Outlook 2021: Forward Momentum

Four trends shaping the future of media & technology

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IPG Media Lab

28 min readJan 20, 2021

Welcome to the IPG Media Lab’s 2021 Outlook. Each year, we round up the ideas that excite us for the next few years: new technologies, market forces, and shifts in consumer behavior that are changing the media landscape. Since 2006, the Lab has worked with clients to help them best adapt to disruptive change.

Guided by a forward-thinking perspective, the Lab team explores emerging technologies and their potential to become new media platforms. Our focus on research and strategy enables us to analyze the latest platform developments, understand how they will impact consumers, and advise our clients on how to navigate the disruption they bring. Through a finely tuned vetting process, the Lab team organizes their findings, manages introductions, and recommends these partners to solve client challenges or bring forward new opportunities.

The Outlook is informed by our growing team around the world. While the Lab has been based in New York for years, in 2018 we added Singapore as a second home. Over the past two years, we have expanded our network, with team members representing every region of the globe, ready to help our clients find innovative solutions to business challenges no matter where on Earth they might appear. Our 2021 Outlook features not only a global perspective, but custom content developed by local teams in each region.

This Outlook is an overview of the trends and topics that we expect to break out in the next few years, why we’re convinced they’re important, and how you should respond. We hope you enjoy it.

Comments, questions, and opportunities to work together are very welcome. Please reach out to Josh Mallalieu, at josh@ipglab.com.

2021: Forward Momentum

After what will go down as one of the strangest years in history, we’re pleased to be here in 2021, with an eye keenly focused on the future. We normally position our annual Outlook as looking at the seeds of changing consumer behavior, which will blossom into mainstream trends in three to five years. While what we have to share today will certainly approach that five-year time horizon, we thought it was important to pull back just a bit, and address directly what we expect to develop this year and next. Because after the interruption of 2020, there is less clarity on consensus on the near term.

The Lab spent much of 2020 discussing the pandemic as a trend accelerator, pulling forward consumer behaviors by five or so years, particularly in areas like ecommerce, remote work, and telemedicine. The acceleration was one of adoption — trend lines jumped to what their future progress was projected to be, as the behaviors of early adopters were thrust into the mainstream, and late adopters were pulled into more mainstream behaviors earlier than they would have otherwise. According to one MAGNA report, streaming TV grew by 1 billion hours in 2020, and ecommerce jumped 5%. Quarantine demanded that our lives be lived online, even more so than we had been doing before, shifting the center of gravity from the physical world to the digital.

The countries that have been hardest hit by the pandemic may maintain a greater forward momentum. With restriction comes invention.

As we come out of the pandemic, there will be two very different reactions to the new world order: those who have embraced the changes wrought by 2020 and want to push even further, and those who want or expect things to return to the way they were before. This divide will vary widely around the world, as places like China and Australia, who recovered more quickly, will have less established new habits, and will more quickly snap back to the way things were. In contrast, here in the US, where we have fared less well with the pandemic, and with a large population to vaccinate — we will have had more time to establish new habits and rhythms. If you’re looking for a silver lining in a dark time, it may be this: that countries who have been hardest hit may maintain a greater forward momentum. With restriction comes invention.

This tension between holding on to the advances caused by the pandemic, and a desire to return to life from the previous decade, will be the driving cultural force of the next five years. For one cohort, not only have their media and shopping habits changed, their work and social lives have as well. After more than a year of being less tethered to a physical time and place for work and play, they may seek to push this even further, becoming part-time digital nomads, optimizing their physical location for the experience it can provide, rather than out of necessity. This is the culmination of Democratized Creativity and Digital Culture — a new creative class that has permanently blended their work and their social lives, and post-pandemic, will be set free to wander the globe, if they so choose, with life and work no longer requiring the same area code. As they do, countries will vie for their skills and their spend, ensuring that by mid-decade, this forward momentum impacts the countries that snapped back quickly after covid.

