Tag: media
CHANNEL 4 SHOWS HOW PUTTING ACCESSIBILITY FIRST BENEFITS BOTH CUSTOMERS AND COMMERCIAL WITH CURRYS’
24. 2. 2026 Context Channel 4’s Diversity in Advertising Award 2025 set its brief under the theme “Inclusive by Design”. It asked brands to embed inclusive practices into the creative, rather than at the end of production. The initiative linked that ambition to airtime: £1m of advertising space across Channel 4’s portfolio sat behind the winning campaign. The brief framed the size of the audience affected by sight or hearing loss at nearly 20% of the UK population, putting an access gap into plain planning terms.
USING ELECTION NIGHT VIEWING HABITS TO MAKE A RETAIL MESSAGE FEEL LIKE ENTERTAINMENT
24. 2. 2026 This campaign connected Bauhaus’s retail messaging to a major national television event. In Finland, municipal and regional elections feature hours-long results TV programmes that track vote counting as results come in. Bauhaus (a major home improvement retailer) partnered with the biggest national broadcaster, Sanoma, to create branded entertainment within this format, using “price” as the central theme.
WHEN A CROSS-FORMAT APPROACH MULTIPLIES IMPACT: BOL × HUIS GEMAAKT ACROSS CONTENT & CONTEXT
23. 2. 2026 Description Bol is Belgium’s largest e-commerce platform, a household name for buying books, electronics, and everyday items online. But furniture and home décor? That was not what consumers associated with the brand. DPG Media set out to change this perception through a multi-format partnership with Huis Gemaakt (“Home Made”), a popular Flemish TV show where couples compete to renovate run-down properties, with the winning couple keeping their fully transformed home.
A SPECIAL CHRISTMAS AD BREAK AS PRIMETIME ENTERTAINMENT
23. 2. 2026 Background In the Netherlands, Christmas commercials hold a special place in television culture. Much like the Super Bowl in the United States is known for its spectacular commercials, the Dutch festive season is the moment when brands showcase their most creative, emotional storytelling. Over the years, several Christmas campaigns have achieved iconic status, moving and entertaining millions of viewers and winning the Ster Gouden Loeki, the public award for best commercial. These campaigns demonstrate how advertising can contribute to the collective holiday spirit.
GIVING SUSTAINABLE BUSINESSES THEIR FIRST TV SPOTLIGHT
23. 2. 2026 Background B Corp certification is a globally recognised standard for businesses that meet high levels of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency. The certification is awarded by B Lab, a non-profit organisation. In the UK, there are thousands of certified B Corps, many of them small businesses with ambitions to reach mainstream audiences at scale. Channel 4 saw an opportunity to use its platform to spotlight these purpose-driven businesses while supporting its own sustainability commitments under the Ad Net Zero Action Plan, an industry initiative to reduce the carbon impact of advertising.
ELEVATOR PITCHES MADE REAL: GIVING BLACK ENTREPRENEURS A NATIONAL STAGE
23. 2. 2026 Black-owned businesses in the UK face significant barriers to success. Only 0.24% of venture capital funding reaches Black founders, and one-third of Black entrepreneurs struggle to gain belief in their ventures. Channel 4, in partnership with Lloyds Bank (one of the UK’s largest retail banks), created the Black in Business initiative to address these disparities. Rather than simply highlighting the problem, the initiative addressed it by removing barriers to accessing national television advertising, enabling Black-owned businesses to scale.
WHEN SILENCE SPEAKS LOUDER
22. 2. 2026 Code of Silence was a landmark drama for British television. The show starred Rose Ayling-Ellis, a deaf actress who became famous after winning Strictly Come Dancing, a popular British celebrity dance competition. In the drama, she plays a deaf woman whose exceptional lip-reading skills make her central to a covert police investigation. The production featured cast and crew from deaf, disabled, and neurodiverse communities, with innovative on-screen graphics that visualised how deaf people piece together conversations. ITV saw an opportunity to extend this representation beyond the programme itself and into the commercial break.
TURNING TRUSTED TV MOMENTS INTO BOOK SALES BY LINKING ATTENTION TO CLEAR PLACES TO BUY
20. 2. 2026 Standaard Boekhandel is a Belgian book retailer. It wanted to make reading feel relevant again at a time when many people spend more time with other entertainment. The brand also wanted its bookstores to stay strong places for discovery, where people browse and find new titles, not only pick up a book they already decided to buy.
