3 Booming Techs That Will Push Marketing Forward in 2021

From video conferencing platforms to chatbots, just about every kind of technology that keeps people connected and engaged saw a boost this year as the Covid-19 pandemic pushed marketers to experiment with tools they might never have otherwise considered. It can be hard to tell how much staying power each of these trends will have as the world begins to reopen in 2021. Will they be prove to be enduring parts of a new normal or fleeting quirks of lockdown life? The difference may be that many of the most promising innovations to gain traction this year were already poised to take off—the pandemic simply lit a fuse. With those considerations in mind, we've rounded up a few areas of emerging tech most likely to have a lasting impact on how marketers do their jobs in the year to come and beyond. Augmented reality (AR) and 5G In January 2020, Apple CEO Tim Cook called AR the "next big thing" and predicted that it would come to "pervade our entire lives." The tech, which involves superimposing 3D graphics on the physical world, has seen a surge in popularity in the months since as retailers have adopted it to create virtual try-on features in lieu of physical store shelves and fitting rooms. Other brands have also latched onto the format as an interactive way to engage consumers as the pandemic made physical activations difficult. "With people buying so much online, AR is able to enhance that experience," said Sheri Bachstein, global head of Watson Advertising. "Companies are still trying to figure out how to use it best, but … you're seeing it in beauty, you're seeing it in some retail clothing—and I think that's just going to grow." Even before the pandemic, social platforms like Snapchat and Instagram had helped set the stage for such a trend by making the developer tools needed to make AR quicker and more accessible than ever, according to a recent eMarketer report on the trend. Now, 5G has the potential to open even more doors for the tech with its ability to support bigger file sizes, faster load speeds and therefore more elaborate and immersive graphics. While the next generation of wireless service is still in the early stages of rolling out, the launch of the first 5G-enabled iPhone this fall could help accelerate AR adoption. "One thing I like to hit on for any brand is to think of all the physical things you have in the world—if it's your store, if it's your products—those need a digital layer, and that digital layer will be augmented reality," said Matt Maher, founder of AR-focused consultancy M7 Innovations. "And that world's starting to be built now. I think we'll get to a place in two to five years where if you hold your phone up at anything, there should be a digital experience to the physical touch point." Spotify used synthetic media to create a one-on-one experience with The Weeknd. Synthetic media With video production processes frequently disrupted by lockdown measures this year, a handful of brands turned to a technology more commonly associated with fake news than Hollywood magic: AI-enabled deepfakes. State Farm and ESPN used this form of machine learning to alter a vintage clip of a SportsCenter anchor when a man-on-the-street bit fell through because of quarantine. Hulu used AI to superimpose the face of NBA player Damian Lillard over that of a stunt double so that the star didn't have to be physically present for a shoot. And Spotify tapped it to recreate the likeness of The Weeknd to simulate a one-on-one experience with the R&B star online. Meanwhile, startups like Rephrase.AI are examining how synthetic media might be used in more everyday marketing contexts, such as generating a video sales pitch from a simple text script. The innovation driving projects like these is an emergent form of neural network called a generative adversarial network (GAN), which has been used to unlock the more creative side of AI with its generated visuals. While the tech is still in its infancy, experts say it could serve as a cheaper form of video production. GAN could also make video ads more personalized than ever. "Synthetic media and generative models will radically modify the video production process," said Cristóbal Valenzuela Barrera, co-founder of creative AI platform RunwayML. "The idea that you can shoot an ad or a film at home without leaving is compelling because it's really, really cheap." Natural language processing In 2019, research group OpenAI made waves in the AI research community with its release of a massive language generation tool called GPT-2. This year, it blew that tool out of the water with GPT-3, an exponentially bigger system trained on nearly a trillion words of text pulled from the internet. The result is a tool that can spit out realistic-sounding copy in a given style of writing based on as few as a couple passages of text. While the content of much of its output still remains somewhat nonsensical, its syntax and style have reached a point where it's very often difficult to distinguish between the writing of a human and a machine. OpenAI is currently limiting the number of clients able to access the system, but the company is already working with brands like Reddit and Quizlet on uses for the tech, ranging from chatbots to creative writing. With its coherence and dexterity vastly improved over GPT-2, GPT-3 holds the potential to transform any kind of commercial language applications in years to come. While the full potential of these efforts might be realized in the next year, one place the class of neural network algorithm to which GPT-3 belongs (natural language processing transformers) will have a more immediate effect is on context-specific Google search results, according to Gartner Research analyst Bern Elliot. Google's own language transformer model, BERT, is already being used to make much more detailed and precise search queries possible, meaning marketers will have to adjust their product listings and search engine optimization strategies accordingly. "The place where [transformer models] are going to have their most significant effect is applications where context of the text plays a big role," Elliot said. "Marketers must ensure that their corporate websites are able to respond with the appropriate level of detail."

Emerging Technologies

The 3 Booming Technologies That Will Push Marketing Forward in 2021

AR, 5G and AI-generated media are poised to shape the way marketers do their jobs in the next year

Patrick Kulp

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Patrick Kulp