This tension between holding on to the advances caused by the pandemic, and a desire to return to life from the previous decade, will be the driving cultural force of the next five years.

On the other side won’t just be those longing for the past, but also those the pandemic left behind: the gig economy and front-line workers who made it possible to work from home for a year, who will increasingly live in a totally different ecosystem of platforms and services. In the past, we’ve discussed this media divide as different spheres for entertainment and information for the Haves and the Have Nots. Post-pandemic, that divide will extend to more parts of life, including and especially quasi-public spaces like retail and events. With infrastructure being laid to enforce vaccination status at concert venues and airports, silently and digitally in the background, it’s not hard to see how it could be rolled out in other spaces, and to enforce other rules. It could become a digital enforcement of “no shirt, no shoes, no service” — except the rules might change by the day, and by the current day’s receipts.

While many brands will naturally want to appeal to the most affluent consumers, a great number of them will also need to recruit the less-digital masses. This means maintaining legacy offline channels as well. And just because the more desirable consumers will be more digital, doesn’t mean they won’t want to engage offline, they’ll just need a reason to do so. To maintain mass scale, it will be in most brands’ best interests to make sure that the online and offline experiences are first class and seamlessly integrated. Synchronicity will become important, as some consumers channel-shift even within a single engagement with a brand. And in some cases — concerts and live events, select high-end retail — the offline experience will become even more premium, as the digital version becomes a loss leader to drive attention and awareness, like Dua Lipa’s breakthrough digital concert, which drew 5 million paying viewers, but generated even more demand for the coming tour.

The end of the pandemic will mark the beginning of what comes next, where we must reinvent the pieces of society that have been stubbornly clinging to the past, while balancing the needs of those who can’t or won’t be ready for that new world.

In the past, we’ve discussed that we were at The End of the Beginning phase of the digitization of everything. We had converted media and retail, and given four billion people pocket computers to access them. The end of the pandemic will mark the beginning of what comes next, where we must reinvent the pieces of society which have been stubbornly clinging to the past (healthcare, education, government, finance), while balancing the needs of those who can’t or won’t be ready for that new world. It will be a period of transition, which is always difficult. We owe it to each other to find a way through, and to make sure that everyone has a bridge to the other side, whether they choose to take it or not.

We’ve identified four ways this forward momentum will play out, impacting how we work, play, shop, and live beginning tomorrow, and through the first half of the 2020s.

The Anyware Economy

For any industry that was able to do so, at least part of 2020 was spent shifting to remote work, rethinking communication and processes to allow employees to maintain social distance. In the vast majority of these cases, this was a net win for the future, forcing organizations to adopt the tools they had long since had at their disposal, and breaking knowledge work out of a rigid schedule of meetings. We were able to reimagine a more fluid day, using asynchronous tools to connect with colleagues and quickly context-shift between our personal and work lives.

To be sure, it was not without its challenges, particularly for parents with partners and children also stuck at home, and those without adequate work space. Still, it’s easy to imagine how we could retain a lot of the benefits with none of the drawbacks, as schools reopen, and homes are reconfigured to support better work spaces. Going forward, remote working will be the norm for many white collar workers at least some of the time, with some industries like tech leaning more towards full-time remote, and some settling more on a traditional schedule, with 1–2 days of flexibility per week, or increased remote work during the summer months. According to McKinsey, up to 25% of the workforce can work remotely up to 3–5 days per week in advanced economies, a number far higher than the 10% who did pre-pandemic.

The tools of tomorrow will be built from the ground up as “Anyware” — software designed for hybrid physical and digital presence.

