Dive Brief:
- In a new report made available to Marketing Dive, Forrester reveals its predictions for B2C marketing for next year with the highlight being the importance of quality over quantity in advertising.
- Customer insight drives ad quality because it leads to better targeting, deeper personalization, and better measurement, per Forrester.
- Another possible driver of ad quality will be the convergence of ad tech and martech, with Forrester predicting M&A activity in the sector will triple next year.
Dive Insight:
Marketers shifting their focus to quality over quantity would be a significant change, if it happens. The quantity approach is deeply entrenched but marketers are facing a wake-up call in the form of the growing use of ad blocking.
Forrester's vision of what it is calling "post-digital" marketing includes the emergence of new ad standards, such as the IAB’s LEAN standard; publishers raising the cost per ad and justifying the move on higher ad quality; ad pricing becoming attention-based rather than reach-based; and proliferating bargains for content-in-exchange-for-ads.
Data and how marketers leverage it is also likely to change going forward. Forrester notes that the European Privacy Regulations going into effect May 2018 will force data governance. One prediction marketers are likely hoping will come true is that social media platforms will begin sharing more data to facilitate being able to better track ROI for social campaigns. Forrester also sees data-centric marketing agencies thriving while predicting the “demise” of the media planner as some tasks are turned over to automated solutions likely driven by artificial intelligence.
