Our Trend Commentary is Better than Theirs

AT LEAST WE’RE NOT STATING THE BLEEDINGLY OBVIOUS

Oh yay! It’s 2023 Advertising Trend Commentary time. The fact that TikTok is
popular, money stress abounds, and we must “expect the unexpected” are not the
revelatory advertising trends those issuing trend reports might want them to be. “Digital
measurement is harder”, whilst true, will also come as no surprise to most advertisers.

They should at least have heard it from those responsible for measurement. Assertions
like “the media has a trust problem” and “privacy concerns continue to grow” are not
insightful, they are just stating the obvious.

Here’s our take on 2023 Advertising Trends

Or, rather, here’s what we’re doing for our clients, so we know it works:

• If you’re not leveraging attention data and incorporating attention metrics into your media buying strategies, you should be. This year, in a world 1st, we used custom-bidding algorithms informed by attention data to prove that not all reach is created equal & achieved a 76% uplift in ad recall for our client. It’s not an everyday occurrence yet, so there’s time to get out ahead of the pack.
  
  
• Leveraging programmatic and programmatic OOH is all well and good but informing your use of programmatic with insights from data scientists adept at supporting advertising strategy is infinitely better. At this stage of the game, doing that well is a competitive advantage.
  
  
• Cookies are dying a slow death and it’s critical that you make better use of your first-party data to inform advertising and media buying strategies. That should be obvious but we need to include it here because it’s still not happening effectively across the board so you still have the chance for a competitive advantage. A data audit is the right next step to help you do that. Skipping this step is ill-advised. Here’s our advice on how to approach a data audit in B&T.
  
  
• Plagiarised news sites are stealing ad revenue. A zero-trust security strategy ensures that a business never trusts users and devices that try to access their systems, requiring verification each and every time access is attempted.
  
  In an effort to minimise ad fraud, we advocate for a zero-trust approach to media buying. That means developing and maintaining a list of vetted and verified websites and only buying from that curated list.
  
  
• At a time when privacy is paramount, it’s good to know that ethical targeting is possible. Here’s an article we wrote for SmartCompany on ethical targeting.
  
  
• Yes, digital measurement is harder, but a better point to make is that advertising measurement needs to evolve beyond click-based, position-based, multi-touch measurement models in order to truly deliver value to the business. There is a need for a regular econometric approach to measurement to ensure you are getting the full picture of advertising’s effect on business results.
  
  
• It’s hard enough for advertisers to get a handle on their advertising-related carbon emissions, let alone reduce them. At the very least make sure you’re working with agency partners that are doing their part.

Contact us to get out ahead of advertising and media buying trends.