Trend Spotting 2019: AI, AR, Voice, Video & the unlimited possibilities of Digital

Leading digital experts do some crystal ball gazing to highlight the disruptions and innovations that are expected to dominate the digital marketing space in 2019. They also share their views on whether there can be a gold standard metric when measuring digital RoI.  

Rohan Mehta, CEO, Social Kinnect 

Disruptions in digital space:

• There’s a good chance that we will be able to purchase TV inventory through digital. 

• OTT will become a first-screen experience. Your TV experience will move to OTT – that’s a massive disruption. 

• We will see a significant increase in smart devices. I expect 2019 to be the year of Voice-activated light bulbs or even air conditioners. Digital will extend to outside the phone or computer screen, and enter your daily life. The insane proliferation of smart devices will be a huge disruption because these will create even more marketing touchpoints. 

• ‘Bharat’ coming online – This is a disruption whose effect on digital mediums cannot even be anticipated. The non-connected mass becoming the connected mass – the ‘last mile’ having digital access – will lead to the proliferation of new types of services, new devices and of course, digital content in more languages. 

Innovations in digital landscape:

• In a nutshell, Voice Search, Chatbots, hyper-personalisation and more immersive experiences through AR and VR. 

• Consumer journeys will change through preferences. So, what I see as an Amazon user, for example, will be different from what you see because of my online behaviour. 

• In essence, in 2019, we will witness the utilisation of machine learning and AI for smarter marketing. 

Measuring digital RoI: I would love to have a gold standard metric when measuring digital RoI, but because digital has been evolving so fast, this is tough. Also, the demands from and objectives of digital campaigns keep changing too. Sometimes, the objective is to drive direct business impact. Other times, it is to create a feel-good factor for the brand or simply brand awareness. A common ROI metric cannot be applied to these divergent objectives. 

Also, the two large digital platforms – Facebook and Google – would need to unify their metrics at the first stage to be able to develop a gold standard metric. And this has not happened yet. 

Client expectations from digital in 2018: Clients are now looking at digital as the primary communication channel. In 2018, we saw a much larger responsibility on digital agencies to solve large-scale, long-term brand problems. Digital agencies used to do shorter, more tactical work and this has moved to higher level, strategic work. These problems are also company or brand-level, and the expectation now is to solve them through digital innovations a technologies. 

Clients are also looking to digital to drive business impact in the form of continuous ROI.  

Bindu Balakrishnan, Country Head, DCMN India

Disruptions in digital space: There is a lot that is expected to happen in 2019 –

• Voice-Based Assistant Services – Apple Siri, Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa will be fighting a more intense war in 2019 to acquire the market share in India. The urban market in India has expressed its willingness to adapt to these assistants and the product volumes sold during the online sales clearly point to a new trend in the market. 

• OTT Advertising – What can one say about Amazon Prime Video, Netflix and Hotstar. It is a merry time for the Indian consumer with so much content available in the market at reasonable prices. Following the trend, traditional broadcasters, publishers, smaller and regional players have also launched their OTT platforms and are spending heavily on advertising. 

• Television Attribution – Television has always been a difficult medium to comprehend medium for marketers, especially, when the cost involved is so high. However, a digital marketer is obsessed with performance and wants the same with television also. Television attribution will be a game changer for the digital brands to optimise their media plan and map the ROI on television spends. 

• AI Driven Media Planning & Creativity – Artificial Intelligence is taking lead in the advertising business with several agencies automating their media planning. It helps the marketer to get a real time understanding of their media plan. On the other hand, several leading agencies are working towards AI driven creativity to ensure that a marketer is sure of the creative as it goes on air. 

• Bots – This has been a new trend in 2018 and marketers will be using more of it 2019 to engage with their consumers. 

• Long format Creativity to engage customers – Digital brands have realised that it is extremely important to interact with the consumers and reach them where they love to be. Millennials are consuming online long form content and hence these brands are partnering with such content creators to be present at the right time. 

• Online Players to Focus on Brand Building than Call to Action – Brand Building has been always missing from the lifecycle of an online brand, but they are realising that it is as important as performance. Be it food tech, fintech, app based cabs, or cricket playing apps, brand building is important. 

• Tighter Restrictions on Data Privacy – In 2018, we saw a lot of questions and controversies emerging around how a consumers’ private data is being used without his authorisation. Going forward, federal governments are issuing stricter guidelines for online players and platforms. 

• Consultancies taking a lead in Advertising – This is a very concerning trend for the entire industry as the consultancies are seeping into the pitches and taking a lead. This is an emerging threat to the traditional and new age players especially boutique players. 

Innovations in digital landscape:
The voice based assistants launched by Amazon, Apple and Google will disrupt the market in a way we cannot even comprehend. It will give a complete new direction to search, exploring content and purchasing. 

Measuring digital RoI:
We are heading in an age where every marketer wants to know about what his money spent has got him. Interestingly, digital as a medium has been able to generate ROI, but it definitely needs a third-party auditing. The latter corroborates what the platform claims and what the marketer gets. 

Client expectations from digital in 2018:

• Bang for Buck – Traditionally, Digital brands want ROI to be high. They seek optimized spending and focused conversion than spilling over to create reach. However, several digital players are now working on creating reach also as they attempt to take the market share of traditional players. 

