As every year, the association of advertising, marketing and digital communication in Spain (IAB Spain), has presented the annual edition 2022 of its Top Digital Trends report.
The report, which this year has been carried out with the sponsorship of Adevinta Spain, offers an overview of the market and analyzes the keys to digital business in 2022 related to different areas. They are as follows:
-Digital audio: According to the report, the freemium market, which allows offering a service to Internet users in exchange for advertising, will continue to grow in 2022. Brands will embrace the trend of creating sound branding and incorporate audio into their digital strategy, creating podcasts, social audio, advertisements….
The rise of synthesized voices for DCO (dynamic creative optimization) will also stand out for facilitating the production of large-scale advertising to generate such dynamic ads (DCO) that speak to the user in their specific context.
-Branded Content: NFT (Non Fungible Tokens) are here to stay in branded content strategies. Based on Ethereum’s blockchain technology (one of the most important cryptocurrencies in the world), NFTs allow to tokenize any digital content by means of an authenticity certificate that identifies them as unique, unrepeatable and non-exchangeable digital assets. This will open up new communication possibilities in storytelling and customer interaction so that brands can carry their messages and even generate revenue in a new way.
-Data: Faced with the incipient disappearance of cookies, advertisers will look for any option to have a greater direct relationship with consumers and this involves having a customer data platform (CDP) that allows them to unify the user experience. Users will be more open to sharing their data or allowing tracking as long as it provides value.
-DOOH (Digital Out of Home): The programmatic channel in DOOH will be consolidated in terms of campaign volume, and the integration of additional data into DSPs will be accelerated, allowing campaigns to be contextualized and targeted more effectively. This data articulated through DMPs, together with the disappearance of third party cookies and “zero person data”, will generate new opportunities under the “context is 2ing” paradigm and will provide higher efficiency ratios than those obtained so far in this type of campaigns.
-E-commerce: This year will see an increase in retail media investment, which is no longer aimed solely at conversion targets, and the major media players are already offering commerce solutions. Moreover, social media will no longer be conceivable without social commerce, because influencers are already influencing purchases without leaving Facebook, Instagram, Twitch, TikTok, etc. On the other hand, BNPL (buy now pay later) will be consolidated by the major players and these new players will offer previously unavailable payment options, which could lead to an increase in the CRs of online campaigns.
-Esports: The metaverse phenomenon, versatility, rapid adoption of NFTs, and the involvement of communities with their teams thanks to fan tokens will present great opportunities for brands in 2022.
-Legal As regards the General Law on Audiovisual Communication, the Spanish regulation is in the preliminary legislative draft stage and stems from the transposition of Directive (EU) 2018/1808. This will provide greater flexibility to the quantitative limits of linear television advertising with respect to the previous one and one of the most novel aspects of the regulation is its application to video sharing platforms.
-Influencer Marketing: A performance-based collaboration model will take hold this year and a new type of relationship will begin in which brands will pay according to the number of clicks, impressions, interactions or even conversions achieved by the influencer during the collaboration.
-Affiliate Marketing: Increasing Brand-Brand partnerships in affiliation to generate synergies by creating value for their audiences from complementary products or services. In addition, artificial intelligence will enable the further development of affiliate marketing campaigns and will be a trend in 2022.
-Programmatic: In view of the elimination of third-party cookies in Chrome, focus will be placed on measuring the efficiency of campaigns with the development of proprietary attribution models. In addition, we will increase investment in the development of Adtech and Martech technologies, trying to unify data from all sources.
-Native Advertising: In native advertising, context will become increasingly relevant, not only in terms of targeting, but also in terms of the environment in which ads appear. In this sense, native advertising will offer in 2022 a unique opportunity in terms of contextual efficiency (what surrounds an ad and at what precise moment the ad is presented to the user) something that is becoming increasingly important.
-Social Networks: In 2022 achieving relevance through content trending will be critical. On the other hand, the metaverse is making inroads as an evolution of social networks. There are three main components of this evolution: the speed at which technology changes, changes in social behaviors, and trends related to this world. We will live in the era of virtual goods (NFTs), AR (Augmented Reality), data collection, virtual influencers through avatars and content creation by users as a gaming-like experience.
-Connected TV: Thanks to content platforms such as Movistar+, Netflix, HBO Max, Amazon Prime Video… new forms of audience exploitation, new advertising models will appear and content consumption will continue to increase.
-Online video: Thanks to the increase in consumption of audiovisual content on subscription and free platforms in Connected TV, the growth of online video is unstoppable. Moreover, according to IAB Spain’s Annual Online Video Study 2021, 97% of Spanish Internet users already consume online video.
