NewDigitalAge

The second day of Adwanted Events's Future of Media event opened with a great interview with Netflix. NDA Editor-in-Chief was there, amidst a packed room, to hear what the future holds for its ad strategy. Three years ago, Netflix launched its ad-supported tier. Speaking at The Future of Media event, Damien Bernet, who leads the advertising business at Netflix, joined The Media Leader’s Jack Benjamin to reflect on that journey and outline what’s next for the global streaming giant. “When I started three years ago, we had zero ad members, zero ad revenue and zero staff,” Bernet recalled. “Now we’ve grown to over 12 million monthly users in the UK alone, with 55% of new joiners choosing the ad plan.” This growth means Netflix is now the UK’s number one streaming service, accounting for around 23% of total video time. Yet, as Bernet pointed out, some things haven’t changed: “We still release more video content than anyone on the planet. From Adolescence winning an Emmy to Squid Game continuing to travel globally, Netflix remains a cultural powerhouse.” The early focus for Netflix’s advertising business, Bernet said, was on scale. “Advertisers told us they needed growth and scale. That’s what we delivered first.” Netflix’s ad-supported model has since evolved into what Bernet describes as a “crawl, walk, run” strategy. “We’re definitely in the walking phase now,” he said. “We’ve built a strong tech foundation, and revenues are growing fast, five times higher than last year.” Read the full article on NDA, link in comments.

In her latest column for NDA, Sara Vincent, Utiq Managing Director, UK, warns that the "death of the open web" poses a much bigger danger to our lives than many of us realise: "It's time to ring the alarm bells..."

Media buying platform Adform has announced the appointment of Liz Hiscoke and Digby Fordham as Sales Directors, and promotion of Kinga Szczerska to Senior Account Director... 

Uber Advertising has announced a first-of-its-kind global partnership with Adelaide and Kantar to create a Custom AU for Uber Advertising, advancing how attention is measured and connected to outcomes, and introducing a scalable approach that sets a new standard for the industry...

At Adwanted Events' The Future of Media, a panel of industry leaders discussed how artificial intelligence is reshaping marketing, creativity and work itself. AI has long been a buzzword in the marketing industry, but as Lauren Ogúndèkó, Global and EMEA Chief Activation Officer at IPG Mediabrands Kinesso, explained, it is now firmly embedded in daily workflows. “Every single platform we use has some level of AI,” she said, “whether it’s entrenched in the platform or in multiple features, it’s everywhere. We also operate within a system that has agentic workflows across all our modules and even our own AI console connected to multiple LLMs like Gemini and Claude.” Ogúndèkó noted that AI’s integration has fundamentally changed how her teams respond to briefs and deliver plans. “Because we have client data within a closed environment, we can respond faster and create plans more efficiently,” she said. “It’s about augmenting how we work, not replacing people. AI hallucinates like crazy, so we still need human intervention.” Read the full report on NDA, link in comments.

The global advertising market has changed dramatically in just a few short years, reshaping the landscape for media owners, brands, and agencies alike. According to Alex Brownsell, Head of Content at WARC Media, this rapid transformation has not simply been a pandemic blip, it represents a fundamental break with the past. Speaking at Adwanted Events must-attend The Future of Media event, Brownsell outlined how global ad spend has entered a new era of sustained growth, driven by new players, new money, and changing patterns of consumption. Brownsell began by taking the audience back to the pandemic, a time when almost everything about daily life changed, from how we worked to how we shopped. While many of those behavioural changes have since snapped back to pre-2020 levels, advertising has not. WARC’s data shows that, since COVID, global ad spend has continued to outpace GDP growth by several percentage points. In the UK, digital channels have driven this divergence, with online advertising growing steadily while traditional media has plateaued. The result is an industry that is now bigger, faster-moving, and more digitally dominant than ever before. Read the full article on NDA, link in comments.

Today it's the turn of Robert Kelly to pick his digital hero and he chooses on of NDA's good friends. Who is your digital hero? Jon Walsh. I’ve known Jon for many years from his days at Glam Media through Monetise and more recently through his work with the online Adtech communities. Jon has been a prominent figure on the London Adtech scene for over two decades now. He’s done it all founder, COO, writer and he remains a nice guy to have a drink with. What has he done to win hero status in your eyes? The creation of the Adtech chat community and Jobsinatech. There are now dozens of Adtech chat communities with topics ranging from technical subjects like AI and CTV, through to regional groupings and non work interest groups such as books and dogs. Read the full piece on NDA, link in comments.

You can now book onto the first Panel Power course which takes place on 26th November. Make yourself a power panellist for 2026

The divide between brand and performance marketing is false, says Dominic Goldman, Founder of You're the Goods. The most ambitious clients understand that fame and conversion are two sides of the same conversation...

Outra, a UK provider of household-level data for insight and marketing activation, has announced a strategic integration with LightBoxTV, the Total TV planning and workflow platform...