Kantar, the world’s leading marketing data and analytics company, today announces the launch of Kantar BrandNowTM, an always-on brand performance tracker.

BrandNow delivers daily benchmarks and short-term forecasts for 25 product and service categories* to steer brand performance. Brand owners can now measure the impact of market factors and marketing activities, while also tracking long-term brand success.

BrandNow generates real-time data that is robust and reliable. In addition to interviewing real people at scale, on a daily basis, it combines proprietary and differentiating IP from across the company, including:

• Kantar’s Trend AI technology to cancel the ‘noise’ in the data that distort short-term metric movements, and lets customers see category trends with no time lag.

• Kantar’s Meaningfully Different Salient (MDS) equity measurement framework to deliver robust insights, allowing accurate and timely interventions to grow brand equity, optimise campaign planning and media spend, and mitigate crises.

• Kantar’s new market-leading fraud and bot detection AI, Qubed, to keep panels clean and human, ensuring real responses from real people.

“Market conditions change in real-time. Brand tracking has now evolved to address that challenge. Shaping brand performance requires a combination of human expertise and technology”, said Ted Prince, Chief Product Officer, Kantar. “Whether as a standalone tracker or a real-time supplement to a customised brand tracker, BrandNow provides the real-time signals and movement in brand equity that every research, marketing or brand executive needs.”

Kantar’s unique IP, alongside the industry’s foremost experts to advise on strategy, makes BrandNow the right platform for customers to use as basis for investing marketing resources in the right place and the right time. Kantar’s always-on brand tracker will also make it possible to understand customer perceptions of brand purpose and sustainability attitudes, an increasingly important attribute for consumers.

BrandNow is part of Kantar’s newly launched BrandTek portfolio – a complete suite of brand guidance products, including dedicated solutions for brand tracking, equity measurement and campaign impact management.

Kantar Media, part of Kantar Group Holdings, today announces the appointment of Patrick Béhar as Global CEO, effective September 2023.

He will lead an organisation with the world’s largest audience measurement and media research footprint. Chris Allen, who has successfully led the executive team since 2022, will now focus exclusively on his role as Kantar Media Global CFO.

Mr Béhar brings more than 25 years of international experience in the media industry. He currently serves as Chief Business Officer for Sky Group, a part of Comcast, and Europe's largest media company and pay-TV broadcaster. In that role Patrick has been managing and expanding all of Sky’s relationships with content and distribution partners, as well as driving Sky Media’s advertising revenues.

On his appointment, Patrick Béhar commented: “Media markets are undergoing unprecedented transformation, accelerated by new technologies and changing audience behaviours. With the widest and most rapidly expanding cross-media audience measurement footprint, Kantar Media is at the forefront of this transformation, uniquely positioned to unlock audiences and drive growth and value for clients. I’m looking forward to leading this amazingly talented team, working closely with the board, our Chairman Adam Crozier and Chris Jansen, Chief Executive at parent company, Kantar Group.”

Adam Crozier, Chairman of Kantar Media, added: “Patrick brings a unique combination of first-hand client experience in equipping media companies to grow in a cross-media age and deep global advertising expertise. His appointment will strengthen the Kantar Media leadership team. As we continue to drive our innovation agenda forward, I am confident he will fulfil the ambition we have for the business to cement its position, unlocking insight opportunities for our clients.”

Kantar’s Outstanding Innovation Awards celebrate the most innovative brands worldwide and show how they consistently used innovation as a driver for growth.

How can brands stand out and innovate in inflationary times? How can innovations be meaningfully different in a crowded marketplace? And what is the secret to successful innovation?
To address these innovation challenges and many more, we mined multiple Kantar data sources (Kantar BrandZ, Brand Footprint and Dx Analytics) to identify the brands perceived to be the most innovative brands worldwide – in the eyes of consumers.

Kantar's BrandZ shows that among the Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands, innovative brands grew at over twice the rate of other brands and that the strongest brands are meaningful, different and salient. Further, it is being different that really makes the difference. Meaningfully different brands grow 25% faster than other brands, and brands that are both meaningful and are perceived to be innovative (shaking things up and/or creating well-designed products) grow 54% faster than other brands.

Brands that are meaningfully different AND innovative grow faster

Top brands use innovation as a lever for growth

Five lessons learned from successful innovators

All of our winners have a track record of using innovation to drive sustained growth. And we learned a lot from analysing the data for our winners and interviews with the winning brands. These are five common themes we observed that have helped our winners achieve growth through meaningfully different innovation.