This shift to an increasingly hybrid lifestyle, where traditional boundaries like time of day and physical location cease to become markers of activity, will create increased demand for new and better tools. We went from assuming that most workers would be in a physical office every day to assuming they’ll be remote. The tools of tomorrow will have to assume it’s some mix of each, changing day by day or even hour by hour, built from the ground up as “Anyware” — software designed for hybrid physical and digital presence. An obvious example of this is rethinking our calendaring and scheduling tools to take into account our location and proximity: Who is working from where today? Which people in this meeting need to be present in person? Will we meet at the office or at a cafe? Is it okay for some people to be remote? Should some people just receive the recap after the meeting, because of time zones? It’s easy to see how once location data and requirements are factored into scheduling, it might unlock totally new capabilities as well, surfacing opportunities for clandestine meetings with colleagues who happen to be in the same city, or just in a more compatible time zone than usual. Think of it like a Snap Map or classic Foursquare, but for work. Our marketing and media will need to become similarly savvy, eschewing assumptions as to whether we’re working, playing, or somewhere in between based on notions like day parts or simple location triggers, and leaning in to data-driven targeting and creative, to reach the right audience at the right time, as they switch from context to context.

Along with this will come a new class of digital nomad, who will spend part of the year working remotely in order to enjoy the benefits of spending their leisure time somewhere new, whether that’s a beach, the ski slopes, or exploring a new part of the world. In 2020, the number of workers who classified themselves as digital nomads — not tethered to any specific place — jumped 49% in the US. Some lived this lifestyle pre-pandemic, but the increased comfort with remote work will mean that many more will opt to spend a month or two in a new locale every year. Especially in 2021 and 2022, as global travel becomes safe and possible once again, expect pent-up demand for new horizons to drive a surge in remote work from exotic locales. According to a Harris Poll, if offered the flexibility with their work, up to half of Americans would relocate, and many of them may soon be given the chance. And while tax implications make this a bit complicated in some cases, there are already over a dozen countries who have addressed these concerns with special visas. As the demand is demonstrated, more will follow suit, setting off a global competition for destination marketers to attract this new nomadic class — and their money — with exciting lifestyle adventures combined with fast wifi and coworking spaces.

By mid-decade, we can expect Anyware to have advanced to factory floors and farms, enabling a new era of digital communication.

While the next few years will be focused on hybrid work/play extended vacations, by the middle of the decade, some countries will be more focused on moving beyond physical location entirely, enticing businesses and workers to engage with them via digital currencies and citizenship. Estonia’s digital e-citizen program is a template: it allows anyone in the world to register as a “digital resident”, register a business with access to the European single market, and establish bank accounts. For tax and trade purposes, the business is Estonian, regardless of if the founder has ever set foot in Estonia, helping the tiny country of 3 million people compete on the global stage. Similar programs are about to be rolled out in 20 additional countries, including Japan, Singapore, Thailand, Brazil, and South Africa. With a different strategy, China and the US will both soon be fronting their own digital currencies, and leveraging their positions in the global market to drive usage well beyond their borders. Stripe, the fintech company whose stated goal is to “grow the GDP of the internet,” is laying similar groundwork with products like Atlas, that facilitate remote incorporation in the US, and Treasury, which allows anyone to build a white-labelled interface to a region’s first class banks. We’ve long known that the internet opens up both competition and the addressable market to the entire world. But up until recently that’s only really been true for media. By 2025, it will be true for businesses and finance, as well, as the global competition for talent will be in full swing.

And though Anyware will roll out first and foremost to high-value white collar workers, the 2020’s will also see an increased focus on technology for desk-less workers, an underserved market who make up the vast majority of the global workforce. Microsoft has already moved in this direction with special versions of their Teams collaboration software with built-in tools for managing shifts in retail stores and restaurants, and deep integrations with hospital technology stacks for nurses. And Netflix has begun developing their own apps for television production, to help streamline shooting in the field. By mid-decade, we can expect similar advances to come to factory floors and farms, as well, as the cost to deploy commodity smartphones drop below the benefits of digital communication within these enterprises. We’ll also see advances in wearable devices for workers who are constantly using their hands — things like AirPods for voice services and communications, and glasses for heads-up displays with instructions and reference materials. These desk-less workers are an untapped market for tech giants, and a new opportunity in the digitization of every other industry.

By 2025, the internet will have opened businesses and finance up to the addressable market of the entire world, vastly increasing competition, including that for global talent.

