Female Empowerment and AI Take Centre Stage at CES

Alysha Dino, VP global revenue, brand metrics, reflects on the key themes emerging from the recent Consumer Electronics Show.

I always enjoy attending the CES event in Las Vegas. It’s a fantastic celebration of technology and a great place to take the temperature of the tech world and see what’s grabbing people’s attention. The timing of the event, the first week of January, while making it difficult to rally out of holiday brain mode, is actually such an excellent way to kick off the year. Meeting so many people from the industry, sharing learnings from the previous year and strategies and plans for the coming one seems like the perfect way to get yourself prepped for the year ahead. Here are my key takeaways from this year’s event…

Female equality and empowerment is real and it’s here to stay

I was delighted to see the Equality Lounge at CES focused on empowering the female voice. Everyone was talking about lifting while you climb, and female empowerment was referenced by some of the biggest names speaking at CES, including Sarah Meron, CCO at IBM, who said: “We don't need programs to address a deficit; we need to create opportunities for women, hire them and provide the support necessary for them to thrive.” 

I also liked this quote from Anneliese Olson, president of HP, "Representation serves your customers. A workforce that reflects your customers drives better innovation and more profitable business. When women and people of colour are at the table, business decisions are faster, and communities that feel included stay longer, leading to better outcomes."

And this from Raja Rajamannar, chief marketing and communications officer at Mastercard, "We have zero tolerance for not being decent. It's true. It's not about IQ or EQ. It's about DQ: decency quotient. You have to be a good human being.” And finally, from Geoff Schiller, CRO at Vox Media, "If you can achieve respectful communication and candid conversation, you can move faster, you can lead with empathy, and that moves the culture forward."

That said, we can’t afford to be complacent. The moves made by Meta and Amazon in the last few days to cut back on some of their DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) initiatives show that there’s still a great deal of work to do to ensure that women and men are treated equally and afforded the same opportunities in the workplace. 

AI is gaining traction

Most people agree that AI won't take over the world, nor is it intuitive enough to replace human creativity or innovation, however everyone I spoke to loves AI for the efficiencies it brings to the workplace, from automating routine tasks to organizing meeting notes and building action plans. I expect to see more companies embracing AI in 2025, and reaping the benefits. 

Content will be king again

Most people think that, from a content perspective, 2024 was all about reining in costs. As they look ahead to 2025, there’s a common theme of investing more in content to retain users’ attention and keep them coming back. With so much content competing for consumers’ attention across so many channels, quality content is essential to cut through the noise.  

Connected TV continues to mature

There was widespread agreement among everyone I spoke to about Connected TV (CTV) that it is moving out of the ‘wild west’ phase and evolving into a mature advertising medium, which is growing at pace and attracting serious budgets from well-known brands.

The key CTV themes doing the rounds were measurement, audience / behaviour insights, efficiency and simplification, and these seemed to pair nicely with the many announcements that came out of the event. Key among these were Roku introducing Data Cloud, an evolution of its clean room solution; Comcast unveiling Universal Ads, a self-serve ad platform geared towards local advertisers; NBCU debuting new ad formats for live events; and Disney pushing a new data fragmentation tool, and their live sports biddable deals.

As streaming TV services and channels continue to proliferate, I believe CTV will find its way onto more and more media plans in 2025.