Advertising 2020: What forces shape the future of advertising? What could advertising look like?What will it take to get there?

Rubinson Partners, Inc. Submission to the “Wharton Future of Advertising” program

Joel Rubinson, Presidentjoel@rubinsonpartners.com Blog.joelrubinson.netTwitter: @joelrubinson Also on LinkedIn and Slideshare

Ideas herein are property of Rubinson Partners and cannot be used without permission. joel@rubinsonpartners.com

“The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed.” William Gibson, Science

Fiction writer and futurist

Let’s look at forces already emerging that are shaping the future of advertising…

All media and advertising, including TV, are becoming digital, interactive, social and connected across devices

TV remains the primary media behavior

People’s TV viewing is stable, averaging over five hours per day, more than twice the time spent on any other media behavior

No other medium matches (or will match) TV for reach and achieving marketing scale

However, the nature of the experience is changing, becoming social and interactive (via second screen behavior)

For this reason, TV is the next battleground for the technology leaders, Google, Apple, Microsoft. I expect Facebook to enter this battleground in a social way.

Paid advertising is not dying…it is growing…and eventually gets into all media

Brands are building their own audiences...making them always accessible

Starbucks benefits from over 100 MM monthly “touches” per month from Facebook, Twitter, website visits, app use, and searches

Apps bring messages right to point of purchase

Creates customer marketing possibilities

Smart phones account for more than half of mobile phones

Tablet ownership is exploding, mostly cannibalizing laptop use

Time spent accessing the internet via mobile devices will surpass computers

We take our smart phones to bed, to the TV room, and to the store while we shop

We are starting to pay for things using our phone, often from within branded apps like Starbucks. Brand communication and transactions converging…

Smart phones literally and figuratively are with us across the full path to purchase

Mobile life is the coming sea change, bringing together consumer and shopper marketing

Coupons and free sample offers spread like wildfire via mommy bloggers and Twitter

Commercials can get tens of millions of views on Youtube

Brands can be praised or pounded in social media and you need to be increasingly part of the conversation.

Ideas can be shared socially, and spread like wildfire

In the mad men era, there were only small lifts to be gained by finetuning demo-based ad placement. The TV creative that caught lightening in a bottle was the thing.

The majority of digital advertising placement will be affected by behavioral data and predictive modeling algorithms, much of it as part of search and real time bidding systems

Advertising has become a naturally occurring experiment that can be optimized in near real time

Profiles are being connected across online, mobile, and offline behaviors via connectors like Facebook log-in or program sign-up (like Starbucks).

Facebook is now connected to frequent shopper data for improved targeting and ROI assessment capabilities

The lift in advertising ROI from Math men is significant and repeatable

The mix of art and science is shifting in advertising

Retail is becoming digitalized

Shoppers are bringing their smartphones to retail, showrooming (buying online while standing in a store) and reverse showrooming (doing all research online but buying in-store)

Stores will all have Wi-Fi (gated by shopper log-in).

Mobile devices and wearable Wi-Fi like Google Glasses will have shopping capabilities that become a portal to purchase across all three types of retail environments, online, offline and virtual.

Advertising will connect to such shopping apps.

Virtual store in Australia: scan virtual images of products you want to buy, pay with mobile phone, order is delivered or assembled for pickup

What could Advertising look like in 2020?...what will be different?

The Transformation of marketing

meaningAdvertising builds awareness, and meaning which hopefully translates into purchase intention and shopper action

Traditional Marketing (past)

meaning connection

Digital and Social Marketing (current)Users can now share ideas, “join” with brands they feel a connection to (e.g. by liking the brand on Facebook), giving marketers a 2-way communication and marketing channel

meaning connectionShopperimpact

Path to Purchase Marketing (future)

People will be able to do things with advertising…act on curiosity, connect with the brand, bring offers to point of purchase via apps.

Connecting advertising in 2020 to path to purchase

1. Shopping will become fully digitized, be it online, offline or virtual. Mobile devices will have shopping capabilities that become a portal to purchase across all three types of retail environments. Advertising will connect to such shopping apps.

2. Advertising will be primarily placed based on modeling of behavior rather than demographics, and integrated with path to purchase activities.

Facebook advertising can now be targeted using frequent shopper data Some TV households viewing behavior are now integrated with frequent shopper data Mobile device shopping apps and digital wallets are emerging

3. Marketers will build their own brand audiences by being social and offering compelling content at their fully mobile-optimized owned media. Marketers will extend their connections into the shopping process via apps. Get users to sign up so you can practice 1-1 marketing and for creating single source connections across devices and from online to offline.

