Gai Le Roy is the Director of Research at IAB Australia. Gai's profile appeared in October 2009.
Four big themes jump out for me this year:
Data – 2012 was the year that everyone was talking about “big data” and started to collect, organise and experiment with a variety data sets. 2013 will be the year we start talking about smart data – the market will learn to interrogate these big data sets and start making more informed decisions from the insightful, actionable nuggets of gold that can be extracted. Look out a flood of data scientists in the industry.
Video – Over two billion video streams are viewed by Australians every month and this is set to increase rapidly throughout 2013. This should now be a critical component in media campaigns and not just an adjunct to tv planning.
Mobile – consumers are now moving seamlessly from screen to screen; and device to device so marketers need to make that journey with them in 2013. Smart phone and tablet traffic is exploding and further expanding the role of digital in all components of the consumer decision and purchasing cycle.
Digital ad revenue set to overtake FTA ad revenue – need I say more?!
Liam Brennan started his career in the Australian market and is now Digital Director, Carat Global Management, UK. Liam's profile appeared in June 2012.
Last year was a game changing year for digital media - 2013 will see some of the big 2012 trends become key pillars of this year's ad campaigns. Digital media will continue to merge with 'offline' media - more TV will be consumed through online catchup, tablet/smartphone sales will continue to boom and more brands will use social channels for 'always on' CRM than just for content distribution. The automation of traditional 'banner' campaigns will become more common place, with trading desk/DSP buys becoming more prevalent on media plans in 2013.
There will be a lot of chatter in 2013 about 'big data'. However, most agencies and advertisers will shy away from harnessing the power of big data due to the man hours (and cost) required to sift through it all. Instead, what we're more likely to see is agencies and advertisers using 'smart data' - taking more high level approach with social, search, web and sales analytics to gain key insights into consumer demographics and behaviours that can be applied to a wide of disciplines - media selection, creative development, web/ecommerce design, all the way through to how products are marketed in the first place. One ecommerce focused client here saw a three fold jump in (already high) ROI in the space of a week from changes in media selection and redeveloped creative recommended by a 'smart data' analysis report.
Digital is usually the main benefactor of advertiser budget in tough economic times due to its accountability. 2013 will be a difficult year for many markets, and just like in 2008/2009, digital spends will see continued growth while other channel spends stagnate or, possibly, drop."
Ellie Rogers is the National Digital Director at Ikon Communications and is also the Co-Chair of the MFA’s Interactive Committee. Ellie’s profile appeared in July 2011.
If you work in the media industry, then 2013 is going to be livelier than a box of frogs on acid at a Swedish House Mafia Gig. This is the year that things need to get finally get done and dusted, with digital measurement getting sorted with OCR, (Online Campaign Ratings) programmatic buying on video finally taking off and people actually doing something with data rather than using the word as many times as they can in the hope people will think they know what it means.
It is also going to be a very exciting year, with a positive economic backdrop and more confidence in consumer spending, that will allow for more much needed innovation and experimentation into how this new media world works in an age where more people have watched Gangnam Style on you tube than have saw the last James Bond Movie.
Please read on for Ellie's personal views for this year including a comprehensive (and sometimes controversial) list of what’s hot and what’s not in sectors such as programmatic buying, video, Facebook and data. Read more...
Mike Zeederberg is Managing Director of digital consultancy agency - Zuni. Mike’s profile appeared in October 2010.
Most predictions for 2013 include the words “Big Data” and how our world of marketing will become data driven. But we’re also seeing the development of a parallel trend of consumers getting their own access to Big Data, and companies beginning to add value for their users by giving them the ability to interrogate data sets built up over time. This started with the movement around “Quantified Self” where consumers use various devices such as a Nike Fuelband or apps on their smartphone to track data around their life (physical activity, eating habits, mood etc.) The data collected by the device is then provided to the user creating greater engagement and involvement (Nike Plus, for example).
