Dmexco 2017 is just around the corner, which means digital marketers, publishers, and ad tech professionals are gearing up to attend, learn, and foster business relationships at the premier European digital advertising conference. This year’s conference is the biggest yet and will feature 1,013 exhibitors, 50,700 visitors, and over 570 industry thought leaders speaking during 250+ program hours.
If you’ve attended in the past, you know that if there’s one place you can take in the pulse of the digital advertising industry, it’s Dmexco.
Wondering what to expect this year? Here are 5 industry trends that will be taking center stage this year:
1. Cognitive Computing
This trend is being led by IBM and is one of the hottest buzzwords in marketing. Cognitive computing technologies are still in the early stages and are being designed to mimic the human brain. The goal of these technologies is to accomplish three major feats in marketing:
- Communicate better with consumers. Think Alexa, Watson, or Siri.
- Mine data to learn about consumers and better understand consumer intent. Today, there is almost unlimited unstructured consumer data from communication channels like SMS, videos, and social media posts. Marketers simply don’t have the time, energy, or human capacity to comb through all the available data and determine actionable insights.
- Automate repetitive marketing tasks and complex workflows.
- The driving force behind cognitive computing is the desire to improve customer experiences. Marketers want every customer interaction to be personalized and valuable.
2. The Combination of Artificial Intelligence and Native Advertising
Native advertising, once seen as a holy grail solution to declining ad revenues, is hitting a wall.
Quality branded content is expensive to create, distribute, and scale. As a result, advertisers are less and less willing to pay for it, and producing it can cut deeply into publishers’ profit margins.
To solve the problem, publishers like the Washington Post, are building content recommendation tools that allow brands to produce their own content, but that can ensure high viewability and engagement rates.
The Post recently introduced its new content recommendation tool called “Own.”
The tool uses artificial intelligence to serve content ads based on users’ previous reading and viewing behaviors. A bot will present messages to readers that include a personalized welcome message along with a highly personalized content recommendation.
At Dmexco, we can expect a lot of talk about native advertising and how it will need to evolve in order to meet the demands and needs of advertisers and publishers.
3. The Data-Driven Talent Shortage
Data-driven marketing has been a theme the last few Dmexcos, but the trend is only heating up.
Data technologies are exploding and there are more and more ways companies can use data to improve their businesses.
Yet, a major industry issue surrounding data remains: There isn’t enough talent out there to effectively harness the power of data. Data is meaningless if you don’t have the talent to analyze and apply it.
Put simply, there aren’t enough data scientists, data engineers, and data-driven decision-makers out there to meet the demands of today’s data-first business environment.
Data technologies are complex and constantly changing, which means data teams have to be made up of individuals with more than just experience. They need to be adaptable and willing to acquire new skills on a constant basis. Data is critical, but even more important is the talent behind the data.
4. Ad Security
Recent ransomware cyberattacks like WannaCry and Peyta have only reinforced the threat cyber criminals pose to not only governments and large corporations, but to publishers, advertisers, and ad tech companies as well.
Although large-scale malvertising attacks hassled publishers and ad companies as early as 2015, these two most recent attacks have brought the ransomware threat to a whole new level.
WannaCry infected over 200,000 computers in 150 countries, demonstrating the tremendous harm fast-moving attacks can inflict.
Even scarier, unlike many past cyberattacks, WannaCry and Peyta were not initiated to demonstrate network vulnerabilities, they were spawned purely for financial gain.
The industry is desperately searching for technologies that can prevent future attacks and protect both brands and consumers.
GeoEdge will be exhibiting at Dmexco, showing some of the most cutting-edge ad verification and malvertising protection technology out there. Schedule a meeting if you are interested to learn more about our technology.
5. The Evolution of Live Video
Live video’s explosion has resulted in an increasingly cluttered environment, with more and more platforms jumping on the live video bandwagon. The result has been an evolution in the technologies and behaviors surrounding the trend. Here’s how live video is evolving:
For one, live video monetization is growing in Europe.
According to a report from FreeWheel, 4% of ad views occurred within live-stream video content, which is an increase of 11% from the previous year.
Second, streaming services are beginning to utilize subscriptions as their primary monetization strategy.
Research from Morning Consult pointed out that young people in the United States are becoming more and more likely to pay for one to two streaming services.
Finally, short-form live news video content has begun to differentiate itself within the live streaming space. According to a recent Digital News Report from Reuters, short-form news videos are now the most popular live-streaming format in the industry.
Dmexco 2017
At Dmexco 2017, expect a lot of talk about live video, how the format can be monetized, and how it’s expected to evolve moving forward.
Meet Up with GeoEdge at Dmexco 2017
GeoEdge will be among the 1,000 exhibitors from around the world at Dmexco 2017.
Learn how you can guard your ad inventory against non-compliance, malware, inappropriate content, data leakage, operational, and performance issues.Schedule a meeting now!
You can also find us at the show in hall 6, Booth E011! See you soon!