For brands, this means that the 2020’s will be a breakdown of assumptions. Our most affluent consumers might be anywhere in the world at any given time, as their work life and their home life becomes less predictable and less tethered. But the same technology that will adapt to help keep them connected will also give us new channels to reach them. And as connectivity expands to deskless workers, it will open up even more opportunities for connection, as wearables unlock new media time beyond the traditional screens.

The hybrid world is something momentous: for the first time in history, hundreds of millions of people can decouple where they live from where they work. The rules and norms carefully laid down over the past few centuries of civilization don’t fit anymore. Just about every part of life is affected: education, healthcare, financial planning, retail, housing, travel, and leisure. The changes bring opportunities and challenges in equal measure. It’s up to us to face both.

— Phil Libin, Co-Founder and CEO, All Turtles & mmhmm

What we have discovered together over the last year will change the way we work forever. It turns out that while many of us still want to see our teammates in person, we don’t want to go into an office every day, and many of our old habits weren’t actually that productive. Together, we invented new ways to collaborate that will stay with us for many years to come.

— Paul D’Arcy, CMO, Miro

Gaming Eats the World

Ten years ago, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen published a seminal article in the Wall Street Journal, declaring that “software is eating the world.” His belief, which has guided the expansion of Silicon Valley investment over the past decade, was that software would eventually disrupt and transform every industry, replacing non-digital processes and transforming how business is transacted. And while we are very much still in the middle stages of this transformation, we would like to add to Andreessen’s prediction: a second wave of software is coming to eat the world, and this one is rooted in the technologies and platforms of the gaming industry.

We can think of industry verticals as divided into two broad groups, the first wave and the second wave. The first wave industries are the ones which have largely been digitized over the past twenty years: news, media, entertainment, and retail. While there are of course legacy components to all of them, they all also have clear, established digital business models, winners and losers, and paths to market for new entrants. They are digitally mature. The next twenty years will be about digitizing the second wave: mobility, healthcare, education, food and agriculture, government, finance, getting them up to speed with internet assumptions, business models, and new go-to-market strategies. But while that is happening, the first wave won’t stand still. Instead, it will begin adopting a set of next-generation tools from the forefront of tech, which just happens to be where the gaming industry lives. This will expand the toolmakers in the gaming industry well beyond entertainment, subsuming everything we do online today, from shopping to working to socializing, challenging the FAANG companies as the most influential platforms in the world. As large as gaming is as an entertainment industry, it’s about to get much larger.

A second wave of software is coming to eat the world, and it is rooted in the technologies and platforms of the gaming industry.

This new layer of the internet is commonly referred to as the metaverse — an interconnected set of three-dimensional experiences, which may be accessed in VR or AR, but will also be accessed on our smartphones, televisions, and computers. It will be separate from the web and separate from the offline world, but connected to both, with frequent hops between them. The true metaverse will take decades to come together. We’re in the equivalent of the AOL dial-up era, where the pieces are becoming clear, but the infrastructure is not ready, and neither are consumers. But in this march toward the metaverse, the gaming industry — and particularly the platform players with the grandest metaverse ambitions — will increasingly steal time and attention away from traditional websites. And the pandemic gave them a huge head start.

More than half of all Americans were playing video games during quarantine, and those who spent more than 5 hours per week grew by 30%. As traditional sports were forced to shut down, many fans turned to esports to fill the gap. NASCAR’s quick pivot to virtual racing and the NBA’s live broadcast of their teams playing the NBA 2K video game helping recruit new fans to both the style and the distribution platforms for esports. And with a live event platform already in place, proto-verses like Fornite and Roblox were ready to host live concerts on their platforms, reaching up to 33 million unique viewers for their in-game events. Even Complex turned their music and streetwear event into a virtual venue this year. All of these contributed to trends that were already developing: an expansion of the gaming audience, now almost evenly split by gender, and strongly represented in every age group under 50. And an increase in use of games and gaming platforms for social activities and events that are unrelated to the game itself.

