5 Trends From the New Fronts that Growth Marketers Will Care About

I recently watched IAB’s New Fronts, if you’re not familiar the New Fronts are where marketers and media buyers preview the upcoming advertising opportunities from digital platforms and publishers for the year.

Some strategic trends for Growth Marketers and Media Buyers:

1. THERE ARE MORE OPTIONS than ever for advertisers to reach their audiences and using a strategic approach with partners for each campaign and objective is more important than ever. The New Fronts included 24 companies including A+E Networks, Amazon, BBC News, BuzzFeed, Condé Nast, Crackle Plus, Digitas, Ellen Digital, Entercom, Estrella Media, fuboTV, Meredith Corporation, Penske Media, Roku, Samsung Ads, Snap Inc., TikTok, Tubi, Twitter, Verizon Media, Vevo, Vice Media Group, Vizio and YouTube. Amazon, TikTok and Roku were among new presenters this year over the 4 days of presentations. Additionally, the New Fronts were paired up with 3 days of Podcast New Fronts that included NPR, Vox, iHeartMedia, WNYC Studios, etc – a testament to the massive growth and content opportunities in podcasting.

2. STREAMING IS THE NEW BROADCAST, streaming is now at the center of multiple platforms, screens and content providers and will change the way that video content is bought, sold, measured. Streaming’s growth is motivating marketers to move budgets from linear and into connected TV. Ad-Tech companies want to accelerate sales into that CTV digital ad spend but they are not making inventory available for programmatic buying – why? The reality is there is high demand but low inventory and ad-tech around CTV is still in its infancy. YouTube announced that they will roll out additional ad products on CTV including brand extensions which will enable links to a brand site from a CTV ad to a consumer's device. Additionally, YouTube will roll out seasonal sponsorships for brands around creators and publishers as a part of its YouTube Select program. Watch for more innovation in this space over 2021.

3. WITH THIRD-PARTY COOKIES GOING AWAY advertisers must have a plan for targeting. Most of the digital platforms brought a solution of their unique target offerings. Publishers made it easier to create shoppable experiences in video content which has been a long time coming. Solutions for ad targeting ranged from ID ad targeting to interest/ contextual targeting – a surprising volume of discussion on “cookie-less targeting” highlighting that there is no established best practice established for when cookies go away. In my opinion, audience marketing and first-party data will increase in importance as a result.

4. TWITCH IS EXPANDING THE FOCUS of its community and content beyond gamers into more mainstream streaming. Its non-gaming audience grew dramatically over the past 12 mos. and it is expanding into sports content such as streaming Thursday night football and music concerts in partnership with Rolling Stone to name just a few areas. Amazon is allowing advertisers to buy Twitch ads alongside Amazon Advertising campaigns, which run ads on its e-commerce platform, the ability for brands to monetize with influential streamers through customized Amazon storefronts could become mainstream.

5. TIKTOK AND WHAT IT PROMISES TO MARKETERS is relevance with a young consumer and ability to tap into viral cultural moments. These cultural moments can have a very positive impact on revenues for brands, exemplified by Nathan Apodaca vibing to a Fleetwood Mac song while skateboarding and drinking cranberry juice. Ocean Spray saw their sales increase and jumped on it by embracing their new brand ambassador customer. Ahead of the holiday season in Oct 2020 TikTok and Shopify partnered on a social commerce integration where the TikTok platform lets brands create and connect their TikTok for Business account and deploy in-feed shoppable video ads, from Shopify.

In summary, this year’s New Front’s showcased both the evolution of digital offerings for marketers from the previous year as well as many opportunities for innovation for brands that are seeking to up their game in digital.