5 Advertising Trends to Tap Into for 2022

A new year brings new opportunities to evaluate your business and advertising strategies for the months ahead. There’s no better time to start planning and setting goals for your advertising budget. If you’re looking to stay a step ahead of your competitors, tap into this year’s adtech and marketing trends with our handy guide to 2022 below.
Calling Out the Cookie… Again.
In 2021, Google announced its plan to delay the phase-out of third-party cookies in Chrome’s browser until 2023, giving advertisers more time to prepare for alternative solutions. The delay comes from Google in part from its need to work with the United Kingdom’s Competition and Marketing Authority (CMA) and working closely with other regulators to ensure advertisers can effectively replace third-party cookies in the time required.
That doesn’t mean advertisers should stop thinking about how they will prepare for the phase-out of third-party cookies. In preparation for the change, Google has released the “Privacy Sandbox,” which has multiple proposals for Chrome’s solutions. In these proposals, you’ll find the “Federated Learning of Cohorts,” also known as FloC. FloC is a complex attempt to create a group of similar users in a decentralized system. Though browsers have so far rejected this option, it’s worth staying up-to-date on the latest proposed solutions. Google is still testing FloC, and you can read more about it on Google’s Privacy Sandbox website.
Shifting Context.
In 2022, advertisers should expect a “new normal” due to increasingly strict privacy laws and regulations affiliated with the death of the third-party cookie. With Google planning to phase out the third-party cookie in 2023, advertisers are asking “now what?” As part of the solution, many have started testing contextual targeting. Contextual targeting uses a website’s content, keywords, and other types of metadata available on a page to help inform ad buying decisions, rather than the private user data that the cookie uses.
To read more about contextual targeting and how it can be your new solution to the phase-out of third-party cookies, read our blog, What is Contextual Targeting?
Connecting into CTV.
Connected TV, or digitally enabled TV, has come into its own over the past few years and the advertising opportunities within it have exploded, so much that specialized agencies have popped up to help brands with their CTV ad buys.
Not all agencies and CTV buying platforms are created equal, however, so if you’re looking to dive into the CTV space, be sure you ask a few key questions to your partners to ensure your ad spend is going to the right places:
- Where will my ads appear? Just like on the web, TV has both premium placements and content that might be less than desirable. If you’re getting a cheap rate, you may want to investigate the channels and content your ads will be appearing next to.
- What brand safety measures do you enable? You want to be sure your buyer works with partners that can protect your brand from bot traffic, negative or irrelevant content, and outright fraud. Your buyer should be able to provide detailed reports about this information if you ask.
- How do you charge your agency fee? Understand how the agency makes its money so you can be sure you’re getting a fair and transparent pricing for your ad buys. CTV buying can seem like a black box, but an agency should be able to give you a breakdown of where your dollars are going, including their own fees, targeting and data fees, and platform fees.
Minding the Generation Gap.
Gen Z will have more influence on the economy and media landscape than many may have expected, and this will only increase in 2022. Gen Z will drive how we think about products and ads, and they will pave the way for how we continue to build the web.
Going into the year, advertisers and publishers will have to work on delivering content that is engaging and provides value to younger audiences. Content creation will need to be bigger and more important than it used to be and brands will have to invest in creating richer content to keep up with Gen Z. To find out more on how to attract Gen Z users, read our blog The Power of Gen Z.
Picking the Right Platform(s).
Social media continues to grow in new ways and into new platforms, and with it, the percentage of buying decisions made with social platforms in mind has increased. Many brands and agencies are moving into social commerce because of the benefits of enhanced engagement and specific targeting, especially as consumers expect to be able to buy anything at any time.
Social platform commerce and ad buying capabilities continue to get stronger, but smart agencies and buyers can extend that reach to programmatic channels with the right technology partners. Consumers are more and more comfortable engaging with ads that look and feel like social media ads, so it can be helpful to explore platforms that offer “social creative” like Logiq’s Digital Marketing platform so you can save money on your ad creative and run your ad buys across thousands of websites programmatically.
If you’re looking for a partner to help you navigate these adtech trends and more, reach out to us at [email protected] and we’ll help create a 2022 plan that meets your business and advertising needs for the year ahead.