Predictions Series 2022: Marketing Leaders Weigh In Future of Content Experience

Content experience management is on top of the mind of every marketing team, yet only a handful are actually able to meet the benchmarks. The Predictions Series 2022 continues with more industry experts sharing their crystal ball insights into what 2022 will have in store for digital advertising and marketing. Recent trends reveal the explosive growth in hyper-personalized content delivered across channels. New capabilities in AI-based speech technology, Metaverse, NFT, and gaming have all converged at critical junctions of Content Development and Marketing, allowing brands to accentuate their overall perception in digital channels.

In today’s Predictions Series, we feature insights on some of the latest content experience trends that we think would rule in 2022. Guests include:

• Janicke Eckbo, CMO at Cavai
• Mike Follett, Managing Director, Lumen Research
• Niklas Bakos, Founder and CSO at Adverty
• Peter Szyszko, CEO, White Bullet
• Owen Hancock, Marketing Director at impact.com

Here’s what the guest had to say.

Focus on Conversational Formats if Brands Are to Achieve Genuine Engagement With Their Audiences

Janicke Eckbo, CMO at Cavai

Janicke Eckbo, CMO at Cavai said, “Fortunately, 2022 will see greater recognition of the fact that creative, conversational formats within advertising are critical if brands are to achieve genuine engagement with their audiences. As such, growth in non-interruptive, native and contextual ad formats is set to continue. This comes at a time when marketing teams are looking to facilitate interactions between consumers and brands in a privacy-compliant way. Ultimately, this will all benefit the industry.

What’s more, as consumers continue to explore new technologies and we live more and more of our lives online, in the so-called ‘Metaverse’, new payment and in-ad purchase integrations will proliferate, enabling increased convenience and true interactivity. Done right, this will all bring much-needed humanity to brand communications.”

Get Rid of Invalid Metrics in 2022 to Boost Content Experience

Mike Follett, Managing Director, Lumen Research

Mike Follett, Managing Director, Lumen Research added, “2021 finally saw the industry wake up to the limitations of the measurements we have been using for the past twenty years.”

Mike said, ” It is now widely accepted that viewability alone, for instance, doesn’t mean much at all. We can all see something, and choose to ignore it. As a result, the new year will see increased differentiation between those who have heeded warnings about invalid metrics, and those who have chosen to ignore them. But I’m also hopeful that the true drivers of attention – such as creativity, context, and format – will be used in increasingly powerful ways. After all, technologies continue to evolve all the time to help us in our quest. Take eye-tracking technology, which is making creative testing easier than ever before. Given that we have the means with which to understand whether anyone is looking at our assets, and acting on them, predictive modeling will be increasingly important in this fast-paced media landscape, too.

Meanwhile, the need for ‘fewer, better ads’ was also called out in our recent study with Ozone Project which noted that high-quality journalism drives high levels of attention to advertising. I’m excited about the possibilities. Roll on 2022!”

In-game Inventory Crucial to Scale Advertising Engagements with Great Content Experience

Niklas Bakos, Founder and CSO at Adverty

Niklas Bakos, Founder and CSO at Adverty comments, “In-game ad inventory has become critical for advertisers globally as they seek to engage increasingly hard-to-reach audiences. As such, expect more sophistication in brand efforts in the all-important gaming space in 2022.

In 2021, the market finally woke up to the critical importance of gaming as the industry started discussing the implications of the so-called ‘Metaverse’. In 2022, this will go one step further and we can expect to see experimentation and sophistication on a scale never seen before. For example, in-game advertising can achieve the same impact as OOH in the ‘real’ world – via billboards in virtual environments. Audiences here are super engaged, while marketers can expect an increased focus on metrics and measurement, too – it’s possible, for instance, to determine viewability and impressions within complex gaming environments.

Top Gaming Update: Female Gamers More Likely To Be Attracted Toward Positive Gaming Experience

All this should come as no surprise. After all, this burgeoning media frontier is where many are choosing to spend their time. As we spend more of our lives digitally, within immersive environments, contextual and unobtrusive brand communications that fit seamlessly within these environments are absolutely critical. Interruptive formats are no longer welcome. We look forward to watching ground-breaking campaigns take shape within the all-important gaming environment in the new year. Programmatic trading need not be synonymous with a lack of sophistication and creativity. We also expect more campaigns using next-generation devices for virtual and augmented reality experiences… Watch this space!”

Greatest Challenge for Marketers: Understanding the Ad-funded Piracy Problem

Peter Szyszko, CEO, White Bullet

White Bullet CEO Peter Szyszko comments, “The scale of the ad-funded piracy problem is on a scale never seen before. But, while there is a great challenge at hand, it also feels as if the issue is coming into focus. Indeed, having witnessed a vast increase in digital content consumption during the lockdown, both legitimate and illegitimate services grew in parallel. But, at the same time, the profile of IP fraud – both as a problem for copyright owners and as a brand safety issue for advertisers – increased, and we welcomed a lot of new parties into the prevention effort.

“With pirates now shifting their attention to apps and connected TV, and piracy representing a huge threat to the creative industries, hindering their ability to grow profitably, we’ve certainly gone far beyond the point where you might imagine you could maintain a blocklist of sites and hope to somehow chase them down. We are in an age of enhanced real-time data now, where AI-driven technology is essential in order to map the vast, shifting network of IP-infringing services building fraudulent businesses on stolen film and other content. In 2022, we hope many more will turn to AI to turbocharge their efforts and crack down on this huge criminal underbelly within the creative industries.”

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Building Commerce Content Experience in Cookieless Future

Owen Hancock, Marketing Director at impact.com

Owen Hancock, Marketing Director at impact.com said, “In 2022, expect to see commerce content continue its explosive growth. This will become a well-established third revenue pillar for publishers alongside paywalls and advertising.

What’s more, with supply chain pressures continuing in many parts of the world, consumers will turn to trusted partnerships as they seek advice they can believe in during these uncertain times. Brand-to-brand partnerships will become more and more critical and commonplace while pressure for accountability will lead to longer-lasting, holistic collaborations.

We can expect greater creativity, too, in an industry that has been criticized, in recent years, for excessively short-term thinking. The pendulum will finally swing the other way. Difficulties and constraints around tracking via the use of third-party cookies, for instance, have led to a focus on more brand-led, creative communications, in a variety of formats. By way of example, in the world of commerce content, we will see publishers diversify beyond written content into compelling shopping content on video – both short-form and long-form.”

Thank you everyone for providing your insights! Hoping to chat with you again soon!

[To share your insights with us, please write to sghosh@martechseries.com]