Marketing trends for 2016

Siloed data

As we start another year, the amount of data that marketers will instantly have at their fingers will continue to grow. In order to keep competitive and avoid the pitfalls associated with siloed data, organisations should invest in making this work more efficiently and effectively for them.

Optimal cross channel marketing performance is essential and achievable with a technology partner that can combine first-party data, behavioural insights, third-party data, and AI (artificial intelligence) capabilities that can add automated machine learning, which makes informed decisions in real-time.

Cross Device

Nowadays, individuals have a smartphone, tablet and desktop or laptop for work and then the same again for personal use (not to mention wearables). For marketers, the challenge is that these six devices are often perceived or measured as six individual identities instead of one.

As the proliferation of devices continues through 2016, it will become more complex to effectively understand the user journey. But it is more crucial than ever to be able to do so. Marketers must continue to evolve their approach to ensure that they understand where and on what device their customers are to serve adverts that are less intrusive, more relevant and more profitable. This can be achieved by gathering actionable cross-device intelligence.

AI

Regardless of perceptions, Artificial intelligence will become more prevalent in 2016 as a technology that powers everything as companies follow the lead of Google and Facebook and invest in its potential. AI empowers businesses and drives better, more efficient outcomes for marketing campaigns, and we can see how it is already making a positive impact.

Research we undertook this year found there is broad public optimism across the UK about AI. We expect to see this move to positive sentiment increase as the public becomes more informed about the technology and the benefits it offers and the role it will play in business especially.

Ad blocking

Last year, there was also an increasingly vocal debate around the role of ad blocking. For example, Yahoo stopped users that had enabled ad blocking technology from accessing their email. While research from the Internet Advertising Bureau showed ad blocking is on the rise in the UK, with 18% web users saying they use the software, up from 15% just five months ago.

However, users must recognise that if they want free content and services that advertising will always be the pay off. What we need is not ad blocking, but more relevant, targeted, useful advertising so that users are engaged and brands reach their bullseye customers, which maximises ad budgets.

Brand and Programmatic

Over the Christmas break there was a high volume of programmatic activity as retailers set out to hypertarget gift buyers. This year, we believe we will see an increase in branding campaign budgets spent in this area, which have previously been negotiated directly with publishers and more often spent on broad awareness drivers such as television and premium display programs. Programmatic TV in particular is one to watch. We’ve seen some developments in video but TV is only just beginning to follow suit. Considering it still has the largest slice of advertising revenue we should embrace it to reach specific subsets of consumers and make budgets go further.

As an industry, we need to focus on the quality of inventory and new products and services that offer state-of-the-art data-driven marketing where ROI of brand metrics can also be met.

Marketing trends and cleaning up the industry

We would love to guarantee our customers that fraud won’t occur on their campaigns but until better checks on blind inventory and appropriate code of conduct is in place this will remain a challenge and we’ll have to continue to reject up to 40% of all bid requests due to inventory quality concerns.

Until then, advertisers will continue to be an easy target for fraudsters and this will be the blight of the industry until publishers and exchanges take responsibility and commit to being transparent about inventory. We need to start to address the issue far more broadly and commit to a quality marketplace.