Lord Sugar may be a regular staple on the TV but now he has outlined a future of the TV via a speech made at an event held at Draftfcb, the integrated communications agency and hosted by the ISBA.
Speaking before an audience composed of some of the UKs leading marketers; including Barclays, Nestle and Ford, Sugar claimed that the days of passively watching broadcast ads would soon be numbered as digital content rises to the fore.
Sugar was in attendance on behalf of his Amscreen firm, the digital outdoor company which he owns. This has been at the forefront of changing patterns of behaviour as traditional ad revenues decline in the face of digital and out of home sectors.
According to Amscreen’s own figures digital out-of-home figures rose by 15.3% to $6.97bn in 2011 alone.
Referring to YouView, the internet based television service he launched in July, Sugar said: “With new technology comes new opportunity and I firmly believe that Amscreen and YouView are going to feature big in advertisers’ futures, and it was a pleasure to talk directly to them about the very specific benefits that these channels will afford them.
“The advent of the internet has been the biggest game changer for advertisers, but one of the things I try to get across is that before you get carried away with all the impressive technology there is out there, you have to ask yourself is this going to be profitable. There are some platforms, like Google and Amazon, where they are fantastically successful; but for others like Facebook monetisation is less obvious,”