Advertising Agency Executives Weigh In On What To Expect In 2023

In 2023 the ad marketplace is expected to slow down after several years of robust growth post-pandemic growth and no Olympics, no Men’s World Cup, a political off-year and potentially economic headwinds. Nonetheless, ad spending is still expected to increase. Among the marketing channels expected for ad growth will be retail media and connected TV as media continues to fragment. In this era of data and analytics, brands will be using more personalized ad messages to consumers seeking to enhance business outcomes. As audience measurement and ad tech companies (including Nielsen) continue to ramp up their capabilities, advertisers will be also placing a greater emphasis on attentiveness in a competitive landscape. These are just a few of the trends in media and advertising expected next year.

As in previous years there will be many trends coming to media and advertising industry in 2023. To find out more insights we reached out to several ad agency executives. Here are there comments.

Daryl Lee, Global CEO, McCann Worldgroup

As people face financial challenges, this is when brands can – and should – show that they have people’s backs during the tough times.

What we found in our own research is that while trust in general took a nosedive during the Covid pandemic, brands largely bucked that trend. In fact, 77% of people globally believe global brands have a greater ability to create positive change than the government does.

There’s a lesson there…when crisis hits, brands can make people’s lives better and the meaningful role they earn in people’s lives in those difficult moments will likely continue long after crises subside, as they inevitably do. Think of the brands that traditionally have nothing to do with medical supplies or pharma stepping in during the pandemic to produce hand sanitizers or masks. The good they did and the goodwill they generated live on.

A fundamental truth is that the strongest and most enduring relationships are not typically built when things are generally going well, but when we are most in need of support. When brands show they are about something more than simply selling a product, when they rise above the transactional, it’s not just good, it’s good business. This truth should guide brands in 2023 as they navigate a year of uncertainty.

Greg Walsh, CEO of Havas Media Group North America

We are entering 2023 in a more cautionary environment with slowed growth trends across the media industry. Whether it’s driven by inflation or a looming recession, our proprietary research indicates that consumers’ brand loyalty is waning at alarming rates. At the same time, the “Modern Marketer” is being evaluated on their ability to deliver business outcomes from an increasingly complex, data-driven and more competitive digital landscape. To meet these challenges, marketers will need to better understand the data that fuels their advertising and find opportunities that deliver contextually relevant content in areas that drive growth and brand loyalty.

Personalized marketing experiences will continue to reign supreme, designed to interact with consumers through Conversational AI, rapidly developed new content, and smarter machine learning models that enhance consumer journeys. This evolution continues to shift funding from traditional programming to highly targeted streaming content, with more accessible and transparent inventory, and selective buying systems to find the “right” audiences.

The “big data” cloud has transformed into a multi-faceted, consumer data-engine for growth and measurement to break the walled gardens and gauge consumer in-marketing motivators. If done right, CMOs can successfully unlock new consumer trends, rapidly design brand learnings and experiments, and close the “loop” by using new activation platforms in retail media, eCommerce, and B2B, while assessing long held metrics like ROI on media experiences.

Arun Kumar, Chief Data & Marketing Technology Officer, IPG

The media options available to brands will increase significantly in 2023, from retailers launching media networks to streaming services opening up ad inventory. As each of these walled ecosystems will have its own rules and metrics, identity resolution will be critical for brands to drive true value. By building a first-party identity graph with their own information about customers, brands will be able to accurately identify and ethically connect with people across these new networks.

In addition, the streaming ad landscape’s measurement gap will persist in 2023. The subscription-plus-advertising model isn’t moving forward because we’re still applying the old linear TV ad benchmarks to streaming services. The walled-garden problem that started in digital has now arrived in TV. Brands can’t aggregate reach and frequency across different platforms, so the ones that allow advertising aren’t getting credit for the audiences they bring. Streaming subscription fees won’t drop in 2023 unless we adopt new methods of measurement to stabilize the ad model.

Megan Jones, EVP Head of Media, Digitas

2023 will be the year we can finally say RIP to the traditional marketing funnel. Today, consumers move from attention to action in a flash, and it has become more challenging for brands to win in those moments. Add to that pandemic fatigue and very real economic concerns – all very real headwinds with consumers that brands have to navigate. We’ve helped our clients solve this through media-fueled creativity – our way of delivering a rich brand experience in the ideal moment to the precise audience that matters to them.

