Right now, there are multiple trends and significant changes happening in the digital space. As media planners & buyers, we need to be aware of these changes and monitor how they affect digital advertising trading.
Here are 3 key trends we’re seeing right now:
Sustainability
As sustainability comes to the fore in 2023, the spotlight is on the entire industry to make positive and lasting changes for the future of digital advertising. Among societal topics that advertisers believe will impact their marketing strategies, sustainability ranks second only to the prospect of an economic recession.
Whilst the impact of COVID positively affected CO2 emissions from digital advertising, this was only a short blip in output, and much more is needed to hit net zero by 2050. Many media companies are adopting smarter targeting, additional creative considerations and assessing how best to offset emissions.
However, as digital advertisers, we also need to think about the partners we work with and raise questions with clients about campaign frequency, high carbon formats and ad length, whilst continuing to reduce wastage internally.
Contextual Targeting
As cookie deprecation comes to a head in 2024, the digital marketplace looks to other forms of targeting, with the most popular being the age-old technique of contextual.
Contextual has come a long way since early conception, and with brand safety in place, contextual has taken leaps and bounds from simple keyword targeting. Now, we look at more than just site level, analysing the URL, full page content analysis, images, video and audio to fully understand page context and intent. We anticipate further work in this space alongside AI advances.
Attention Tracking
In addition to the loss of 3rd party targeting, the deprecation of cookies will also lead to different ways of tracking campaign successes.
Consumers are exposed to 4,000 messages a day and spend an average of 3 hours 32 minutes online. But how do we really know what’s had an impact?
Measuring attention helps to understand what parts of the screen users are focusing on, and what is delivering cut-through. Multiple studies claim that measuring attention is more effective than viewability alone, as it increases brand lift and has a positive effect on ROI. Not only will attention tracking become more prevalent in measurement, but also in campaign optimization.
Key considerations for increasing attention include the quality of the environment, location of the ad, ensuring the creative works across all devices with minimal clutter and tapping into quality targeting techniques that ensure relevance.
The above is by no means an exhaustive list. We expect many more innovations and trends to enter (and exit) the digital space before the year is out. But for now, I’ll put the digital ‘crystal ball’ down…
Phil Butcher
Head of Digital