It’s no secret that we’re living in a digital age, but a recent tube journey brought the pace of change into sharp focus. Of the 11 people in my section of the carriage, six were on their mobile phones. This was an environment where historically you’d get no coverage, where people would be reading books or staring absently into space trying desperately not to catch the eye of the person opposite, where it was not uncommon to find at least one copy of The Metro in every carriage no matter the time of day.

This experience got me thinking. As connectivity reaches even these previously offline moments, moments that news brands like The Metro have relied on to capture our attention, how do traditional publishers adapt to an increasingly online world? More importantly, what does that mean for us as advertisers?

The Ofcom News Report 2026 published last month tells us that 96% of all UK adults consume news, highlighting just how huge its reach and scale is. However, a much broader range of platforms are now being used to access news, beyond printed newspapers. The news landscape, much like every other media channel, is becoming increasingly fragmented.

It’s not surprising that 82% of adults access their news online, with nearly three-quarters using online intermediaries such as social media and news aggregators. However, only 5% of those that use intermediaries rely solely on them for their news. Encouragingly for news brands, 57% of adults access news directly through news publishers’ websites and apps. Social media need not be the enemy of news brands, particularly amongst young audiences as many use these services as a gateway to their news consumption.

What does this all mean for advertisers?

These changing audience behaviours create a broader set of opportunities than traditional print placement alone. Publisher websites and apps can offer access to loyal, logged-in audiences. Video-led formats can deliver attention and storytelling. And social distribution can extend reach to younger news brand consumers. The opportunity is not simply to follow audiences onto new platforms, but to choose the combination of environment, format and publisher relationship that best serves the campaign objective. Reach may come from distributed channels, while trust, context and deeper engagement may be strongest in publisher-owned spaces. The ultimate question for advertisers is not whether news audiences are disappearing, but where and how they are choosing to engage.

Getting something to work is only the beginning

The session introduced an Agentic AI Lifecycle:

Idea → Introduction → Growth → Maturity → Decline

What I liked about the lifecycle was that it didn’t stop at adoption or maturity. The inclusion of decline is a useful reminder that value needs to keep being reassessed. Processes change, technology moves on and better options emerge. Something shouldn’t continue indefinitely just because it once worked.

The session also gave a good example of why getting beyond the pilot matters. One AI agent was consuming around 60,000 tokens for a single interaction. The speaker compared that with roughly 20,000 tokens for a master’s thesis, so each interaction was effectively processing the equivalent of three dissertations. Technically it worked, but whether that approach made sense at scale was a different question.

That resonated because we’d encountered a similar challenge ourselves. Earlier in the year, we experimented with conversational analytics, allowing people to ask questions of data more naturally and then explore the answers through follow-up questions. It worked and showed the potential, but the challenge was scaling it. At the time, the value didn’t justify the cost at scale, so we started exploring alternative approaches that could achieve the same goal more efficiently.

What was interesting was seeing conversational and agentic analytics appear across several other sessions at Big Data LDN, particularly given the direction reporting and insight generation seems to be heading.

The direction still feels relevant, but our own experience reinforced an important distinction: a working AI solution isn’t necessarily a scalable one. The value it creates, what it costs to operate and whether that equation still makes sense as usage grows all matter.

What I came away with

I didn’t leave Big Data LDN thinking we’d been looking at AI in completely the wrong way. If anything, it reinforced many of the questions we’re already asking and gave me a few useful ways of thinking about them as we continue experimenting with AI across the business.

What problem are we solving? What does success look like? Should AI augment or automate? Will people trust it? Does it make sense at scale? And when should we change, replace or retire it?

The technology will keep changing, but those questions feel much more durable.

Getting AI to do something is becoming easier. The harder part is turning that capability into something valuable, scalable and trusted enough to become part of how the business works.

From trust and attention through to market share, profit and ROI, news brands consistently deliver business outcomes. We spoke to Niki West, Client Services & Strategy Director at Newsworks, who told us that campaigns that tap into a cultural moment and become part of the conversation have the biggest impact.