As gaming expands to swallow parts of the internet, the most important players to watch are the companies building infrastructure, and the platforms that are aggregating users. From the establishment, both Facebook and Apple throw the largest shadow. Facebook acquired Oculus back in 2014 because they saw the existential threat of the metaverse. And while it was slow going for awhile, 2020 was a breakout year for sales of their flagship device, the Quest. Where Facebook has stumbled so far is in software — Facebook Horizon is the company’s third attempt to build a social space on the platform, and while it’s still in beta, it doesn’t seem to have enough compelling content to attract the initial audience necessary to jumpstart engagement.

While Apple has a rocky track record with social and gaming, they have a stellar history with everything else, and a keen interest in augmented reality indicates that they will take a stab at a metaverse platform of some kind. At this point, the industry is largely waiting with bated breath for the launch of some kind of glasses, which might provide an entry point to more immersive experiences on Apple’s platforms. Similarly to how the iPhone developed, it’s likely that Apple will create at least part of the hardware and infrastructure powering a metaverse, if not the actual services themselves.

The pure infrastructure upstarts to watch include NVIDIA, widely regarded as the world’s best graphics processor designer, who builds the chips and cards that power high-end gaming computers and consoles. But GPUs are already widely used for other purposes, as the most important hardware for artificial intelligence and machine learning, NVIDIA has secured a place in the future of computing more broadly, as well as in ML-intensive applications like autonomous vehicles. And on the software side, Unity is the game engine that powers a large number of existing games, and which is rapidly expanding into other 3D and immersive fields. Both NVIDIA and Unity’s broad use within the industry all but guarantee them a place at the table as metaverse platforms develop.

For brands, it is well past time to figure out a gaming strategy, both in terms of how to reach gamers as an audience, and how brands should show up in immersive spaces.

On the software side, there are four massively multiplayer games which currently dominate attention: Grand Theft Auto, Minecraft, Roblox, and Fortnite. They each maintain between 70–120 million monthly active players, generating 1–1.5 billion hours of gameplay per month. GTA is probably the least advanced in terms of metaverse ambitions, but that fact belies its longevity: originally released in 2013, it is the only major title to now span three generations of gaming consoles. Minecraft is of similar vintage, first available to the public in 2009, but it’s acquisition by Microsoft in 2014 is what gave it the sustainability it needed. With a firm foothold in education and Microsoft’s backing, it will likely make the jump to a metaverse platform, and provide one of the true family-friendly on-ramps that will be necessary.

Roblox is a creative game that’s akin to a digital toy box, and is currently played by over half of all kids under 16 in the US. It’s also the first major gaming platform to let users monetize their own creations, selling everything from aesthetic skins and objects to use in your own creation to fully developed games-within-a-game. They are well on their way to being a default marketplace for digital goods, and will be the first metaverse company to go public early in 2021 on the basis of that premise.

Epic Games, maker of Fortnite and the Unreal Engine, may be the farthest along with their metaverse ambitions, and is the only player who is currently pursuing a vertically-integrated strategy. Not only does Fortnite itself still command many hours of gameplay every month, and serves as a de facto social platform, it also has become a melting pot of pop culture IP, the default place where Disney’s valuable catalog of Marvel and Star Wars characters appear in gaming, and host to the most technically advanced virtual concerts from popular musicians. But beyond Fortnite, it’s the infrastructure that Epic is creating with it’s Unreal Engine that might change everything. Those concerts are created at a special soundstage designed for the purpose of modeling and motion-capturing the artist in real time, creating a “digital twin” that can easily be imported into the game. It’s the human equivalent of the work they’ve done with Hummer on their first electric vehicle, which has a high-resolution model of itself in the dashboard, to display information and controls. Perhaps most interesting is the digital twin Epic created with the city of Shanghai, which can import real-time weather and traffic data, and help city officials simulate proposed changes to infrastructure. Along with their contributions to the digital sets of The Mandalorian and Disneyland’s Galaxy’s Edge, Epic is quickly building out a toolchain for production of digital twins of people, places, and things, but also the means to deploy them in game and in the real world. These tools and processes will all be key components in the buildout of the metaverse.

