This year's list of top advertising trends is mostly about the
shifting ways that consumers experience content and how publishers hope
to harness those experiences. Some see it as a chance to reboot the
digital advertising model. Others view it as a future in which
publishers compete for lower and lower stakes as advertising migrates to
(so far) cheaper mobile formats.
1. Native Advertising
The term "native advertising" was allegedly first introduced by
venture capitalist Fred Wilson at OMMA Global in September 2011, but it
really picked up steam towards the end of the year. While there's some disagreement
about what native advertising actually is, it is perhaps best summed up
by the idea that advertising within a context -- whether it's an app or
a content site -- should be pretty much indistinguishable to consumers.
Thus, Sponsored Stories, Sponsored Tweets and content like "
20 Places That You've Probably Never Heard of But Should Totally Visit" on
BuzzFeed,
which is sponsored by Samsung's Galaxy Camera. The idea seems to be
that traditional banner ads won't work on mobile. With smaller screens
(especially on phones), your ad has to work harder to catch the reader's
attention.
2. Action-Based Advertising
A sibling to Native Advertising, action-based advertising is based on
the idea that the consumer has to do something to initiate an ad. Once
again, the trend is driven by smaller screens and the more consumer-ish
relationship people have with their mobile devices compared to desktops.
For instance, you won't see a Sponsored Story unless one of your
Facebook friends recently interacted with a brand. Other ads can be
initiated by sharing a piece of content.
Appssavvy,
one of the leaders in the space with more than 100 million users on its
adtivity platform, claims that such ads get 10 times the click-throughs
of traditional banner ads.
3. Location-Based Marketing Cools Off
Back in late 2010 and early 2011, it seemed like marketers were
falling over themselves to launch deals with Foursquare. In 2012,
though, fewer advertisers were beckoning customers to "check in on
Foursquare." Though Foursquare appears to have waited too long to roll
out advertiser-friendly programs, the novelty also seems to have worn
off. Yet, as Aaron Strout, head of location-based marketing for the W20
Group, notes, location-based marketing hasn't gone away. It has just
been subsumed by, among others, Apple's iOS 6. Or, as Strout says, "It's
become part of the electricity." For instance, when you go to
Google.com on the browser of your smartphone, you'll see five icons:
restaurants, coffee, bars, fast food and nearby. That's a nice utility,
but there's no gamification layer like Foursquare has. Similarly,
Apple's Passbook, which is hard-coded into iOS6, is useful, but not much
fun.
4. Daily Deals Cool Off
Foursquare is a stand-in for location-based marketing in the same way
that Groupon is shorthand for the daily deals category. After the
frenzy of 2011, including that long-awaited IPO, Groupon's 2012 was a
bad hangover. (LivingSocial, Groupon's big rival in the segment, doesn't seem to be faring much better.) Again, the novelty has worn off. But vendors have also questioned the long-term value of the deals.
5. Internet Blackouts
What do you do when your competitors are asking consumers to tweet,
share, like and +1 everything in sight? One solution is to go in the
opposite direction and ask them to get off social media and the
Internet. That's how Diesel marketed its 1993 YUK shoe, which it exhumed
this year. The campaign asked users to quit Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for two days or just quit Facebook for three days to try to win the shoe.
Other far-flung examples
include McDonald's, which promoted Sept. 28 as a "day offline" in Dubai
and Telia, a Swedish telecom that created a brand app that disables the
Internet for periods. Other pushback includes a campaign from Brut that tried to convince guys to quit Facebook because it's "unmanly" and an app from Newcastle Brown Ale that exposes your lame motivations for posting photos on social media.