Industry Update

7 Top Advertising Trends You Should Expect in 2020

Just like every beginning of the year, we’ve got some expectations as to what possibilities digital advertising will offer us. Or rather, what users will impose on digital advertising, for sometimes it’s all about the customer, really! In this blog, we’ll give you 7 advertising trends that, according to how the industry has been moving, you should expect to occur in 2020.

Millie D'Arcangelo

Copy Writer at The Next Ad

Jan 7, 2020

Trends change from year to year, primarily due to technological advancements. As we’re given more and more possibilities, digital advertising is continuously being made easier for us (and for the customer too!).

However, trends also suffer alterations because of changes in the customers’ needs. Every year, they hold different expectations, which goes hand in hand with technology advancement. Businesses that are left behind with or neglect their tech are usually turned down by customers.

So all these trends described in this article are bound to happen, and it’s up to you whether you want to include them in your business’s strategy. Some of them are a must, others are an opportunity for improvement or earning a competitive edge.
All in all, it’s up to you.

What to expect in 2020: IT and customer behaviour trends

Technological trends

Increased Artificial Intelligence

Increased AI is now getting the upper-hand. Thanks to AI, infinite possibilities are continually arising in the world of digital advertising; therefore, it’s clearly the core of all the technological trends we’re going to address now. What AI will allow us to do include but are not limited to:

• Obtain in-depth insights into customer behaviour and expectations. Yet, this isn’t limited to the preferences of the buyer, but to the particular needs of the individual. This makes targeting much more precise and useful.
• Create more personalised content, and make the customer’s experience unique. By designing apps that learn what the user’s preferences are, they’ll offer ads based on past purchases. 
• Sentiment analysis. Although AI can’t feel, it can read the emotional state of a customer through keywords like ‘excellent’, ‘terrible, ‘acceptable’ that mark how they feel towards a specific service or product. This leads to better insights and more valuable information that wasn’t present before.

Shoppable Posts

This year, more and more companies have been implementing shoppable posts. In photo ads, the images themselves are clickable and/or provide information about the products shown in the picture. For example, a clothing company would create an ‘interactive’ shoppable post with a picture of a model.

Suppose you like the T-shirt she is wearing, so you click on it and can see how much it costs. This is a clear example of how ads are becoming more and more interactive as time goes by.

Credits to HubSpot: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/selling-on-instagram

Virtual And Augmented Reality

Usually, video games stores provide customers with the opportunity to experience a VR experience for their products. VR and AR are excellent forms of advertising or giving a sneak-peek about your next or recently-launched product. 

However, VR and AR are expanding to other shopping categories. An example is Home & Health; by using this tool, the user would be able to see what the products (such as a piece of furniture) look like in your own house. 

Other brands use VR and AR by asking you to place your phone over an ad and walk into their store, which is excellent to get to know the company better. Both of these tools, therefore, are very likely to be expanded and improved during 2020.

Google Ads Smart Bidding

To the advertiser’s advantage, Google Ads will now offer more transparency into the performance of smart bidding strategies. In the bid strategy report, advertisers can now view the top bidding signals (device type, location, day of the week, time of day, and specific keywords) that are making your campaign successful. This means more insights and, therefore, better performance.

Chatbots and Messenger Integration

The objective for advertisers and business owners alike is to make the service as simple as possible for users and be available all day, every day. The problem here is that a person is not able to do this unless you’ve got a specific multinational strategy.

Two things to expect for next year are chatbots and Messenger Integration, which are easy to program and personalise, are convenient to offer quick answers and resolve complaints, and also work well to provide additional content and assistance in registering or requesting.

Increased safety and privacy and spam control

• Safety: investment into things like advertising IDs (as used across Google and Apple ecosystems) and 3rd Party software solutions that include device-based statistical identification and universal login.
• Privacy: New regulations mean an increasing number of marketers prioritise privacy. This will place emphasis on 1st Party Data collection and will refine the list of 3rd Parties qualified to manage the data used to inform strategy and navigate upcoming digital marketing trends.
• Spam: more and more businesses are considering the exhaustion that spam ads produce in customers. One of the priorities within this category is to reduce the number of spam ads, and, if possible, make them disappear.

Customer behaviour trends

More use of social media and the emergence of new platforms

The fact that social media usage is rapidly increasing is a no-brainer. We all know that. One and a half billion users are highly active on Facebook and sellers alike, and similarly, 1.3 billion are highly active on Whatsapp. On top of it all, we typically spend one and a half hours a day checking all social networks. Mental, isn’t it?

However, the changes aren’t limited to the increase in social media usage. According to Duane Brown, Founder & Head of Strategy, Take Some Risk, and Lisa Raehsler, Founder & SEM Strategy Consultant, Big Click Co., remarked that, in 2019, users have spent more time on platforms like Snapchat, Pinterest, and TikTok. As a consequence, the revenue at those companies is rapidly growing.

So not only will the number of users increase, but also new platforms will emerge, or will become more active amongst customers.

SERP Position Zero

People tend to grab information and don’t click on the search engine results. Instead of engaging deeply, they simply gather the data from the bullet points, find the answer to their search, and move on.

This is why Search Engines are gradually changing. The priority is not being the first on the Search Engine list; now, businesses will be aiming for something else.

Google is undergoing a permanent change that seeks to offer information to the customer as quickly as possible, which is why you’ve probably noticed changes in your browsing behaviour already.

So, going back to the first sentence, the aim of featured snippets and other ‘on SERP’ information is that you won’t need to click on a link to a website to obtain what you’re looking for—instead, it’ll be right there, on the Google search results page.

A smooth, quick, and efficient way of finding information, isn’t it?

Last thoughts: will all of these trends be advantageous?

The answer to this question is up to you. We’ve seen that Artificial Intelligence is likely to improve, which is natural considering we’re in the 21st century. All the trends, changes, and behaviours that are expected to occur in 2020 depend on technology development. 

Just think of it this way: safety is improving, insights are becoming more detailed, advertising is turning more and more interactive, and vendor-customer relationships are growing due to improved messaging systems. 

The disadvantages? We don’t know them yet. I suppose we’ll have to wait until the end of the year and collect the data, just as we do every year. To keep updated with the ongoing trends, subscribe to The Next Ad’s newsletter below!