Consumers are “disrupting” the advertising world, to borrow one of the tech industry’s favorite terms. For digital advertisers, this may seem like a difficult fork in the road. And it is. But it is also an opportunity to look at ourselves honestly and fully—to deeply reflect on our practices, methods, technologies—in order to come together and chart the best path forward as a community.
It’s time to create a new world order in advertising. This is the challenge at hand when we convene at the 2016 IAB MIXX Conference.
For two days at this year’s conference, forget everything you’ve known about advertising. Consumers have more choice and control over their digital lives than ever before. They expect a quality experience no matter what platform or channel they are on. What can we do as marketers and advertisers to ensure we are adding as much value as possible and leading the charge into the next era of digital advertising?
Join us as we discuss how to renew and reenergize our focus on creative storytelling built upon developing an emotional connection that compels consumers to action. We’ll have the industry’s top leaders and thinkers—including Google, Publicis Media, McDonald’s and 360i—on hand as we explore the reinvention of media, platforms, creative and business models.
A few of the themes we’ll explore include:
The marriage of creative and data
Programmatic commands the majority of digital ad spend. Despite its lack of sexiness, it’s a sophisticated way to target consumers across ad formats, channels and devices. As an industry, we’ve spent the last decade building programmatic’s buying and targeting foundation. How do we now make room for storytelling, and how do we create and deploy compelling storytelling at scale? How do we build out the creative tools and services for the programmatic ecosystem? And how do we continue to pave the way for higher function buying?
Creating authentic value exchanges
Using an ad blocker is often akin to using a sledgehammer where a scalpel is more appropriate. Put another way, not all ad experiences are created equal. For as many annoying and intrusive ad experiences consumers encounter, there are many more ad experiences that deliver compelling value for all parties. Yet these experiences often float below the consciousness of the consumer. How do we better communicate the consumer-publisher-advertiser value proposition to our audiences? And how do we elevate our game to deliver ad experiences so engaging, joyful, surprising or outstanding that they register at higher levels within the collective consumer consciousness?
Connected TV and the evolving video viewing experience
Internet-enabled televisions have become mainstream, and television is increasingly looking to digital as the model for data-driven, audience-centric advertising. As broadcast advertising evolves, how do we retain and grow bold, compelling and inspiring creative while incorporating sophisticated audience buying technology and analytics? How do we move addressability from a nice-to-have feature to a must-have tool? How will we buy ads agnostically and deliver them sequentially across all screens?
In this new era of people-centric advertising, the industry must leave the ways of the old world behind or risk losing out. By joining us at the 2016 IAB MIXX Conference, you’ll have an opportunity to be a part of these conversations, to be a catalyst for the industry change you wish to see and to take fresh insights and perspectives back into your work environment.
