At Infillion, our tech and creative teams build for desktop, mobile, connected TV, and even sports stadiums. That’s a lot of platforms – and a lot of different creative strategies.

What were some of our creative milestones in 2023? From brand lift to 3-card monte, from inventive custom builds to our performance-driving Blueprints, this infographic shows a few of our team’s favorites.

(See full sized PDF here.)

Want to find out how Infillion’s creative tech can take your ads to the next level? Get in touch today.

 Streaming TV business model changes, shoppable ads, generative AI, and a stronger push for collaboration will reshape next year’s advertising landscape. Here’s how.

Ad spending roared back in the latter half of this year, indicating that there will be a healthy start to 2024. Yet, as ads proliferate, frustrated consumers have erupted with a collective “Enough!”  

As consumers take more control over their media use and consumption, there is a clear dynamic marketers and publishers cannot ignore: more than ever before, they need to attract audiences with relevant, engaging  experiences – including both content and advertising. Yet easier said than done in a world of fragmented viewing, increased privacy restrictions, and wholesale shifts in how people pay for and consume television. 

Pulling consumers in is especially important in the streaming TV space, where viewership is soaring. From May 2022 to May 2023, there was a 20% surge in total CTV usage, with viewership  jumping from 9.6 billion hours to 11.5 billion, according to Comscore. Not to mention the latest news from the  Netflix Engagement Report, revealing that viewers spent 100 billion hours on that streaming service alone. 

Although that’s all great news for our industry, our focus should be on new research from Parks Associates that the churn rate for streaming TV subscriptions stands at 47%. Many consumers cite cost; others say that they’re cutting subscriptions once a favorite TV show or season of a sport they follow is over, but regardless of the reasoning there’s no doubt that consumers are in control. Publishers and marketers need to align on putting the consumer first – and that means being ready, in lockstep, for what’s next. Here’s what the industry can expect in the year ahead. 

Prediction 1: Attention Metrics Take Center Stage  

This will be of no surprise to anyone reading this: People are bombarded with hundreds if not thousands of ads each day – and the vast majority of them likely don’t “stick.” Our responsibility as an industry must be the creation of better experiences, so that ads can be rewarded with true consumer attention. To succeed in 2024, advertisers would do well to embrace the Attention Economy but only if they fully understand what type of attention works best for their brand/KPI. If they don’t, their relevance and performance will suffer.  

Enter attention metrics. More than 90% of marketing professionals believe metrics that measure attention will soon augment legacy standards – like reach & frequency, impressions, and page views – if not replace them altogether. That’s according to a survey issued by The Attention Council (TAC), an organization composed of researchers, agencies, publishers, and holding companies focused on improving advertising-related outcomes. (Infillion is proud to be a member.)

Nearly 9 in 10 respondents to the TAC survey identified several promising use cases for attention metrics: media optimization (75%), measurement (67%), creative testing and optimization (64%), and planning (54%) as the most likely to successfully employ attention driven signals. 

That said, there’s more work to be done. Attention metrics’ utility isn’t set in stone, and 2024 will see significant moves in attempting to solidify them. Advertising Research Foundation is currently working on an “Attention Atlas,” which, as Adweek reported, will outline vendor positioning, methods, and deliverables so that brands can make more informed choices when exploring new partnerships. The Atlas was initiated to give brands and agencies access to greater insights as the slow death of third-party tracking cookies diminish the online signals marketers have relied so heavily on for the last two decades. 

Prediction 2: Shoppable Ads Go Mainstream

The past year has seen a tidal wave of shoppable ad announcements. Innovators like Kerv, Disney, NBCU, and Roku have revolutionized how viewers interact with content, turning passive watching into active shopping experiences. In the not too distant future, this shopping process is expected to become even more seamless, allowing purchases to be transacted with a click of a button.

We witness the rise of shoppable ads firsthand at Infillion every day. We launched ShopX, a shoppable solution for streaming video that allows viewers to add products directly to their carts at a selection of retailers, in May of 2022. By the end of the year we’d run a campaign in which over $1B worth of a single product was added to users’ carts.