What’s the biggest misconception advertisers have about news brands?

For me there are two significant misconceptions that prevent advertisers from harnessing the power of news brands to drive effectiveness for their brands.

The first is that people often assume that news brands are all about print, older audiences and serious current affairs. This couldn’t be further from the truth. The reality is that news brands are hugely dynamic, constantly evolving businesses. They’re creating a whole host of vibrant and engaging content spanning hard-hitting breaking news stories to lovely lifestyle content across websites, apps, video, podcasts, social media and more, reaching 24 million people across lots of different demographics every single day. Often media planners and advertisers don’t really think about this when planning, because news brands are just not on their ‘media’ consideration list. However, commercial opportunities within news brands are vast and there is real opportunity to drive brand and business effectiveness by partnering with news publishers.

The second misconception, and probably the one which has the biggest commercial impact for news publishers, is the idea news environments aren’t ‘safe’ for brands and that placing digital ads in and around news could have a negative impact on brand perceptions. This is a persistent challenge that Newsworks has been lobbying against ever since I joined nine years ago. It’s one that I feel particularly passionately about. It’s also an interesting conversation because many of the assumptions people have held for years are now being challenged by evidence. Consumers are far more sophisticated than we sometimes give them credit for. They understand the difference between the content they’re reading and the advertising alongside it. And there is conclusive evidence, from several different research studies, which highlights that advertising in and around trusted news environments is brand safe and has no negative impact on brand perceptions. In fact, the opposite is true: trusted news environments have a positive effect on how people perceive brands and on business outcomes.

What’s the best use of news brands you’ve seen in the past three months?

I’m always drawn to campaigns that do something only news brands can do. When a campaign feels as though it couldn’t have run anywhere else, that’s often a sign it’s doing something special. I love seeing brands use the context of a news environment to make a message work harder, whether that’s through a clever tactical execution, a brilliant headline or a piece of content that feels completely at home within the editorial environment. The standout work tends to be the campaigns that tap into a cultural moment. A news story or an editorial context in a way that feels smart, timely and genuinely useful to the audience. The best news brand advertising doesn’t just sit alongside content; it becomes part of the conversation.

This is exactly what ASDA and George achieved through their Family Matters’ partnership with Mail Metro Media – a seven-month, insight-led content programme designed to put the brand at the centre of family life. Built around a dedicated Daily Mail TikTok channel and amplified across print, digital, social and commerce platforms, the campaign combined authentic parenting content with real-time audience insights, delivering millions of views, strong brand engagement and measurable sales impact. And I have it on good authority that a second iteration of the campaign is coming due to the success of the initial investment.

How can media agencies get the most out of news brands for their clients?

The best results come when agencies treat news brands as strategic partners, not just media channels. By combining trusted environments, rich first-party data, audience insight, creative expertise and multi-platform reach, news publishers can help agencies deliver more relevant campaigns, stronger engagement and better business outcomes for clients. To get the most out of news brands, my advice would be for media agency planners to engage publisher commercial teams upstream in the planning process. They can provide a valuable source of consumer and category understanding which can support strategic direction. They also have a wealth of creative media and commercial content experts who would love to have a crack at helping you to solve clients marketing and business challenges. Their door is always open, what are you waiting for?

Our search strategy across both Google and Microsoft combined brand and generic PPC to capture both high intent users familiar with the charity and broader audiences searching for information about the disease.  We aligned all our TV activity with sport to ensure that we were speaking to men while they were engaged with the media. We ran across a range of sports including football, darts, cricket, boxing, rugby and Formula 1 to reach a breadth of men. Finally, we monitored the news for relevant breaking stories that would drive interest in men checking their risk of the disease such as when public figures including Jeremy Clarkson and Lord David Cameron have spoken up about their prostate cancer diagnosis and treatment. We made sure that Prostate Cancer UK was present in these moments when more men would be looking for information by uncapping search and social budgets

Prostate Cancer UK’s award-winning risk checker is free, anonymous and simple to use. It can help you understand your risk of prostate cancer in around 30 seconds and support you with information about what you can chose to do next. To take the Risk Checker today visit: Prostatecanceruk.org/risk-check

*The Office of National Statistics

We sat down with senior account manager, Wendy Chung, to grill her about how we approach paid social for our clients. For Wendy, our strength is in looking at campaigns from the perspective of both the client and their audience so we can create the right moment, message and environment to deliver results.

