• by Dave Morgan , Featured Contributor, August 20, 2015

We’re in the lazy days of August, when most in the media and advertising business are vacationing, or at least taking Fridays off, and everything slows down. Well, certainly not nearly as slow as it used to be before the Internet, mobile phones and unlimited calling plans, but a lot slower than things will be post-Labor Day.

It’s hard not to let your mind drift to the future and wonder what might be in store for us this fall.  Here are some five near-certainties that we should expect to greet us in the months ahead:

TV will find some big hits, again. TV is not dead. FOX proved that this winter when “Empire" became the first show in the history of television to grow its audience every week for the entire first season.  We’ll see a crop of shows debut in late September and, in defiance to the dismal expectations of many, some of the new shows will become instant big hits, not unlike “Empire.”

Another massive social network will spring up, seemingly from nowhere. Facebook. Instagram. Pinterest. What’sApp. SnapChat. All are enormous. All seemed to come out of nowhere. That trend will continue. Before the fall is up, another massive social network will take the stage. Maybe Kik?

More big marketers will put their agencies in review. This has been a big summer for agency reviews, by far the biggest ever, but it’s not over. The core issues causing the reviews –- desired cost-savings, fresh perspectives, greater transparency, questions of trust, fascination with bright, shiny objects –- are still out there. More reviews coming.

Fraud, lack of viewability, and bots will grow. Just because this issue has finally gotten the attention it deserves doesn’t mean that it will go away. Paradoxically, or maybe not so, the more the issue is examined,  the more problems around fraud, viewability and bots in digital video will be found. This issue will get much worse before it gets better.

Accelerating M&A. LUMA’s Terry Kawaja has been telling us that consolidation is coming to the digital world. Not only is the Lumascape too crowded to survive that way, but there are too many “tweener” digital ad and marketing companies that are large enough to add value to really big companies, but will never be really big companies themselves. They will start to get bought. TV companies, worried about their future and their stock prices and desiring to be younger and more digital, will buy. This trend has been going on piecemeal over the past year or two. This fall, it will be nothing like that.

What do you think? What will the fall bring?