That all represents a massive change in consumer behavior.

In 2024, shoppable ads will become the answer   for brands looking to engage consumers in “never been done before” ways, empowering innovation in a space that has been stagnant for decades… All eyes will be on the  retail media networks Amazon, Walmart, Target, Albertsons, and others to see how this trend potentially disrupts, in a good way, traditional ecommerce opportunities.

Prediction 3: Cross-Platform Measurement Gets More Intelligent — and Actionable 

Unfortunately, as streaming TV has taken center stage among viewers, the fragmentation in the marketplace has only gotten worse. The slow adoption of partnership across publishers, advertisers, operating systems, and devices is hindering ad innovation and scalability even as the demand for such solutions is becoming more urgent. 

As subscription growth has slowed for many publishers and churn has increased, the need to establish effective ad-supported options that don’t alienate audiences is a must solve for all streamers. Audiences have shown they’re “leaned in”. But this can’t be done unless there are effective partnerships, and the willingness to co-mingle tech reducing publisher burden across the industry.

Case in point, in 2020, technological advancements like the IAB’s SIMID technology, which promotes interoperability across platforms, never scaled. Today, in 2024, there is a revitalization in the format to make cross-platform interactive advertising from mobile to CTV more scalable and measurable. Without SIMID, ad tech innovators are forced to negotiate/integrate platform by platform, publisher to publisher causing universes of “walled gardens” within what’s supposed to be the open internet.

Prediction 4: Increased Scrutiny – and Potential Regulation – of AI Used In Content and Ads. 

As much as all major industries — along with a growing segment of consumers — are experimenting with generative AI, the advance of this technology has also been accompanied by fear and backlash. Concerns among advertising professionals that they’ll be replaced by machines is understandable, if only because AI is opening up completely new arenas for everyone from artists to analysts to technicians. 

As it relates to creativity, and our industry, that fear was a large sticking point in the drawn out “Hollywood Double Strike,” as the writers’ and actors’ unions fought the studios over the role of AI models in all facets of TV and movie production. As for advertising specifically, platforms have begun to flag political ads created with AI, seeking to maintain transparency in the digital ecosystem.

Both government and corporate regulatory measures that address AI are inevitable; the European Union has already agreed on its AI Act. It’s likely that – among other things – these measures separate genuine, professional uses of AI in creation from bottom-feeding attempts to leverage these platforms for quick gain. Even if regulators don’t take down bad actors, consumers will prize authenticity above all. 

It’s also crucial for the different siloes of the advertising industry to align on how AI can be helpful versus harmful to the industry. New research from Borrell Associates found that while both direct buyers and agencies are interested in the use of AI for content creation and optimization, agencies are more interested in predictive analytics and campaign planning. Agencies are also far more likely (70%) than direct buyers (43%) to already be using generative AI or to be planning to do so. These discrepancies in how AI is prioritized and deployed can cause friction when it comes to bigger-picture issues, like sustainability, and the environmental impact that all the processor power of generative AI is adding on to an already energy-intensive digital advertising industry. But when done well – and done mindfully –  generative AI can open up a renaissance in creativity. And that’s what it will take to gain meaningful attention, engagement, and loyalty from a brand’s audience.

There’s a lot ahead for streaming in 2024, given how much 2023 revealed some of the industry’s most pressing voids and disconnects. From subscriber churn to frustration over a lack of scalability, it’s evident that 2024’s biggest trends are going to point to the need to further work across departments, companies, and historic “siloes” of the business. After all, consumers are now in charge, and the answer for the industry is going to lie in unified progress rather than further fragmentation.

How do our 2024 predictions match with your own? Are there any we missed? Click here to reach out and let’s get a conversation started!

Perhaps unsurprisingly, advertising is a contributing factor. New research from Aprimo found that 58% of consumers say the onslaught of holiday marketing stresses them out – countdowns to the number of shopping days left until Christmas, or reminders that post-Thanksgiving deals are fleeting, can understandably induce anxiety.

