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.
You’ve heard of buying a house from Sears. Now get ready for: buying a car from Amazon. The ecom giant recently announced a deal with Hyundai for the automaker to become the first brand to make its cars available for purchase on the platform. Prime delivery is even included — buyers can choose to pick the car up at a local dealership or have it delivered to their home.
Amazon’s move is part of a larger trend in auto purchasing, as more consumers turn to online sales instead of in-person. While the majority of cars are still bought at dealerships, car buyers are increasingly interested in the ease and convenience of shopping online. This is especially true for electric vehicle purchasers — according to a survey from Cox Automotive, 87% of EV buyers are open to buying fully online, compared to 73% of traditional car buyers.
Of course, current EV buyers are already ahead of the game when it comes to auto trends. Even as governments and auto manufacturers hurtle towards an all-EV future, not all consumers are on board yet. Demand for EVs has hit a slump, leaving auto and battery makers scrambling to make up lost cash, while analysts are saying the mass move to EVs may have been premature.
The automotive world is going through a transformation that will change everything from what cars are sold to how, and it’s not a surprise that the industry is hitting a few bumps along the way. Solving the EV adoption problem will encompass a multitude of factors, from improving charging infrastructure and electric grids, to developing cost-effective options, growing the used EV market, and solving the PR problems these vehicles continue to face.
Authentic — Merriam-Webster’s 2023 word of the year and a term you might be a little sick of by now. But as AI took the world by storm this year and brought with it a flood of AI-generated content, “authentic” became the word every brand wants to hear.
While relatively every brand dipped a toe or two into the AI waters this year, some experiments were more well received than others. One of the most recent examples of this technology backfiring comes from Sports Illustrated, which was caught publishing AI-generated articles under fake author profiles. Some sleuths caught on when they found alien-like writing within their articles, and backlash was swift as readers took to social media to call out the outlet's less-than-authentic (or, straight dishonest) content practices.
You know what they say, what goes around, comes around. After a multibillion dollar fall from the industry’s heydey, print magazines are coming back in style as the hard-copy antidote to sometimes-dubious digital content.
For its 30th anniversary, gourmet food magazine SAVEUR is coming back to print. NME announced a new global print magazine earlier this year. And NYLON, the iconic fashion and entertainment magazine, will be re-launching its physical magazine bi-annually starting in 2024.
As AI continues to get more advanced, it's also increasingly difficult to decipher the origin and accuracy of the content it creates. Consumers are looking for something they can trust is authentic, whether that’s something printed they can hold in their hands, or well-written, well-researched content from a trustworthy brand.
By most economic and financial measures, we’re not technically in a recession right now. But that doesn't mean we don’t feel like we are. Continuing news of mass layoffs (like Spotify’s latest 17% cut), a difficult to navigate housing market, and a general sense of malaise about the state of the world contribute to what some are calling a vibecession (defined by Dictionary.com as “a period of widespread pessimism about the economy regardless of the actual economic situation”).
Despite it being more of a vibes-based recession than a true economic one, consumers and businesses are still operating in protective conditions. Many brands are staying conservative with cash flow, while consumers are fantasizing over simpler times and jobs that seem unaffected by the unpredictable ups and downs of the economy. A new crop of influencers is gaining traction on social media, one world’s away from the Alix Earles and MrBeasts of the world. These influencers work blue-collar jobs like lobster fishing, tree trimming, and shepherding, offering an escape for viewers away from their monotonous desk jobs and uncertain economies.
Consumers are yearning for positive news right now. Brands that offer uplifting campaigns and simple, positive messaging will offer a respite and win with consumers.
After the rush of holiday shopping slows down, retailers will be hit with another wave: post-holiday returns. A growing “reverse logistics” industry is popping up to ease the process.
At this year’s Climate Summit, hosted by the United Nations, nearly 200 countries including the U.S. signed a global pact to transition away from fossil fuels. They also agreed to stop adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere entirely by 2050.
AI isn’t always the enemy of news. Axel Springer, the owner of Business Insider and Politico, struck a first-of-its-kind deal with OpenAI to get its content featured in ChatGPT results.
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