The future of advertising is here. Advertising is entering a new age, with online advertisements proliferating and capturing an increasing share of the advertising budget. 

Along with ad tech, data has developed into the latest advertisement gold and is a game-changer for processes and targeting. Long-established stakeholders are losing influence as new advertising heavyweights emerge. This systemic transformation appears to be continuing. The main issue is not whether ads can adjust but how dramatically. Our scenarios have solutions.

We used our tried-and-true scenario approach to depict realistic futures in the global advertising industry and how today’s market players could adjust to the many changes and uncertainties that will occur along the way. 

The future of advertising affects a wide range of stakeholders.

Aside from traditional advertising world players, the transformation is critical for many new market entrants, especially those with a technology and data stack. To give you a quick overview of this dynamic environment, we’ve identified five archetypal stakeholders who will significantly impact the future of advertising landscape. They are the protagonists in our four examples, each facing unique challenges and opportunities in their respective worlds:

  • companies that have digital platforms
  • Tv firms, agencies, marketers, and customers

Our scenarios are based on a detailed collection of underlying drivers that can influence the advertising industry’s future. We then classified the resulting drivers into social, technical, economic, environmental, and political factors and graded them based on their level of uncertainty and effect on the advertising industry.

Four Future-of-Advertising Scenarios

As a result of our research, we have produced four possibilities for the future of advertising:

  • Scenario 1: You Are a Transactional Individual
  • Scenario 2: The Ingenious You
  • Scenario 3: The Amused Masses
  • Scenario 4: The Dispersed Masses

The advertising industry is evolving as a result of these developments.

Several crucial uncertainties in the matrix are reflected in our four scenarios. These drivers and their consequences can vary from scenario to scenario, with each representing an extreme point of potential advertisement market developments. Furthermore, we have described seven factors whose evolution can be predicted with a high degree of certainty and are important for all scenarios. 

These developments will affect the future of advertising:

the future of advertising

Artificial intelligence is needed

Artificial intelligence is pervasive in the advertising industry. AI aids decision-making by analyzing customer behavior. It significantly optimizes campaigns to perform better as it is enriched with data on how customers engage with ads. When used reliably and completely, AI understands customers better than they do themselves.

Marketing clouds will prevail. 

Marketing clouds are critical components of advertising processes because they govern the development and management of marketing relationships as well as the management of consumer campaigns. Integrating technologies for consumer journey management, email, mobile, social, site personalization, advertisement, content handling, and analytics will become the norm.

Programmatic becomes universal

For digital ads, programmatic is the gold standard. In the sense of buying and selling ad space and dynamically positioning digital ads, processes are completely automated, and transactions occur in real-time. Programmatic advertising is a critical enabler of targeted advertising. Traditional procedures such as RFPs, human negotiations, and manual insertion orders will be phased out of the digital advertisement industry.

Consolidation of ad tech

The once fractured and heterogeneous ad tech supplier landscape would converge. Large ad tech companies would acquire almost all of their smaller yet highly skilled rivals. The need for better facilities, greater size, and more data is the primary motivator behind the flurry of M&A operation.

“The background is king.”

The majority of digital advertising is contextual. Automated systems pick and position ads based on ever-increasingly complex user-profiles and the content displayed. This trend is being bolstered by a rise in smartphone and location-based advertising.

War for ad talent continues

With new market entrants, evolving work profiles, and a change in influence within the industry, the ongoing digitalization of advertising creates a massive battle for talent. Employers search for specialists with advanced skill sets that are in short supply. Data scientists, analytics specialists, and creative minds are in high demand right now and will continue to be so.

TV loses its dominance

 After print, conventional linear TV is losing its clout. Large digital network companies generate comparable reach across video-on-demand, social, and messaging features.

Last Updated on November 28, 2023

Author

Elizabeth is a Senior Content Manager at Scaleo. Currently enjoying the life in Prague and sharing professional affiliate marketing tips. She's been in the online marketing business since 2006 and gladly shares all her insights and ideas on this blog.