For brands, it is well past time to figure out a gaming strategy, both how to reach gamers as an audience, and increasingly important is how brands should show up in immersive spaces. While the former will vary widely from brand to brand, for the latter, it’s time to build out a 3D asset pack in widely compatible formats. As more of the internet begins to look and behave like a game, it’s time to start thinking about games as the new social — unique channels where users gather to hang out online, and where they build reputations and personas that can and will include brand affinities. It will be important to think through not just product design for virtual worlds, but interactivity as well — can players interact with your product, or use it with a custom emote, to show off to their friends? Can you create demand with limited releases, or generate engagement by providing a more practical value? And as you look to your product and packaging development, identify whether the tools your designers are using can be upgraded to the ones that game designers use, embedding the creation of a digital twin right into your core creative process.

The dramatic growth of end-user demand for interactive content is driving industries beyond gaming to embrace the advantages of real-time 3D content. Creators are leveraging our platform to provide faster content creation and efficient deployment across formats and use cases. Today, Fortune and Global 500 companies in industries such as architecture, engineering, construction, automotive, transportation, manufacturing, film, television, and retail are using Unity across many new use cases, including automobile and building design, online and augmented reality product configurators, autonomous driving simulation, and augmented reality workplace safety training. These new forms of content are emerging parts of our business and represent a significant opportunity for growth.

— Julie Shumaker, VP of Revenue, Unity

Welcome to the Splinternet

In another sign of maturity, our major tech platforms are facing down their first real regulatory and antitrust challenges around the world, and the outcome of these inquiries is likely to make it clear that GDPR and CCPA were only the first tentative steps of global governments. It’s an odd juxtaposition of history that this is occurring following the year where the focus of our lives was largely shifted online. But these forces were mustering well before the pandemic, triggered by the growing techlash and the political attention it was drawing. Over the next five or so years, the actions taken by governments will vary greatly around the world, and that variance will make for a fragmented digital media landscape, a Splinternet that will diverge in capabilities, culture, and permissions as the decade wears on.

Of course, despite a common technical infrastructure, the consumer internet has never been truly global, with China carving itself off from the rest of the world early enough that it has always been a separate (if interoperable) ecosystem of platforms and services. Over the next few years, these two spheres — China and the rest of the world — will further divide and expand, leaving the internet of the late 2020’s with a very different geography than the one we have today.

Over the next five or so years, the actions taken by governments will vary greatly around the world, and that variance will make for a fragmented digital media landscape.

Despite differing approaches to antitrust, it’s likely that the platforms used in North America and Europe will remain broadly similar to what they are today, and interoperable with each other. Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp will still dominate social platforms (even if they wind up as separate companies), Google will be the leader in search, and Amazon in ecommerce, while Apple will control the affluent segment of hardware, software, and services. While new regulations in Europe might alter search results on Google, Amazon, and Apple’s App Store to de-prioritize first-party services, the platforms will otherwise remain identical. Where a wedge might form between the US and Europe is around speech: there is broad political consensus in the US for overturning Section 230, which grants internet providers a safe harbor for user generated content. If that protection were removed, every platform would look vastly different than it does today, with Facebook’s News Feed suddenly focused solely on vetted news articles, YouTube stripped of all but the most professionally produced content, and user reviews hidden in Amazon and Apple’s marketplaces. There would be many unintended consequences of such a move, and Europe would wisely be watching with one foot on the brakes, which could result in the experience of using the platforms — for users and for brands — begin to diverge in meaningful ways.

