Audio, Retail media, CTV, DOOH.. Where will brands invest in 2023 and what developments will be made in these channels to attract both people and advertisers? We asked IAB Europe’s Brand Advertising Committee for their predictions on the trends and themes that will shape the industry over the next 12 months. Take a look below to see their insights, including 2023 buzzword predictions!
Maria Shcheglakova, EMEA Marketing Director, PubMatic - As digital content consumption has risen and digital advertising has delivered superior outcomes to advertisers, the scale and scope of the internet has increased. Globally, internet use accounts for 3.7% of global emissions, which is the equivalent of all the air traffic in the world. A decade ago, it was common to see questions about paper recycling initiatives in media or technology RFIs – today, the questions go much deeper. Brands want to know that the partners they work with are not just the best technology platforms for media optimization but also that they have tangible evidence of how they minimize their impact on the environment. Advertisers and agencies are increasingly focused on reducing the emissions resulting from their media campaigns and are considering three main approaches to do so: Making their data transfer more energy efficient; Reducing the amount of data used; Using clean energy to power the internet.
Lisa Kalyuzhny, RVP Advertiser Solutions, EMEA, PubMatic - Given the likelihood of a recession, programmatic budgets will continue to fluctuate. The benefit to programmatic has always been the flexibility of campaigns – the ability to set something up within minutes and set it live – no need for an upfront commitment. I believe that programmatic was set up for uncertain times like these. With uncertainty, we will continue to see consolidation by the key agencies and brands as they continue to optimise their supply chain and require their partners to provide full transparency and automation. With the consolidation should come efficiencies set around sustainability which will further drive consolidation – more like a full circle.
Emmanuel Josserand, Sr Director, Agency, Brand & Industry Relations at Freewheel - In the TV advertising space, the linear and digital convergence will accelerate as players continue to deploy new hybrid video on demand models (HVOD) and the battle for eyeballs intensify. As such, we expect strong growth in particular for ad-supported video on demand and streaming services (FASTs). Something that was evidenced in a recent research from AudienceXpress, FreeWheel’s Advanced TV and premium video media sales house, which found that nearly nine in ten marketers surveyed intend to increase their investment in these AVOD platforms in the coming year. In fact, Advanced TV more broadly, which includes video-on-demand, connected TV, over-the-top, and addressable linear TV, will experience tremendous growth as marketers, faced with a difficult economic situation, will seek to direct their media spend towards more transparent, qualitative and safe video environments. Additionally, other growth areas we anticipate in 2023 are DOOH (Digital Out Of Home) and audio, propelled with the adoption of podcasts. From a data perspective and the deprecation of third-party cookies, the resurgence of contextual advertising will become ever more apparent in 2023.
2023 buzzwords prediction: Stagflation. Contextual. Sustainability
Stephanie Donovan, Global Head of Revenue, Triton Digital - The growth in programmatic buying of audio inventory has grown substantially -- in the last 5 years we have seen it surge over 500%, in terms of Triton Digital’s gross revenue, due to the efficiency by which buyers can reach a targeted audience at scale. Advertisers have signaled with their media budgets their preference for programmatic buying, but if inventory is not available in a programmatic exchange, publishers will miss out on revenue opportunities. Over the next year, we expect audio to continue to be of high interest to buyers; thus, ad spend via programmatic exchanges will continue to show significant growth as brands aim to reach an engaged, mobile audience. 2023 will be another banner year for podcast advertising in terms of both volume and publisher CPM rates. Programmatic podcast advertising, projected to grow 30% year-over-year according to the Podcasting Global Market Report 2022, will once again lead all other audio channels. We’ll see dynamic ad insertion (DAI) continue to steal the spotlight from baked-in ads, building upon 2022 momentum. Couple the flexibility to precisely message intended audiences with potential revenue growth opportunities, and we can expect programmatic to remain at the forefront for advertisers and publishers in 2023.
2023 buzzwords: diversity (in content, in distribution, in talent), creative targeting, powerful fan engagement, all-audio programmatic packages
Gabriele Vileikyte, Product Manager, Eskimi - With more than three billion people playing games, including practically every demographic and advertisers’ target audience, making it a viable advertising vehicle. Gaming audience will be a focal point of digital advertising during 2023. As advertisers are losing ties with their traditional advertising platforms and consumers have trained themselves to ignore traditional banner advertising. Blended in-game ads offer a viable alternative. In-game will continue to dominate during 2023 because of the constant innovation. We will continue to see emerging new performance proxies alongside attention. New revenue streams will be opened through in-game advertising on AAA console and PC games. It is no wonder that the in-game advertising market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 16% between 2021 and 2025. However, with the growing demand for in-game advertising, the market can be hit with privacy, fraud challenges. Therefore, advertisers will have to take additional measures to identify platforms, partners to work with, who actually deliver quality at scale by ensuring a fraud free and brand safety environment.
Csaba Szabo, EMEA Managing Director, Integral Ad Science (IAS) - As the cost of living crisis hits the pockets of businesses and shoppers and a recession looms, it has become more urgent than ever for brands to maximise every media dollar spent effectively. Because of this, 2023 will see advertisers place a greater emphasis on streamlined supply paths and contextually targeted ads, but it will also sharpen demand for more precise metrics. This is especially true for ‘attention’. The effort to articulate a clear and industry-accepted definition of attention is not new, but the drive towards efficiency expected in 2023 will only intensify this hunt. From ‘on the page’ measurements, including viewability, time-in-view and full screen visibility, to nuanced interaction metrics that track whether a user has resized an ad, hit pause, turned up the volume or even track their scrolling or eye movements, the choices on offer can be overwhelming. Technological advancements will refine ways in which attention may be measured, and will be of fundamental importance within the industry as a way of understanding the reach and success of a campaign. These increasingly refined attention-related metrics, with or without consensus, should be considered a mark of quality for brands for one key reason: their direct correlation with outcomes. Ensuring that ads are not only measurable, but that all impressions drive better outcomes for brands. In 2023, every advertiser will be a performance-driven advertiser. Combine this with the depreciation of third-party cookies, and the challenge of measuring attention to gauge the effectiveness of these budgets will be a top priority in 2023.
Ilhan Zengin, CEO, ShowHeroes Group - Going into 2023, we’ll be seeing the deprecation of third-party cookies become more of a reality for advertisers, rather than something coming in the distant future. Anyone who hasn’t started making the switch yet will be under more pressure to consider privacy-compliant alternatives, namely contextual and semantic targeting technology – which, on top of protecting user privacy, are more efficient and effective. We’ll also be seeing sustainability becoming a key focus in the industry. The need for the whole industry to come together to reduce emissions across the whole value chain will be more apparent. Expect more carbon-neutral ad initiatives, such as ShowHeroes Green Media, and more partnerships with carbon management and measurement companies such as our partners Scope3 and Cedara. Attention-based metrics and their technologies, as opposed to plain viewability metrics, will continue to increase in relevancy – they’re becoming a necessity as brands increasingly want to know exactly how audiences are engaging with their messages. It allows brands to really optimize their campaigns. Finally, diversity, equity, and inclusion will cease to be a topic on the periphery – something to take into consideration on surface levels. Instead, they’re going to be increasingly integrated into all operations and ways of doing business.
