M & A Handbook: Experts share prevailing Advertising trends

There will be a lot of campaigns that dabble in mass personalisation as data allows for it. Content is bound to grow, not just in terms of amplification but actual growth. The virality of news and verification ecosystems will see growth in the next three years as a revamp is underway. OOH and television are important and their synergies can help brands. Biggest spends will be on video whatever medium it may be, as visuals are a staple.

Today Digital, Data and Tech occupy more than 50% of a marketer’s mind space but less than 20% of spend. Measuring top of the funnel effects will reach a boiling point with Tech Media Giants being forced to acknowledge the issue. DMPs will start churning insights and impressions will start evolving to insight-led audience profiles. I’m expecting to see interesting work on MI/AI and Voice. I don’t expect the internet of things to impact media just yet.

One trend I see has ramifications on not just advertising but also the way ad agencies work is ‘integration’. Increasingly, the number of communication partners carrying a message to consumers has become a problem. The message gets diffused and the marketer is left managing the many ‘specialists’. Besides, it is becoming sub-optimal in terms of costs. It's not easy for traditional agencies to build specialist capabilities quickly. It requires a change in attitude and thinking. A change in the kind of people that need to be hired, organisation design, and delivery of the Integrated Solution at a global scale.

Conversational Marketing using chatbots with the aid of NLP will very rapidly proliferate in areas such as customer service. This would be used in instances where the conversation has to be human-like in order to facilitate not just basic communication but also product recommendation, personalization and other e-commerce solutions.

Growth of OTT will give rise to deeper audience engagement. The content tsunami has engulfed the consumer and is only going to continue, as a result of this; clients will need to spend time and invest in these mediums where there is a massively captive audience. With Regional/Vernacular growing from strength to strength, agencies will need to better understand this dynamic consumer. Their consumption on mobile will continue to grow and we must customise content that fits and engages via this medium effectively.

Three performance marketing trends will stand out this year include an integrated approach, zero party data and automation. An integrated approach will involve all teams early in the plan to build an impactful strategy that considers all aspects of digital. Zero Party Data will be an audience-first approach that helps provide explicit audience interest and preferences to analyse the consumer purchase journey. This data can help in devising the marketing strategy and evaluating its efficiency. For automation, you will see a shift of human skill requirements from routine role to strategy building role for emphasizing on creating better customer experience by using human analytical skills.

Evolution of Display is a major trend. Thanks to Programmatic Media Buying, AI tools bid for ad spaces on web pages in real-time using data-rich audience personas, delivering speed and accuracy. This in-turn increases conversions rates (CVRs) with drops in costs per acquisition (CPAs) at a scale that surpasses search impressions in thousands. Next is AMPs (Accelerated Mobile Pages), they focus on making the user experience more accessible and friendly. A standard web page could take anywhere between 8–9 seconds to load on a mobile handset whereas the AMP-enabled pages bring down this speed to 2-3 seconds. I see it as a chain reaction process where a decrease in loading speed causes bounce rate to fall and thus, increases click-through rates (CTRs). 

User-generated content will continue to grow in value as a key asset for the social media and brands should leverage themselves clearly and cautiously around it. Another trend would be to employ micro-influencers holding a smaller number of followers but wielding more credible push. Social media regulation would prove to be a game-changer as governments are getting more and more wary of the dark side of the web where people are publishing all sorts of content without differentiating between what’s right and what’s wrong.

Three performance marketing trends will revolve around data-driven marketing, creative optimisation and analytics. Data-driven insights will help in all the three stages of the campaign (pre, during, post) as well as forecasting, optimisation and KPI deliveries. Dynamic communication and creative optimisation will help address creative fatigue, ensuring optimal campaign performance. Analytical data from diverse sources will help manage revenue KPIs through attribution management, lead funnel management and process optimisation. 

Personalisation would be one of the biggest game-changers for digital marketing. We now have the means to suggest something to the consumer before they know that they need them. It increases engagement, creates richer dialogues and most importantly, alters behaviour. Visual search has become a very big thing and it is going to get even bigger in 2020. With Google lens being integrated into the Android camera and Pinterest finding a new lifeline in Pinterest Lens, it is the latest bandwagon that brands should jump on.

Businesses are now trying a more people-based approach. This means that ads will now be geared towards targeting real people through emails and other registered user data. Targeted marketing isn’t confined to just a single form of advertising. It can be applied to practically any — video, social media, TV, display, and even print advertising. This gives marketers a plethora of options to make sure that only relevant audiences receive their ads. Marketing is going to become a game of personalisation.