Featuring:
Joanna O’Connell, VP, Principal Analyst
Show Notes:
Think the average consumer is fed up with advertising? Think again. Consumers still value advertising as a source of information and inspiration. Forrester predicts that in 2021, after the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact, advertising spend in the US alone will reach $200 billion. The future of advertising will be different and more customer focused.
In this episode of What It Means, we feature VP and Principal Analyst Joanna O’Connell’s recent keynote presentation from CX North America: “The Future Of Advertising And Its Impact On The Customer Journey.”
“There are major forces at play that are going to reshape the face of advertising over the next couple of years,” O’Connell says, emphasizing that traditional approaches such as segmenting advertising based on gender or delivery channel are becoming less relevant in today’s market.
Perhaps most prominently, current and future privacy regulations along with the death of the third-party cookie will have a major impact on the availability of consumer data around which many digital advertising plans are built. Marketers won’t be able to rely on those sources of data in their future strategies.
As O’Connell puts it, the Wild West era of digital advertising will end. Advertisers will strive to get closer to consumers by leveraging first-party data and other regulation-compliant, identity-based solutions in their marketing strategies.
“We really need to rebalance the advertising relationship much more in favor of the consumer than we have in the last 15 to 25 years,” O’Connell says.
She also provides several specific suggestions for advertisers looking to move into the next phase and develop more meaningful relationships with customers.
