Trends toward subscription services 59 per cent “more likely”: Essence report

Essence, a global data and measurement-driven media agency which is part of GroupM, has released a new research report called ‘2030 Revisited’.

It has ‘revisited’ in its name because Essence had asked, in January and February 2020, “an elite group of marketing practitioners, executives and academics to speculate on the future of advertising in the year 2030.” Little did Essence realise how a month later, the world would change forever.

In ‘2030 Revisited’, more than 50 CMOs and brand-side marketers, agencies, networks, platforms, and adtech executives and marketing academics revisit the predictions for the next decade in the wake of the upheaval of 2020, said Essence.

The experts now believe that eight scenarios are likely to occur by 2030:

· Increased use of biometric data (with 65 per cent of the respondents saying “more likely”).

· Time spent in virtual environments and trends toward subscription services (each 59 per cent “more likely”).

· Personalisation (56 per cent “more likely”), and micropayments (46 per cent “more likely”).

· Nearly 60 per cent felt the events of 2020 will accelerate the trend toward consumer prioritisation of environmental impact.

· Over 40 per cent saw an increased likelihood that AI and automation lead to job and wage losses.

Experts judged five scenarios as largely unaffected by the year’s upheaval and two (the adoption of a global privacy law and the ability of large tech companies to remain intact as global consolidated entities) as less likely to occur now (than they were at the start of 2020).

Summarising the report, Kate Scott-Dawkins, VP, thought leadership and innovation at Essence, said, “The consequences of the trajectories we find ourselves on are real and will become more real in the years ahead. Advertisers must act boldly with plans to put themselves at the centre of people’s experiences if they want to make it to 2030.”

You can read the full report here: