Bath conference highlights “top development areas” for digital advertising in 2018

By Nick Batten on 1 December, 2017

Bath-based digital media buying agency, SearchStar hosted its first conference this month, with guest speakers from Facebook, Google and PZ Cussons, all discussing what the future holds for digital advertising in 2018.

According to the speakers at the event, the top things that will have a “significant impact” on branding and digital advertising in 2018 include ‘artificial intelligence,’ ‘building brands via search’ and ‘gamification messaging in advertising.’

Speaking at the conference, Jennifer Prior, agency lead at Google, began by claiming that Google is “now an AI first company.”

She explained: “This makes total sense considering we now live online, allowing advertisers to tap into millions of data points and automate campaigns that appear tailored and personal.”

She added: “For scale, Google can process 70 million signals in the blink of an eye, leaving advertisers wondering why 80% of their time is being spent on manual bidding.”

Paul Morris, global digital director for PZ Cussons, discussed the topic of ‘building brands via search’ and explained that the focus on building a brand in 2018 will be “delving deeper” into customer behaviours and “understanding what prompts people to share.”

He went on to explain the importance of “building brand trust” through his G.O.O.D framework (Gravitas, Openness, Outreach, Distribution) in addition to thinking about how brands are perceived on “all the other platforms where potential customers are likely to interact with a brand.”

David Wilson, head of FMCG strategy EMEA at Facebook, claimed that 5 billion gigabytes of content data are being created “every 10 minutes online,” and highlighted that adding more online content isn’t necessarily a successful brand-building strategy. He said: “Quality is paramount and, to cut through on Facebook, ads have to be both relevant and remarkable.”

Additionally, Lisa Killbourn, brand and strategy consultant at Independent Eye, discussed ‘Gamification messaging in advertising.’ Reminding the conference that customers are humans, she claimed that “getting to the route of the buying decisions” will be “fundamental” in 2018, to ensure adverts and campaigns get noticed amid an “endless content stream.”

She added that, with social media platforms like Facebook claiming that content has a 2.5-second audition to “capture engagement,” advertisers will have to ensure that their content “doesn’t just add to the noise.”

For more information on the conference, click here to view the slides.

Pictured above: Jennifer Prior of Google delivering her presentation at the conference