The Media Leader Podcast

Earlier this month at our Future of Media Manchester event, The Media Leader's content director, James Longhurst, sat down with four leading sports journalists to peek behind the scenes of covering this year's biggest shared cultural moment: the 2026 World Cup.
John Cross is the chief football writer for the Mirror. Nikhita Chulani is the executive producer for Sport at The Guardian. Dean Scoggins is head of sport at The Sun. And Henry Williams is a sports presenter at the Daily Mail.
As they explained, with the World Cup being truly "24-7" this year, publishers embraced a multi-platform, multimedia strategy in which volume was less important than engagement with audiences, be it on publisher websites or third-party platforms.
The group spoke about the tournament's controveries, celebrations and disappointments, and how journalism can bring a global community together around one moment.
Highlights:
3:16: Reminisces on this year's tournament
10:12: How to cover a 24-7 World Cup across all channels, digital and print
16:46: The mindset shift required to embrace platforms and move from volume to engagement
22:12: What worked this year and the importance of community
Related articles:
Culture is everywhere. So why is it rarely planned for?
Why mass cultural moments still matter (and the World Cup proved it)
‘The division between church and state isn’t sustainable’: Journalists weigh-up life as a creator
The scoop that stopped FIFA’s secret World Cup selloff
News brands: The beating heart of the FIFA World Cup
Open goals: how The Guardian brought the World Cup to life

This week on The Media Leader we will be taking a deep dive into the future of media planning and strategy.
So, what better way to start than with unpacking a new planning paradigm.
This summer, independent media agency Craft Media London launched a new planning “Cookbook”. Titled Anti-Ultra-Processed Planning, the book argues that “planning has become fast food; mass-produced, pre-packaged and dangerously addictive”.
Agencies, it continues, are increasingly outsourcing strategic thinking to automated platforms, producing similar plans and dull work.
It is time, the book reads, to stop microwaving briefs and start cooking again.
Sally Weavers and Jen Jones are co-founders of Craft Media London and co-authors of Anti-Ultra-Processed Planning. They joined host Jack Benjamin to discuss its arguments and takeaways, and why they believe good planning has become harder and harder to come by.
Highlights:
7:05: What is anti-ultra-processed planning?
11:34: How to incentivise better planning practices
18:20: People not audiences
23:14: Notice over reach: the importance of attention
29:37: How brands can 'get out of the middle lane' and become more distinctive
40:29: Planning through culture, not channels
46:15: Measuring what matters and moving beyond social media
Related articles:
Beyond the black box: The case for anti-ultra-processed planning
Media for planners who give a shit
Templatisation and automation: Is planning losing its edge?

One of the fastest moving parts of the marketing industry is GEO, or generative engine optimisation.
As AI search proliferates on Google, on ChatGPT, on Claude, brands are wanting to influence how results related to them are shown to users. For Google and ChatGPT, that could include through paid advertising, but the organic effort is seemingly just as important, much in the same way that search engine optimisation (SEO) has been.
GEO presents a unique challenge, however. There is currently a relative lack of data flowing from AI companies to brands and agencies; it’s not always clear why and how a large language model decides to reference or pull in information about brands; meanwhile, AI search has led to a decline in clickthrough rates not only to publishers, but also to brand websites, vastly changing the online consumer journey and making it harder to prove exactly how GEO is working.
Amy Banks was recently promoted at Havas Media Network UK to become head of both SEO and GEO.
She spoke to host Jack Benjamin about how she’s developing strategies in GEO for clients and whether or not consumers can really trust what they see in AI search if marketing teams are constantly trying to influence it.
Highlights:
4:02: The evolution of GEO and why data is a limiting factor
9:00: Who is winning the AI search market?
19:25: How GEO is linking with paid search, social and PR
21:38: The impact of declining referral traffic to brand websites
24:47: Does GEO undermine consumer trust in AI search?
Related articles:
AI search is reducing traffic to brand websites — but not sales
Who owns GEO? That’s the wrong question
GEO is an e-bike, not a spaceship

Publishers are not sitting idle as AI companies scrape their websites and cite their content in response to queries without permission. As their business models are turned upside down by sharply declining referral traffic from search, they are fighting back. That starts with understanding precisely how AI companies are scraping their content.
In February, a coalition of leading UK news publishers founded the Standards for Publisher Usage Rights, or SPUR, an effort to develop and formalize a way for AI companies to make use of journalism in a way that protects publishers’ intellectual property.
Dubbed “NATO for news” by FT CEO Jon Slade, the coalition has since rapidly expanded beyond its original founding members, and in June it released what’s known as a draft telemetry standard, an effort aimed at providing the technical foundation and shared language necessary to understand how AI systems use publisher content. With this knowledge, publishers can then start to create informed licensing deals with AI companies.
Alex Springer is the technical lead at the SPUR Coalition.
He spoke with The Media Leader about SPUR’s work, and whether publishers have finally developed the leverage needed to get AI companies to pay fair value for the work they’ve been allegedly stealing.
Highlights:
4:10: Redefining publisher value in the AI era
11:11: The SPUR Coalition: Goals, technical developments, and building co-equal relationships with AI companies
20:01: Can the long tail of the web be protected from AI copyright theft?
26:41: Is the publishing industry being incentivised to improve quality?
35:22: SPUR's draft telemetry standard: what it is and how it works
43:04: What a new marketplace between publishers and AI companies could look like
51:44: Government interventions and development timeline
Related articles:
Telemetry: the key to solving AI’s valuation and measurement crisis
‘The first tremors in an earthquake’: Digital publisher revenues decline 4.6% amid falling referral traffic
How publishers are fighting to protect their copyright from AI companies

Every year, The Media Leader and its parent Adwanted UK celebrate the best of UK media research at the Adwanted Media Research Awards (AMRAs).
Robust media research is an important industry resource. It helps inform and steer conversation and our understanding of marketing best practice – as well as the incentives that often get in the way of implementing it.
This year’s awards include 6 new categories and 22 in total, covering every element of media research. One notable new award is the Denise Turner Award for Best Use of Joint Industry Data in a Research Project, in honour of the late media researcher and friend of The Media Leader, who died last autumn.
This year’s awards will be open for entry beginning Tuesday the 1st of September, with an early bird deadline on Wednesday the 7th of October and a standard deadline on Wednesday the 14th of October.
Ahead of the opening, host Jack Benjamin sat down with this year’s judging panel co-chairs Dan Flynn and Graeme Griffiths.
Flynn and Griffiths are joint directors of media research for the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA). They jointly succeeded Turner in the role in February of this year.
Apart from leading the development of the IPA’s TouchPoints research and other industry benchmark surveys like the IPA Agency Census, they also represent the IPA on all of the major joint-industry currencies.
The pair spoke recently about what makes for exceptional media research, why research isn’t always put into practice, and what innovations JICs can and should be driving to better meet the needs of advertisers.
Highlights:
7:33: Judging the AMRAs: What makes for good media research?
10:23: Why doesn't research always lead to impact and behavioural change?
19:50: New AMRA awards and Denise Turner's legacy
24:49: How JICs need to evolve to meet advertiser demands
30:06: The Barb-YouTube relationship and agency demand for new JICs for platforms and podcasting
35:22: Is Origin the way to cross-media measurement nirvana?
42:29: The future of media research: AI, synthetic data, and in-housing research
Related articles:
AMRAs add six categories including Denise Turner award
Measurement can’t be an afterthought — with IPA’s Denise Turner
A round-up of some of the best research of the year
Podcasting needs its own JIC – Jack Davenport, Goalhanger CEO
Will YouTube’s new definition of a ‘view’ undermine its effort to tap into TV budgets?