What do you wish everyone knew about paid social?

Paid social naturally offers a more relaxed environment for receiving information compared to paid search, where users are proactively looking for information with a specific intent. This is where the social element comes into play. As consumers, we are immersed in social platforms every day, often without recognising how much information we absorb unconsciously as we scroll. We move between different platforms intuitively and adapt to the ways in which each platform shapes how users discover and consume content.

For advertisers, understanding audience mindset is crucial. Often, advertisers want to prioritise channels based on their larger user bases or stronger returns. However, audiences rarely engage with just one social platform. Instead, they move across multiple platforms. Therefore, it is important to understand where we position our clients across these platforms within the different stages of the funnel, and how we can create experiences that feel natural, relevant and that genuinely resonate with audiences.

What is the biggest opportunity for advertisers in paid social this year?

AI is constantly evolving, and we are continuously adapting our best practices to keep up. With AI now embedded across paid media, from Advantage+ on Meta to AI Max on Google, the question is no longer whether we use AI, but how we work with it effectively.

AI can help us expand reach, optimise performance and generate stronger signals, but it doesn’t replace strategic judgement. While platforms increasingly automate audience targeting and optimisation, we still need to consider creative, placement, context and brand sensitivity. These are areas where AI is stepping up too, but it demands more human attention. The opportunity is to work with AI, learn from its signals and recommendations, while maintaining strategic control over how and where we use it.

How can media agencies get the most out of paid social for their clients?

Understand both paid and non-paid activities happening at the same time. Reusing content across channels can create a more connected journey as audiences encounter different touchpoints. For example, we have boosted clients’ organic content through paid social, using additional messaging that may not have been part of the original paid activity. Looking beyond advertising also helps us understand what clients are doing to achieve their wider goals. We can then determine where those activities can be leveraged within paid campaigns, particularly at the awareness and engagement stages. Ultimately, it is about understanding both what the client wants to deliver and how audiences will receive it. Creating the right moment, message and environment by looking at the campaign from different perspectives.

To help brands earn meaningful attention, Tom Firkin, Senior Client Partner at Reddit wants advertisers to respect why people use different platforms, understand the distinct behaviours and expectations within each environment and create work that feels genuinely relevant rather than interruptive. Here he explains what a platform-independent approach could look like.

What is the one thing you wish everyone knew about paid social?

Paid social isn’t one homogeneous channel. Each platform is inherently different because people visit it to fulfil a different need – whether that’s entertainment, distraction, connection, inspiration, discovery or validation. Those motivations directly affect the quality of attention a platform commands. The best planning begins by understanding that mindset, then adapting the message accordingly. Reddit is particularly powerful when people are actively seeking information, exploring interests and learning from communities, which creates a naturally engaged environment for brands.

If you could change one thing in the industry, what would it be?

If I could change one thing in the industry, it would be how we measure the true impact of social campaigns. Too often, success is defined by the metrics that are easiest to count – clicks, views and engagement – rather than the outcomes that matter most, such as incremental sales, brand growth and long-term customer value.

I’d also like advertisers to rely less on last-click attribution. An old colleague explained its flaw brilliantly: imagine having six beers, three gin and tonics, four glasses of wine and a shot of tequila, then blaming the tequila for your hangover. That’s essentially what last-click does, it gives all the credit to the final interaction while ignoring everything that influenced the customer beforehand.

