Speaking as part of a panel of industry leaders at a Future of Media session on Growing a Media Business: 2025 – 2030, Bauer Media President of Audio Simon Myciunka outlined his vision for how the industry must evolve in the years ahead. He emphasised that the next five years will be defined by deepening digital engagement and building more meaningful relationships with audiences. “The focus must be on deepening audience digital engagement. The future is about relationships, personalised experiences, knowing audiences better and serving them better. We need to really drive audience engagement across our whole portfolio.”

Simon highlighted that Bauer’s strength in audio storytelling continues to drive trust and brand growth, with the most successful partnerships built on long-term collaboration and consistent investment. He said; “Audio is famous for building brands. Any well known brand has consistently invested in brand story telling and audience connection. Our most successful brand partnerships are ones we’ve been working with for years. The key is trust and creating something meaningful for people that will matter in five years.”

As the conversation turned to AI, Simon described it as a means to “boost human creativity and deepen human connections” and “AI should help brilliant people do more brilliant work, freeing up time for creativity, not replacing it.” He added; “The challenge is how do you get brilliant people to do more brilliant work. The question needs to be how you can free up time and do great work. We are using AI to boost human creativity, deepen human connections and create better products.”

When asked how the media industry should retain talent and help them thrive, Simon said leaders must “ensure that AI is given to everybody. Start valuing people for how they think. Tasks can be automated but creative thinking can’t. Rewarding people when they’re being creative and trying to grow is how we retain talent.”
 
He also spoke about leadership and culture as core drivers of growth. “Empowering people to have autonomy to make decisions and play a bigger role in defining strategy is key to growth,” he said, adding that sustainable success comes from building environments where creativity and learning thrive.

Simon concluded that growth depends on “building a culture that learns as fast as technology develops.”