As part of our annual digital trends, we have collected thoughts on 2015 digital marketing trends from expert leaders and practitioners in their field.
Below are 6 Online Advertising Trends for 2015.
| Tamara Jacobs, Brand Solutions manager at blinkx Media | |
 | The digital evolution is expanding into all areas of life, especially the advertising industry. As the world of online communication, networking, and advertising continues to mature we are seeing brands strive towards delivering their end-users more authentic experiences. In a recent 2015 Digital Trends report from SODA, experts from across the industry flagged concepts such as “experience economy”, “transformation economy” and the notion of brands moving towards a more “holistic” view of customer experience. As digital platforms and tools continue to emerge, brands and businesses are recognizing their value in supporting, connecting and facilitating action and purchase intent. However, people are still people and their values and desires remain the same as they always have. Digital strategy, therefore, is becoming more about “identifying the role technology plays in delivering a sound business strategy. |
| Celine Saturnino, Head of Media Operations at Total Media | |
 | 2015 will be the year of the consumer. Over the last few years online privacy has been a driving force in the digital media landscape. We’ll move on from consumers accepting cookies to consumers owning their data and choosing when they are in-market and what brands they want to see. Power to the people! |
| David Barker, SVP and Managing Director, EMEA, Amobee | |
 | We will see an increased use of marketing technology operated in-house steadily transferring power and responsibilities from agencies back to brands. With data now at the heart of all marketing activity brands are less willing to part with their invaluable customer data and as a result less willing to outsource as much activity to agencies in the coming year. We’ll continue to see more consolidation in the market. Automated or programmatic technologies will continue to present a lucrative business opportunity, however, there is a limit to how many of these solutions can survive in an already saturated market. |
| Glen Calvert, CEO, Affectv | |
 | How advertisers decide to transact media will become more diverse in 2015. More advertisers will separate media transactions from traditional routes, and play with buying media themselves, or through independent ad tech suppliers, of independent trading desks, or an agencies own trading desk that is separate to the groups trading desk. This will be fuelled by clients increasingly questioning the agency trading desks interests, the disparity of having agency execs offer impartial advice while being compensated for the client revenue they move to their groups trading desk is unsustainable. |
| Dominic Trigg, SVP, Managing Director Europe at Rocket Fuel | |
 | 2015 will be the year marketers will start to challenge the limitations of basic attribution models and move towards a Multi-Touch Attribution (MTA) approach. MTA allows marketers to look at the entire marketing mix and to track how a consumer interacts with different media and the subsequent actions they take. MTA also enables marketers to see how different marketing channels interact with one another and and how sales attribution should be fairly weighted. All in all, it looks at the whole picture and in 2015 marketers are going to come to understand the benefits of this holistic approach. |
| Charlie Faulkner, Head of EMEA and APAC, Manage.com | |
 | Mobile first – Reportedly around one billion people will use their mobile as their only form of internet access. Marketers will put mobile at the forefront of their marketing mix. Pre-targeting is the new real-time – Moving beyond targeting based on past behaviour and search history, 2015 will see the emergence of pre-targeting: predictive targeting using big and little data to address consumer needs. More brands break into the app space – Apps will continue to dominate share of mobile consumption time with 86% of time spent in apps versus 14% of time spent on mobile web. Geo-targeting – Marketers will increasingly use geo-targeting as a way to target consumers based on their geographical location. As features advance to real-time notifications, marketers with location tracking could dramatically change the relationship between brands and consumers. |
