2014: the year in digital

Some broad observations, and a bit of future-gazing for 2015

Alex Willimott

2014: what happened?

Looking back

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Alex Willimott

2014: smartphones and selective attention

Growth in smartphone

ownership, higher data speeds

and a desire for convenience

has helped users (esp. Gen Y/Z)

develop “selective attention”

into an art form

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Alex Willimott

2014: platform and media fragmentation

Selective attention has driven

increased media and platform

fragmentation, breaking up

those multi-purpose, one-size-

fits-all platforms

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Alex Willimott

2014: single-use apps and services

Focused, single-use apps and

platforms have taken over,

driven by user experience.

Think Whatsapp, CityMapper…

Goodbye to Facebook-as-a-

destination

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Alex Willimott

2014: increasing data bandwidth and video

As 4G/LTE creeps over the

horizon, increasing access to

bandwidth has driven huge

growth in video – over 214

million hours of video were

watched every day through 2014

on YouTube alone

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Alex Willimott

2015: so what now?

Looking forward

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Alex Willimott

2015: the big winners

2015 will see a proliferation of

single-purpose apps and

services whose creation is

driven by UX. The most

successful will be those that do

one thing well, and by ‘well’, I

mean FAST

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Alex Willimott

2015: the big winner

I’m betting that a big winner in

2015 will be Twitch.tv – the

game streaming service is

perfectly placed at the

convergence of video, gaming

and fragmentation of media

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Alex Willimott

2015: video kills off ‘wallpaper’ static ads

In 2015 static ads will largely

disappear – let’s face it, they’re

already basically wallpaper.

Video will become the new

standard, with forays into

interactive video from the most

forward-thinking…

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Alex Willimott

2015: the opportunities for brands

In 2015, brands will have to

change their video focus from

high production values and TVC

content to lower-budget, higher-

frequency video, to meet the

changing expectations of their

consumers

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Alex Willimott

2015: brands and co-creation

To create steady streams of

good quality video content,

brands will increasingly turn to

influencers and creators who

already have the right skills,

equipment and experience.

Collaboration and co-creation

will be buzzwords in 2015

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Alex Willimott

2015: the opportunities for individuals

2015 will see the rise of the

video specialist as a middle-

man, to negotiate between big-

budget brands and independent

creators. Some services have

already clocked this – one great

example is Vidsy.co

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Disclaimer: there will be tons more exciting

stuff I’ve missed

This is just a broad opinion piece. Agree? Disagree? Let me know:

@alexwillimott