Top Advertising Industry Challenges and Technology Trends that are Changing Advertising as We Know It

The advertising professionals in the hit AMC series Mad Men, and the real life ad pros of the 1950s would feel like dinosaurs if they were living present day and witnessing changes going on in the advertising industry. The primary trends and challenges current day include creative populism (consumer interests, rights and wisdom in participating in advertising), personalized measurements, interactivity, open inventory platforms and greater consumer control that are all expected to generate more change over the next five years than what the industry experienced in the last fifty. The advertising industry we thought we knew and considered totally invasive to our media viewing habits and lives is on the brink of a transformation that will forever change our and vendors’ perspectives on advertising. Consider four primary pillars to the advertising industry and how they are changing:

Pillar #1) Attention – Consumers are increasingly exercising their control over how they view, filter and interact in a multi-channel and multi-medium world of content options as the slow trend away from linear programming continues and they employ ad skipping and consider adopting ad-sharing and ad-rating tools.

Pillar #2) Creativity – Thanks to a number of technology trends and the rising popularity of user-generated and peer-delivered content – and new ad networks, exchanges (see Pillar #4 following) and revenue-sharing models, semi-professionals and even amateurs are now creating lower-cost advertising content that are proving to be as appealing and effective as advertising agency creations.

Pillar #3) Measurement – More an imperative of advertisers, but increasingly of interest to consumers from intrusion, privacy and opt-in/opt-out perspectives, is the measurement trend of more individual-specific and involvement-based measurements. The importance to advertising executives is the desire to move away from impression-based to impact-based formats for measuring effectiveness.

Pillar #4) Advertising Inventories – New ad network and ad exchange entrants are taking ad space that was once exclusive and proprietary now being made available for more purposes and re-purposing through more open and considered efficient exchanges. An example and impact is ad executives’ prediction that open platforms within the next five years may take as much as 30% of advertising revenues currently flowing to proprietary incumbents such as broadcasters.

These trends and other continuous technological advances and ever-expanding media, message and platform (online and the changing pay-TV worlds especially) choices are clearly empowering consumers. They are resulting in advertiser imperatives that include new and creative ways to engage audiences and to gain their trust, making hard choices in cannibalizing their existing media products and business models, accepting new pressures in results accountability – and to accept the following new mantras in their line of business. The first is the widely viewed criticism that 60% of advertising is wasted, that old and legacy models are outdated and no longer work – and that if they’re going to jump into the new brave world of advertising they will run the risk of bleeding if they’re going to be leading in this often consumer-maligned industry.

Trender Research is taking its own branded approach in covering the new world of advertising and technology impacts for its readers and client base. Please watch for continuous coverage going forward in our blog posts and elsewhere on this site.