The prominent trends that shaped advertising & media in the decade gone by

Adgully’s last Twitter Chat of 2019 aptly looked back at the developments, events and trends that shaped the decade gone by. The discussion was led by moderator Dr Kushal Sanghvi, India Lead, Integral Ad Science (@drkushalsanghvi), who was joined by:

  • Arun Gupta, Founder & CEO, MoMagic Technologies (@MoMAGIC_T)
  • Babita Baruah, Managing Partner, GTB India (@babitabaruah)
  • Pradeep Dwivedi, Founder & CEO, Divitiae IN (@PradeepDwivedi)
  • Sanjay Tripathy, Founder & CEO, Agilio Labs (@Sanjay_Tripathy)

While it was a rich decade in terms of marketing and media activity, these industry veterans identified the following major media and advertising trends that shaped the industry in the last 10 years.

Changing marketing outlook

Arun Gupta: The marketing spend leader board changed from mass marketing to contextual analytics where people, thing, place and time played a critical role.

Babita Baruah: In my view, the change in 4 P’s has transformed the traditional marketing media mix into a full funnel strategy. This has led to a seamless waltz of data and consumer behaviour, leading to designed experiences that engage and perform. In fact, we have moved from business media planning to an audience or people first media planning.

Pradeep Dwivedi: This decade has seen an unprecedented rise of performance marketing over brand marketing.

Sanjay Tripathy: Advertising and technological advancements have resulted in the crafting of better personalised experiences, enabling clutter-cutting ads with hyper-personalised messages that resonate with the target customer.

Where digital is gaining on television? (It’s not reach) 

Arun Gupta: We will multiple categories within digital. The disruption within digital will happen in terms of screen size and display forms.

Babita Baruah: Digital is gaining in terms of content that is being consumed on small screens. With OTT players and content on the rise, digital will definitely be a challenger.

Pradeep Dwivedi: Digital will be  over 50 per cent of overall spends in the next couple of years, largely due to accountability and attribution variables demanded by the marketers in an era of performance  marketing.

The fresh content agenda has already shifted to digital and OTT! Only live news and live sports are still TVs forte and not for long.

Why programmatic is a big deal?

Arun Gupta: Globally, the programmatic spend accounts for 69 per cent of total digital spend.

Babita Baruah: Programmatic drives sharp shooting, customised, targeted, data directed, inspired messaging leveraging consumer behaviour. Brands that have not turned to programmatic will have to do so. It drives both resource optimisation and performance.

Sanjay Tripathy: Technology now enables you to collect, analyse and process data about everything and take better informed decisions. It gives you opportunity to reach customers where they want to be reached, personalise your communication and market your product to them effectively.

The next consumer destination

Arun Gupta: The real shift will happen by 2023 when 5G is expected to be the main mode of connectivity.

Sanjay Tripathy: The next wave of consumers – Gen Z and beyond – will be digital natives, not digital immigrants like the millennials. They’ll have no memory of newspapers and landlines and feature phones. The digital platform to them will be as comforting and common as Sunday morning cartoons.

Pradeep Dwivedi: Creation and self-expression of ideas unique to their times will be all pervasive demand on times for this audience.

People outpaced brands in embracing tech

Babita Baruah: People are outpacing most brands today in embracing tech and expressing themselves. Unlike brands, they have fewer censors and guardrails.

Pradeep Dwivedi: The widening net of brand safety will envelope this universe in unprecedented ways leading to an increase in AI and ML tools being deployed to ensure salience and recall for brands in a suitable environment.

Brands – The new producers of 2020

Babita Baruah: Will brands produce content that is not just native advertising but stories or work that drives the brand values and hence the brand equity?

The mobile marketing environment

Babita Baruah: Mobile brands are in a fantastic collision point of screen, content, commerce. If this is leveraged, they become the platform, the ecosystem, the wallet, the entertainment and the one asset that holds things together.

Sanjay Tripathy: While mobile OEMs had the biggest wallets, they did not have the best marketing. The movement in the positions of the top 10 mobile brands was very dramatic.

Dr Kushal Sanghvi
Dr Kushal Sanghvi

Brands categories that led the decade

Babita Baruah: In what we call traditional media, we see categories like Auto, Government ads, Smartphone OEMs leading it. If we include FMCG as a whole, of course, it will still lead the chart.

The consumer journey has scope for brand interventions at every stage, from research to post purchase. Experiences are key, both online and offline. New tech and tech related categories from travel, commerce and content have no unlearning to do, unlike older brands and categories.

Pradeep Dwivedi: I love the work done by Hindustan Unilever and the team led by Gauravjeet Singh, which is at the cutting edge of the media game. They’ve leveraged innovation and creativity without sacrificing efficiency and effectiveness! Given the size of the organisation and spends that is incredible!

Sanjay Tripathy: The shift of ad spending from traditional to digital media is happening at a rapid pace. While digital media currently contributes 17 per cent to total ad spends, it is expected to reach 21 per cent by the next year and 29 per cent by 2021.

On the brand end, Worldwide Retail, Auto, Financial services are leading the chart followed by Telecom.

New categories like OTT, smartphone handsets, e-commerce players, and tech companies definitely understood consumers better.

Marketing event of the decade

Pradeep Dwivedi: Undisputedly the Indian Premier League (IPL) in the Indian context. It was a marketing and media game-changer.

 

Also Read;

Internet Advertising: future of marketing in India

Political advertising has been a buoyant force in 2019: Dhruba Mukherjee

Advertising
@adgully

News in the domain of Advertising, Marketing, Media and Business of Entertainment

More in Advertising