• by Melynda Fuller , December 26, 2018

Publishers Daily asked a few leaders across digital media and technology to share with their 2019 predictions, ranging from data privacy to 5G to AI. Here’s what they had to say.

Adam Singolda, founder and CEO, Taboola:

The emergence of 5G will be key to helping brands establish meaningful, personalized connections with mobile consumers and improving overall user experiences in ways we can’t even fully perceive. Brands will be more creative and innovative with their storytelling, including AR and VR, to engage users throughout the entire consumer journey. They will take advantage of the fast speed to create two-way connectivity between the user and the brand.

This will enable the consumer to revisit a brand message from a different angle, all while using a faster infrastructure. There is a major opportunity for 5G infrastructure to drive more positive consumer attitudes toward advertising, as well.

Similarly to how the switch from 3G to 4G prompted more video consumption on-the-go, the shift to 5G will also help publishers increase traffic to their mobile sites. As we’ve seen from projects like AMP, fast is good. Ad load times will decrease, and people will stay on their phones browsing publishers’ sites for longer during their ‘moments of next’ when they’re looking to engage with new information.

Patrick Hogan, Director of Legal Affairs, Digital Remedy:

Get ahead of the looming U.S. data privacy reforms by thinking forward to what the new laws will emphasize. Many have suggested, and I agree, that U.S. laws will most likely mirror many of the principles of GDPR. So it would be prudent to prepare for things such as consent requirement, data accessibility, and the right to be forgotten.

With an aggressive increase in spending in the U.S. throughout the holidays, it will be a huge opportunity for marketers to get ahead of the looming U.S. data privacy reforms. There will be so much information to gather, both in terms of user data, and the way in which we collect, store and move that data. Going through this process in rough draft now will give significant lead time to develop a streamlined process for when the laws go into effect. (Which is likely to be 2020.) 

Guillaume Clement, Chief Product Officer and Chief Technology Office, Dailymotion: 

Every industry needs to be extremely careful about how they use AI. Let’s not pretend AI is going to solve all of our problems without any supervision. We need to have supervision, so we don’t have a bias. We have to be very careful when we let the machine make 100% of the decision. It also depends on the critique of the algorithm and what we’re trying to do.

That’s the next thing for the industry: Let’s be careful about the bias AI introduces.