From Cookies To NFTs, What Lies Ahead For the Advertising Ecosystem In 2022
As a new year begins, the advertising industry already has a whirlwind of anticipated developments and disruptions to contend with. With the cookiepocalypse looming ahead, we’re likely to continue seeing publishers and AdTech platforms furiously innovating to finally produce a fool-proof, first-party data-based solution. Meanwhile, the growing landscape of digital spaces — across both the familiar territories of social and the unfamiliar terrain of the metaverse — is presenting new opportunities and challenges for both brands and marketers alike. As we look ahead to the rest of 2022, what can we expect?
The dominance of digital
In spite of the ongoing post-pandemic recovery taking place across the globe, the ways in which consumer habits have evolved in the past year are likely here to stay. From a growing acceptance and preference for online shopping to new app-based innovations in domains such as healthtech, we’re seeing a broadening spectrum of traditional services now transitioning to digital. To adapt, platforms have gotten creative, tapping into predictive analytics and gamification strategies to understand what makes consumers tick and how to get them to stay on apps for longer periods of time.
Throughout the past year, Asia has especially taken the lead in this regard with many of the continent’s e-commerce giants such as Shopee, Lazada, and Taobao, fusing entertainment with shopping. This novel approach to sustaining customer engagement and loyalty has been largely driven by livestreamers. Live e-commerce has largely matured as a sector in mainland China, where viewers spent over USD 188 billion (CN¥1.2 trillion) in 2020 alone. Though the West has yet to see the same traction on its platforms, some retailers have started to experiment. Walmart, most notably, was an early mover in 2020 and has since expanded its live commerce efforts beyond TikTok to Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and even media partners such as Buzzfeed.
A solid privacy-first play
We may only be in the first few weeks of 2022 but for the advertising ecosystem, the phasing out of third-party cookies is on the horizon. With Google set to disable support by 2023, the industry is still scrambling to find a sustainable solution that benefits all those involved. After all, it’s telling that when Apple rolled out its App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework as part of its iOS 14.5 update, 96 per cent of US users chose not to allow app tracking.
In line with these shifts, it's clear that brands will need to invest in private-by-design infrastructures that can provide greater assurances of their customers’ privacy. From privacy-preserving data clean rooms that allow brands, publishers, and platforms to share consumer data with their consent to decentralised alternatives that ensure privacy-assured audience targeting, 2022 is likely to see a plethora of experiments.
Ushering in the era of Web3
Discussions of the new phase of the internet have been making their rounds across the web for the past few months, with many stating that the age of Web2 is now over. Web2 is largely characterised by a peer-to-peer ethos in how content is disseminated online — user-generated content and participatory culture was (and is) all the rage. In spite of its seemingly ‘people-first’ philosophy, Web2 has been built on the backs of big tech giants. From the social commerce entrepreneurs who’ve built steady followings on Facebook to self-made influencers who’ve come of age on Instagram, Web2 has inevitably raised a new generation of enterprising creators but all have been limited to these closed-loop ecosystems.
The implications aren’t new to us in the advertising and marketing world — after all, Web2 has largely catalysed the growth and subsequent reliance on the data economy as we know it. With so much of our lives now lived online, it’s no surprise that we’re estimated to generate 2.5 quintillion bytes of data each day. Amid regulatory pressures surrounding cookie consent rules that have led to substantial fines, the data economy is rightfully taking a decentralised turn: Welcome to the age of Web3. Positioned as the next iteration of the internet, distinguished by interoperable (non-walled garden) environments and token-based economics, Web3 purports to truly put the power back in the hands of users.
We’re already beginning to see the stirrings of disruption in the creator economy — valued at USD 104.2 billion — where non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are enabling entertainers, musicians, and artists to bypass industry gatekeepers. 77 per cent of content creators rely on brand deals to stay afloat, but NFTs present an exciting opportunity for creators to generate a token economy of their own. From exclusive perks, loyalty schemes, or a full-on creator coin, NFTs can help to add a new layer of fan engagement and increase monetisation opportunities for creators.
Simultaneously, NFTs can be equally leveraged as a digital identity solution — a fascinating experiment in light of a possible future internet powered solely by blockchains. Recently, blockchain domain provider Unstoppable Domains launched Login with Unstoppable, a single-sign-on (SSO) feature that is 100 per cent user-owned and prevents websites from mining and selling user data. As the industry grapples with the demise of third-party cookies, this shift towards decentralisation may very well be the impetus it needs to commit to privacy-preserving solutions for the long term.
One thing’s for sure: At Aqilliz, we’re especially excited about the ongoing decentralised revolution that’s been long underway. As an early pioneer in blockchain-enabled solutions for the AdTech and MarTech ecosystem, the myriad of industry developments that have taken place across recent years has all the more pointed to the need for an ecosystem that properly rewards all those involved. From the ongoing forays into the metaverse that will surely expand beyond viral marketing campaigns to the rise of a new vision for the internet, driven by a new philosophy that users will underwrite, 2022 is set to be an exciting year and we can’t wait to see how our ecosystem evolves.
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