In the near term, Latin America is likely to mostly adhere to US regulations, which tend to be more strict in the media space, despite some high-level local initiatives taking shape. Over the course of the decade, local players in the region will continue to gain strength and influence with consumers, as companies like Mercado Libre, Cornershop, Rappi, and Bitso build up consumer trust and digital infrastructure. They will provide brands and opportunity to engage deeply with the culture and community in the region in ways that international platforms cannot, and may one day challenge them for attention from both brands and consumers. But for now, platforms like Facebook and Google will leverage their tools for businesses and free access to wifi for consumers to maintain a strong foothold in LatAm.

The China story will be much different, as it looks to grow its own digital economy by expanding the Great Firewall to include Southeast Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean. This will place them on some brands’ radar for the first time, and buoy their status and revenues, putting them on more equal footing with the western tech companies. The two major Asian economies which are a bit more of an unknown are India and Japan. While it seems likely that Japan will remain closest to the European flavor of regulation, that is far from certain, and it’s possible that they will challenge China to compete for Southeast Asia’s digital infrastructure, a move that would likely win them support from the west. India — which will surpass a billion internet users by 2030 — has been indicating that they will carve their own path, following China’s example of carefully moderating what is permitted on the Indian internet. Though it’s unlikely to entirely eschew the western platforms that already have a foothold, it’s not hard to imagine that the rapid gentrification of such a large population, with some kind of digital borders in place, will foster robust local rivals. Jio, India’s largest mobile provider, will almost certainly be a major player in platforms and services.

For global brands, the splinternet means an increased balkanization of the digital platforms that we use to reach consumers.

For global brands, this means an increased balkanization of the digital platforms that we use to reach consumers, with everything from designing and targeting audiences to developing creative becoming more complex. While many of these activities are already managed at a market level, it will be an increasing challenge for global teams and brand managers to even offer meaningful input outside their home markets, as capabilities, content formats, and norms diverge. And in India and other markets, if local competitors arise, we might soon be looking at a digital ecosystem that is just as fragmented as the analog channels of television and print before it. The interesting counterpoint to this trend is TikTok, which will have over 1 billion global users this year. Though it is technically a separate repository of content from its Chinese sibling Douyin, the features and formats are evolving in lock step. And with video being the most cross-cultural form of media, it’s easy to see how content could be shared between the two. This might provide a template for platforms moving forward, and could provide some much needed respite for global brands. Of course, TikTok is currently banned in India, and narrowly escaped a US ban last year, showing just how quickly the landscape can shift.

Beneath the surface, there will be a countervailing narrative to the Splinternet, as a new class of digital elites maintain the drumbeat of culture at a global level. We’ve discussed the rise of Global Culture in the past, participation in which used to be a signifier of class and status, to have the wealth to travel often, and the insider knowledge to know where to be when. Digital Culture democratized this, granting access to those who knew where to look. And while the pandemic with birth a new class of globe-trotting digital nomads, it will also reduce access to culture beyond our own borders, making it challenging for all but the most professionally produced media to achieve global scale — with the notable exception of TikTok. But as we’ve seen with VPN usage in China, there will emerge a highly savvy class of consumers who will adopt and develop the tools they need to cross these digital borders. This will maintain a true global network for some, which will be small but powerful, until the cultural pendulum inevitably swings in the other direction, when they will be at the forefront of the efforts to re-unify our digital world.

Global users have a right to dismantle digital borders in a secure and private manner. Our rapid user growth worldwide demonstrates the increasing scope of the splinternet. General consumers are facing a fragmentation shift in many areas of their digital lives, and the need to bypass artificial barriers is no longer reserved for the tech-savvy. We believe the next step for VPN technology will be to provide one solution suite that not only offers options for advanced users, but also integrates seamlessly in general users’ day-to-day lives.

