Brands in Apps: The Future of Advertising Is in Your Hands

The media plan most brands are running was built for a world that no longer exists. Sixty-eight per cent of Google searches now end without a click. Publishers are reporting web traffic declines of 20–30%, and in some cases far worse. TV viewership has fallen more than 40% in a decade, and CTV supply cannot absorb what's left. So where did the audience go and where should brand budgets follow?

Increasingly, the answer is apps: on the phone in your hand and on the screen in your living room. App environments deliver session-based attention, incremental reach, and brand outcomes that are now measurable and optimisable in flight. But the infrastructure to make brand demand work inside apps has lagged the audience shift and CTV, for all the money flowing into it, is still too often bought as a black box.

This fireside chat will explore the gap from both sides — the brands trying to buy this reach and the publishers trying to sell it — and what has to change for app inventory to become a core brand channel rather than a test line.