From the metaverse to the elimination of cookies and sustainability: we asked within the industry which developments and trends will determine the marketing year 2023. Here come the answers.
The year is coming to an end and the marketing industry is also reflecting on the past year and is looking forward to 2023 with eager anticipation. Which trends will continue in the coming year or will there even be new ones? Below you can read the expectations and prophecies of some key voices in the industry.
Success through contextual and authentic video ads in marketing
It is hardly surprising that a large part of the industry expects the greatest potential and trends for the coming year to be in the video and social sectors. Vera Vujevic, Team Lead Marketing at solute, observes a complete replacement of pure image ads by video ads. In order to reach online shoppers on social media, marketers should use an emotional approach:
Regardless of the platform, video ads have now completely replaced pure image ads. Especially via social media, the video always wins in the bidding for the ad spaces due to the strategic switches of the networks. Social commerce is becoming more and more important because new and young target groups in particular are more and more frequenting social platforms and exchanging ideas there. For this reason, social is becoming extremely important, especially when it comes to building and maintaining digital brands. Retailers and brands should also address online shoppers on social media emotionally instead of relying exclusively on conventional shoppers who make rational purchasing decisions.
Media companies are also increasingly adapting to the 9:16 format and will rely even more heavily on video formats in the future, predict Thomas Vogt, Head of Publisher Business Central Europe at Outbrain, and Robert Herrmann, Chief Revenue Officer at Traffective/FLAP.ONE. Francois Roloff, CEO of Madvertise, also expects increased use of Automated Content Recognition as a tool for retailer marketing:
Digital remains the number one growth driver! With the noticeable unrest in the global economy, retailers are always breaking new ground in planning their marketing activities. One of these paths leads to Automated Content Recognition (ACR). Audio signals from a wide variety of sources such as TV, streaming, radio and so on are recognized by the smartphone and processed in real time to trigger an action on a mobile device. Used correctly, they give campaigns a real consumer engagement boost, which has a positive effect on both performance and cost efficiency. As a tool for retailer marketing, ACR can be used in dynamic and highly scalable campaigns. This makes it possible Adapting messages individually to the respective location and the optimal time of their display, thus guaranteeing a relevant advertising experience for customers. Mobile ads will be particularly successful in the future if they are context-related and find the optimal user address at exactly the right moment.
Looking ahead to 2023, Konstantin Prodanovic, Senior Copywriter at Hootsuite, emphasizes the importance of authentic and engaging content:
Digital remains the number one growth driver! With the noticeable unrest in the global economy, retailers are always breaking new ground in planning their marketing activities. One of these paths leads to Automated Content Recognition (ACR). Audio signals from a wide variety of sources such as TV, streaming, radio and so on are recognized by the smartphone and processed in real time to trigger an action on a mobile device. Used correctly, they give campaigns a real consumer engagement boost, which has a positive effect on both performance and cost efficiency. As a tool for retailer marketing, ACR can be used in dynamic and highly scalable campaigns. This makes it possible Adapting messages individually to the respective location and the optimal time of their display, thus guaranteeing a relevant advertising experience for customers. Mobile ads will be particularly successful in the future if they are context-related and find the optimal user address at exactly the right moment.
Companies can also convey more authenticity by directly addressing customers and personalized touchpoints, explains Franco Paolucci, Senior Sales Director DACH at Mapp Digital. He suspects that companies will increasingly turn away from large platforms in favor of their own communication solutions. Kathleen Jaedtke, Head of Marketing DACH at CRM platform company HubSpot, explains to us that video ads are given special weight in the marketing mix (even more than before):
The investment will continue to increase in 2023 and this applies to both short and long formats. Social media is one of the top channels for sharing marketing videos, often has the highest ROI and is the most effective at generating leads. Videos are also on the rise for company websites, blogs and e-mail marketing, especially in B2B, where texts on products, services or case studies are accompanied by videos. They can be consumed more quickly and create greater authenticity and credibility.
With regard to the TV sector, Maximilian Balbach, Co-CEO of crossvertise GmbH, suspects that advertisers will increasingly rely on channels such as Connected TV – a measure that is also possible for SMEs with a smaller budget:
With regard to advertising channels, one trend in particular is emerging: Advertisers will increasingly shift their funds from linear television to streaming TV. Because consumer demand for video-on-demand continues to increase. The implementation: Channels such as Connected TV – which makes advertising on the big screen possible at moderate budgets – will therefore make a significant leap forward on the list of the most popular advertising media, especially for SMEs.
