What's Next, Now: December 2023
This month, our crystal ball predicts an upended advertising market, changes in auto buying, the resurgence of print media, and more.
Advertisers are abandoning social media in search of new avenues to reach customers. Bumble and Match are suspending ads from Instagram after a WSJ investigation found they appeared beside explicit content, some featuring children. Advertisers have also been leaving X in droves after recent anti-semetic comments made by X CEO Elon Musk. Despite the potential $75 million loss in advertising revenue, Musk doesn’t seem to care, telling advertisers to “Go F– themselves” at the same time as apologizing for his offensive post.
Advertisers are now looking for alternative avenues to reach consumer eyeballs, and these days, everything is an ad network.
United Airlines is considering expanding its ad business by leveraging passenger information to help brands serve targeted ads to its customers, while Walmart just introduced a romcom(merce), an entirely shoppable movie. Streaming services including Netflix and Disney + have launched ad-supported tiers, opening the opportunity for advertisers to be seen in consumers' homes. Out-of-home screens are becoming advertisements, too. Best Buy and Walmart are letting advertisers buy ads on their TVs in stores and on the screens in self-checkout lanes, and advertisers can now place ads on gas station screens.
Unfortunately, brands are caught between a Musk and a hard place. What once was a quick and easy place to engage consumers in real time now carries significant brand risk. Between a lack of safe places to advertise on social media and the rise of ad blockers, the advertising industry is on its toes. As MasterCard’s CMO recently said, “The way we know advertising today is dead.” But that doesn’t mean the end of advertising — it’s just evolving. As advertisers look to new avenues, having a deep understanding of where your key audiences are engaging will be essential to effectively reach them.