Y&R Global CEO, David Sable looks into his crystal ball and shares his predictions for 2017.

1. 7
PREDICTIONS
FOR 2017
FROM A CLOUDY
CRYSTAL BALL
DAVID SABLE
GLOBAL CEO, Y&R

2. The luddites will be those who insist on
conversion simply by following your data
trail. I’d stay away from them and instead
gravitate towards the folks who combine the
two.
Algorithms and anything
programmatic will lose their
luster. There will be a movement
towards adding human insight and
appreciation for the serendipity of it all.
“In the zeal to follow consumers
wherever they may roam on the
internet, advertisers now risk
bankrolling sites that are toxic to
society”
—NYT, DEC 2016
1.

3. 2.
The excuse that your brand content shows
up in the center of racist incitement because
you bought audience programmatically will
no longer wash.
The dilemma, of course, is that those racists
must be your audience, no? After all it was
the algorithm that chose them.
Media will also return to its
human roots. We will see a return
to more accountability for
placement of advertising.
“Not all human behavior and human reaction
can be rendered into machine-readable
form… Environment is something we feel,
react, and can be irrational about. Editorial
adjacency used to be a default setting on all
advertising.”
- JIM MESKAUSKAS, CO-FOUNDER OF MEDIA DARWIN, INC.

4. 3.
I don’t believe the platforms can or should be
held liable. It is not a new problem nor will it go
away. Only publishers can be liable. They need
to employ more fact checkers.
News media will grow in importance again. The
world is craving authenticated and trusted
sources, particularly in times of crisis and
upheaval. I expect to see some interesting
developments here.
A follow up to this is the
fake news issue.
The creators make money, the platforms
and publishers make money, and the
brands find audience.
“As long as it’s on Facebook…people
start believing it...It creates this dust
cloud of nonsense."
—BARACK OBAMA, NOV 2016

5. 4.
However, the issue will not be content or what
platform or device you watch it on.
I see the real issue being how do I pay for
it all?
Watch for the next cable-like consolidation offer.
I’m ready to bet that advertising will play a key
role in reducing the price.
TV will continue to grow in
importance. And by this I mean TV
in all its glory across all its platforms
and devices.
“68% of Google ad spending
Oct 2015- Sept 2016 was in TV.”
—KANTAR MEDIA

6. 5.
New Year’s Eve around the world, The Super
Bowl in the US, Cup games anywhere, concerts
and plays. VR and AR will enhance their afterlife,
but they’re an evolution of how we remember and
not a proxy for being there.
There are no experiences
like live events, where the crowd
becomes a living, breathing entity,
bringing more life to each participant.
Through live broadcasting the longer tail
of the tale itself lives on.
“Broadway’s trade association, revealed it
bested its own astonishing records. In the
last week of the year, it grossed $49.7m
and played host to more than 359,000
people, more than the combined
populations of Iceland and Greenland.”
—THE GUARDIAN, JAN 2017

7. 6.
Snapchat will continue to “pivot” as it opens itself
up to more revenue opportunities and as its IPO
looms, expect more changes like data sharing…
after all, these were the folks who said they’d
never sell advertising.
Twitter needs to find a place for itself. Donald
Trump will keep it alive but it needs purpose.
There will be another shakeup in the
social platform world.
Facebook will continue its dominance,
but if it continues in the path of Yahoo
(that is thinking it can be everything) it
will water itself down.
“Twitter’s problems have
continued…The biggest is that it has
largely stopped growing. Its tally of
monthly users, at around 313m, is
barely rising.”
—THE ECONOMIST, SEPT 2016

8. 7.
People will once again seek to take back
some control of this planet’s destiny.
Disruption is stale. We will see more
dissidence…more coalescence of people
in movements to solve problems
We will see a
shift from public to
private development.
The political climate will give birth
to highly innovative and ambitious private
companies and causes that
seek to change the world for the better.
“The responsibility for business is
enormous. Small companies need to
adopt small, local problems. Big
companies need to adopt national
problems. Bigger companies to
adopt international problems.”
—RICHARD BRANSON

9. THANK
YOU
Linkedin.com/in/dsable
@DAVIDSABLE