The year 2021 was revolutionary for most industries and the programmatic advertising industry was no exception. There's no denying that AdTech is evolving at a fast pace. With changes in consumer behaviors formed by the worldwide pandemic to alterations in digital advertising brought on by the loss of the third-party cookies and new privacy-enforcing policies like Apple's, it is natural to wonder what this year is going to bring.
Let’s dive right into the top five trends in Ad Tech in 2022 with mediasmart’s CEO, Noelia Amoedo, and learn a little more about how we expect them to play out in the next year.
Digital Out-of-Home Advertising
Advertisers want to spend their money where their audience is. During the pandemic, when the customers were cooped up inside their houses, the Out-of-Home (OOH) advertising industry suffered. The decrease in demand for OOH interestingly forced its digitalization, which means OOH has made its comeback in the form of DOOH. From billboards to screens in elevators, a lot more inventory is now available for auction in the programmatic ecosystem. We are quite optimistic that Digital Out-of-Home is not a fad.
Connected Tv Synced with Mobile
The rising demand has made Connected TV clearly unstoppable. We predicted that 2021 was the year of CTV and we were right! Advertising on CTVs will remain the talk of the town even in 2022, as it combines the convenience of online advertising with the branding inclined formats of television. Along with mobile sync, CTV advertising is much more effective than advertising on traditional TV or on other digital media. This is why 80% of advertisers want to increase their investments in CTV in 2022 as compared to last year.
Programmatic Audio
With the increasing popularity of online music, streaming and podcasts, it is highly likely that we will see a scale-up in the use of programmatic Audio for Advertising. Last year 16.5% of digital radio ads were transacted programmatically, and this figure is expected to reach 21.0% by 2022. Only a small percentage of demand-side platforms currently offer podcasts and other audio advertisements, but we can expect this to change in 2022 and the years to come. It's time that advertisers start to consider ways to use this promising channel of programmatic advertising.
Omnichannel Advertising
Whether it was TV, OOH or Audio, we have seen these advertising channels change from analogue to being completely digital. This highlights the importance and relevance of omnichannel advertising platforms. As consumers interact with advertising through an increasing number of digital channels, advertisers need to be able to combine them all into a single platform. This functionality will help brands develop an advertising strategy where ads are always relevant and in sync across all the different channels that their consumers interact with.
From Hyper-personalization to Hyper-relevance
Personalization will be possible only when executed hand in hand with consent-driven models. In this privacy-friendly advertising era, 2022 will be about finding new ways of making ads more relevant. With the use of techniques like contextual targeting and geofencing, ads will focus on creating experiences based on the user's current interests. This means we are moving away from the times when advertising was all about personalization. Be ready for an era of hyper-relevant advertising.
Summing up, the AdTech industry has a lot to look forward to this year. We’re ready to face the interesting opportunities as well as challenges that this year will bring. Are you ready too?