“People notice a huge surge in marketing content around the holidays, and this is a double-edged sword,” Aprimo CEO Erik Huddleston explained. “It drives people to find deals and make more purchases, but brands also run the risk of overdoing it and turning people off, leading to consumers unsubscribing from email lists or developing a negative impression of a brand.”

Or, as Intermark Group CEO Jake McKenzie wrote in Adweek, “Extreme periods of stress change how we think — we begin to process information as if we are in a state of fear.”

That role of stress as a factor in advertising and its effectiveness is a curious one. “Stress spending” – making impulse purchases to alleviate stress or anxiety – is a well known phenomenon, with 52% of respondents to a survey saying they’ve partaken in the practice, and that number goes up to 68% for millennials. But it’s not a successful shortcut to customer loyalty or advocacy in our post-omnichannel world. The same survey says that 83% of stress spenders have regretted their impulse spending. You’re not going to make a repeat purchase if you’re regretful or embarrassed – much less tell your friends and family about it.

Plus, research from Yahoo in 2017 found that advertising can be 40% more effective when it reaches consumers who are in a good mood. So here’s a question for marketers: How much more effective could your advertising be if it aimed to truly alleviate consumer stress, rather than elevate it or provide a quick fix?

At Infillion, we have some ideas.

Harvard Business Review said it bluntly in 2020: “Advertising makes us unhappy.” But the real problem is that consumers are seeing too many ads, and they’re too interruptive. Marketing Dive found that 52% of consumers say that if they see an ad too many times, it hurts their perception of the brand. And in the battle for scarce consumer attention, the American Marketing Association found, advertisers responded with louder and higher-energy TV commercials – which consumers didn’t like, especially when they were trying to chill out. In short, if consumers are only paying attention to an ad because they have no way of avoiding it, brands aren’t really earning that attention.

The Infillion solution: Getting the right kind of attention – the kind of attention that consumers consciously choose to provide – is key. Fine-tuned targeting, particularly with first-party data that users provide proactively, can ensure that your ads are reaching the right audience without needing to rely on the heavy frequency that can make already stressed-out consumers tune out. Plus, you can offer them the option to see fewer ads by opting into an interactive experience that maximizes brand lift in less time. (That’s what Infillion’s TrueX technology does.)

Content that lends a helping hand.

We’re bombarded with so many ads that it’s difficult to pay attention to them all. But – speaking of interaction – making a video ad interactive boosts the amount of time consumers spend with it by 47%, according to IPG Media Lab. Maybe that’s because interactivity can be fun (think branded Tetris-inspired games) but it can also help provide more information that’s actually helpful rather than just a sales message. Around the holidays, that can seal the deal.

Consider this: Rather than just reminding you that there are only so many days left until Thanksgiving, an interactive ad for a CPG food or beverage brand can help buyers out by offering recipes (if it’s on TV, an easy QR code snap can ensure viewers can access it later). A mobile rich media ad for a wine brand can offer a store locator for easier buying. Or, for indecisive shoppers, a product exploration or quiz can help them figure out what they’re really looking for. 

The Infillion solution: Making ads interactive can seem daunting, but Infillion’s Creative Studio offers Blueprints, a set of frameworks that can take a brand’s existing creative assets and turn them into any number of engaging interactive units, from quizzes to multi-video experiences, in a fraction of the usual turnaround time.

Making gifting easier.

While impulse shopping to alleviate stress isn’t great for creating customer loyalty, an easy path to purchase is perfect for last-minute gifts. After all, 56% of consumers say holiday gifting stresses them out. And stressed-out consumers can find it difficult to focus, which means that they might see an ad for a product that would make a great gift for one of their loved ones but then completely forget to search for it later. (Being bombarded with more and more ads for other products probably doesn’t help.) 

