Commentary

Is There Life After The Smartphone?

GroupM is out with a new treatise on some of the forces that will shape the media-marketing landscape over the next few years that’s probably worth your attention.

It’s written by Rob Norman, the former GroupM North America CEO (and current consultant to the company) and Brian Wieser, who joined the firm as president, business intelligence in February.

The paper covers a lot of ground, including developments in the areas of bandwidth, the increasing “intelligence” of machines, brand safety, privacy and identity and “the possibility of life after the most successful consumer product in history — the smartphone."

There is commentary on the rise of direct-to-consumer brands, which the authors assert “are now a threat to the profitability of legacy brand owners.”  

The role of data in marketing is also addressed, and the authors note that that role will continue to change.

“And for advertisers first-party data will be of the greatest value for understanding customers. They will use it to create audiences that will be found inside the walled gardens of the platforms [Google, Facebook et. al.] and that match with the context of publishers and the data they have on user behavior."

More generally in advertising, the “interruptive model will persist, but delivery will be increasingly programmatic and addressable. Decision making will be both automated and autonomous. Over time, the pursuit of mass reach via broadcast means will give way to in-target reach assembled one person, one household or one device at a time.”

That would explain the big bets all the holding companies are making in the sphere of people-based marketing, right?

Wieser and Norman conclude: “Coupled with enough creativity and variation in messaging to address the varying needs and wants of the many customer cohorts of each and every brand, advertising has the opportunity to maximize efficiency, effectiveness and relevance. In other words, advertising will become more valuable.”

In this holiest of weeks, I can hear Adland saying: “Amen, brother, your mouth to God’s ears.”

Anyway, you can download the paper for free here, so long as you’re willing to fork over a modest amount of info about yourself, like what industry you’re in, the name of your company and what department you’re in. Seems like a fair trade to me.

 

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