Hot Takes 2023: Some Bold Predictions From Our Members

As the year draws to a close, we asked our Thought Leaders Circle members to give us their best media-related predictions for 2023—something they were looking forward to, something they were sure was going to happen or something they themselves were going to be a part of that would shake things up.

The responses cover a wide swath of the industry, so if you are making plans for next year, you would do well to take heed.

To start off, Ben Kartzman, COO at Mediaocean sees the convergence of creative across publishers and platforms as one of the big stories of 2023, as brands realize the value of omnichannel advertising and look to software solutions to help them  create a common message across all platforms. 

As budgets tighten and marketers and their agencies are asked to do more with less, it will become critical for advertisers to extend creative assets across publishers and platforms. Brands will still need to be present across all social channels as well as video and display, and they will need software to help them automate creative that can be deployed efficiently across different publishers. Furthermore, the creative will need to feel like it’s been purpose-built for the channel it's running in. Ad tech will play a critical role in enabling this by allowing marketers to follow the old mantra Sun Microsystems developed for Java of “write once, run anywhere” where a piece of creative can be “created once, run everywhere.”

Next up, Chrissy Werner, VP of Marketing at Tubular Labs predicts that the future of search is going to be in social video as viewers increasingly search within the social video platforms for answers rather than Google.

Next year, everyone will discover how the future of search is in social video.  As consumers are increasingly looking for answers to their search questions within the platforms themselves, the shift from text to video has emerged as a go-to for everything from recipes to makeup tutorials and more.

Audiences already see social video as a way to get authentic answers to pressing questions, and with the right data, brands can make investments that organically insert them into that journey. By linking viewing to purchasing and site visitation behaviors, marketers can turn video search into one of their most powerful assets in 2023.

Cathy Oh, Global Head of Marketing & Analytics at Samsung Ads is bullish on the growing role that smart TVs will play in the entire home entertainment space, not just television.

Smart TVs will continue to redefine how the consumers leverage the largest screen in their homes. As we enter 2023, Smart TVs will become the de facto device for more than just video viewing. With the rise of new FAST offerings, online shopping, game streaming maturing and metaverse and Web3 experiences arriving on the big screen, Smart TVs are positioned to become the preferred gateway to interactive digital experiences. Consumers and platforms are embracing the value exchange between audiences and advertisers, so we expect a rapid rollout of new AVOD and FAST tiers in premium/SVOD platforms to match consumer demand in 2023.  

Field Garthwaite, CEO and Co-Founder of IRIS.TV had two very different predictions. The first is about the rapid rise of content identifiers in the face of increased privacy regulation. The second is that streaming will become the star of this year’s Upfronts. 

2022 showed us that brands, advertisers, and publishers are under privacy scrutiny. As new privacy state regulations take effect in the coming year, those who can make use of video-level data and content identifiers will come out on top in 2023. Content identifiers make it simpler to comprehend what has been or will be shown to a consumer. They help ensure a relevant ad is delivered to the right viewer and enables accurate measurement and tracking of which creatives were displayed where and to whom. We've reached a point in the industry where CTV is expanding 50% YoY and with so much fresh content being produced every day, a content ID for streaming that is supported by all major ad platforms will be necessary to address issues with targeting and measurement.

Streaming will become a priority at the Upfronts in 2023. This year, more upfront commitments will go to TV networks' streaming and digital video assets than they did last year. As TV networks experience an inflow of new and streaming-first advertisers, their streaming and digital video inventories have emerged as the focal point of upfront deals. The market is at a critical juncture right now because CTV inventory is in high demand, and there is a perception that supply is limited. The reality is that there is a transparency problem, not a supply problem. Streaming has surpassed cable in viewership in large part due to the growth of FAST on Samsung, Vizio, LG, and others. These platforms cannot share show or episode data, they will share a content ID with contextual and brand suitability data stored on it which will further accelerate the growth of the streaming market.

Jessica Hogue, Innovid’s GM of Measurement & Analytics sees the continued rise of cross-platform measurement as the key story next year, with advertisers understanding the need to measure converged TV campaigns.

Measurement will be table stakes – end of story: The topic of measurement has dominated industry conversations, but for many across the buy- and sell-sides the focus has been almost exclusively focused on understanding new methods of counting impressions and not nearly enough depth on connecting awareness to actual business objectives. Nevertheless, new technologies have arisen to meet the needs of advertisers and publishers that want faster, transparent, and comprehensive analysis of both the reach and performance of converged TV campaigns. Next year will be defined as one of cross-platform measurement action. As marketers continue to rely on streaming inventory to meet their reach objectives and refine their strategies amid an economic climate where every dollar counts, flexibility in measurement and the ability to optimize high-performing channels and creatives will no longer be experimental, but a crucial and game-changing source of insights for uncovering the real business impact of campaigns. With better cross-platform tools at our fingertips, 2023 will see a deep harmonization between media efficiency and creative optimization. 

