Will 2015 be the year we take a united stance on ad fraud? Will CMOs take a more significant role on the exec team by collaborating with CIOs more fully? Will dark social be embraced and are more publishers set to monetise audience data?
From private programmatic marketplaces to out of home advertising, social media measurement and radio networks getting digital, we have garnered a few predictions from across the buzzing media, advertising and marketing industry to see what they think lies ahead for 2015.
Check them out below and feel free to add yours in the comments section below.
Adam Furness, director of strategic accounts, RadiumOne, said:
“In terms of social media trends, dark social will be understood, and embraced. In 2015, brands and publishers will understand the 69% of all sharing that goes on via 'intimate' social networks (emails and instant messages). We’ll see this data activated to convert intent and interest signals into new customers at scale.”
Cindy Deng, MD Asia Pacific, Turn, said:
“The groundwork has been laid for the programmatic ecosystem to flourish and after some growing pains, programmatic is ready to become more adaptive and innovative. 2015 will see customised and bespoke solutions emerge to suit the needs of industry segments. The big verticals - banking, finance and automotive - will see the first wave."
SamSmith, TubeMogul Australia and New Zealand MD, said:
“The programmatic advertising market next year will continue to mature, led by brands seeking independence along every step of the transaction. We expect to see a move toward independent assessment of the reporting, optimisation and verification processes. Brands will also seek deeper transparency into the cost of buying impressions and the performance of their programmatic campaigns.
“Other key developments will involve brands taking ownership of their own data (both trading and audience data). There will be a sharp increase in programmatic mobile as audience verification improves. The advent of more sophisticated buying practices will focus attention on the benefits of trading inventory in the open exchange markets, where publishers will increasingly make high quality inventory available. Finally, programmatic will spread to other media segments, including television and outdoor advertising. Programmatic TV and programmatic OOH will deliver a lot of excitement as agencies will be able align their traditional efforts with digital video.”
Patrick Darcy, commercial director, RadiumOne, said:
“Looking at industry trends, I'd say private programmatic marketplaces will become the norm. Programmatic will become less of a standalone 'thing' and more the foundation that supports all trading. This will lead to publishers needing to further protect and grow their revenue and yield through private agreements with brands and agencies – and the prevalence of open exchange based activity will decrease.”
Mitchell Waters, MD at Adap.tv Australia and New Zealand, said:
“Looking at an industry wide prediction - the TV companies will begin to employ audience-driven, programmatic selling. Broadcasters and cable networks will adopt programmatic technology, measureable attribution and will transact on more precise audience segments. The battle for 1-2 TARP's, between traditional broadcasters and the digital giants will begin.
“Social media-wise - social data powering programmatic buying is next. We have already seen Facebook enter into this space with their OCR partnership with Nielsen. As social continues to take share away from search in content discovery, social media players will leverage the information they have capture to facilitate further targeting, reporting and verification across third party technologies.”
Oliver Roydhouse, MD, Inlink, said:
“2015 will be a ‘coming of age’ year for the out-of-home industry. As the sector moves from ‘analogue to digital’, the three big tectonic shifts in 2015 will be 1) the evolution from audience measurement to real time analytics; 2) the strategic use of data to drive campaign outcomes; and 3) content development and integration capabilities. These are all new competencies for the industry, so it’s going to be an exciting year ahead.”
Trent Lloyd, managing partner at audience data platform Eyeota said:
“Firstly publishers will monetise audience data. By this I mean we’ll see more and more publishers embracing the opportunity to monetise their anonymous audience information.
Secondly audience buying will accelerate - brands will be investing in platforms to collect and organise their data, and this will lead to the rapid acceleration of audience buying.
Thirdly, brands will bring programmatic buying in-house. I think we’ll see even more buyer fragmentation. Specialist programmatic planning and buying businesses will enable brands to bring their programmatic buying in-house and directly engage tech platforms to do so.”
Paul Cross, VP customer success, Oracle Marketing Cloud, JAPAC, said:
“Marketers can’t expect similar success in 2015 by relying on the same strategy they did in 2014. The best customer experience anywhere raises the bar for customer expectations everywhere. Savvy customers are now in control and will make it easier for modern marketers to engage them, but nearly impossible for under performing marketers to reach them.”
Anthony Deeble, chairman of the DPAA and MD Val Morgan Outdoor, said:
“The flexibility and accountability that digital outdoor offer advertisers, coupled with the advantage for no production costs, will result in the continued expansion of Australia’s digital out of home (OOH) network.
“Also, with further advancements in audience metric devices and the ability of digital out of home (DOOH) networks to report audiences actually looking at a campaign, we see programmatic trading a really interesting development where outdoor is planned and sold on actual audiences delivered, rather than purely based on environment of format.
“Lastly, Digital Outdoor in Real Time (DART) and other technologies now allow outdoor networks to identify consumers that have an opportunity to see an campaign alongside measuring actual campaign engagement. This will provide new levels of insights as we start to collect historical data to help predict future trends.”
Charmaine Moldrich, CEO, Outdoor Media Association, said:
“Year to date 2014 is up 9.6%, and the signs say 2015 will show similar trends. Out of home media in 2015 should see strong growth as a result of increases in audience, opportunities and data. OOH is in the enviable position of both maintaining a true broadcast audience and introducing new technologies that increase the ways to capture customers. Both of these are expected to grow in 2015, along with the industry working together to provide tools that deliver greater measurement and insights in to the purchasing of OOH.”
