The overall advertising environment in 2009 was fairly gloomy with slashed budgets and revised strategies to address the new reality. However, that didn’t stop the industry from evolving, and the lessons learned will likely pay-off in the year ahead. For example, advertisers started to look at the need for accountability metrics beyond the simple “click-through” and on to campaign-specific performance. They also started to embrace burgeoning social networks and consumer generated media to bring consumers closer to a product or brand.
Top Advertising Trends for 2010
- Optimizing media convergence is a top priority. A better understanding of media convergence will manifest in order to deliver a better return on investment. The ability to accurately measure activity and link online ads to offline purchasing behavior will be critical.
- New models emerge to take advantage of smartphones. Accurate mobile measurement will be required to stay head of the snowballing growth of that media platform.
- More cross-media ad campaigns surface. The massive growth of online video games played and shared online leads the way for more successful interactive and cross-media advertising campaigns to appear. Growth in the adoption of this innovative advertising across screens and activities will increase.
- Commercialization of social networking hubs increase. Social media will provide a new sales channel for establishing product awareness and commercializing brands to better support traditional advertising or text-based ads.
- More interesting and interactive online ads appear. Increased use of more creative advertising and content models online such as video, attention-seeking page takeover ads and mechanisms for greater interactivity will drive the next era of Web development.
2010 U.S. Outlook