— Tom Okman, Co-Founder of Nord Security

The Reinvention of Social Context

Though the Splinternet will mark a shift away from the generations-long drive towards a global culture and economy, it will mirror the secular shift that is happening on many social platforms, with users migrating away from public squares and into more private digital environs. With more than half the world online, and many more to come in the next decade, it turns out that we don’t all want to be in the same room all that often. As governments look to impose their local values on the platforms, they are in some ways just catching up to users, who have been resisting tech’s insistence on imposing a singular identity upon them. Rather, consumers have been using more private groups and different platforms to reestablish social context online. This allows them to fluidly redefine the face they present to others depending on the audience: a witty intellectual stance on Twitter, a warmer tone with family on Facebook, a more jocular mood while playing Fortnite, and a more honest and open presence in a group text. These are all facets of the same person, with different filters on tone and topic, depending on the audience, similarly to how we might shift our behavior when moving between groups at a party. As consumer attention moves to these smaller groups, the way brands reach them online must evolve as well.

A brand can prioritize both values and escapism, but must carefully target the messaging to fit the context.

It should not be lost that the motivating factor for tech’s push for a consolidated identity online isn’t because they believe it’s better for users or morally superior, but because it makes it easier to target ads to them. As we move into this next phase of the internet, and both governmental and individual scrutiny of privacy practices increases, this Reinvention of Social Context will only help brands and advertisers, as we’re able to use data about the context — rather than the individual — to target our messaging. User behavior has provided a solution to the looming problem of data privacy. In some ways, this will be a return to media practices of the analog world, buying adjacency in magazines and television shows. But now it will be supercharged by the scale of the internet, allowing us to programmatically find the right subreddit or Twitch stream where a well-defined message will be not only well received, but welcome. Notably, because these social spaces are smaller, they are largely very well moderated — it’s easier to impose a set of community standards on a smaller group who has gathered for a specific purpose.

We have spoken about the evolution of Brand Trust to become just as much about social and cultural values as about product promises. As the world continues through a tumultuous time of social upheaval and climate crisis, we can expect that consumers will double-down on supporting brands who align with their values, turning to them for education and action on the issues they care about. But they will also be looking for an escape, to forget the problems of the world and retreat to greener virtual pastures. At each touchpoint, brands will have to consciously choose whether it’s appropriate to engage the consumer in conversation on the issues they care about, or to help them temporarily escape those concerns. While most brands may prefer to align with escapism, the context and timing of an escapist message will be important, and increasingly at odds with all of the other distractions that media can provide. Not many brands will be able to compete with Disney or TikTok for attention. Meanwhile, the most trusted brands will be the ones who do engage with the larger world. These brands will earn their way into more and more intimate contexts. The best mission-driven brands will enter the chat.

The best mission-driven brands will enter the chat.

There will be many potential pitfalls to navigate as we enter this new era, simultaneously more intimate and more alienating. One of the most critical is that in an effort to seem purposeful, brands must not succumb to both-sidesism, attempting to please everyone. Consumers care about the issues they do because they affect their lives, so any disingenuous behavior by a brand will be received just as poorly as if it were coming from a friend. Similarly, a brand can prioritize both values and escapism, but must carefully target the messaging to fit the context. The medium is the message, and showing up with the wrong tone in the wrong place will harm more than help.

And this recontextualization will also present a unique opportunity, for the most adept brands. This new internet, siloed by governments and divided up by users, will just increase the problems of filter bubbles and a collective understanding of reality. As the 2020’s begin to roar, this fractured landscape will be one of our greatest cultural challenges. For the mission-driven brands that can earn their way into the most secluded channels, there will be an opportunity to truly do good, by ensuring that they bridge these contexts. It’s not a brand’s job or responsibility, but as entities which inherently exist across many contexts, some clever brands will see that they can provide the shared context, bridging isolated groups, and reminding us of our shared experience.

Consumers are shifting from traditional corporate media to find their information from sources that most align with their values, politics, and religious beliefs. Podcasts offer direct access and a deeper relationship to their favorite journalists, content creators, and personalities. In these communities, consumers build stronger identities, and in turn, they also become valuable targets for brands. For brands entering the podcast market, they can quickly gain exposure to incredibly niche and valuable audiences with pin-point precision.

— Jeremy Lermitte, COO & Co-Founder, RedCircle

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