• On another front, new digitals (traditional players who have embarked on a digital journey) have realised the potential of digital as a medium and its importance in creating the brand salience. 

• Some of the digital players are targeting specific markets and pockets, and hence they want the agencies and partners to come up with a specific solution and strategy for these markets. 

• More Emotional Connect – The clients want their creative agencies and production houses to create engaging content that generates a response and kickstarts a conversation with the consumer. 

• Separate content for Digital & TV – Brands have started to understand that content for digital and television is not similar. They cannot just run the television ad on digital. They want a more proactive digital specific creative and media strategy from their partner agencies. 

Prateek Kumar, CEO & MD, NeoNiche Integrated Solutions 

Disruptions in digital space: There are few trends that we can expect in 2019 as marketers –

• Artificial Intelligence and Augmented Reality will play a big role in shaping customer opinion. There would be more content which would be produced for omni channels.
• New industries like Agro business and the ones targeting Tier 3 cities and villages will take the digital route. 2019 would be a scenario where less would be more, that is, brands will consciously make less clutter and create more meaningful dialogues with their TG.
• ‘Crowd shaping’ will emerge in digital campaigns. Overall, 2019 will be all about maximising the ROI where digital campaigns are concerned.

Innovations in digital landscape:

• Technologies like accelerated mobile pages (MP) and progressive web apps (PWS) will see a lot more implementation in 2019, since mobile has become the foremost vehicle for content consumption.
• Search and social media marketing giants like Google, Facebook, and Instagram will create algorithms to enhance user experiences by taking into account speed, relevance, user reviews and other such data.
• B2B marketing platforms like Twitter and LinkedIn will focus more on publishing and content for demand generation and branding.
• Digital marketing as a whole will shift from multi-channel to more integrated omni channel for a richer customer experience.

Measuring digital RoI: Since digital trail is long and spreads over a year or more, it is difficult to create a single metric. Hence, for a long time digital marketers have used various measurement matrices which qualify data, like the number of impressions, amplification ratio, and return on resource employed, ROCI. However, newer technologies, including Machine Learning and Big Data and emergence of omni channel marketing campaigns, are creating simplified and more accurate predictions for ROI based on input versus outcome. 

Client expectations from digital in 2018: The year 2018 saw B2C brands making digital marketing core to their entire marketing strategy. Digital marketing as a whole became lot more intelligent and measurable in terms of ROI, PPI and other such matrices. 2018 also saw the emergence of B2B brands on digital and social platforms. 

Ankit Dhadda, Head of Marketing and Product, Bloomberg Quint 

Disruptions in digital space:

• Indian languages will be language of preference rather than a value addition in the coming year
• Brands will want to leverage WhatsApp; our own consumption numbers show that WhatsApp is parallel to none when it comes to time spent and delivery/ viewability rates
• Increasingly, brands will leverage data management platforms (DMPs) to segment and customise messaging for the audiences

Innovations in digital landscape:

• Increasingly content rules the roost over display when it comes to brand campaigns
• SEO is now more about the content you produce than the links you build
• Video is the first currency of content and driving engagement

Measuring digital RoI: It will be difficult to achieve a gold standard metric while measuring digital RoI until Facebook, Google, Twitter and LinkedIn come together for uniformed reporting. Yet, digital remains the most measurable and traceable medium today. 

Swati Nathani, Co-Founder, Chief Business Officer, Team Pumpkin 

Disruptions in digital space: We see 2019 as a year of new formats of tech-enabled content. Whether it is about Voice Bots or Image Searches, 2019 will be all about enabling the current content for the tech disruptions. We also see a huge wave of regional content flowing in.

Innovations in digital landscape:

• AI-enabled Chabots, Voice, and Image Search enabled content
• Rise of Social Chat Platforms based Marketing

Measuring digital RoI: It’s always and always Sales and Conversions. There is no other metric that could justify spends. 

Client expectations from digital in 2018: In 2018, we saw the digital marketing space merging into traditional marketing. Now, there is no divide between digital and offline communication, and the communication is just tuned to the platform of advertisement. 

Mayur Sethi, Partner & COO, Vatsana Technologies 

Disruptions in digital space: Data have changed the way the Internet is been used in the last few years. From Analytics to Machine Learning to Artificial Intelligence – the segment is growing and helping automate many processes; it can be called as a phase of a paradigm shift for advertising industry too, with unlimited possibilities for everybody. 

Innovations in digital landscape: As a technology-led publishing house, we are working on various new formats for advertisers to interact with the audience on our platforms. We are also working on various ways to distribute our content to a larger base of audience and would certainly come up with a game-changer product in the middle of 2019. 

Measuring digital RoI: The industry is still to find a concrete metric to measure the ROI in content marketing, however, there are various ways to know the success of different formats and types of integrations. In recent days, we saw production houses leveraging Social Influencers to promote the upcoming movies via celebrity integrations and task-based digital-led campaigns on platforms like Tiktok and Instagram, which has changed the way content marketing was done and created a totally new metric. 

Client expectations from digital in 2018: Content marketing started as advertorial in the offline industry and subtle plugin with brand mention to now newer formats and interactive integrations that can make the user to explore the features/ offerings via multiple touchpoints, that is, via Interactive Polls, Quizzes, Games, Videos, etc.