• by Cory Treffiletti , Featured Contributor, August 10, 2016

We need some new memes, some new topics of interest for the industry to grab hold of and beat into the ground on panel after panel, at industry conferences and in columns like this one.  

The last few years were fun, filled with topics like “Is this finally the year of mobile?” “The state of programmatic,” “Marketing to millennials,” and one of my personal favorites: “The demise of the ad agency model.”

I think it’s about time we realized these topics are outdated and no longer of interest, because there’s nothing new to be said about them.   Mobile arrived a couple of years ago.  Programmatic is here to stay.  Millennials are regular people.  The ad agency model may be changing, but agencies aren’t going anywhere.

What are the topics of interest in today’s global marketing economy?  What are marketers talking about behind closed doors that can be discussed publicly to come to a common understanding that will drive the business forward?  

Marketers don’t need to be told that data is important -- those are table stakes.  What’s interesting is how data signals can identified as important and marketers can weed out the noise faster, enabling their tools to improve quicker and have a more dramatic impact on cross-channel campaigns.  Of special importance is how data can be gathered to create targeting across offline channels like TV and OOH, and measure exposure and performance across these channels as well.  The unification of the entire marketing landscape is important to me. What about you?

Marketers don’t need to be told that TV is an important channel, but they might need to be reminded it will be even more important as we progress forward.   Currently the addressable TV market is minuscule.  I’ve heard only 5 million to 8 million U.S. households are enabled for the delivery of addressable TV advertising in the form of commercials targeted to the household, but this number is inevitably going to increase.  

Having an addressable platform on the receiving end enables a better ad experience and ties together TV with other channels, creating a massively more efficient campaign.  Being able to manage that inventory through programmatic platforms for the spot market would bring added value to TV -- along with more interest from progressive marketers looking to create accountability.

Marketers don’t need to be told that mobile is an important channel for them, but they should start to think about the ways a mobile device itself can become a better proxy for understanding ad exposure across multiple channels -- and even as a beacon for ID methodology across existing channels.  Mobile devices can deliver an ID on home WiFi that could theoretically provide insight into who is engaging with TV and other platforms in the home.  Mobile devices can provide proximity information to OOH advertising.

Theoretically, marketers could use this to understand what messages consumers were exposed to and how long they were exposed during the course of the day.  This information can be matched together with more directly accountable signals to provide a unified view of a consumer’s media engagement path.  This effectively unifies our view of media throughout the day, providing marketers with valuable insights.

Marketers don’t need to be told the same old thing. They are used to learning new tricks every day, and with the rapid pace of technology adoption,  they are constantly looking for new topics to discuss.

What are the other topics that marketers need to be talking about?  What are the topics we should be covering in conferences, as we get away from standard programming and move toward more-progressive topics?