It all comes together when brands understand how to create these magical moments. That’s where meaningful connections happen – where art marries science – and we believe that brands need agencies that understand that synchronicity between media & creative. If there isn’t fluency and collaboration between the two, then those key moments are wasted.

Mike Fisher, VP Advanced TV, GroupM & Essence

Streaming will become a more viable option for end-to-end commerce. As platforms and consumers embrace the notion of streaming as a proverbial storefront opportunity, the ability to showcase relevant products and offers will drive viewers deeper down the funnel. Building on the advances we’ve seen in social commerce, customized storefront-esque experiences and addressable messaging within streaming offerings will give both brands the exposure they need to close the purchase opportunity and consumers the ability to discover relevant products and services.”

Amy Lanzi, Chief Operating Officer, Publicis Commerce

The future of creative commerce will be about creating a frictionless experience everywhere that enables a purchase moment. We’ll continue to see the explosion of retail media and stores becoming more programmatic with the influx of new data inputs, interconnected technology and more. Social commerce will continue to play an important role in connecting community, shopping and entertainment – paving the way for people to move into the commerceverse to buy coveted virtual goods and digital experiences as brands continue to shift into Web3 environments.

Ecosystem hacking, or leaning into API integrations and enhanced partnerships, will be critical to tying commerce to CRM and understanding how consumers move from like to love to loyalty. Bringing these two functions together will improve consumer experiences, increase customer lifetime value and enable retention and conversion – all of which lead to increased profitability for brands.

Michele Madaris, Media Director, Boathouse

The words recession and economic hardships are at the forefront as we embark on 2023. As a result, the assumption is that advertising spend will be impacted in 2023. The question is how much? For that reason, I’d like to say that I’m cautiously optimistic as to what 2023 holds. What we can be sure of is that with every dollar spent there will be more rigor and scrutiny focused around the performance of media spend. Linear TV and OTT measurement have certainly been in the hot seat as it relates to performance and measurement and I expect that to continue.

The IAB just released some work around attention metrics and defining attention unanimously across channels. I expect that this will be a focus of the discussion for much of 2023 as the industry migrates to a universal impression currency across channels. In my opinion, what will be the most interesting is whether a recession or economic hardships further influence consumption trends as consumers start to evaluate their personal wallet and whether or not they will choose to continue to pay for cable and sometimes multiple streaming video services.

Whitney Fishman, Group Director, Consumer Insights and Innovation, GroupM, North America

We will double down on human connection. Whether it’s through conferences, in-person meetings, physical brand activations, and the embracement of public spaces, we’re seeing how people want to be together, and want to connect. The humanity of connection transcends technology, but also can be enabled by innovations in the Out of Home media area, digital storefronts and displays, and other tech-fueled media innovations that provide additive experiences to living life outdoors.”

Dave Kersey, Chief Media Officer, GSD&M

Evolution in consumption fragmentation. It’s not going away for marketers but consumers, especially Gen Z, will continue to streamline where they spend time and be more selective with their attention. Moving into 2023, marketers should consider optimizing for fragmentation and prioritize a simplified ecosystem focused on earning consumer attention. This is especially true during an economic downturn; instead of turning focus to media efficiencies, the better course of action is to balance efforts with salient, attention-earning content where your key customers are highly engaged. So, when the economy stabilizes–even if it’s a soft, gradual landing–marketers have maintained or grown their brand’s marketplace position.

We also have an enormous amount of data from brand perception to real-time purchase behavior to layer into optimized media campaigns. The real test will be activating efforts quickly to drive scale within those key channels, while evolving creative messaging relevant for each channel. For example, in-game marketing should look different from TikTok which is different from YouTube which will also be different from what we should do on NetflixNFLX
or other streaming platforms now experimenting with ad formats.

Martin Blich, Executive Director, Sports and Live Events, GroupM

As previewed by this year’s World Cup, live sports is going to be one of the most viewed properties that you can buy within the media landscape. Given the fact that we have more and more tentpoles coming into this year like the Super Bowl and Women’s World Cup, it’s going to keep growing. People are excited to see people back in stands, watching the events and being able to go to the other countries to see the events like the World Cup and Olympics.”