Too much information and too little time? You’re not alone.

Short-form video is a reaction to two things: the volume of information produced and introduced to us daily and the way our brains respond to stimuli. Nielsen reports that in spring 2018, the typical U.S. consumer watched or listened to 10 hours and 24 minutes of “media” each day — sometimes stacked between multiple devices! The attention span of viewers has decreased over the past decade and our ability to process information has also shortened. Given consumers’ fleeting attention span, brands need to engage fast and get their message across quickly.

For all the troubling headlines facing some of the media agency giants, many independent media agencies are thriving. At Decisions 20/20, a recent advertising industry association event convened by the 4A’s, Jeff Larson, president of independent media shop Mediassociates, presented an optimistic picture of the future. “Independent agencies have been the beneficiaries of a lot of the disruption in our industry,” said Larson. “There’s a fundamental lack of trust between many brands and their agency partners which is not a healthy way to build a relationship.”

Dear marketers, ever worry that your ads online are in safe company?

YouTube just got in hot water again for, yes, running ads next to questionable content. TechCrunch just reported last week on how YouTube searches for certain content may pull up videos for soft-core pornography; others have recently questioned the vast rise of conspiracy videos on YouTube, and whether advertisers really want to be there.

Mediassociates, a U.S. media planning, buying and analytics agency, has been retained by Discovery Benefits as its media agency. Mediassociates will manage advertising media strategy, implementation and measurement to build brand awareness for Discovery Benefits in the United States.

“I am very pleased to kick off 2019 with the announcement Discovery Benefits is partnering with Mediassociates on a year-long (and beyond) advertising campaign,” said Ann Schneider, VP of Marketing for Discovery Benefits. “We are excited to work with such a passionate and talented group to help us catapult awareness of our offerings across employee benefits administration.”

At its simplest, predictive analytics looks at patterns in past data to predict what might happen in the future. While none of us has a crystal ball, it is possible to foresee what is most likely to happen tomorrow. Any future has a range of possible outcomes, and even if some are difficult to predict (who will win an election, future fashion trends), almost all potential scenarios can be modeled.