The Future of Advertising: How Technology Influenced A New Age
Reflections of a Strategist at Crossmedia
This summer, I had the pleasure of joining Crossmedia (XM), an incredibly innovative international media company, as a Strategy Intern. XM is known for being one of the first companies in advertising to embrace data-driven intelligence. Therefore, it’s no surprise they’re continuing to lead the development of new marketing strategies in an effort to better understand diverse audiences in a digital age.
I came into the internship with some marketing experience after my time at Thinknum, a data analytics startup. There, I helped design a variety of new use cases for their no-code, knowledge graph tool, and wrote specially curated content such as blog posts. This gave me considerable insight into how individual companies ameliorate their own, often highly specific, marketing challenges.
Furthermore, I learned a lot about reading audiences and understanding their needs because the Thinknum team spent a lot of time #buildinginpublic and for the public; for instance, I was tasked with enhancing KgBase’s public project offerings regarding NYC institutions, 2020 PPP loan data, and helped launch a free resource with 4,000+ job postings for workers laid off in pandemic. This experience was both meaningful and edifying because I got to work in an environment where I helped disseminate important data to the wider public.
Over time, I realized that advertising is indeed an information science and I wanted to understand how technology is shaping its capabilities. After all, in the past, we experienced the height of marketing channels like:
- Radio
- TV
Then, we entered an era with rapid adoption of digitalized ads, whether via Google Search or YouTube.
This next age is going to be guided by ever increasing personalization rooted in insights from new data sources, as well as user generated content — consumers will turn into storytellers.
I got to investigate exactly that phenomenon over my two months with the XM team. In my first project, I focused on applying behavioral economic principles to conduct statistical analyses of often convoluted data. This materialized in researching how companies can use certification and awards to build trust and capture new consumers, especially in the current economic downturn.
I also dove deep into macroeconomic trends, building a handbook for our financial services and consumer packaged goods clients to analyze key economic indicators in governmental reports and help build recession-proof advertising campaigns. This turned out not only to be a numbers game — I really had to think about the relationships we wanted to build with clients (and who built them) and how to align our values in times of difficult markets.
Using my own experience in the rapidly growing Web3 industry, as well as my understanding of Gen Z, I was able to strengthen the company’s ability to navigate changing socio-economic structures and offer five distinct theses on the future of advertising. This included:
- breaking down how natural language generation will revolutionize chatbots
- exploring experiences in AR and VR as a novel content delivery method
- diving into the Internet of Things as a new data source. As governments back people’s increasing requests for the right to data privacy and security, advertisers have to get creative about how to find out more about their audiences — they turn to smart location devices. Think about companies like Tile or even Amazon’s acquisition of iRobot which was a data, more-so than competitor, acquisition. I’m not comfortable with the fine line such companies walk with the type of data they collect, but it’s important to observe.
- proposing a very plausible hypothesis of TikTok outpacing Google’s SEO, which has already been happening for Gen Z. TikTok’s strength lies in generating interest graphs mapping your, you guessed it, interests and personalizing future results based upon the content you interact with. This is a step up from Facebooks’ social graphs which recommend products based on what your social circles like.
- and most importantly, encouraging companies to withstand content shock or the idea that you can’t compete with endless amounts of products and campaigns already out in the world. Companies can overcome this by embracing user generated content as the passion and creator economies turn consumers into thought leaders. This is especially relevant with regard to fin-fluencers being sponsored to teach Gen Z about complicated topics like cryptocurrencies and exchange traded funds. Technology has enabled them to use financial products and services, efficiently develop, record, and simply edit their reactions, and publish them directly to potential new clients. There’s no need for a production studio — just use your phone!
As I researched these trends, I held firm to my conviction in data privacy and responsible data usage, helping to ensure that the company would fulfill its role as a truly independent media company.
In future roles, I am excited to continue observing how technology has enabled the concepts of “social” and “community” to permeate nearly every industry, including finance. I also know that no matter what position I hold in the future, I will always be in touch with the company’s advertising team, as they hold a special place between our product teams and our customers.
Thank you to Anne Bologna, a bold media industry leader, for the opportunity to learn from you and take part in projects with real-world impact.
If you want to learn more about the future of advertising, check out:
- Li Jin on the Enterprization of the Consumer
- Jason Levine on Monetizing Your Dopamine Addiction
- WeForum on How the Passion Economy is Shaping the Future of Work
- Mark Schaefer on Content Shock
- Jamie Bartlett’s A Vision of the Dark Future of Advertising
- Ron Knox on the iRobot acquisition by Amazon
- Rex Woodbury’s Digital Native newsletter.
Tweet your takeaways at @UrszulaSolarz!
