Future of Advertising / iMedia Connection

As the first half of the year draws to a close, we’re starting to see a number of future-gazing reports that are providing fresh insights and ideas for digital marketing. Rather than attempt to extract all the wealth of juice from these reports for you, we recommend you click through and read the full articles. Here are the links with a little information about why we feel they should be included in our latest future of advertising round-up:

• What advertising will look like in 2020 – This article looks at how the integration of mobile with wearable computing will bring to the mainstream market innovations such as Tesco’s virtual supermarkets currently live in South Korea. Other key points include the convergence of media and customisation to enable true 1:1 communications, how the predictive capabilities of the ‘Internet of Things’ will both inspire and challenge marketers, plus how Google will still be a major, relevant marketing platform in 2020.

• A Conversation on the Future of Digital Advertising – Speaking of Google, the company’s annual DoubleClick presentation predicts that we are nearing the end of the phase where consumers or companies ‘go online’ and will now welcome in an era where the logistics of digital advertising are solid, allowing marketers to focus instead on audiences and interests rather than how to actually conduct advertising in digital channels. While digital has already redefined consumer behaviour, content, content creation and advertising itself, we are still out of reach of the holy grail of digital advertising though – the full internet-driven advertising experience. The importance of data, and how without it there can be little innovation or consumer gratification was another pertinent point. All those still focused on TV advertising will be heartened to know that even Google doesn’t see TV disappearing from relevance, but that instead there will be a continued shift towards using data to deliver a more personalised, targeted entertainment and marketing platform.

• The 8 Digital Trends That Will Change The Future Of Advertising – In this article, eight digital trends happening right now that will impact on the future of advertising are pulled out and explained. Brands as publishers, digital video, rise of mobile, the problem of botnets, viewability of advertising and the shift of TV budgets into social channels, programmatic gains and the merging of online video and TV are all key growth areas according to the report.

• How Will Marketers Buy And Sell Media in 2020? – A video focused view on the future of advertising, which as you know is something we are already actively helping our clients take advantage of with the Magnetise Media In-Video lead generation solution. The core pointers from the article stretch across all formats and channels however – activating data, planning and measuring holistically, measuring against goals and the importance of experimenting and evolving campaigns and measurement.

• Advertising In 2020: The Industry’s Key Players Weigh In With Divergent Strategies – A heavy-hitting article that picks the considerable brains of the CEOs and Chairmen of leading companies such as Edelman, Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide and the Publicis Groupe. Covering everything from the next revolution after social and mobile, to attracting the right kind of minds to fuel the ad industry to what the advertising landscape will look like in 2020, this contains some very useful insights into the convergence and divergence that lies ahead for us all.

• Mary Meeker’s 2014 Internet Trends - The latest annual internet trends report from the enviably knowledgeable Mary Meeker. Looking at everything from the re-imagining of key digital apps, markets and behaviours through to the rise of Chinese technology firms, this deck is 164 slides of very in-depth, useful intel. TechCrunch has helpfully created a cut-down version pulling out what they feel are the most pertinent aspects, but even this runs to 54 slides so might be one to review over a cup of coffee or two.

We’d love to know what you think of these reports, and also to find out about any other future-gazing articles which are inspiring your work and fuelling your innovation. Let us know in the comments section or whizz us an email.