Wimbledon was on and I didn't know. Could this be the biggest advertising opportunity of our lifetime?

Like a lot people I know, I do not watch TV anymore, I stream. I watch what I want, when I want and I love it. I love not paying money to that old meddling bastard Rupert Murdoch far much more than I thought possible and I am aware of how much I love this daily, I do not forget it like most things in life. I despise the TV license and antagonise the authorities every time I move house which has been a ridiculous amount in recent times.

Streaming works with how I work, I set my alarm for 5:00 am and watch whatever I want before work and that can have massive affect on my day. If I am feeling a little vulnerable I can watch Billions or Suits and get my tiger on or if I am feeling a little sad or down I can get whatever dose of laughter fits my bizarre and ever demanding sense of humour.

I do not watch the news, I read it on Apple and Google news and these algorithms / AI (is it really though?) feed me more of what I am interested in, making my view of the world ever more myopic.

Facebook has even started to limit my news feed to those I interact with, which makes me paranoid to point of checking if people have abandoned the platform or abandoned me.

My music choices have zero new influences apart from my daughter and my partner taking over on trips in the car due to Spotify and their inability to lure me into "discover daily".

So Sunday evening, I look on the news to find out Novac has beaten Federer, and I am seriously like "faaaaack summer is over! How the hell did I not know it was on?!? "

The answer is obvious and explained previously, the modern internet is completely programmed to give you what you want based on your everyday choices. I do not like tennis, although in my 40's I am contemplating buying a racket and taking it up but Google doesn't know this yet. It also doesn't know I have always loved watching Wimbledon at my parents with strawberries, ice creme and some Aperol spritz. It also doesn't know that I mark Wimbledon as the end of my happy time, aka summer, and my life takes a darker turn in emotions as we move into winter.

These massive world sports events are on networks / channels and the companies behind them dominate airtime in the run up to these events. But what if they realise that nobody is watching the run up anymore? Where do they turn? They will turn to where your attention is currently.

Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, Twitter, Reddit, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Google, Amazon and some much cooler networks that I am not listing here because I am too old to understand them, These networks are where the mammoths of media are going to pay huge sums of money to utterly dominate what you see. And if they do not do it soon they will die.

We live in a time where you can advertise daily for poultry sums like ￡10 for a week's advertising on Facebook or ￡10 a day on Google or LinkedIn. At these prices, advertising is basically for free and we do not even realise it. We will though when it all changes, when what you search for becomes irrelevant to the advertisements on Google and the bidding wars start between the big boys.

Cheap is not a word that can describe how incredibly low priced advertising in these spaces is, compared with how it will be by 2023 and beyond, if not sooner. Advertising money is always spent where attention is and the people at Sky, ITV, etc do not even realise that the attention has shifted. They are still battling to move into the digital world and keep up with the "disruptors", and to keep attention on their digital offering they are going to have to advertise outside of their own networks that have dwindling numbers of viewers and that means advertising on Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, Twitter, Reddit, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Google, Amazon and some much cooler ones I am not listing for reasons described earlier. When that happens the bidding will change, the marketing real estate will change. Small budgets will not get any of the the attention.

Make hay while the sun is shining ladies and gentlemen :-)