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The 4 key trends to be watching

Mark Britt, CEO, Mi9

I believe we will see more change in digital media over the next five years than we have seen in the last 20. Today, the pressure on CMOs and marketers to deliver tangible results in the short term is intense. It’s easy for tunnel vision to set in. Advertisers are reacting to trends rather than mastering and exploiting them.

At Mi9, with heritage from Nine Entertainment Co. and Microsoft, we uniquely straddle the advertising and technology industries. I’m often asked what I think are the key trends advertisers should be staying ahead of. I thought I would share my latest thoughts with you today.

We believe future digital opportunities will be unlocked through the power of imagination and intelligence. Creative ideas, coupled with the data and technology to bring them to life and truly connect with consumers. So what are we doing to help brands unlock these opportunities?

Context is King

With all the focus on the amazing tech that enables our new era of advertising, it’s easy to forget that what’s in the ads matters as well as the environment it’s viewed. Advertisers need to tune in to what kind of content engages their audience and create advertising that aligns with what they watch and read. You can roll out a remarkable initiative to find consumers, but how will you engage them? Premium ad placements that offer contextual inventory are essential to branding.

Our focus for our advertisers:

–          Creating insight-led, deep content integration opportunities with relevant advertisers that are truly immersive for our consumers. Like the Coles/Food integration and Hyundai New Thinkers campaign

–          Investing in more sophisticated context and behavioral targeting technology to deliver hyper-relevant ads to people who actually want to see them

–          Continued dedication to impactful rich media executions – that don’t just look amazing, but perform amazingly

–          Providing a mix of brands that aggregate audiences (like The FIX, Wide World of Sports and Australian Women’s Weekly) along with more niche, special interest brands (like PRIMPED and The Knot)

Virtual Togetherness

Social platforms and technologies that enable people to interact with TV programs will explode in 2012. We will see innovations that allow people to engage with shows in ways we haven’t even thought of yet.

To some degree, TV has always been a sociable activity, whether it is with family or conversation at the work water cooler the next day. Throw in a bit of Twitter, a backstage blog, behind the scene videos and tablet optimized web experiences, and you have the perfect formula for TV on social steroids. 3 in 5 Australians are already regularly surfing the Internet while watching TV.

Our focus for advertisers is: complementing Channel 9 properties with PC and mobile properties that amplify and socialize the experience – as opposed to cannibalise.

Connect the dots

As industry guru Peter Horan told us, “Counting clicks for branding is flawed. Marketers know TV works even though viewers can’t click on a commercial.” Beyond the click, the revolution in data will continue. Marketers can now look more closely at consumer behaviour to get more mileage out of campaigns. The social graph is generating more meaningful data for brand measurement. As technology gives us a clearer view of reader engagement and retention, we see that all content is not created equal, and that despite the recent increase in content volume, quality is what drives results.

We are also able to connect this data to create more intelligent targeting and insights around our audience.

Our focus for our advertisers:

– Via our newly created Data Engine, working with marketers more closely on their data strategies

– Studying “shareability” trends and continuing to lead the way in social media optimisation. You can follow some of our strategies and findings at share-wars.com

– Providing more robust metrics, to help marketers to realise CPC and CPA are not the best metrics to measure all results – depending on their objectives.

Real Time Bidding & Automation

If 2011 was the year that real-time bidding emerged, 2012 will be the year when the impact is felt across the industry. Media buyers will invest heavily in their demand-side platforms and become accustomed to responding to real-time analytics. Market researchers and creative agencies will need to rise to the challenge laid down by real-time purchasing that can provide real-time ad evaluation and real-time creative recalibration. There will be an increased demand for immediate actionable insight as the time between campaign measurement and response is reduced.

In November, we launched the first premium, open exchange in Australia – the Microsoft Advertising exchange. Unlike Google’s platform (the only other exchange in Australia), this allows:

– advertisers to bid in real-time for inventory in brand safe, high quality environments

– any other premium publisher to put their inventory into the exchange

We’ll happily consult with agencies on the best way to utilise an exchange to drive their business forward. More detail on our exchange can be found here.

The late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs used to say, “a lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” Brands can’t afford to wait until tomorrow’s trends blossom. They need to be ready now. Are you?

To access more of Mi9’s free insights reports, go here.

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