This is now spreading from health and wellbeing into all areas of our digital existence, with businesses starting to provide tools that allow us to better interact with the digital footprints we continually generate. Facebook is the most high profile example of this with the launch of Graph Search, but players like Google have been providing more data mining functionality to their account holders for a while, with tools such as “Account Activity” tying together email, search and other Google Apps. LinkedIn’s data-mining tools sit within the “Premium” account area.
This year, we’re going to see marketers and businesses rush to give consumers “value add” by providing access to data already held about them. As it is, the only place I know I can reliably find the address I lived at in London 9 years ago is on my Amazon account…
Simon Van Wyk is the Founding Partner at Hot House Interactive and “someone still interested in the transformational power of the Internet”. Simon’s profile appeared in September 2010.
It's pretty clear to me now we are going to see a number of major changes this year. Macro-economic changes primarily driven by the global nature of the Internet are starting to bite. Most categories of business are going to experience a tough year as they grapple with their own transformations. This pressure will spin out into digital business everywhere.
The major trends will be mobile, accountability and costs.
Most business will be looking at more than half their traffic coming from a mobile device by around the middle of the year and most organisations are just not ready. Mobile adds complexity to already stretched marketing budgets and resources.
It'll be interesting to see where the money comes from. Mobile traffic is also a little different – it is a little more directed and close to the sharp end of the funnel for a lot of industries. Not getting a mobile strategy in place will be a serious omission for many businesses.
Every CEO is looking for accountability and 2013 is going to increase pressure on many industries. The "I don't care what you do, just drive sales" will become more pronounced this year. This is going to mean an increase in things that do drive sales and are easy to account. That should mean a better year for Google but a number of marketers have reported that Google adwords are now so expensive they are using other means to generate sales. Accountability will drive marketers to using DSP's and taking advantage of the benefits of buying behavioural targeted advertising online. This can deliver massive benefits – one global marketer reported a 6 times improvement in ROI however it does change the role of marketers from concerned about the location of the commercial shoot to a bunch of people consumed by the analytics.
Lots of companies are not ready and it is a real change to the way marketers think and behave. It's also a change to the way some marketers validate their job. The "I’m selling products to young, up and coming trendies in Surry Hills using social and experiential marketing and we've building a network of advocates" feels much better that "I'm using behavioural targeting to attract anyone from 20 – 80 to click on my banners or search campaign"
Costs will be under pressure and this is going to mean a change to the way we work. I've already spoken to people who find it cheaper to get their programming done in the USA. This type of global pressure will create tensions for the digital agency business in Australia. It'll require agencies to do the thinking here and the work elsewhere. The things we've valued will change as we are forced to think globally about where we add the most value. Exciting times for an Industry that is really adept at coping with change.
Stephen Hunt is the Managing Director of online video marketing company - TubeMogul (Australia and New Zealand). Stephen’s profile appeared in October 2012.
Let's start at the macro level. Internationally, uncertainty in China and Europe are likely to slow growth, though the US should recover if lasting debt reform is passed. The impact for Australian businesses is a dollar that is likely to remain high, leaving businesses bearish on their marketing investment. As we saw in the Global Financial Crisis, these conditions play out well for online channels as brands rush to accountability.
But accountability in 2013 has taken on a new meaning as brands begin to demand greater transparency from their agencies and in turn agencies mandate open and trusting relationships with their vendors. This transparency goes beyond knowing where and when ads are appearing and transcends the basics of brand safety becoming a need to understand true value from a partner. Vendors should be proud of their great work and happily justify the margins they earn in return to their clients.
For video, 2013 is set to be the watershed year. With the release of a generally accepted currency of audience measurement in Nielson OCR (Online Campaign Ratings), we will have online TARPs being measured and subsequently traded. This all signals exponential growth as TV budgets extend to reach digital audiences though I would caution over-ambitious expectations given the constraints of capacity on the inventory markets.