4. The creative challenge is changing. All advertising will have interactive and social aspects, and be fully mobile optimized so messages and offers can be brought to the point of purchase. For example, you will be able to capture a TV commercial via your mobile app and see friends who like the product.

5. Make ideas, content, and offers sharable and find the influencers. For example, the spread of free sample offers by P&G via Twitter and mommy bloggers is amazing.

6. Create visual, touch, and voice marketing. We touch, pinch, pause, and speak to our smartphones. Could we do the same with advertising and packaging?

7. Advertising and insights activities will merge via common data streams into a commitment to real time campaign management.

How can marketers prepare for advertising in 2020

1. Understand path to purchase. Create a synthesized view of the consumer and the shopper and understand how people make purchase decisions and what the influencers are along the way.

2. Create digital (including social, mobile) centers of excellence within your organization with strong technical knowledge. This is too important to abdicate to suppliers and agencies.

3. Master mobile. Understand the ability of mobile to impact the full path to purchase and crack the code of how to connect clickstream data across smart phones, tablets, and computers.

4. Commit to real time campaign management. Build a digital data, analytics, and ad serving rules infrastructure that supports this.

5. Redefine brand tracking, using the same digital and social data streams for insights that you use for advertising targeting so that your insights are immediately actionable and to reflect a picture of what brand success looks like in a digital, social, and mobile age.

6. Understand customer relationship marketing. Marketers who previously only had anonymous relationships with consumers can now create connections via social and owned media that leverage 1-1 marketing.

7. Get to know the influencers. In every vertical, there are certain bloggers who are very influential and needed for ideas to spread socially.

8. Creating ROI assessment tools that capture paid, owned, earned media interactions. Prove what works from experiments, modeling, and attribution analysis. Evidence trumps narrative.

How brand advertising might affect George Jetson’s shopping trip

George wakes up, activating smart phone controller. Start coffee pot

Logs into TV with his Facebook profile which automatically turns on viewing preferences and suggestions. Sees

personalized advertising

As commercials run, he sees friends who like each brand and recipe being

advertised.

George has opted into Google’s “ads you want”. He sees ads that are relevant to his shopping trip, searches to find out more, and gets rewards for his opt-in, as he adds them to his list. George’s shopping apps check prices and store inventory to confirm that the products are in stock.

George’s smart countertop weighs products and reminds him via a daily e-mail he is running low on Chobani so it gets added to his favorite store shopping list. Because George has the Chobani app, he gets a discount

offer. George decides to go shopping.

Having entered his favorite stores’ frequent shopper numbers, he can image any interesting product and

have it added to his shopping or wish list

While George gets gas, he sees an ad for an interesting product. He images it with his phone to add it to the list. He hears an interesting ad on the radio and tells his car, “add product”

George arrives at the store with his smartphone and Google glasses. As he parks and as he shops, suggestions and offers appear and he says “add” to some. The glasses are connected to his list and store layout helping him navigate and find products.

He sees an interesting product on the shelf, and finds out more interactively. He scans UPCs as they go into his cart by looking at them. He checks out with his mobile pay. Inventory in smart countertop is updated. His Facebook profile is updated and his friends see what he likes as they watch TV.

Ideas herein are property of Rubinson Partners and cannot be used without permission. joel@rubinsonpartners.com

About Rubinson Partners, Inc.

Started in 2010, Rubinson Partners, Inc. (RPI) is a marketing and research consultancy that has helped equip marketers, research, firms, and digital marketing companies for success in a digital age. Selected assignments:

For a large CPG marketer, evaluate measurement gaps regarding digital data and create a roadmap For Unilever, designed one of the most comprehensive shopper insights digital sensing and social media listening

platforms ever created For AOL and BBDO, consulted on “7 Shades of Mobile” to understand smart phone owners’ usage and motivations

into a new way of defining what we called “behavior markets”. Working with MSA, a leading analytics firm, created a next generation approach to marketing mix modeling that is

specifically geared towards improved estimation of digital and social media impact Conducted numerous workshops on shopper and digital For ShareThis, led one of the largest analyses of social media sharing behavior ever conducted, In partnership with InsightsNow, Inc. RPI created a next generation system for innovation For a major marketer, helping to shape a new approach to digital media measurement Conducted white paper analyses for leading suppliers

Contact info: joel@rubinsonpartners.com Blog.joelrubinson.net

Joel Rubinson is President of Rubinson Partners, Inc. marketing and research consulting for a brave new world and a member of the faculty of NYU Stern School of Business where he teaches social media strategy. Joel is the former Chief Research Officer at the ARF.