The Future of Advertising: Crisis or Opportunity
‘Reset and Resiliency’: Why Building Trust Is the Key To Growth For 2023
Ad industry challenges are unleashing more creative responses from digital marketers, publishers, agencies, and platforms execs from Mindshare, IAB, VMLY&R and Nomology find
By David Kaplan
The advertising industry’s future might not be as bleak as recent news headlines seem to indicate.
Finding areas for potential growth for 2023 was the focus of a recent panel discussion among agency and ad tech leaders. “The Future of Advertising: Crisis or Opportunity” reframed the past year’s debate, asking if “tough times inspire new approaches” to the difficult issues marketers, creatives, media buyers and ad tech providers have been grappling with.
The discussion, hosted by digital media organization 212NYC and sponsored by video ad effectiveness platform Nomology at Publicis Groupe’s Hudson Square offices on Thursday, ranged widely among topics tackling ad spending, social media, brand safety and engagement, online privacy and regulation, diversity/equity/inclusion policies, the implications of artificial intelligence, and user experience.
When budgets are tighter, brands’ concerns with safety naturally intensifies. At the same time, ensuring that a marketer’s message breaks through the clutter requires some level of risk. Balancing those goals, which can seem at odds with each other, was a conversational thread picked up by the event’s panelists and attendees throughout the evening.
The overarching theme of brand safety was threaded through all points of the panel discussion. Afterward, Nomology CEO Robert Gibbs spoke to the digital ad industry’s need to ensure understanding between marketers, agencies, and creators by focusing on the way context and relevance has evolved in online advertising.
“The way we are defining brand safety has shifted,” Gibbs said. “When we think about what’s appropriate and what are table stakes for brand safety, marketers know what to watch out for. But the challenge is that brands continue to be exposed to bad players across all channels.”
Panel moderator Ritu Trivedi, executive director of WPP Group’s Mindshare, kicked off by cataloging the most anxiety-inducing topics: fears of a deep recession, tech industry job cuts, Russia’s ongoing war with Ukraine, prompting questions: “What is going on? Is this a deceleration? Is this a crisis we’re in?”
“There’s opportunity in crisis,” said Amanda Richman, CEO, WPP Group’s Mindshare North America. “The only option involves driving forward and not getting caught in a hype-cycle of negativity. Raise your hand for the problem and run to solve it. That’s where the opportunities are.”
Sheryl Goldstein, EVP, chief industry growth officer at digital ad trade group IAB, took issue with the “crisis” theme. In her view, the abrupt cutbacks in ad spending and staffers represents a response to the excess and upheaval of the last year. “It’s a reset, not a deceleration,” she said.
Nevertheless, considering the nonstop extremes of the last two years, it’s no wonder the advertising world is straining to make sense of where the industry stands right now.
With creators, smaller is safer
The emergence of the “creator economy,” which is represented by a coterie of social media influencers, entertainers, and online video “personalities,” has steadily altered the concept of advertising executions. The 30-second spot is no longer the grand pinnacle of a marketer’s messaging.
Responding to this brave new world, panelists took turns exploring the implications of creators’ evolution from ad hoc, viral sensations to a new form of celebrity spokesperson. Unlike the stars who pitched a product in carefully calibrated TV commercial campaigns, creators are often seen as offering hard to balance risks and rewards.
It’s a more complicated playing field. In the stereotypical influencer effort, a brand and its agency put themselves in the hands of a TikTok or YouTube phenom and hope the message carries through to otherwise ad-avoiding Gen Z-ers. The benefit and the danger is equally at stake in the unpredictability of the creator and their environment.
In response, agencies have begun to form a framework for advising their clients about the safeguards to maintain when considering deals with creators.
“You really need to understand the relationship between the brand and creators,” Richman told us after the panel session. “The audience that intersects with both those sides might be smaller. But the relationship you can forge in those experiences are likely to be much deeper and stronger. The point is: it’s not just about scale anymore. And in that sense, smaller can be safer for brands.”
Brand Suitability Breaks the Shackles
There are several related questions brands need to answer in order to define a suitable ad environment for your messages to be surrounded by placed, said Gibbs, whose company, Nomology, provides brand suitability, ad relevance, and campaign performance as part of its core competencies. Those functions all fall under the umbrella of driving “video ad effectiveness” for its clients.
When the company works with a brand on to develop a program to drive ensure its ads are placed in the appropriate environment on YouTube and in CTV channels, Nomology’s team starts by asking three basic questions:
What’s suitable for you as a company?
What’s suitable in the context of the consumer journey?
What’s suitable and relevant to the consumer decision you want to encourage?
Ultimately, it’s not just about a marketer’s relationship to brand safety and suitability — there’s no “one size fits all” answer. Each brand needs to define specifically what relevance, context and campaign performance means to them, he said.
Still, there are universal starting points that will allow brands to form a clear approach to brand suitability.
“What is the new definition of contextual advertising? In the old days, it was keyword contextual targeting. That was a decade ago,” Gibbs said. “Context is about so much more now. It’s about considering the rest of the environment an ad appears in. It’s about time, placement, platform and the geo-location in which each viewer experiences a message. Context is a spectrum throughout the consumer journey. By making context the focus, that’s how we break the shackle of the ad industry’s addiction to personal data.”
A matter of trust
Providing relevant ads, building stronger relationships between brands and partners, dealing with consumer data and privacy issues all comes down to one thing: trust.
Erasing barriers of doubt and suspicion is one of the hardest parts of any advertising effort. Words like “transparency” and “authenticity” remain largely aspirational for all marketing.
Walter T. Geer III, chief experience design officer at VMLY&R discussed the work his agency did with a pharmaceutical company as an example of how to develop a sense of trust with a brand’s desired audience.
“One of the things we learned was that trust wasn’t going to come directly from the brand; trust wasn’t going to come from government agencies or politicians; trust was going to come from the people in a consumer’s personal circle: their pastor, the person who does their hair, the person they see every day behind the counter of the bodega they shop at,” Geer told attendees.
There is a clear role for agencies and brands to play in connecting with consumers’ spheres of influence. It’s also why he’s optimistic that progress on DEI in the advertising and marketing industry will not be scaled back in an uncertain economy.
Still, despite being more hospitable to the global majority the ad world has a way to go toward fulfilling promises made over the last two years.
“In the beginning, people in the industry genuinely moved with purpose and intent on opening their doors to diverse talent,” Geer said. “A couple of years in, these same people realized, ‘Oh, this is harder than I thought.’ Some people started backing away from those promises like Homer Simpson slipping into the bushes. I want progress quickly. But I also recognize that when it comes to achieving real DEI in the industry, this is a marathon, not a sprint.”
Special thank you to Nomology for sponsoring and thank you to everyone who attended our panel discussion in-person. Stay tuned for 212NYC’s 2023 programming calendar.