1. Embrace a consumer-first mindset

A revolutionary technical advance in materials, functionality or design may offer potential for innovation, but unless that innovation solves a real consumer tension it is unlikely to be successful. This is even more true in challenging times when people’s needs are evolving. A consumer-first mindset involves identifying tensions and blind spots in a specific usage context.

It was clear when talking to our winners that they were looking for this human tension, beyond just whitespaces to focussing on blind spots. They also thought about the factors that influenced choice and designed their innovations to address these. So, check-in with your target audience at critical stages throughout the innovation journey.

“I think sometimes people tend to use the word innovation to refer to product, packaging, and formula. I think the way we see it is looking at how can we create a different set of experiences for people to interact with Coke. For us, the first thing is to really start with people first and how they experience Coke.” - Selman Careaga, President, Global Coca-Cola Category

2. Be fit for your brand

From consumer-centricity to brand-centricity. Our winning brands were all clear about their brand foundations and had a clear purpose. They built on this clear understanding to help them ensure their innovations are fit for their brand, getting the balance right between protecting the core and looking for incremental growth. Always looking for new ways to be meaningful and different. To do this you need to check your innovations support your brand purpose and the broader portfolio, and look beyond short-term sales to understanding the long-term impact of your innovation on brand equity and growth.

“We have built our purpose into a growth driver. It requires a lot of business modelling and learning - ensuring you do purpose in a commercial way, never loosing track of the business impact but also in a very authentic way, delivering positive change in society.

We got to a point where we really finessed the model and showed that Dove creates strong social impact which in turns creates goodwill with consumers. Purpose simply becomes a considerable accelerator of our growth..” - Alessandro Manfredi, CMO Dove, Unilever

3. Learn, test and learn

Our winners are on a continuous innovation journey and are willing to learn from their mistakes. They break from the traditional stage-gate thinking to focus on testing assumptions, looking at the unknowns and putting more energy upfront to get to more meaningfully different opportunity spaces. They also spent energy on how they executed and how they understood the performance of their innovations in market.

Shifts in underlying demand caused by the pandemic have yet to play out, but innovators can’t wait for that to happen. They must anticipate the future and continue to test their critical assumptions and sense-check their progress. So learn, test and learn.

"Be willing to try and fail"

President, Global Coca-Cola Category, Selman Careaga says he is proud Coke has a culture where they are willing to try stuff. Selman explained that his teams had found success by giving them full decision rights and empowering them with a sense of urgency. "You can talk about ideas forever and ever, and then then don't launch them... that’s why I think that the sense of urgency, it's very important."

4. Better for the planet, better for you

Kantar’s Sustainability Sector Index 2022 (SSI) reports that 79% of people want to buy environmentally sustainable products, but a similar proportion believe that it is the responsibility of companies to make sure their sustainable products are affordable. This presents a big challenge for many brands, but the evidence suggests the payoff is worth it. Brands rating highly on sustainability in BrandZ 2022 grew their brand value by 31% over the prior year, outpacing the average for the Top 100 Most Valuable brands. While all our winners acknowledge the need to develop more sustainable products, here we call out The Vegetarian Butcher as a brand committed to a more sustainable future.

Many of our winners put sustainability at the heart of their thinking.

“The footprint of plant-based is sustainable, but every day we work on being more and more and more sustainable.”- Karlijn Ris, Global Marketing Director, The Vegetarian Butcher

5. Shape the future

The first step in future-proofing your innovation strategy is to step outside the boundaries of what exists now and anticipate what the future might bring. Innovation is a driving force that not just shapes a brand, but also the future of the category and market. These innovative brands, as market leaders with an innovation track record, have continued to safeguard and grow the entire category.

Technology companies are often at the forefront of shaping the future – but it applies to all brands, big or small in any category. Future-shaping is about systematically bringing in holistic outside-in and inside-out thinking lenses to address long-standing and evolving human tensions.

“At the heart of what Oreo does differently is to not blindly follow trends, but start from the brand and consumer, and then exploring ways to bring the playfulness spirit together with these trends -maybe tapping into a new occasion to stretch the brand in the right direction.” - Eugenia Zalis, Global Head of Marketing and Brand, OREO

What next?

Our winners demonstrate that for innovation to drive growth it must combine a clear strategic business intent with solving a real consumer tension. It must be a win-win for the brand and its consumers. To do this requires a learning mindset and a future-focused perspective designing for the planet and for people. And the evidence shows that if you get it right it benefits long-term brand building and growth as well as shorter-term sales – and hopefully the planet too.

