Deepit Purkayastha
Guest Article

The Tech Interplay in Advertising Industry

Advertisers and marketers are revisiting their strategies with the help of disruptive technologies like AI and AR to woo GenZ.

Traditional advertisements do not appeal to the millennials and GenZ anymore. While they may pick newspapers or watch television, they seem to be doing fine without them. They are the ‘instant generation’ - instant information, instant communication, and above all, instant gratification. For advertisers, this behaviour is both a challenge and an opportunity. Imagine a mall which has a huge sale planned. Instead of combing through the mall, the young population will appreciate notifications via mobile from their favourite brand with sale offers especially designed for them basis their past shopping behaviour. Geo target led advertising is a reality today and is one of the major shifts which the advertising industry has observed, thanks to technology!

The Tech Interplay in Advertising Industry

Deepit Purkayastha

A recent report by Ericsson highlights that Indians consume maximum data as compared to the rest of the world at an average of 9.8GB per month. This is expected to reach 18 GB per month by 2024, fuelled by rich content. For a young nation like ours where 65 per cent of the population is below the age of 35, marketers today have become more precise and personalised in their approach while targeting, understanding and engaging with their audiences through the vehicle of the internet.

To keep up with the sea change in the advertising ecosystem, brands are now getting more creative by making advertising content less “ad-like”. And it has become imperative for advertisers and marketers to revisit their advertising strategies. At the centre of this, undoubtedly, is technology. Many technologies have proved to be of help to the advertising industry. One of the most important of them all is Artificial Intelligence (AI).

AI algorithms are helping in analysing the behavioural pattern of single users and drawing insights. Brands are now using this technology for target market segmentation- to target the right customers at the right moment with the right message. AI’s predictive algorithms help in doing action based bidding. For instance: Now an e-commerce brand can bid for customers who are likely to purchase a smartphone in the next one month. With more data to power these algorithms, the accuracy of such campaigns would improve with time and further reduce the cost of marketing.

For a marketer to monetise a mobile marketing campaign, choosing the right kind of ad format is important. Digital technologies have given birth to new ad formats, which are namely - interactive ads, expandable ads, vertical video ads, and native ads. While these formats serve different needs of brands and campaigns, Native advertising is one of the most preferred and used formats. Native advertising is basically when the ad merges exactly as if it's a part of the editorial platform itself, giving the ad a more authentic feeling because it just doesn't look like an ad anymore.

Speaking of engaging advertising formats, the use of another technology, Augmented Reality (AR), has helped brands and marketers find a way to reach out to the audience in a totally new, never seen before interactive manner. For instance, AR has brought a video game-like format for consumers, making ads more thrilling and helping brands make an emotional connect with customers whilst creating brand awareness at the same time.

Location data is already influencing advertising in a big way, more advertisers will look at launching campaigns specifically based on location data. Mobile devices will spur location-based advertising further and will help predict trends as well. For instance, a user entering a Nike showroom, would get live notifications from e-commerce companies offering discounts on Nike products.

Blockchain, on the other hand, serves the other side of the coin: making advertising more secure, it is an advanced technology which enterprises have identified as an important tech for digital times. Digital advertising industry which accounts for a significant part of the ad industry, is plagued by fraud which is estimated to account for $19 billion as per a 2018 report. Challenges in the form of non-transparency and traceability are the glaring gaps which lead to significant losses due to the rise of ‘bot traffic’. With Blockchain technology, monitoring and ensuring the records are reliable and accurate will become easier.

Looking at the list of technologies, it is clear that these will pave the way for the next shift in the ad tech space which will be chaotic. But at the same time, such technologies will be cheaper than traditional print/TV advertisements and more effective in their reach, and will generate more ROI for marketers. These tech changes will also help the most creative reach unsurpassed heights and the future can actually be exciting for those who are really good at what they do.

The author of this article Deepit Purkayastha is CSO & co-founder of Inshorts

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