Evorra 2024: Big and small, here’s what we can expect

What are some of the things that are likely to happen in data, privacy, addressability, and digital advertising technology in the coming year?

😱 CPM Recalibration Pain: eCPMs will increase, as addressable identifier coverage intensifies. Increased bid density on new ID solutions and supply issues are driving this today, however, expect a reassessment and recalibration of CPM expectations northward into 2024 for agencies and brands as something they will need to get used to. 

⛓️ Increased Use of Blockchain for Data Privacy: While limited today, blockchain technology will be increasingly employed across data and digital media use cases. We are already seeing players like @IBM @Mediaocean, @Verasity, @Brave, @Bitclave and of course @Evorra working across different advertising use cases, expect more. 

👱 Increased Adoption of First-Party Data: With the phasing out of third-party cookies, marketers will focus more on collecting first-party data directly from their customers. This will not be easily and immediately scaleable for many as they rethink their value proposition to customers / users and how to convince them to provide details and opt-in to something which up to now has been freely accessible. Also, with machine generated emails spoofing real email addresses, the first-party journey won’t be easy. Platforms like @lockr will at least help in the transition on the last point. 

💬 Contextual advertising limits: Contextual advertising will grow (unsurprisingly). This ‘no-brainer’ prediction will come up against increasing problems however including, challenges in performance and measurement; weakness in targeting more niche audiences efficiently; limited scope for retargeting; limited personalisation and dependence on content quality which won’t always be there as long-tail publishers die off …. see 👇

☠️ The death of fraudulent long-tail publishers: @fouanalytics does a good job of reminding us how bad the long-tail of publishers is because of fraud, and how the ad ecosystem today keeps that alive largely due to the reliance of 3rd party cookies. The fraudsters won’t go down with a fight, but, there will be significant rationalisation. This will, of course, have knock on effects (see CPM recalibration above) 

🤖 Increasing application of AI into day-to-day digital advertising use cases: @martech 2023 analysis of ad and martech companies showed that the rapid increase of entrants in 2023 was driven by AI based platforms. This won’t stop. Don’t expect the AI dust to settle in 2024 but do expect some valuable, replicable and accessible use cases to start flourishing, including, increased use of AI in privacy-compliant audience creation @Evorra, fraud detection @Moat, programmatic optimisation @TheTradeDesk, and content creation / personalisation @Synthesia, @Copy.ai @Celtra.

🔒 Clean Room reckoning: Privacy-enhancing platforms like Clean-Rooms will have a tough 2024. Competition, increasingly sophisticated ‘built-in’ and cost efficient capabilities from the likes of @AWS, and still a faltering ability to prove out day-to-day cost/benefit use cases for digital media activation will hamper efforts. One likely response, the decrease of set-up and ongoing costs to run Clean Room instances from some of the bigger players, and dare we predict, consolidation?

🌏 Increasing focus on sustainable and ethical data use: Growing consumer awareness, regulatory pressures, CSR and ESG corporate initiatives, investor expectations and new platforms like @goodloop @ecosia, will drive a more dedicated use and expectation of using technologies and approaches in ad and martech which are both good for people and good for the environment. 

✅ Opt-in / Opt-out simplification: From requirements to equally promote ‘Reject All’ to consent language so easy a 12 year old can understand, expect the barrage of opt-in / opt-out mechanisms to not necessarily decrease, but, become at least a tad more palatable. 

🆔 Consolidation of Identity Solutions: while hardly out of the gate, we expect to see the consolidation or, or at least the close partnering of, the new Universal Identity solutions. Scale and scope limitations and the ramp to scale for a myriad of Universal ID options won’t be quick enough for advertisers and brands to have faith in using them across all campaigns. Consolidation will start to emerge across providers.