tend to be at the margins. You know, we tend to have a lot to debate around social, YouTube, TV, advertising markets in general. You know, these are very interesting markets. You know? There's a lot that's going on there, not just in terms of what's happening in advertising, but the way that they're sort of trying to measure their audiences, the attention, also as well. Again, they really sort of at the heart of trusted media. So Yeah. I think, yeah, that's an area that, is you know, well, we talked about this before, and you just said it. We'd like to actually sort of,

Speaker 0 · 33:19

focus on a lot more. We we will, we'll cover these markets moving forward. Ian, thank you very much for your time today. And if you are part of, radio, social, and you have data or even at home, we did a reflection on the at home market in New Zealand, and it was interesting how they they managed to clean up their measurement, and they collaborated, and they're growing the market. You're looking at TV companies and other businesses actually buying these businesses, radio and at at home. You look at the Finnish market where they're actually forming superticks, so for all local media. So we wanna cover that stuff. And like Ian says, it is very much trusted, and, and it's something that perhaps, brands should be looking at more. Ian, with that in mind, this is definitely not investment advice. There's been a a great chat. Usual. It's been a nice as usual. Advice indeed. Okay. We'll chat next week. Thank you. Take care. Brilliant. You too.