Originally posted by gables
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State of the Market
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Originally posted by edison View Post
I saw a great example of this the other day.
A senior person in an in house Marketing department was showing how an AI image generator was used to create a mood board for an advertising campaign. The kind of thing it might have taken a creative agency designer a day or two to mock up was done in minutes.
The Marketeer acknowledged it wasn't perfect but importantly, it was quick, good enough and very cheap.
https://www.adcreative.ai/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0G5en3ZS4s
Has a database of 150million ad creatives - as the guy in the vid says - 'so we know what works'
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Also see - Full list of functionality Google Ads has removed/made worse in order to make more money off advertisers, while actively making the platform worse
https://www.reddit.com/r/PPC/comment...oogle_ads_has/
and "13 Ways Google Has Taken Away Control Over Ad Spend"
"The main issue with Google’s updates over the past 5 years is that collectively, they take a lot of control and visibility over ad spend away from advertisers. From changing the definition of “exact” a few years ago, to aggressively pushing auto-applied recommendations, it seems clear that Google is broadening its control over what happens within accounts, slowly shifting the balance of power away from users."
"PPC is never going to go back to how it was in the “good old days”. Every ad platform from LinkedIn to TikTok is rolling out their own proprietary smart bidding and targeting system"
https://lunio.ai/blog/paid-search/go...trol-ad-spend/
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Originally posted by tsmith View Post
Agreed. The "AI" piece to me is not so much about "sexy innovation" as much as how do we use tech to "dumb down" the skill needed to perform this work so it can be done offshore cheaper with a lower skill worker
If you do a text search on the WPP prelim doc below theres 12 mentions of AI and 15 mentions of offshoring
A senior person in an in house Marketing department was showing how an AI image generator was used to create a mood board for an advertising campaign. The kind of thing it might have taken a creative agency designer a day or two to mock up was done in minutes.
The Marketeer acknowledged it wasn't perfect but importantly, it was quick, good enough and very cheap.Leave a comment:
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Originally posted by sreed View Post
I don’t think that’ll make any difference. If a role can be done at a desk at home, creating an artificial need for that role to attend the office isn’t going to change the direction of movement on this. Plus, like the WPP quote above, once the difference in salary costs exceeds a certain threshold (eg: UK vs India or Philippines), there’s no stopping it.
The only things that may slow the tide (won’t reverse it) is government regulation (and I’m not using it as a pejorative) eg: specifying that companies in supply chains fulfilling govt/public contracts must be UK based, or properly thought out protectionist data protection laws which disallow companies processing UK personal data from doing it overseas, etc. The US has been doing the former for quite some time, the EU is ramping up in this space as well.
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Originally posted by Fraidycat View Post
IT has been in slump for 20 months now, started middle of 2022. What industry is that linked in thread about, have they only started to really feel it now?
Thats to be expected from the 18 month delay from interest rates hikes to really hit the economy, but the IT contract market saw the effect after just 6 months.
Although 18 months ago interest rates were only 3%, so thats what the wider economy is feeling at the moment, just 3% interest rates, it might still require another six to nine months before the economy feels the full effect of 5% interest rates.Originally posted by edison View Post
I'll go further and say that the trend in outsourcing and offshoring will accelerate. India still has huge potential for outsourcing all kinds of services. The likes of Vietnam are growing rapidly. I worked at a large UK accountancy firm last year and they are piloting outsourcing more basic accounting services to the likes of Pakistan. Many large firms in the UK outsource a lot of finance department admin work to Eastern Europe.
There will be hundreds of millions of people in developing countries who are relatively well educated and speak English who will be able to take what used to be well paid jobs.
What's especially worse for Britain is we will struggle to create new highly paid jobs to replace those lost. We used to be world class in high value add sectors like aerospace, pharmaceuticals etc but those sectors are not growing like they used to. And the City with all the associated highly paid jobs in professional services like law seem to be in relative decline and it's hard to see what will revive it long term.
And I haven't even mentioned the ongoing challenges with making Brexit work or further threats from AI.
If you do a text search on the WPP prelim doc below theres 12 mentions of AI and 15 mentions of offshoring
https://www.wpp.com/-/media/project/...eb-2023-v2.pdf
Also this
"WPP will invest an annual £250mn in the sorts of AI technology that many analysts believe poses a threat to the sector, with the potential to replace many of the functions of an advertising agency in creating, planning and buying marketing for big brands. AI could also allow more companies to carry out their own marketing functions.
