Sometimes it is hard to be the final speakers of the day! At the recent MACMA Chicago event, universal challenges facing media audience pros and management were brought up so consistently by others that Elizabeth Kachoris from PMMI and I re-formatted our discussion on-site.

Based on the presentations and our conversations with people there, some of the common concerns impacting media companies today include:

• Changing customers’ search behavior, especially the growth of zero-click search
• Brand revenue channels shifting
• First party data value top of mind (again)
• The impact of AEO and GEO as AI changes how customers discover content
• Customers expecting more for sharing their personal information
• Advertisers want to know more details about who is responding, not just how many

Some actions companies are taking to address these growing challenges:

• Becoming the trusted voice so people want to engage with your content
• Improving customers’ online experience
• Continuing testing
• Creating ongoing efforts to convert unknown site visitors to known
• Attendees told us they felt understood (maybe even a little relief?), knowing other organizations had similar stresses.

We also raised an interesting question: as audience knowledge and engagement become more critical to organizations, maybe audience should be at the center of the company.

That’s a discussion we should all be part of.

The journey continues. Cindy