As we head into the new year, advertisers, media and ad tech companies have a lot on their minds – and their priority lists.
Chances are, there are things you’ve earmarked for 2024 that you’re unsure about. That’s where we come in. Here’s what our team of industry analysts are prioritizing as key trends for next year.
Prediction #1: The news category will innovate and expand: 2024 will be a peak year for news, with elections, wars and increased US/China tensions driving more eyeballs and time spent with news channels, digital properties and special programming. This opportunity will lead to greater experimentation for how news is delivered direct-to-consumers outside of search and social media, in an effort to increase monetization.
–Stuart Schneiderman, EVP Business Intelligence
Prediction #2: Sustainability takes center stage. In 2024, more marketers and advertisers will walk the talk on sustainability, being not only more careful about the legitimacy of green-focused messaging, but also updating their back-end ad practices to reduce carbon footprint. As sustainability continues to be a top corporate marketing value, we expect these practices to increase in 2024. We also expect advertisers will be held to higher standards and more readily scrutinized for “greenwashing” – marketing that misleads consumers by exaggerating ‘green’ credentials to obscure environmentally harmful corporate practices – as industry watchdogs and organizations will keep these issues front and center.
-Sarah Bolton, EVP Business Intelligence
Prediction #3: Budgetary pressures will make the transition to the cookieless future even more difficult next year. The end of third-party cookies in Chrome is near, just as the ad industry finally seems to have turned the corner after a difficult 1H 2023. Many advertisers—and publishers—will continue to be cautious about spending increases and will face pressure to do more with less. This will make finding and testing the best solutions for addressability and measurement a more challenging task, and advertisers and publishers will likely be looking to compromise in exchange for free or low-cost solutions, which are likely to have an edge.
–Nicole Perrin, SVP Business Intelligence
Prediction #4: To reduce churn and drive audience engagement CTV/streaming publishers will prioritize content discovery with ideas borrowed from social media’s playbook. Expect a lot of experimentation as publishers determine best practices. They’ll test the effectiveness of allowing consumers to select auto-play on their settings. When a consumer opens their app, the show they’ve been binging will auto play, or a brand-new title will begin based on an algorithm’s recommendation. Home screens will change, tapping into TikTok’s success in promoting streaming content discovery, publishers will add a new category “Trending on Social Media.” Publishers will test chatbots that pop up when consumers have been scrolling through titles too long. After a few questions about their mood, who they’re watching with, preference for comfort/familiar fare or something new, streamers will serve up a curated recommendation. Advertisers will benefit from title sponsorship opportunities, deeper insights into consumer preferences, and more engaged viewers.
-Erin Firneno, VP Business Intelligence
Prediction #5: Marketer investment in AR/VR advertising will see strong growth in 2024, spurred by the introduction of AR/VR headset devices that span a range of price points for consumers. From Xreal’s more affordable glasses (Air & Light) to Meta’s two releases in October (Quest 3 & Ray-Ban smart glasses), through high-end devices like Apple’s Vision Pro (available in March) and Microsoft’s recent patents to enhance their AR/VR/MR experiences & device capabilities, there will be no shortage of platforms available for advertisers to consider including on their media plans. According to our Mobile App Advertising Report (Aug 2023), one in three advertisers plan to use AR/VR ad formats in the next year, up from just one in five that were currently using in Q4 2022.
-John Bishop, VP Business Intelligence
Prediction #6: Audience extension deals are back in vogue, but will bring more competition. 2024 will be the year everyone in advertising needs to pay attention to retail and commerce media. Retail media’s growth has been exceptional over the past few years, growing from $11.1B in spend in 2019 to almost $50B in 2023, according to our estimates. However, through 2022, over 90% of this spend has gone to retailers’ owned and operated properties. 2023 was an inflection point as offsite programmatic retail media platforms accounted for 15% of all retail media. Looking forward to 2024, programmatic buys through retailer-owned programmatic platforms such as Amazon DSP, Walmart DSP, and Kroger Precision Marketing will account for over a third of all programmatic spend and will reach over half by 2025. Publishers and ad tech need to create the right partnerships and work with these retail platforms, or risk losing market share.
-Eric Haggstrom, Director, Business Intelligence
Prediction #7: Gaming ads move up – or finally make it onto – media plans. Next year, advertisers that have long held out on gaming ads will finally find their way in as they continue to seek out scaled and engaging methods of reaching their audiences. In 2024, advertisers will begin to move past misperceptions that gaming ads aren’t brand-safe or don’t reach their target audiences – instead, advertisers will increasingly find partners and platforms that can show proof of large-scale audiences and ad results that can drive both lower- and upper-funnel KPIs.
–Lauren Fisher, GM, Business Intelligence
And, our favorite…
Prediction #8: With Breaking becoming a Summer Olympic sport, what’s old will be new again as movie and TV production companies will bandwagon on to this soon-to-again- be-craze. 2024 and 2025 will see such offerings as the long awaited sequel to Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo, a Dancing with the Stars spinoff and Breaking tours that feature old and new school dancers hosted by the omnipresent Snoop Dogg of course.
-Stuart Schneiderman, EVP Business Intelligence
