2020 Trends: Advertising & Marketing Industry
03 Jan 2020

Happy New Year, everybody! As 2019 and the past decade comes to a close, a new one begins. And as is a tradition here at Provoke Insights, time for our annual advertising and marketing trends article. In other words, a comprehensive look at what can you expect over the next 12 months. That is to say, what are in-house marketers and ad agencies up to?

A Decade of Change

The 2010s were a decade of change in the marketing and advertising world. Ad spend has shifted almost entirely to digital, in large part due to social media. Advertisers spend around $30 billion on advertising on social media. And advertisers spend a total of $57 billion on programmatic advertising (includes banner ads and advertising on Google and Amazon).

Surprisingly, video advertising is the end of decade trend for online ad spend, as connected video advertising is expected to reach $6 billion by 2021. It comes as cable cutters have driven down television’s stranglehold on the media marketplace.

5G’s Impact on Trends

The first big invention of the 2020s will be 5G. 5G is the upgraded cell service technology that will make phone speed incredibly fast, and is going to be further integrated in 2020. A study even projects that sales of 5G devices will increase to 73.7 million units by the end of the decade’s first year! 

How will this affect advertisers? Well, phone streaming is going to hit incredible high speeds, with better sound, and higher definition. Now advertisers will have to react to the market by developing more interactive creative, with high-resolution graphics and better sound. This leaves possibilities for a whole new wave of creative advertising to try and hold consumer’s attention. 

Amazon: How will Retailers Respond?

Amazon may have killed retail this last decade, as their online shopping service is now ubiquitous, and in-person retailers have notably struggled to keep up. What Amazon may have done best is integrating with brands to sell their products and taking a piece of the profit in the process. 

However, 2020 is the time that companies fight back against the omnipresent online technology giant. For example, Microsoft will be launching cashier-less checkout and dynamic pricing displays. The company Neighborhood Goods specializes in partnering with companies to create pop-up shops, which have made an impact as apart of the new experience-based shopping economy. And the Canadian direct competitor Shopify’s launch of fulfillment services makes it a strong challenger. Will they have a shot of dethroning e-commerce king? Unlikely, but they sure will try!

Research Trends

As the marketing world shifts, so will the world of research. And the research world is getting much more creative. As so much spend has shifted online, and as surveys generally have shifted online, new technologies are allowing market researchers to be more creative in how they collect information. 

One of these new trends is online artificial intelligence focus groups. New companies that have created focus groups that utilize AI are taking the research world by storm and allowing researchers to conduct larger focus groups and get results in real-time. Focus groups can consist of dozens of people now, take less time, and be conducted online from anywhere. Other utilizations of online surveys are launching, as quick surveys on websites as pop-ups are becoming more and more popular. Look for that to continue in 2020.

We hope you had a refreshing holiday season and are recharged and ready to go in the new year!

Sources: 

Fisher, Lauren. “US Programmatic Digital Display Ad Spending.” Nov. 21, 2019. Available at: https://content-na1.emarketer.com/us-programmatic-digital-display-ad-spending

Ryan, Jillian. “Ten Key Digital Trends for 2020 What Marketers Need to Know in the Year Ahead.” Dec. 9, 2019. Available at: https://content-na1.emarketer.com/ten-key-digital-trends-for-2020 

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