A phone showing scary good media trends to consider in 2023.

Have you been haunted by tried-and-failed past media trends? A vast number of paid media trends have emerged over the past couple of years. We’ve taken a look at the most wicked, engaging, and impactful media trends to enhance your marketing goals and objectives going into 2023.

Video Advertising

Video ad types are becoming more and more popular: audiences find video a quicker, easier, and more spellbinding way to consume content as opposed to reading lengthy articles or native content. Video content provides consumers with more information in less time. If your goal is to increase your company’s awareness and reach, video can make that happen. Research has shown that video advertising can improve conversion rates by 86%. There's also a benefit to brands — video ads present advertisers more opportunities for data collection, brand exposure, enhanced targeting, and personalization.

There are many different video ad types that can elevate your brand. Video ads have grown rapidly on the YouTube platform with new format options. Skippable, non-skippable, and in-feed ads are already widely known, but with the introduction of 6-second bumper, mobile outstream, or masthead ad formats, the possibilities are endless. With more ad types and sizes, YouTube ads are able to serve on more websites and apps than ever before for more available audience reach.

CTV (Connected TV)

CTV (connected TV) advertising helps brands in a variety of industries reach audiences where they're already consuming content: through TV streaming services. Unlike live television, CTV partners have the capabilities to target a company’s direct audience rather than reaching anyone and everyone (some audiences who could very well be ghastly irrelevant). While CTV may have a higher CPM than linear television, the ability to refine targeting helps ensure that the right audience is seeing your advertisement.

When people think of CTV advertising, they generally think of typical television commercials that play during show breaks. However, options have expanded over the years and CTV now offers many different ad types. These include ads that run alongside TV shows, user interactive ads, video in-stream ads, and online video (OLV) ads, which run within video content. CTV advertising refers to ads shown on devices such as smart TVs or mobile phones that allow brands to reach streaming audiences.

Voice Search

Customers like the ease and convenience of voicing what they want or what they need via smart home or smartphone devices (Alexa, Siri, etc). This has made marketers carefully review how they are using keywords and which high-opportunity keywords their marketing strategy should focus on, such as question-based keywords. Consumers are more inclined to ask their voice-assistant devices questions as if they are talking to a real person, rather than speaking directly to what they want or need as they would in a web search engine. 

Sales from voice search are expected to reach $40 billion in 2022, and it is expected that 50% of those purchases use voice shopping. Here’s the trick: By incorporating more long-tail terms and question keywords (who, what, when, where, etc.), and optimizing for mobile for paid search campaigns, you may betreatedto better performance results. This trend is expected to continue to grow with the development of these voice assistant devices and advances in the software.

Influencer Partnerships

Marketers use social media platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube to acquire more customers or elevate their brand. Many active social media users follow accounts that share their interests or passions or accounts that use/feature their favorite brands. So it only makes sense for businesses to partner with those accounts and use the accounts’ extensive following to their advantage to attract a relevant audience. While leveraging influencers is not a traditional Two Rivers Marketing paid media tactic, similar best practices apply, including selecting influencers who reach a relevant audience.

The key to successful ROI on this type of marketing is assuring that an influencer’s following is active and fits your audience’s purchase behavior. Another underrated aspect is making sure the influencer seems engaged with your product, as this will help sell it to their audience. Some marketers have fallen short on choosing the right influencers with relevant and engaged social following, and the results can be hair-raising. An influencer could have a large number of followers, but what percentage of those followers are relevant to your business, are purchasers, and are actively on the platform engaging with the influencer’s content? A strategically matched, compelling influencer could not only bring awareness and conversions, but also help grow your own company’s social following.

Geofencing

Nothing screams relevant audience targeting like geofencing. This trend allows marketers to reach the right audience at the right time with the right content. Ad formats such as display, native, video, and others can be utilized with geofencing targeting capabilities. An example of a geofencing strategy would be geotargeting the perimeter of a tradeshow venue: capturing the devices of those attending the trade show. Only devices within the targeting radius will be shown the ads. Ad messaging could include your business’s booth number at the tradeshow to increase foot traffic to your booth.

Consumers who are served geofencing ads generally appreciate the personalization since it is tailored so closely to their needs or wants, resulting in more engagement with the ad.

Online Reviews

Real, unbiased online reviews are strongly impacting consumers' purchasing decisions. Positive or negative reviews can influence how new and existing consumers view a brand and their future decisions on buying from that brand. Research has shown that 79% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.

Having a large number of positive reviews can make a company stand out from the competition. Whether these reviews are featured on Google, Yelp, Facebook, or other channels, it is smart to incorporate them into your marketing strategy. Marketers can do this by repurposing positive reviews into ad copy in various types of ads such as social media ads, direct mail, and digital ad placements. This is a boo-tiful way to prove credibility and show off the reputation of your company.

Although putting together a paid media plan may seem like witchcraft, incorporating one or all of these media trends will help you avoid a stagnant, frightful media plan in 2023. If you want to develop a scary-great media plan for 2023 or beyond, contact us to see how we can partner together to help reach your marketing goals.