The Infillion solution: With shoppable ads like Infillion’s ShopX, viewers can add an item to a shopping cart at any number of retailers directly from the ad. Shoppable ads are also great for purchasing gift cards, which consistently rank among the most popular (and most desired) holiday gifts.

The traditional purchase funnel has long been a staple in understanding consumer behavior. This framework has historically illustrated the journey consumers undertake, starting from the “Awareness” phase and concluding at “Purchase” or “Loyalty.” Yet, new findings from Infillion’s Customer Journey Research Report challenge this conventional model.

The Widening Consideration Phase.

Traditionally, the “Awareness” stage was viewed as the widest part of the funnel, indicative of consumers at the threshold of discovering new products or services. Yet, our recent data paints a different picture, revealing an astounding 45% of respondents actively considering diverse brands and products, in contrast to the mere 6% still in the awareness phase. In other words, there are plenty of brands that consumers are aware of but haven’t yet decided are worth buying. In some cases, they might have been aware of a brand for years or even decades, but haven’t had the catalyst in their lives that suggests they should become a customer. Cynics call this the “brand dead zone.” We call it “constant consideration” – and we see it as an opportunity for innovative advertising.

In our current digital era, the barrage of information is unyielding. Be it subtle banner ads or persuasive influencer endorsements, consumers are perpetually cataloging. And this cataloging doesn’t always translate into an immediate purchase. 

Embracing the Era of Constant Consideration.

The 2023 study of 779 adults, all of whom had engaged with a new brand in the past six months, offers profound insights into modern shopping behaviors. The findings underscore that shopping has morphed into a consistent aspect of daily life, rather than a sporadic or intentional act. A striking two-thirds of these consumers admitted to ordering products on a weekly basis. More revealing, 95% of those who had just completed a purchase were already contemplating their next buy. In other words: Shopping is now an always-on behavior.

Such data confirms that we’re truly in the age of constant consideration. With a treasure trove of information at their fingertips, consumers aren’t just passive participants; they’re in a continuous cycle of evaluation, purchase, and re-evaluation.

Download the Full Report Here

Strategies for Maximizing Attention.

To navigate this evolving landscape and ensure they’re taking full advantage of consumer attention, advertisers can adopt the following strategies:

1. Consistent Brand Messaging: In a world where consumers are perpetually deliberating, consistency in branding becomes paramount. If consumers have been following your messaging passively and it suddenly takes a very different turn, they may not yet be engaged enough to follow along. You’ll lose their attention quickly.
2. Engage Beyond the Sale: A pause in the purchase process is not a sign of disinterest. Infuse value through enriching content, immersive experiences, or loyalty programs to remain within the consumer’s sphere of consideration. Offering game-based ads, for example – we all love getting competitive, after all – can help you hold consumers’ attention and remain top-of-mind even if they aren’t yet ready to purchase.
3. Understand Consumer Triggers: Every consumer has a catalyst – be it a discount, a seasonal demand, or a peer’s endorsement. Harnessing these insights can be pivotal. Infillion’s first-party targeting uses geolocation, AI-powered surveys, and more to gain unique insights about consumers, allowing brands to target consumers known to be more discount-friendly or who may be more receptive to messaging while at home versus the office.
4. Leverage Retargeting: In the digital domain, retargeting isn’t just a strategy; it’s a gentle nudge, a reminder of interest, steering the consumer closer to purchase. Retargeting can help your brand remain top-of-mind with consumers even if they were at a point of “not quite ready to buy” when they initially engaged with your creative.
5. Use Opt-in Advertising: Advertisers are competing for human time and attention. Infillion’s TrueX engagement ads optimize consumer experience by reducing the number of ads a consumer sees in exchange for their undivided attention. Guaranteed.

The consumer journey is no longer a linear progression from awareness to purchase. In an era of information abundance, consumers are continuously assessing multiple brands and products. To succeed in this new paradigm, businesses must recognize this shift and adapt their strategies to remain pertinent during the extended consideration phase.