AI and the Metaverse: New Playgrounds for Marketers
The Metaverse is becoming tangible for more and more people through initial experiments and campaigns. Florian Hübner, CEO and founder of Uberall, suspects that the Metaverse and AI-supported projects and measures will become even more relevant in the coming year:
Social networks and technologies such as AI or, more recently, the Metaverse offer creative marketers new playgrounds to connect consumers with brands online and ultimately offline. We are convinced that these topics will become even more of a focus of the industry in the near future and will become an essential part of digital marketing strategies in the long term - and thus take the hybrid customer experience to a new level.
Nik Ruangroj, Head of Brand Marketing at WEPA Professional GmbH, predicts that AI-based advertisements will attract increased interest in the coming year:
An interesting and innovative topic will be AI-based advertisements. While classic ad creation still relies on internal or agency skills, there are AI-controlled tools that create or cross-check optimal ads that are tailored to the target group. These technologies have been used in Asia for many years and you can see more and more competences in this area in Europe.
Trending for years: the end of cookies, the end of an era
The end of third-party cookies forced companies to rethink, and new strategies had to be found. For Maren Seitz, Head of DACH at Analytic Partners, this development has had a particularly strong impact on marketing in 2022:
With cookies gone, many companies are rethinking their strategy and measurement methods. Holistic approaches are taking the place of classic attribution models – which delivered fast and well-founded results, but in reality could never keep what was promised. They measure the marketing activities as interaction. Therefore on everyone's lips: Marketing Mix Models (MMM). They're much faster and more granular these days than they were in the '90s. Digital campaigns can be integrated into the overall commercial image of the company and their true success can be measured - without any cookies or user-level data.
Sara Sihelnik, Country Director DACH at Quantcast, also believes that the end of third-party cookies offers companies numerous opportunities. She also advocates greater cohesion within the industry:
The end of third party cookies holds a lot of opportunities for the industry. This is not just about switching to cookieless approaches, but also about bringing all parts of the programmatic value chain closer together. 2023 should not be the year of the loners, but a year in which the industry moves together and reconsiders its inherent standards and adapts them to the current state of affairs. The pressure on advertisers is increasing. Marketing activity needs to be quantifiable, now more than ever. In order to make that possible, we need a higher degree of cooperation.
Technologies such as data clean rooms are becoming more important for data-driven work that does not endanger the privacy of users, explains Menso de Buhr, Partner Development Manager at AppsFlyer. These provide a secure environment in which multiple parties can collaborate on sensitive and restricted datasets. Matthias Postel, CEO of iCompetence GmbH, also names server-side tracking as an important trend for 2023. This provides clear data and can at the same time increase data quality in cooperation with a customer data platform.
Digitization needs to catch up
Melanie Wagner, Country Manager DACH at HiBob, believes that in order to retain not only customers but also their own employees in the long term and to attract new ones, companies should invest primarily in digital tools in 2023, which enable hybrid work, for example :
Every company that wants to retain employees has to work with digital tools that enable hybrid working from any location and cover all the needs of teams, management and HR - from onboarding to managing master and company data and talent management to offboarding. This creates a feeling of belonging across borders.
Companies in the B2B sector in particular have a lot of catching up to do when it comes to digitization, explains Laura Ameskamp, COO of Kyto:
B2B companies are still lagging behind when it comes to digitization. Added to this are the current economic challenges. In order to be able to keep up and continue to be successful, the focus for industrial companies in 2023 will be even more on online marketing and the digitization of sales. Digital B2B approaches such as website analytics and international purchasing platforms will be essential for the industry.
Green media planning: focus on sustainability
Last but not least, for many marketers, the topic of sustainability is a central focus point for the coming year. According to Christian Zimmer, Managing Director at Teads Deutschland GmbH, green media planning will be one of the most important topics in digital marketing in 2023:
The environmental awareness of consumers is increasingly becoming the focus of decision-making processes. That is why green or sustainable media planning will be one of the most important topics for the digital advertising market in 2023. At the same time, the implementation of attention as a new measure of advertising effectiveness will play a major role. Because this not only optimizes the efficiency of a campaign, but also has a positive effect on the CO2 footprint.
Olaf Peters-Kim, Managing Director of Welect, predicts that digital sustainability will become the minimum requirement in the coming year:
The big topic in 2023 will be sustainability - also in advertising communication. It's about real reduction of CO2 emissions instead of just compensation. It is also about digital sustainability. This becomes the minimum requirement. The equation here: Without the application of real data protection standards or privacy-first concepts, providers will have a hard time.
Which trends do you think will be particularly important in the coming year? Write it to us in the comments.