Brands who did their testing and learning with online video last year will diversify their video buy away from the pre-roll default that has become the norm. They learned the benefits of using in-banner and social video in the distribution mix and are now executing highly efficient and effective multi-channel strategies. Mobile and Connected TV are beginning to enter the channel mix too as they scale creating an arsenal of powerful branding tools for the savvy marketer.
The opportunity is there for online video (and brand marketing in general) to be great and last year was an incredible journey to build a solid foundation for 2013. It's time for us all to make the most of a rare opportunity to cause a seismic shift in the marketing landscape.
Gavin Heaton is Digital Strategist & Founder, The Social Way and is also known at The Servant of Chaos. Gavin’s profile appeared in October 2009.
Disruption is the new normal. In almost every category, we can expect dominant players to struggle and new competitors to emerge. Those that don't begin grappling with this changing digital landscape will find themselves losing relevance. Remember Kodak? That can happen to any business.
Education will become a priority. The hard reality of the digital skills gap will begin to bite and the war for digital talent will extend from just a challenge for marketers and agencies to a whole of business dilemma. Expect to see "chief digital officer" roles begin to appear.
Mobility will move from being a gimmick to a business priority. With mobile now accounting for 25% of all internet traffic brands will need to not only think about "operational expense" - strategic investment will be on the cards. Expect to see more technology in your marketing infrastructure and more mobility in your digital strategy.
RIP B2B and B2C. As the walls come tumbling down and digital technologies dismantle the hierarchies between those who create and produce, and those who consume, we are also finding that the neat identities that we had constructed around ourselves are crumbling. In 2013, marketers will recalibrate their marketing models to focus on the power of peer-to-peer (P2P) marketing.
Lija Wilson is Head of Marketing at travel website - Hooroo.com (a wholly owned subsidiary of Qantas). Lija’s profile appeared in March 2010.
Data and in particular, talk of ‘big data’ created a lot of discussion last year around how businesses need to evolve to make smarter decisions around the way they manage their investment in marketing and how they resource and plan their businesses both offline and online.
Research released in 2012 by CEB however pointed to the fact that marketers relied on data only 11% of the time when making customer related decisions. This needs to dramatically shift in 2013 and I think in Australia, it will be a year of evaluating resource plans and skillsets to ensure marketers and agencies are heavily geared towards data based decision marking. Despite the challenges in recruiting and finding local digital talent, we’ll hopefully see greater demand for roles such as ‘data scientists’ cropping up locally.
The other big trend and shift which I think we’ll continue to experience in 2013 is around fragmentation, specifically in social. Over the last few years, brands have jumped into paid and organic activity but the approach and authenticity of how brands commit to playing in the space will determine the success stories of 2013.
Unless brands really start to build social strategies around niche content and to respect and gravitate towards developing comms plans for niche communities, brands will lose relevancy entirely. At best, consumers may shut brands out of their space, at worst, businesses may suffer from the effects of brand terrorism. Marketers continue to talk about needing to listen and join the conversation in social, yet there is still widespread intrusion – brands screaming at customers at inappropriate times, pushing irrelevant messaging out or attempting to hide commercial intent. Getting social tone and participation right will make or break a lot of digital brands in 2013.
Further to this, we’ll see a shift of social advertising opportunities as native units continue to evolve and traditional digital display continues its path of fragmentation. Sponsored stories and promoted tweets have offered up some good opportunities but hopefully, we’ll witness some great enhancements amongst Four Square, Instagram, Pinterest, Klout and LinkedIn as well as in Facebook and Twitter.
Finally, it wouldn’t be a prediction list without a specific call our to mobile. There was a great quote from David Amaro which I think best sums up the future:
‘The future isn’t about mobile, its about mobility’
The most critical thing to nail in mobile is getting context right.
Interested to see how these predictions compare to last year? See Digital People's 2012 Forecasts here
See an overview of all 110 Digital People profile articles here.
Thanks for your continued support and interest in Digital People. If you have any comments please feel free to get in touch - denise@mediascope.com.au or phone: 0424 100325. I welcome your feedback.