I’d like to see the industry adopt a more consistent, platform-independent approach that combines brand-lift studies, incrementality testing and commercial results. Social’s influence is rarely linear, so its measurement should reflect its role across the entire customer journey. Better measurement wouldn’t just prove social’s value; it would help brands invest more intelligently and reward work that creates genuine impact rather than simply generating activity.

How can media agencies get the most out of paid social for their clients?

Give every platform a deliberate role based on why people actually use it, not simply because it appeared on last year’s plan. Creative should be built for the environment, rather than declaring one asset “platform-agnostic” and resizing it nine different ways.

Agencies should also test off the beaten track and include emerging partners early enough to generate meaningful learning, not once the plan, creative and budget have already been set in stone. That includes involving platforms such as Reddit early, when they can help uncover audience insights and inform the wider strategy. Ultimately, the strongest paid social plans give each platform a clear purpose while leaving enough room to experiment, learn and adapt.

This month’s we sat down with media Account Executive, Aimee Williamson, for our Day in the Life chat. Aimee tells us why you shouldn’t go into new roles with your blinkers on and why it’s important not to be too hard on yourself in the first few months in a media agency.

What led you to a career in media?

I’ve always been quite creative leaning. Following an English and Drama degree at university, I was lucky enough to get a graduate placement in film marketing at Warner Brothers. For a year I got to learn about international marketing for Warner Brother’s European cinema releases. As part of my placement, I worked alongside media agencies and was even able to spend a couple of days in the agencies themselves, learning about how they run and the role they play.

When I started at Warner Brothers, I thought I’d landed my dream job straight out of uni. But I quickly realised that there were so many options out there in the world of marketing, entertainment and media that I hadn’t realised even existed. When my placement ended, I was drawn to experiencing advertising from the other side and working in agencies. I wanted to work in a smaller, independent agency so I could gain experience across multiple channels, rather than being siphoned into one small area of the business. That’s how I found MI Media!

What does a typical day look like for you?

A lot of my role involves client communication: being open with feedback about how campaigns are working, what we recommend changes and what they need from us over the coming weeks and months.

To be able to do this effectively, I have to be across our reporting and planning. I pull together reports on our TV and press activity, monitoring how current activity is performing and working with the sales houses to make any changes we need. Alongside this, I work with the team to use the data from current activity to plan our campaigns three to four months head of time, considering how we can optimise activity or try something new.

More recently, I’ve been getting involved in digital channels; doing daily pacing, monitoring to see if we’re meeting target costs and putting together performance reports. It’s been great to get the chance to work across a new team and try a different channel mix. Having the opportunity to learn digital alongside the offline channels I work on is really valuable.

What mistake have you learnt the most from?

When I joined MI, I expected to understand everything quickly. I was being too harsh on myself if I didn’t pick things up straight away. But I came into this role with no media knowledge or experience and there’s a lot to learn, especially in those first few months when all sorts of acronyms and channels are thrown at you. It’s easy to be hard on yourself, but this is just the nature of the work. You will learn.

As I’ve settled into the role, I’ve also learnt that every client wants to be treated differently. At first, I was just sending reports in the exact same way to every client but I quickly learned that while some may want lots of detail, others are looking for an overview. You can’t expect to have the same routine to cover every client but must learn to adapt depending on who you’re communicating with.

Who’s your role model and why?

Having an older sister is like having a built-in role model in life. I’ve always looked up to her Every good decision she makes I can follow, and every bad decision she makes I can learn from. God I hope she doesn’t read this!

Prostate Cancer UK is uniting all football fans against one shared rival, prostate cancer, in a campaign for its fundraising challenge Prostate United. As reported by Campaign.

“This club matters more” is a new brand platform for Prostate Cancer UK and was created by Elvis. It aims to drive sign-ups to this October’s challenge and is part of the charity’s three-year strategy to grow awareness of Prostate United. 