DON’T SKIP THE BREAK: TURNING FRANCE 2’S AD BUMP INTO A LIFE-SAVING REMINDER
20. 2. 2026 Campaign objective FranceTV Publicité (FTP) built the campaign around a single TV-native move: take the short on-air ident that usually marks the start and end of advertising on France 2 (a well known visual “bump”, where the channel’s celebrities seem to be touching the screen to ‘enter’ into the advertising break) and turn it into a moment to pass an important message.
LIDL INVESTED THE MOST IN ADVERTISING IN 2025. HOW MUCH WAS INVESTED IN MEDIA?
9. 2. 2026 Lidl also confirmed its position as the strongest advertiser in the domestic media in 2025. Advertising for food and food chains was once again the most intense. Total advertising investment in the purchase of advertising space in the media increased only slightly, according to data from Nielsen monitoring.
WHEN BRANDS BECOME CHARACTERS: TRANSFORMING PRODUCT PLACEMENT INTO ENTERTAINMENT
30. 1. 2026 ProSieben and Joyn broke new creative ground with The Masked Singer Germany, transforming traditional product placement into something unprecedented. Seven.One Media worked with Playmobil to create a partnership where the brand did not just sponsor the program or place products within it – instead, the brand became a competing character. The Playmobil Pirate mask sang, performed, and competed alongside celebrities in one of Germany’s most-watched entertainment shows.
OVERVIEW OF INDUSTRY CONFERENCES AND COMPETITIONS IN 2026
13. 1. 2026 We bring you an overview of conferences in the marketing, advertising, PR and media sectors, as well as an overview of the most important industry events in 2026.
AI IS ALREADY CHANGING THE WORLD OF MEDIA; IN 2026, IT COULD BE ADVERTISING’S TURN
8. 1. 2026 Tech giants such as Google have made such progress with artificial intelligence that it is already having a noticeable impact on the business of many online media outlets. This trend will intensify in 2026.
MEDIA 2025: THE EMERGENCE OF ONEPLAY, THE FIGHT FOR THE CZECH AND THE CZECH ONLY AND THE FEARS OF AI
2. 1. 2026 Uncertainty about the impact of artificial intelligence, potential regulatory changes, changing user behaviour and a volatile and spillover advertising market are increasing pressures on the survival of media companies.
USING CARBON SCORING TO STEER ADVERTISING TOWARDS MORE SUSTAINABLE PRODUCTS
11. 12. 2025 FranceTV Publicité has partnered with independent consultancy Carbone 4 to measure the climate compatibility of advertised products and, from 2026, to encourage higher-scoring products with preferential airtime across its ecosystem. This approach treats climate-compatible advertising as a lever sales houses can actively control, rather than a passive constraint. The following sections highlight seven points sales houses can focus on if they wish to replicate or adapt the model. Replace media-only CO₂ metrics with neutral A–F product scoring The partnership rests on two principles: working with a neutral third party that has no commercial links with advertisers, and using a methodology that is scientific, transparent and aligned with the Paris Agreement.
HOW TO USE UNSOLD INVENTORY TO PROVE TV’S EFFECTIVENESS
28. 11. 2025 Transfer Media, Belgium’s sales house for premium thematic and kids channels, worked with DSTRSD media to turn unsold linear TV minutes into measurable single product commerce tests. The goal was to show how unused airtime can support a low effort conversion pilot that brings incremental revenue and gives sales teams concrete evidence on audience response, placement, and frequency.
INSIDE FRANCETV PUBLICITÉ’S ADSPACE•IA’S PLANNING LAYER
14. 10. 2025 FranceTV Publicité is transitioning its media buying operations into an AI-assisted mode. ADspace•ia now produces real-time, inventory-aware recommendations for TV-cross-video campaigns. It executes these plans as a managed service on france.tv’s premium offer. For sales houses, this marks a tangible step in AI commercialisation: algorithmic Total Video mixes enriched with attention and carbon reporting.
SHORTLIST FLEMA: MOST NOMINATIONS FOR OMD WITH SEZNAM.CZ AND WAVEMAKER SK
23. 9. 2025 A total of 15 campaigns are on the shortlist of the Flema competition, which recognises innovative use of media. The winners will be announced on 30 September.