5 Advertising Trends To Watch This Year

2019 is well underway, and with it, trends for the rest of the year have begun to emerge. Radio lives on in the form of podcasts and streaming, and AI lives everywhere — including many peoples’ homes. 2018 planted the seeds for many of 2019’s emerging marketing and advertising trends. Now, it’s time to sit back and watch them grow. Read on for Tag’s top five advertising trends to watch for the rest of this year.

1. Voice marketing

Smart speakers like Amazon Echo and Apple HomePod are everywhere, and with them, their powerful AI-driven voice assistants. Smart speakers are on the way to being a household staple — sales grew 78% in 2018. As the industry continues to grow, expect to start seeing opportunities for voice marketing emerge. In order to stay ahead of the competition, start thinking about integrating voice into your brand’s marketing mix.

Voice marketing may be less “addy” than one would think — because of the wide use of voice search via smart speakers, the real marketing opportunities could lie in leveraging search rankings.

2. A new look at brick-and-mortar stores

Since the rise of online shopping, brick-and-mortar stores have struggled to compete. It’s hard to beat the ease of shopping without even leaving your bed. However, one advantage that brick-and-mortar stores have over online shopping is the ability to create a memorable in-store experience. In 2018, the trend of in-store experiences began, as many brands realized the power of making a lasting, in-person connection with their customers.

In-store experiences are so effective that many brands that started as online-only, such as Warby Parker, have begun opening their own brick-and-mortar stores. We predict that in 2019 this trend will continue to grow, as brands start reinventing their brick-and-mortar stores to provide an experience that just isn’t available online.

3. Shift towards nano-influencers

Influencer marketing has a problem: people don’t trust influencers any more. Large-scale influencers are unrelatable at best, and untrustworthy at worst. And influencer scandals such as the Fyre Festival fiasco don’t help.

2018 saw a shift in influencer marketing away from macro-influencers and towards micro- or even nano-influencers, who have anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand Instagram followers. Nano-influencers are much more relatable to their followers, and because they have a smaller reach marketers can afford to work with many nano-influencers at once.

In 2019, expect to see influencer marketing focus less on huge, macro-influencers, and more on building large networks of many smaller influencers.

4. AI as a Media Buying Tool

AI may very well be one of the largest forces in media buying in 2019. 4 out of 10 advertisers already use AI to optimize their media buys, and that number is predicted to keep growing.

AI may not be a great creative tool — just look at all the bot-generated t-shirts in your Facebook ads — but it’s a gift for media buyers. AI is great at deciphering confusing data sets and figuring out consumer patterns. By using AI, media buyers can save themselves both time and headaches.

5. Chatbots in everyday life

Chatbots have been around for a while — since 1966, in fact — but the technology really exploded in 2018. However, even though we’ve all probably used chatbots at least a few times, the technology remains a novelty. We predict that in 2019, chatbots will continue to grow, and become less of a novelty and more integrated into our everyday lives.

Brands can integrate chatbots into their websites and social pages — especially Facebook messenger — in order to help customers navigate their services more smoothly. In a year, it may be commonplace to order a pizza or even book a flight via a chatbot.