According to Jason Cohen, CEO at MyBundle.TV, 2023 will be the year that operators begin driving the push to new “virtual” pay TV bundles as the cost of maintaining traditional set top box bundles continues to skyrocket.

2023 will see a big step up in the fragmentation of the traditional Pay TV bundle as consumers will have more ways to get the content they want (including sports and news.) Additionally, streaming services are looking at new paths of partnership distribution, including bundling with other services and platforms, as the early days of “easy” subscriber growth are behind us and churn reduction and revenue become the focus.

Until now, it’s mostly been consumers who are driving the shift out of the traditional Pay TV bundle, but operators are increasingly looking to play down or even get out of the now low-margin traditional Pay TV distribution business, with more drastic price hikes on the way.  This will quicken the pace of the decline of traditional TV penetration in the US, bringing more of the 65 million households still there over to streaming alternatives for their content.  Instead, operators can now connect their subscribers with the content they need without all the cost and investment. Call us crazy, but there is no floor for the expensive and bloated traditional PayTV packages. There is a lot more change to come.

Ed Laczynski, CEO of Zype is focused on all those broken and unused ad slates and how a better and more innovative set of standards are needed this year to finally fix the problem.

In 2023, as an industry we need to step up and fix the dreaded "we'll be right back" messages and broken ad slates. Both reveal how far we have to go to meet the basic standards of reliability in advertising demand for viewers—problems that were solved decades ago in broadcast and cable TV.

How do we do it? As an industry we need an emphasis on support for existing standards and innovating new ones, leveraging data to enable better serving, and finding ways to work together as technology providers, publishers, distributors, and advertisers.

Joe Hirsch, SpringServe’s GM, predicts 2023 will be the year brands start focusing on making their ad buys more sustainable by looking for lower SCO (Supply Chain Object) numbers. 

Historically, buyers have used SPO to consolidate their budgets with the goal of maximizing their buying power. In 2023, we’re going to see marketers move towards vertically integrated ad stacks with the intent to produce more sustainable outcomes. Supply Chain Object (SCO), the value in the bid request that increments up every time a request changes hands, will be an indicator of how environmentally sustainable a transaction is. Buyers are going to place more of an emphasis on lowering the SCO number, and reduce the number of partners they work with, to optimize for transparency and efficiency, as well as environmental sustainability. 

Adam Helfgott, CEO at Madhive says 2023 will be the year that targeting niche segments will take a back seat with TV advertisers, particularly on streaming where geotargeting will thrive.

It seems like every week there is a new partnership announcement that claims to be the future of TV ad targeting. But these partnerships still don’t solve for the lack of transparency and identity at the household level. As a result, advertisers will increasingly put targeting against niche segments, like ‘moms who shop green,’ on the back burner. 

On traditional linear TV, buyers know exactly where their ads will run, right down to the position in the ad pod. On digital TV, however, buyers typically only get insight into what platform the ad ran on, but oftentimes not the channel, network, or show. And since panel data for CTV is still not mature enough yet, advertisers still do not know who in the household was on the couch when the spot aired. Because of all these factors, savvy TV buyers are somewhat in the dark about what is actually being reached and rely on a hodgepodge of 3rd party services/data to try to figure it out.

So, instead of going after niche audiences like ‘moms who shop green’, or large national CTV reach campaigns, we are seeing demand for big TV advertisers to efficiently target against hyper-local audiences and geos at national scale. Digital TV also allows advertisers to tune campaign planning and performance in real-time, so they can move ad spend to different markets and hit national KPIs similar to a reach barometer.

At a time when economic uncertainty is looming overhead, the ability to hit reach, frequency, and market saturation goals with efficiency across 210 DMAs will ensure visibility with all target markets.

Tony Marlow, CMO at LG Ad Solutions sees even faster growth for the FASTs as consumers continue their shift to free TV. 

2023 will be the year that connected TV goes FAST(er). We are already seeing massive adoption of ad-supported streaming content and consumer preferences have shifted to a point where free TV has an opportunity to become one of the primary ways people watch the content they love.

Cassandra Arora, CMO at  iSpot sees 2023 as the year that brands look to measurement to help them reach all parts of the funnel with greater precision.

Brands doubled down on measurement as a means for navigating uncertainty when COVID upended everything. Increasingly, brands are learning to turn TV and CTV into a performance channel and are getting better about measuring all parts of the funnel. A softer ad market will make precision, speed and transparency all the more critical as brands look to cut waste and optimize investments. This also requires a new approach from networks, which learned to be more flexible in recent years and are now moving towards transacting against buyer preferences using new currencies. 

Our TVREV take is that 2023 will be a transition year, where there will be more experimentation than actual large scale change as brands and media companies alike take a wait-and-see attitude towards the economy, the state of the ad market and the ultimate impact of the shift to streaming, which, without cable and retrans fees to prop it up, is going to be a bit painful at first, but ultimately fine.

Sort of like having to swap a $50 million penthouse for a $20 million one.