Digital advertising is a change driven business. To better understand the impact of top priorities and concerns in the year to come, we asked over 150 professionals, including brands, agencies and publishers, about industry challenges and opportunities, and how those factors will drive industry-wide change – and direct ad budgets – over the course of 2019.
The key findings from our latest UK Industry Pulse report were:
Data privacy: the forefront focus
With the arrival of GDPR, data privacy has moved to become the top UK priority for the advertising industry – over half (55.5%) of all respondents felt data privacy was the top challenge for 2019, a significant 39% increase compared to the IAS Industry Pulse survey last year.
It appears a sense of positivity towards the future of data protection has been instilled, with nearly two-thirds (65.3%) saying data privacy regulations improve business function. However, concerns do remain, with over half of respondents (61.2%) agreeing new regulations pose a significant threat to the entire digital advertising ecosystem.
UK industry misalignment
When assessing the key priorities across the industry, we found distinct misalignment amongst UK respondents. Whilst agency respondents agreed data privacy was the most pressing issue for 2019, brand respondents chose lack of consistent measurement across the entire media plan, whilst publishers opted for ad fraud.
Buy-side misalignment was further highlighted - brands remain focused on multi-touch attribution and have begun to see greater opportunity in cross-device measurement. In contrast, half of agency professionals (50%) are placing bets on AI and machine learning as the top future opportunity.
Transitioning to transparency
Transparency was an overwhelming industry desire revealed in our research, with both brands and agencies calling for greater insight into the quality of digital media – specifically, 83.3% of brands perceived an overall lack of media quality transparency as the main threat to ad budget expenditure. Social media was also flagged, with more than eight out of ten (84%) of respondents noting that social platforms do not provide adequate transparency.
Opportunity of Amazon, AI and video
Overall, across the UK digital advertising industry, the greatest future opportunities were felt to be within video, AI and machine learning. Just over two fifths (41.1%) of respondents saw the future in video advertising, whilst 40.2% saw this in AI and machine learning.
When looking at platforms attracting larger ad budget allocation, Amazon was found to be set for a boost – with a majority (81.6%) of respondents believing Amazon will gain a larger portion of UK budgets in 2019 - as many UK consumers use it to discover and research relevant products.
The UK Industry Pulse report clearly reflects the need for closer agency and brand collaboration, greater transparency into media quality, and wider understanding of data privacy regulations. To capitalise on the opportunities in 2019, the industry must work together to realise the true potential of digital advertising.
Nick Morley is Managing Director, EMEA at Integral Ad Science.