Joe Copley, MD, Posterscope Australia, said:
“There are tremendous opportunities in out of home in 2015 around the key themes of digitisation, improved use of data and strong competition. Increased access to audience and client data will continue to help us to help clients make more relevant connections. Digital out of home messaging can be updated in real time, so that customers can receive the right message for them in that moment. This complements and enhances the role of out of home in any campaign, without impacting the role it will continue to play as a broadcast channel. Competition in the out of home category is very healthy. Media suppliers are trying hard to find ways to be more effective and innovation is key as they keep striving to offer advertisers improved solutions.”
Julie Delaforce, GM, Quiip, said:
“There is a widening skills gap between social media and online community roles and experienced practitioners. As organisations develop more rigorous social media and online community strategies this gap will become more apparent. Specific roles will be better defined and the separation between online community and social media will become clearer.”
Simon Ryan, CEO, Carat, said:
"On radio predictions - radio’s biggest challenge is to maintain relevance to the audience and work with new technologies to maintain and grow audience. The radio space is largely celebrity and music driven but now it’s quickly moved into competing with new technologies, and listening devices and apps that continue to erode radio audiences. Radio networks have done a great job this year to maintain and grow at minimal levels, expansion through development of technologies and acquisition is absolutely crucial to the future success of the these companies. The volume sales revenues that radio is used to needs to be reinvested into growth areas to future proof their businesses. In 2015…radio needs to evolve, change and drive new consumer interaction.”
Adam Land, MD, Fairfax Radio Network, said:
“In 2015 Australian radio will continue to see the level of change, growth and innovation that has seen this vibrant medium as a world benchmark. New and existing shows will continue to break the news and share an audience connection to rival any form of content.”
Peter Charlton, group sales director, Nova Entertainment, said:
“2015 is going to be a very competitive year with lots of changes in talent and new line ups and the obvious formula for success in 2015 will be having the right balance and combination of strength across talent, brand, creativity and audience.
“Radio audiences, unlike most traditional media, will remain robust so demand and revenue will continue to grow next year. Successful radio businesses will be the ones that can provide greater insight into their audiences, unique relevant data beyond pure reach and frequency and those that can deliver on clients’ demands for entertaining brand solutions to share, inspire and excite rather than just running ads. There will be a continued focus to innovate and grow ‘digital’ revenue streams - social, on line and mobile.
“The digital incarnations of our brands has given us the opportunity to put strong brands and performance in the one commercial solution and this will be more relevant next year. Content will continue to be king, leading to an increased investment in commercial creative services to meet the new opportunity and talent as content creators, particularly video. Finally, the power of the brand will be more important than ever and collaborations with other publishers and brands leveraging new audiences and broadening the footprint of the radio audience, for example Coles Radio, will continue.”
Wayne Arnold, global CEO Lowe Profero, said:
“I believe we are about to see the second Dot Com boom, but rather than a bubble this one is here to stay. Every business on the planet that has ambitions to survive will need to create compelling digital experiences.
"Also, clients will begin to truly consider mobile experience first, rather than paying partial lip services to it. For many people mobile is their first and only entry point to the internet, and brands are finally coming to terms with this.
“The digital emerging markets will reach their tipping points in the same way AU, UK and US did over five years ago, especially Asian markets like Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand.”
A global Forrester spokesperson said:
“Forrester believes that in 2015, CMOs should step forward and take responsibility for turning the enterprise toward the customer. This means taking on a more significant role on the executive team and collaborating with chief information officers (CIOs) more fully. It also practically begs CMOs to lead innovation processes in the organisation and means that the whole company — starting with the CMO — has to identify places where technology can create a more engaged customer relationship. Getting the organisation to see the CMO in this light is a big ask, and only CMOs who rethink their approach to marketing operations will pull it off.”
John-Jo Eastwood, Rocket Fuel MD Australia and New Zealand, said:
“Multi-touch attribution, a united stance on ad fraud, programmatic TV and guaranteed Audiences are all on the agenda for 2015.
“There’s no denying that in 2014 the topic of ad fraud reached new heights. Everyone within the industry has had an opinion on the topic and most haven’t been afraid to point the finger of blame. What has been good is that more companies are now focused on tackling this issue and in 2015 we should see even further action taken to ensure advertising spend isn’t going to waste. What’s now needed is for the industry to come together and collectively discover ways to bring to a halt this problem.
“Programmatic TV remains an untapped opportunity in the industry. Imagine if we were able to use the data obtained from what people choose to watch on playback services to identify insights into their interests and intentions. We would then be able to use this information to serve them an ad relevant to their preferences, rather than just a general ad seen by everyone. In 2015 marketers will realise the huge potential available from using programmatic technologies for TV advertising and spend on this area will increase.
“2015 will be the year marketers will start to challenge the limitations of basic attribution models and move towards a multi-touch attribution approach.
“Also, for brand marketers it’s important to be able to reach a target audience at scale, however, traditional brand campaigns are still based on demos, content / sties and behaviours which have their merits, but still include audiences outside of the target. In 2015 brand advertisers will insist on guaranteed audiences i.e. utilising the latest ad tech offerings they can ensure that the audience they are reaching is entirely made up of their target market – saving on wastage and most importantly, increasing ROI.”
For more 2015 insights:
ADMA CEO talks content, real-time & skills shortages in 2015
What does 2015 hold for publishing?
Agency predictions - what to watch in 2015
The trends that will shape programmatic video in 2015
Recruiting ad tech talent – the formula for success in 2015
Facebook: what marketers need to know in 2015
How will brands use social in 2015?
Have something to say on this? Share your views in the comments section below. Or if you have a news story or tip-off, drop us a line at adnews@yaffa.com.au
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Sign up to the AdNews newsletter, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter for breaking stories and campaigns throughout the day.