Myles Haslam, Group Planning Director at Mediacom, presented to the lecturers at the 2023 MFA Lecture the Lecturers event. Myles presentation was full of interesting insights, exploring the implications for the industry arising from subscription video services now beginning to offer ad-supported tiers/plans.
We asked Myles a few important questions about his media journey, his key presentation insights and the skills needed to succeed in his role.
What’s your role & how would you explain it to your mother?
As a Group Planning Director, my job is to find the audiences that my clients needs to speak to, and then identify how we do that in media through channel selection, budget allocation, and flighting.
What was your presentation about & why did you think it was relevant to share with lecturers?
My presentation was about the video landscape and where its moving. It’s an important topic because it moves quickly, but in that speed we often see over-sensationalised pieces of news. There is a need for tempered and reasoned understanding of this – TV costs more and reaches less people than a few years ago, BUT it is still a powerful mass-reach vehicle with relevance to many brands. SVOD is an exciting new & high-reaching channel, BUT from an advertising perspective the volume of eyeballs aren’t there yet.
What are the top 3 takeaways of your presentation?
- The landscape continues to evolve away from the TV dominant landscape of the past
- SVOD will be a major player in the advertising game eventually
- The most important thing an advertiser can do is have a channel/screen agnostic approach to video planning
What skills do you think are most critical to your role?
Being results oriented – what is the job we need to do and what is the most straight forward way of getting there? And then blending data and a human lens to get that done.
What are the best resources to keep up to date on the industry?
Trade Press (Adnews, B and T, MediaWeek etc), and Linkedin are my main go-tos.
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