What Are You Most Excited About For 2024, Part 2

That’s the question we put to our Thought Leaders Circle members at CES this year. Check out Part 1, which we released on Monday.

JO KINSELLA (XR, EXTREME REACH): I think we've spent a lot of time in this industry talking about media plans, currency, and measurement, and I want to move past that. You can put an ad in a really good spot, but if the creative is terrible, you're not going to get the outcome you want. I feel like this is the final frontier. Is the creative helping brands tell better stories globally?

FIELD GARTHWAITE (IRIS.TV): I think definitely the growth of the free, ad-supported streaming market. TVREV has commented a lot on this, and there's been so much growth of VIZIO, LG, Samsung, Roku, Pluto, Tubi. These have just become the biggest growth area of all of streaming. TVREV talked about how that market is predicted to be actually larger than both cable and broadcast combined in now less than 2 years. 

CHARBEL MAKHOUL (VIZIO): How our customers are going to use our data and innovate around our data using artificial intelligence, how internally VIZIO and Inscape is going to use artificial intelligence to innovate and advance our technologies, and then the last thing is how AI is going to have a positive impact on the user and the user experience, and in particular in the TV industry. 

MIKE WOODS (ORKA TV): What has me really fired up this year is the continued explosion of FAST. Prior to Orka, I helped build a lot of the fabric tech that powers the FAST channels, and we had a lot of theories back then. And now we're seeing them play out, and that's what's just so cool to see. Is when you dig in early, and you just don't know where things are going to go. Are they going to make it? Are they not? 

KIRBY GRINES (43TWENTY): I love the idea of a mobile carrier being like kind of like your place where you manage all your subscriptions. They're in your pocket, easy to subscribe, easy to cancel, both in video but also music, and then Pliability and just apps that have nothing to do with media or entertainment per se. 

GEOFF CLARK (ACTVE FAST CHANNELS): So, I'm really excited about the influx of celebrities and globally recognized brands that are now kind of moving into FAST. You know, we look at FAST channels as being very much like a 360 business, and for a lot of these celebrities, they have lots of products to sell or events or other things, and there's no better platform than television. It is a great model that hasn't really been proven out yet. We've seen Conan O'Brien, we've obviously Ryan Reynolds' Maximum Effort Channel, but I think this year is going to be the year that we see a lot more of the Kevin Hart types coming to FAST. 

BEN ROPKE (CCR MEDIA): I think I'm most excited about just getting back to the business of making compelling content and finding good ways to monetize that. 

JEFF FAGEL (MADHIVE): I think the combination of everything is an ad network plus there's no such thing as national advertising, everything is local. The combination of the two of those coming together I think are really exciting. What's driving all that is data, and then how does that translate to reaching audiences? 

BEN KARTZMAN (MEDIAOCEAN): I really think this year is going to be the year of creative, so you know, whether that's going to get brought on because of what's happening with cookies being deprecated, or just the sort of shift and focus to, you know, we've squeezed as much as we can out of media performance, and now we're going to have to shift into creative, and that's where we really think the opportunity is and really bridging creative and creative experience and creative opportunity across every channel where consumers are engaging. 

SCOTT CUNNINGHAM (CUNNINGHAM.TECH CONSULTING): Cookies have touched and been so pervasive for so long that the entire programmatic supply chain in some cases is rooted in its foundation. I think what we'll find is over the course of this year, it's going to be a lot of experimentation, and I don't think everybody is really prepared for this transition, but I do think that now folks understand that they're having to get prepared for this transition of cookies going away.