U.S. immigration is focused on the American story unfolding: At first glance, there seems to be no common ground between Kris Jenner, the mother of the Kardashians, online brokerage E*Trade, singer-songwriter John Mayer, and Twitter. However, the "Advertising Week" conference held in New York City aims to create another opportunity for them to share a platform.
The 10th "Advertising Week" conference will kick off this Monday in New York City, with approximately 90,000 professionals from the advertising and marketing industry expected to attend. The event will last an entire week, featuring around 250 seminars and related activities, showcasing the significant progress Madison Avenue has made in embracing digital marketing technologies, including social media and mobile advertising.
According to market research firm eMarketer, digital advertising remains a bright spot in the advertising industry, with the U.S. digital advertising market expected to reach $42.26 billion this year, a 14% increase year-over-year. Technology companies like Facebook and Amazon, along with over 100 advertising technology startups, will showcase their latest products this week to attract major advertisers such as PepsiCo and Macy's Priceline.com.
A key focus of this "Advertising Week" event is the rise of "big data," which refers to the use of powerful computing capabilities to analyze vast amounts of data. Matt Freeman, chairman of the "Advertising Week" conference and partner at the well-known venture capital firm Bain Capital, stated that the event aims to demonstrate how the marketing industry is becoming "an equally important art and science." He noted that an increasing amount of data is becoming the foundation for activities such as social purchasing, product development, and creative creation.
Key parameters
Madison Avenue's reliance on data and analytics is growing. Meanwhile, advertisers are using information from consumers' shopping histories and online behaviors to guide their advertising purchasing decisions. An advertising industry executive stated that today, advertising companies take into full consideration users' discussions on social media sites like Twitter when creating advertising products.
At the end of July this year, the world's second-largest advertising company, Omnicom Group, and the third-largest advertising company, Publicis Groupe, jointly announced that they had reached a merger agreement, with a combined market value exceeding $35 billion. Both companies emphasized that enhancing data analytics capabilities is a significant factor justifying this transaction.
Eric Bader, Chief Marketing Officer of online advertising company RadiumOne, stated that the company will hold a seminar this Tuesday to discuss how marketers can "discover 'gold bricks' in data to help them solve business problems." RadiumOne can deliver targeted advertising based on content shared by users on social media.
Meanwhile, Acxiom will also launch a new product that allows marketing and advertising companies to utilize more data to aid their decision-making in online and offline media purchasing and planning processes.
Automated bidding
This Monday, AOL also held its first advertising "upfront presentation," allowing advertisers to gain deeper insights into its automated advertising purchasing business, where data will remain a key theme. The upfront presentation signifies that AOL is drawing on the television industry's experience. Traditionally, the television industry holds an annual event that gives advertisers the opportunity to purchase television advertising slots before the new television season begins.
AOL hopes to persuade advertisers to allocate more of their advertising budgets to "programmatic advertising products," which are increasing in number, allowing advertisers to purchase advertising products in real-time through automated trading systems. Market research firms predict that the global advertising market will reach $505 billion this year, and although programmatic advertising currently accounts for only a small portion of this, it is growing rapidly.
eMarketer expects that the total value of real-time bidding transactions for digital display advertising in the U.S. will reach $3.34 billion this year, a staggering increase of 73.9% year-over-year. At this year's "Advertising Week" event, Jenner will discuss the Kardashian brand to a non-geek audience, while Mayer will represent media giant CC Media Holdings' digital consulting firm MediaLink LLC and Clear Channel Media & Entertainment, attracting the attention of financially strong advertisers.