Prostate United was founded in 2018 by Stephen Gilpin and Ross Burbeary after Gilpin lost his grandfather to prostate cancer. Now in its eighth year, the challenge asks participants to walk, run or cycle every day throughout October while raising funds for Prostate Cancer UK. 

The campaign will run across paid social, paid search, radio and podcasts. 

Seren Evans, head of events and community fundraising, Prostate Cancer UK, said: “What started as a football-led movement eight years ago has grown into a powerful team effort, uniting people from every corner of the football community behind a shared goal of saving men’s lives. ‘This club matters more’ captures exactly what Prostate United is about; rivalry set aside for a cause that matters more than any result on a Saturday. Every mile covered and every pound raised helps fund more groundbreaking research and work towards a screening programme, to catch prostate cancer early and save lives.” 

I was asked to write an article about OOH. Anything I like! Sometimes a loose brief is more difficult to respond to, so I was thinking about it whilst walking to the station. In that time, two people bumped into me because they had their heads down looking at their phones whilst walking along. What could possibly be that interesting that you’re not looking where you’re going? Obviously, I shouted, “look up,” at them in a slightly aggressive way, which did make me happy. But it got me thinking about the article; looking up and being in the real world, so here goes!

There is a massive misconception about OOH, that it’s a traditional, old-fashioned medium trying to keep up with modern advertising. But (and hear me out) OOH combines the scale and visibility of the physical world with the targeting and flexibility of digital technology. OOH cannot be skipped, blocked or just scrolled past. And the best part: OOH lives where people live, work, shop and socialise. OOH reaches audiences when they are actively engaged in the world around them. This gives brands something increasingly rare: presence.

OOH remains one of the few truly shared media experiences

I think that one of the most important points about OOH’s place on a media plan is that it remains one of the few truly shared media experiences. It exists in public places and can become part of culture. The most memorable campaigns are discussed, photographed and shared on social media, amplifying them far beyond their original location. This ability to bridge the physical and digital world is becoming one of the channel’s greatest strengths. A striking billboard can generate millions of online impressions. A clever digital screen activation can become social content. I don’t think that OOH should sit at the edge of a campaign. Perhaps increasingly, it is becoming the creative spark that can drive wider conversations.

The future of advertising is already being shaped by technology and AI, but in a landscape where digital messages are limitless, the power of a physical presence and real-world attention will prove more valuable than ever.

OOH’s biggest competitive advantage is not technology but the fact that it inhabits the one place where consumers do not switch off: the world around them.

Gambling brands have a responsibility to their players which must be considered when planning and buying media

Stricter gambling regulations on affordability checks and deposit limits were introduced in August 2024, impacting gambling brands’ revenue. This had a knock-on effect on our media strategies. To drive new customers to gambling websites and apps, we needed to increase awareness and shift brand appeal to a broader audience. This led to us buying high impact TV spots in appropriate programming, whilst also widening our targeting across VOD and linear radio to reach a more diverse audience.

All these gambling regulations were introduced as part of the industry-wide safer gambling initiative, designed to protect high risk players. The initiative was also an opportunity for media to emphasise the importance of the responsible gambling strategies our clients were implementing; such as aiming to reduce revenue from harmful gambling and creating community-first men’s mental health and wellbeing programmes.

This meant delivering messaging that resonates with the right audiences in contextually appropriate environments, requiring a tactical and targeted approach. Brand activity needed to communicate social responsibility and promote the brands, while performance activity had to continue to deliver profitable customer acquisition.

Adaptation is key to the success of gambling brands

At first glance the restrictions placed on the gambling industry could be viewed as a barrier to effective advertising. However, they provided gambling brands with an opportunity to discover new audiences, whilst creating positive changes for their customers. There is an ongoing challenge for regulated gambling brands, that comply with restrictions, to reduce the increase in play going via the growing black market. Consolidation of the number of regulated operators has felt inevitable for some time, but those who adapt their approach frequently and effectively can continue to thrive.