How 2023 May Have Changed Media Forever

As we step into 2024, saying that 2023 was a landmark year for the advertising industry is an incredible understatement. Last year saw the meteoric rise and widespread adoption of AI tools like OpenAI 's ChatGPT, reshaping business operations and everyday interactions across countless industries -- but most certainly within the advertising industry.

While there were several key moments and developments in 2023, we've shared three of perhaps the biggest impacts facing the media landscape.

The AI Enlightenment?

While the digital age of enlightenment has been here for decades, we have just scratched the surface of rapid advancement since the introduction of advanced (and accessible) AI tools last year. If the internet was the democratization of information, AI may just be the democratization of development. And 2024 will continue transforming the marketing landscape and the world as AI becomes more integrated into business and everyday life.

The iteration, adoption, and usage growth of generative AI in just twelve short months was unprecedented. By the end of 2023, ChatGPT reported 100MM weekly users and 2MM developers. GPT’s development speed was on full display at the first-ever OpenAI developer conference in December, which included announcement after announcement, each with significant implications. A few notable examples: OpenAI launched a GPT store in December, rolled out GPT-4 Turbo, which is trained with data through April 2023, introduced a ‘Copyright Shield,” and unveiled a new Assistants API to allow developers to integrate assistant bots directly into apps.?

These types of advancements left other tech leaders on their heels all year. 谷歌 , in particular, found itself in unusual territory and unable to keep pace, given that Bard was an inferior product that was rushed to market. But Google will likely close the gap on ChatGPT in 2024 with their newly released Gemini that overcomes most of Bard’s flaws and positions itself differently in the market. If 2023 was the year of ChatGPT, 2024 is looking up for Google. Gemini is multimodal, meaning it can handle understanding video, images, audio, and text all within one model. Oppositely, GPT specializes in creating and understanding text and OpenAI has trained separate models for image (DALL-E) and voice (Whisper) understanding and generation. If Gemini can do more, and better, it will gain significant ground.?

The second significant advantage that Google will look to leverage in 2024 is its data, cloud, advertising, and search infrastructure. Gemini will enhance the functionality and technicality of those Google products, and those products will inherently inform and train Gemini’s LLM to be a smarter model. Adding AI functionality to all of their marketing offerings will also enhance both the creation and performance of advertising, meaning that Google will be in a strong position to monetize AI, which has been tricky for GPT.?

But regardless of who wins out, how we search, learn, solve problems, create, and outsource work and thinking has been and will continue to evolve with every AI update and new capability release. Last year fundamentally changed us, and we will forever live and work differently in this new world of agents; the digital enlightenment has transitioned to the age of AI, and we expect 2024 will be even more expansive in change.?

The Demise of the Duopoly?

Google and Meta have dominated the tech ad market for decades thanks to legislative inability to regulate the complex nature of the technology sector, but we expect to see wind changes on this front next year. While the last few years have seen some competitive encroachment against the aforementioned duopoly, most notably from TikTok which has legitimately challenged pieces and parts of their empires, the monopolistic practices that have been present from the jump are still largely undeterred. But 2023 showed strong signs that legislation may finally begin to help unravel the duopoly to allow others to gain share; both Meta and Google spent significant time in court last year defending their business models.?

Google, in particular, was under the most legal fire with multiple federal accusations of anti-competitive violations across the arms of their business. The year closed out with a symbolic win by Epic Games against Google’s Play store, where a California jury found Google guilty on all counts of unfair pricing and use of monopolistic practices. If the ruling stands in appeal, Google will owe $700M in payouts which may be a slap on the wrist but indicates significant weakness in Google's armor. Additionally, and on a much larger scale, the landmark DOJ case against Google’s core search business wrapped up in November and will be ruled on by Judge Amit Mehta in 2024. That case against Google is mainly focused on Google’s revenue-sharing contracts which makes them the default browser for most computer operating systems. While revenue-sharing deals are not illegal, the contracts have blocked the potential for competitive growth since 2005. If the DOJ prevails, it will set a new precedent for anti-competitive practices in the tech market.?

It will take years to undo the myriad monopolistic practices that set up Google and Meta’s dominance over the last two decades, but the movement toward tech regulation intensified significantly last year and will continue to grow in 2024; the end of the tech duopoly’s deregulation may actually be near.?

Social Evolved

When social platforms burst onto the scene in the early 2000s, they were pure connection tools - new ways for users to connect, interact, and explore the world. Then brands entered the space and changed the proposition; fast-forward 20 years, and social platforms simply aren’t very social anymore. The initial power of social was in the stickiness of the audience - the connections with friends and family created a staying power that media platforms had never experienced before. Much of that connection is gone today, particularly for Gen Z, who use the platforms much differently than generations that signed on decades ago.

But that doesn’t mean social platforms are dying; they are just evolving. As long as people are entertained, audiences will hold steady. TikTok’s emergence and growth dominance are a clear example of this strength. However, we will shift how social platforms are viewed in the media landscape. Social platforms are evolving along with TV and video platforms into much more passive entertainment vehicles; and social as a channel is in a strong position to help replace the reach that TV can no longer deliver. Media dollars follow reach (and low CPMs), so as long as social platforms can keep entertainment value and impression opportunities high, their ad businesses will remain strong.?

Thus, the future of social platforms will be as entertainment and practical application (a.k .a. messaging and shopping) vehicles. But what about building sustainable communities? Seeing a brand as an active member of a community is one of the best markers of a thriving brand. At the same time, social responsibility remains a top consumer desire from brands and the social landscape is one of the only real places to do that authentically. Even still, look for social players to continue to rapidly expand their offerings towards wide-reaching appeal, customer-centricity, and data-led personalization. Social has officially come of age, and the pressure is on; look for advertising offerings to lead innovation and drive long-term fortitude for the next five years.