E-commerce & mobile retail Online video planning & buying YouTube

YouTube continues to command a strong position in the online video advertising market and is actively looking for ways to forge deeper connections with viewers, creators and brands through multi-format video strategies.

Context

YouTube is prioritising Shorts and CTV engagement, and is innovating with unskippable 30-second ads and “pause experiences” on TV to help marketers engage audiences across screens and achieve both performance and brand-building goals.

Takeaways

Ad investment with YouTube is set to rise 4.0% in 2023 to reach $30.4bn

That marks a turnaround from Q4 2022 when ad revenue declined 8.8% year-on-year, as marketers shifted investment to retail media and search. But growth is expected to resume in 2023, at more than double the rate of growth recorded in 2022. WARC Media forecasts YouTube’s revenue growth to accelerate 10.3% in 2024, to reach $33.5bn by the end of that year.

Commerce brands are expected to spend $4.1bn on YouTube ads in 2023

This is a 4.6% rise on 2022. Retail remains YouTube’s most important category for ad investment, but growth from other sectors has been harder to achieve. While some categories will see double digit spending increases in 2023, including technology and electronics (+13.9%) and toiletries and cosmetics (+12.1%), figures elsewhere are more modest.

YouTube advertisers can reach half of all internet users globally. More than one billion hours of video are watched every day on YouTube

YouTube is the world’s most popular online platform, with an adult advertising reach estimated at 2.07 billion people, almost twice as much as TikTok and Instagram respectively. YouTube Shorts (60 seconds or less) will provide more opportunities for marketers to reach new audiences, but its 50 billion daily viewer total is some way behind the 140 billion daily views achieved by Instagram Reels; under-18s, meanwhile, spend on average 60% longer on TikTok than with YouTube content.

YouTube has overtaken Netflix as the biggest TV streaming platform in the US

YouTube accounted for 22.9% of OTT viewing in March 2023. It is also the most popular channel for US Gen Zs to catch up with sports news, and last year it was the most popular platform for both music and podcast listening in the US.

APAC is a key growth region for YouTube – from live shopping and Shorts to gaming – while in Latin America, YouTube delivers brand impact more cost-effectively than any other video platform, according to research by Kantar.

Emerging technologies will continue to force the news media landscape to evolve.

Technology transformed the way readers read news, and digital products and technologies have played a significant role in this transformation. The news media industry has had to adapt to this shift, investing in robust digital infrastructures that provide a seamless and personalised experience to their audience.

The question is: What does the future hold for the industry?

Digital products such as Web sites, mobile apps, and social media platforms have become the primary sources of news consumption for a majority of people instead of conventional printed newspapers, radio, and television.

Adapting to this transformation, news media organisations must provide a well-maintained user experience on Web sites and mobile apps. This can help news media organisations to deliver news updates in real time, curate content based on user preferences, and offer an immersive multi-media experience.

Technology has also played a crucial role in enabling news media organisations to innovate and experiment with new content formats. Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and 360-degree video are just a few examples of new technologies that have been used to create engaging and immersive news experiences. These technologies allow news media organisations to transport their audience to the scene of the news story, providing a more visceral and impactful experience.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are also transforming the news media industry. These technologies can be used to analyse vast amounts of data, identify patterns, and generate insights that can inform editorial decisions. AI and ML can also be used to personalise news content based on the user's preferences and browsing history, making the news experience more relevant and engaging.

The rise of digital products and technologies has also opened up new revenue streams for news media organisations. Advertising remains the primary source of revenue for most news media organisations, but digital products and technologies have enabled new forms of advertising such as programmatic advertising, native advertising, and sponsored content. News media organisations can also monetise their digital products through subscription models, paywalls, and e-commerce.

However, the digital transformation of the news media industry has also created challenges. The rise of social media and user-generated content has led to concerns around the credibility and accuracy of news. News media organisations must also navigate issues around data privacy, fake news, and the role of algorithms in shaping news consumption.

To address these challenges, news media organisations must invest in robust fact-checking processes and ensure that their content is trustworthy and accurate. They must also provide transparency around how their algorithms curate and prioritise news content, and work toward building trust with their audience.

In conclusion, digital products and technologies have transformed the news media industry and opened up new opportunities for revenue generation and audience engagement.

News media organisations must continue to innovate and experiment with new technologies while also ensuring they uphold the highest standards of journalistic integrity and ethics. The future of news media is digital, and the organisations that can adapt and leverage these technologies will thrive in this rapidly evolving landscape.

Source:INMA