Infillion is built for the age of “constant consideration.” If you’re curious about how our product suite can help your brand, reach out and we’ll be in touch!

The need for more authentic and diverse storytelling emerged as one of the major themes at Cannes Lions and Infillion’s Inclusive Café in June. With global industry leaders in agreement, Laurel Rossi, CMO at Infillion, helped advance the conversation at one of Inclusive Café panels, asking how pledges to spend and invest more dollars with purpose-driven or minority-owned media can reach smaller and impactful publishers.

To address this topic and understand why the advertising and media industry is at an important juncture, she invited leaders in this space to not only consider the present moment, but to also share some of the actions they are taking to create authentic and diverse content that reaches and resonates with their audiences. Joining Rossi on the “Maximizing Impact through Purpose-Driven Advertising Investment” panel were: Damian Benders, General Manager at B Code Media, My Code; Dave Rosner, CMO at Audigent; Kerel Cooper, President of Advertising at Group Black; Mari Kim Novak, Trustee at Creative Spirit; Scott Kelliher, Head of Revenue at NewsBreak; and Susan Schiekofer, Chief Digital Investment Officer at GroupM.

“We’ve talked across the industry about purpose-driven marketing, where investments come from, where they go, where they should be. I know this panel is going to be about action,” says Rossi, who recently wrote a Fast Company article highlighting the need to “accommodate and protect workers with disabilities in systemic ways.”

Driving Increased Investment in the Multicultural Marketing Space

Damian Benders, General Manager at B Code Media, My Code, a multicultural, marketing and media platform focused on creating opportunities for driving increased investment in the multicultural marketing space, says, “Everyone involved in the space or in the process needs to be in the process of figuring out what it means for them. For My Code, we came into the space specifically to solve and address needs. There were opportunities for Hispanic, Black, Asian-Pacific Islander, and LGBTQ+ organizations, media companies, etc. We wanted to help them receive funds, support their businesses, and support their journalism… And we take that goal through our conversations with brands and agencies.”

“For us, the purpose originates with the people that are working in the company, people that are working at the brand, that are trying to develop that conversation. And we want to unearth what that is and give them an opportunity and a partnership to help that come to life. It takes a lot of work, but that’s the goal,” Benders adds.

Along with other companies featured on this panel, My Code was recently featured in an AdWeek article on how brands can lift up minority-owned business, adding that My Code leverages proprietary data and helps companies develop strategies, campaigns, and messaging that resonate with underserved audiences.

Dave Rosner, CMO of Audigent, as well as other panelists, emphasized the need for structure. “I think this conversation shows that we desperately need to get together and create some definitions, because once we have that structure, we can move together. And when we move together, we move much faster.” Rosner added, “Let’s move the money now that we have the pipes to do so.”

While Rosner says there will be challenges, Mari Kim Novak, Trustee at Creative Spirit, says driving awareness can drive change. “It’s a hard category, and you can’t do purpose-driven if you haven’t thought about it. [You have] to make conscious change in your investment, in your employment practices, your day-to-day [practices], the way that you think about any of these different underrepresented communities in the media,” Novak says.

How Do We Measure the Progress?

Over the past several years in directing investment toward purpose-driven or minority-owned businesses, Rossi asked what measurements are in place to gauge progress.

Novak, in addition to other panelists, called out GroupM, noting the company has forced change because of its high standards, requiring brands and others to “prove” themselves to work with GroupM. “Everybody is doing that on this stage because I think that’s a very, very honest way of saying how you’re seeing major change.”

Measurement is the first step to track progress, but Scott Kelliher, Head of Revenue NewsBreak, says he feels like “we’re only in early days in figuring out how to prove the efficacy of the media and the purpose. NewsBreak is a hyper-local news aggregator, whose mission is providing news across the U.S., particularly to local news deserts. “So as small publishers and small newspapers across the U.S. go out of business, our drive is to figure out how to get local communities the information they need in a quick and easy manner,” Kelliher says.

