Advertising trends of 2013
Here’s a brief look at some advertising trends garnering attention this year.
Native advertising
Difficult to define, this term seems to most often be a new, fancy way to describe an advertorial. In the Harvard Business Review article digital marketing expert Mitch Joel says: “I define native advertising as an ad format that must be created specifically for one media channel in terms of the technical format and the content- (ie the creative that is placed within that format). Both must be native to the channel on which they appear and unable to be used in another context.”
If this is, indeed, the definition, then we agree that native advertising is one of the trends to watch as TV programs broaden their means to reach their viewers via social media and even traditional magazines are finding ways to shift to digital.
Programmatic buying
Again, this is another murkily-defined advertising term. In an article on Ad Exchanger, http://www.adexchanger.com/online-advertising/define-programmatic-buying/, where they asked execs to provide a definition, the definitions covered all of the intricacies surrounding the term: real time systems, big data, ad exchanges, and automated purchasing. Philip Smolin, SVP of Market Solutions, Turn says, “In the digital advertising world today, marketers are faced with an overwhelming level of inventory and audience fragmentation. Each customer interaction happens on a different device, different media channel and at a different time during the lifecycle of brand engagement. Data is generated throughout. Programmatic Buying helps bring order to this fragmentation. It enables marketers to consolidate customer interactions across multiple channels into a single dashboard, and then use that dashboard to develop a single, overarching strategy about how to best engage (and continue the conversation) with those audiences. Along the way, it helps marketers use data to increase advertising effectiveness by assigning a value to every impression. – and then uses that value to ensure the marketer doesn’t waste budget by advertising to prospects who will never have an interest in their brand, products or services.” That definition sounds familiar to us…
Content marketing
Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action. Source: http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/what-is-content-marketing/. This could include blogs, videos, microsites, Facebook pages, podcasts, online games, newsletters and sponsored events.
This method of advertising can develop and nurture a loyal following to a brand, however, the downside is the amount of worker hours needed to develop that content and interact with customers.