IoT Dominates Emerging Tech Among Ad Execs, Clients More Bullish Than Agencies

by Joe Mandese @mp_joemandese, November 7, 2016

Emerging and potentially disruptive technologies such as VR, AI, IoT and “conversational marketing” are considered important by the majority of advertisers and agency executives, according to results of a survey conducted for MediaPost.

The survey, conducted online by Advertiser Perceptions Inc. in October with ad executives, found that the Internet of Things (IoT) was deemed most important of four technologies queried, especially among brand marketers.

Seventy-four percent of respondents said IoT was at least somewhat important, while 24% said it was very important. Only 6% said it was not important.

Among marketers, the relevance of IoT is even higher, ostensibly because IoT has implications for their enterprises that go well beyond conventional advertising and marketing.

Seventy-nine percent of marketers deem IoT very or somewhat important, compared to 72% of agency executives.

Conversational marketing and AI tied as the second most important technologies, although they are actually interrelated, because artificial intelligence is helping to transform the “conversations” marketers have with consumers through things like chat-bots and messaging apps that are the core of the emerging marketing technology practice.

Both conversational marketing and AI were deemed very or somewhat important by 64% of all respondents. The biggest difference among marketer and agency execs was the percentage citing these technologies as “very important.” Overall, agency executives consider both technologies more important than their clients by several percentage points.

While virtual reality, augmented and mixed reality applications generated the lowest level of importance, the category still was cited by a majority -- 62% -- of all respondents. Overall, agency executives deem such applications more important than their client counterparts.

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