Even for NewsBreak, as Kelliher explains, the translation from “oh, that’s cool, that’s different”, when industry people hear about the company’s purpose, needs to backstop words with investments, and that goes for any company with a purpose-driven model looking to reach and serve diverse audiences.

Kerel Cooper, President of Advertising at Group Black, adds that besides moving beyond mere words, as Kelliher suggests, the industry needed to monitor the flow of investment in an“aggressive way.” He adds, “I don’t believe there’s a real universal approach yet, but each of our companies are doing their part to try to do that piece.”

Susan Schiekofer, Chief Digital Investment Officer at GroupM, suggests focusing on certain areas, such as Black-owned media. “So, we did look in terms of our spend total versus the industry (benchmarks). While ours was better than the industry at large, it still was small. It’s a couple of years later, and I would say we’ve had good improvement, but not yet enough.”

Regarding the news, Schiekofer adds, compared to where [ad budgets] were 20 years ago, averaging between 16% to 20% of overall budgets, it is dramatically down since then. The adverse political environment hasn’t helped, so many clients just want to stay away from controversial issues. You don’t have to be on the hard news page or the political page, but you know there is sports and entertainment. It’s gotten somewhat better, but we have a long way to go.”

The Shift to Programmatic Buying

Is the shift to programmatic buying making it difficult for smaller publishers to gain visibility with brands that can meaningfully support content? Rossi asked the panel to weigh in on the shift. Here are some of the responses:

” We recently did a very small test with DoubleVerify where we took ten of our clients that were running across group Black sites. We changed the blocking from the domain level to the page level, and it opened up 15% more inventory for that marketer to take advantage of, while sticking to what they deemed as brand safe. There are ways to do this and activate it. We have to get to the root of the issue, and I think brand safety and blocking at the keyword level, site-page level is still a big issue.”

– Kerel Cooper, President of Advertising at Group Black

“While we were deciding to focus very much on our DEI initiative a couple of years ago, we did an audit of all of our accounts and the exclusion keyword list. And what happens is that, let’s say it’s a small, happy campaign, you might have a ton of news keywords or underrepresented voices, keywords that were blocked for one campaign, but then they become part of an overall client list. We actually went through every single word and then removed words on the exclusion list to do the same exact thing. It’s something that all teams at the agencies or the clients need to do, like I would say, not just once a year or every couple of years.”

– Susan Schiekofer, Chief Digital Investment Officer @ GroupM

“I think that one of the dangers that we have in being in digital and programmatic is that we think the system is automatically going to be smart. And it comes down to the fundamentals of the building that were here long before the Internet. We’ve got to be thoughtful. If you’re launching a brand campaign, you have to look at the specifics of that brand and go in and change it. And that requires all respect to ChatGPT, a person who really is passionate and knows that brand.”

– Dave Rosner, CMO at Audigent

Underrepresented Groups That Are Largely Invisible

Some of the discussion revolved around underrepresented groups and visibility in the industry, because when people or consumers have a connection in terms of what is reflected in media or advertising, a brand can inspire people, and you take them along on the journey, creating loyalty.

Part of the solution, Novak explains, is hiring people with intellectual disabilities because of the needed and different perspective they bring to the creative process. “And that’s true of any underrepresented community. The only way we get the greatest ideas is with a great level of creativity, and that creativity only comes by having a diverse amount of creative thinking and experiences at the table.”

In wrapping up the panel discussion, Novak challenged the listeners: “I don’t think this is a conversation you should be having later. Let’s bring it into this generation, so that in five years and in ten years, this is in their DNA.”

Special thanks to our participants:

Moderator:

• Laurel Rossi, CMO @ Infillion

Panelists:

• Damian Benders, General Manager at B Code Media, My Code
• Dave Rosner, CMO at Audigent
• Kerel Cooper, President of Advertising at Group Black
• Mari Kim Novak, Trustee at Creative Spirit
• Scott Kelliher, Head of Revenue at NewsBreak
• Susan Schiekofer, Chief Digital Investment Officer at GroupM