It’s not all doom and gloom; five forecasts for creative advertising in 2023
Despite the financial storms that lay ahead, Paul Wright, General Manager, Western Europe & MENAT at AppsFlyer, believes there are reasons to be cheerful, offering five ways the industry can thrive in the year to come.
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Although the recession will be the biggest cloud hanging over creative advertising in 2023, the sky won’t be completely overcast for the industry.
Previous economic downturns have provided many lessons on how to pivot creative strategies and sustain campaign effectiveness.
Consumers will be cutting down their expenditure in 2023, presenting challenges to apps and platforms that depend on monthly user subscriptions.
Right now, advertisers must be mindful of consumers’ more cautious spending habits and consider how to make the most of their own scrutinised budgets. From precision targeting to proving creative impact, there are five tactics that will become best practice in 2023 because, as advertisers brace against the headwinds and prepare for when the economy recovers, they will:
1. Look for new opportunities on the horizon
Consumers will be cutting down their expenditure in 2023, presenting challenges to apps and platforms that depend on monthly user subscriptions. UK households, for example, reportedly cancelled more than 1 million video streaming subscriptions at the start of 2022, due to the cost of living crisis. Shortly after, Netflix backtracked on its previous statements and announced its plan to launch an ad-supported tier, which rolled out in November 2022.
Subscription-based mobile apps may also face a similar pressure as users tighten their purse strings, prompting app developers to explore in-app advertising as an alternative monetisation model.
Since both video streaming platforms and subscription-based apps are rich in content, these shifts will increase the availability of quality ad inventory. Video environments are suited to high impact ad creative, while subscription-based apps lend themselves well to contextually relevant ads. By aligning ad creative with the content users are interested in, advertisers can successfully capture audience attention and drive engagement.
Above: Netflix's announcement of an ad-supported tier follows the UK's cancellation of more that 1 million streaming subscriptions at the start of 2022.
2. Use precision as the North Star
Another trend that will emerge as consumers pull back on their spending is that advertisers will prioritise precision. Precision targeting techniques ensure the right ad creative and brand message reaches the desired audience. In the months ahead, advertisers will be ditching ‘spray and pray’ tactics in favour of laser-focused creative campaigns.
Precision targeting will become the North Star for advertisers, directing investment to the channels and platforms that perform best. Through identifying and reaching the most valuable audience segments, advertisers will be able to deliver results with every penny of their budgets.
Precision targeting will become the North Star for advertisers, directing investment to the channels and platforms that perform best.
Precision targeting will require data, however. As concerns rise around user privacy, how can advertisers be certain that they can safely access the insights needed for their creative campaigns?
3. Use data clean rooms to shelter creative advertising capabilities
Advertisers will continue coming to terms with user privacy changes in 2023 and will look to replace user-level data with aggregated data. Alongside this, adoption of privacy-preserving technologies such as data clean rooms will likely increase.
Data clean rooms are secure environments where multiple parties can match and analyse data sets without sharing personally identifiable information or raw data. Other industries are already utilising this technology, including in the healthcare and finance sectors where sharing sensitive data is a necessity, so next year could see applications emerging in the advertising space.
Data clean rooms safeguard user privacy while letting advertisers gain consumer insights, which can then inform campaign strategies and support measurement capabilities.
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Above: Advertisers will prioritise precision rather than ‘spray and pray’ tactics.
4. Need to prove an idea's impact on ROI
Many advertisers have learned that slashing budgets during rocky times weakens their market position in the long run. But, with that being said, there will be an intense need to demonstrate how creative advertising delivers against business objectives. Advertisers will therefore require accurate measurement tools that can prove ROI and rationalise their investments.
Monitoring performance also fuels ongoing optimisations that help advertisers refine their campaigns, maximise ad spend and sustain their competitive edge. For instance, measurement capabilities enable advertisers to try out new ad creatives and use A/B tests to pinpoint the best performing ones, which they can then introduce to business as usual campaigns to boost success.
5. Make owned media the home of adaptable creative
Going into 2023, more advertisers will likely focus on their owned channels, such as email marketing, social media and brand websites and apps. Advertisers will be looking to overcome the challenges of limited resources, and using owned media to reach and engage audiences is, typically, more cost-effective than paid campaigns.
By learning from the past and embracing emerging opportunities, advertisers can stay resilient and adaptable.
Advertisers also have direct control over these channels, which means it is comparatively easier to adapt creative elements and messaging to hit the mark. By establishing benchmarks and tracking performance against them, advertisers can improve their efforts with a test-and-learn mentality that continually delivers better results. Furthermore, owned channels rely on first-party data that consumers have given consensually, so they provide a privacy-centric way of staying connected with audiences.
Market challenges, changes to data privacy and stretched resources will have a strong influence on creative advertising in 2023. By learning from the past and embracing emerging opportunities, advertisers can stay resilient and adaptable, delivering optimised and relevant creative to the right audience through the right channel.