Mark Read, chief executive of WPP, said it was “too early” to say whether these moves would lead to more or fewer jobs in the sector"
Ha if its "too early" you're investing 250 mil to experiment? - the analysts state in the article it has the potential to replace a bunch of the agencies functions
https://www.ft.com/content/f649b685-...d-760ffbc53172
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Originally posted by sreed View Post
I don’t think that’ll make any difference. If a role can be done at a desk at home, creating an artificial need for that role to attend the office isn’t going to change the direction of movement on this. Plus, like the WPP quote above, once the difference in salary costs exceeds a certain threshold (eg: UK vs India or Philippines), there’s no stopping it.
The only things that may slow the tide (won’t reverse it) is government regulation (and I’m not using it as a pejorative) eg: specifying that companies in supply chains fulfilling govt/public contracts must be UK based, or properly thought out protectionist data protection laws which disallow companies processing UK personal data from doing it overseas, etc. The US has been doing the former for quite some time, the EU is ramping up in this space as well.
There will be hundreds of millions of people in developing countries who are relatively well educated and speak English who will be able to take what used to be well paid jobs.
What's especially worse for Britain is we will struggle to create new highly paid jobs to replace those lost. We used to be world class in high value add sectors like aerospace, pharmaceuticals etc but those sectors are not growing like they used to. And the City with all the associated highly paid jobs in professional services like law seem to be in relative decline and it's hard to see what will revive it long term.
And I haven't even mentioned the ongoing challenges with making Brexit work or further threats from AI.Leave a comment:
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Originally posted by Fraidycat View Post
IT has been in slump for 20 months now, started middle of 2022. What industry is that linked in thread about, have they only started to really feel it now?
Thats to be expected from the 18 month delay from interest rates hikes to really hit the economy, but the IT contract market saw the effect after just 6 months.
Although 18 months ago interest rates were only 3%, so thats what the wider economy is feeling at the moment, just 3% interest rates, it might still require another six to nine months before the economy feels the full effect of 5% interest rates.Originally posted by sreed View Post
I don’t think that’ll make any difference. If a role can be done at a desk at home, creating an artificial need for that role to attend the office isn’t going to change the direction of movement on this. Plus, like the WPP quote above, once the difference in salary costs exceeds a certain threshold (eg: UK vs India or Philippines), there’s no stopping it.
The only things that may slow the tide (won’t reverse it) is government regulation (and I’m not using it as a pejorative) eg: specifying that companies in supply chains fulfilling govt/public contracts must be UK based, or properly thought out protectionist data protection laws which disallow companies processing UK personal data from doing it overseas, etc. The US has been doing the former for quite some time, the EU is ramping up in this space as well.
and then surprise - good old Rishi helping out Infosys - his Father in Laws Indian offshorers with nice juicy gov contracts...
"Infosys – in which Murty reportedly has shares worth around £610 million – has been put on an “approved list” of suppliers in line for £750m of public sector contracts, according to The Mirror.
The newspaper also reports that the Indian firm is named on a £250m NHS contract, as well as a £562.5m contract from the Financial Conduct Authority for IT services, according to the investigative Substack newsletter Democracy for Sale."
https://www.thenational.scot/news/24...ernment-money/Leave a comment:
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Originally posted by gables View PostWell as we all know offshoring has been around for ages (decades) but if it is ramping up maybe then, just maybe, we should stop with the insistence on remote roles and start sending out the message that on site is best for projects\deliverables etc? And I include myself in this as someone who has relished the remote working of recent years.
The only things that may slow the tide (won’t reverse it) is government regulation (and I’m not using it as a pejorative) eg: specifying that companies in supply chains fulfilling govt/public contracts must be UK based, or properly thought out protectionist data protection laws which disallow companies processing UK personal data from doing it overseas, etc. The US has been doing the former for quite some time, the EU is ramping up in this space as well.Last edited by sreed; 8 March 2024, 09:22.Leave a comment:
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Well as we all know offshoring has been around for ages (decades) but if it is ramping up maybe then, just maybe, we should stop with the insistence on remote roles and start sending out the message that on site is best for projects\deliverables etc? And I include myself in this as someone who has relished the remote working of recent years.Leave a comment:
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sreed yes the agency space is hyper competitive / not much to differentiate apart from price - love that quote "WPP said it was using offshoring to mitigate salary inflation"
Put a more accurate way we're offshoring as UK people are too expensive and we need to get cheaper wages asap to undercut the competition whos still not offshoring yet and make more profit for our senior management bonus fund.
Fraidycat - agreed. I guess theres been people out of the loop in contracts or maternity leave and its only just dawned on them
Im not convinced even if they put interest rates down to 1% it would make much difference to our industry - it feels like the end of an era
I agree with Techleads take...
"A low opportunity, low growth, stagnant era that we're living through where theres nothing really exciting going on"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l222fIkesAY
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