What You Need To Know From The 2024 IAB NewFronts
Gone are the days that pulling levers behind-the-scenes qualifies as advertising.
The industry is constantly innovating, and marketers must stay on the pulse of emerging trends and technologies to remain competitive and develop meaningful connections with modern audiences.
At the 2024 IAB NewFronts, we connected with the industry’s leaders like Google, Snapchat, and Roku, on topics from AI to CTV to empower our clients to maximize their impact through digital media.
Amidst the days of insightful sessions and conversations, we’ve distilled key themes and announcements from The NewFronts that will aid brands and advertisers in leveraging new opportunities to effectively reach and engage their customers.
KEY INSIGHTS
- To reach customers where they are and truly capture their attention, video content is essential. Digital video is set to surpass linear TV in ad spend for the first time in 2024, with social video spend projected to surpass CTV. This growth should motivate advertisers to invest in versatile, high-quality video content that can be repurposed across different platforms and time slots.
- Leading social platforms are investing heavily in AI technologies to optimize advertising effectiveness. From predictive ad performance to immersive AR experiences, advertisers can harness these tools to elevate creative production and campaign performance.
- Tech giants like Google, Samsung and Spotify are driving innovations in screen-based content. New advertising solutions and expanding content partnerships are giving advertisers an opportunity to expand their reach and tailor their content as CTV continues to evolve.
Lights, Camera, Action – Video On the Rise:
- IAB announced a report that finding video across CTV, social and online video is expected to increase +16% YoY to $63 billion in 2024, growing nearly 80% faster than all other media.
- Digital video will surpass linear TV in ad spend for the first time in 2024, owning 52% of the share.
- Social video spend is projected to surpass CTV in 2024 with an estimated +20% YoY growth.
Takeaway: Invest in high-value creative production that can be repurposed across various placements. Maximize the use of the content by creating videos of varying lengths that work for multiple time slots and platforms.
Social Video Takes Center Stage:
- Meta announced expansions to their Reels capabilities. Product Catalog Ads will now be able to leverage the placement, and Reminder Ads for Reels can now include external links to promote new products and offers.
- TikTok debuted its new TikTok Pulse suite, which amplifies brands on the platform through content adjacency. Pulse videos are optimized to be placed alongside trending and premium brand-safe content. Paramount and the NHL are the latest to join the TikTok Pulse Premiere roster of premium publishers.
- Snapchat unveiled new initiatives to diversify its breadth of content including a new in-app sports channel called “Snap Sports Network” that will focus on unconventional sports and a partnership with Live Nation to curate concert and festival content. The platform is also expanding its 523 creative program and developed a partnership with Issa Rae’s Ensemble that will bring brands and diverse creators together to collaborate on Snapchat content.
Takeaway: Advertisers can leverage new social platform video tools to increase visibility and reach customers across multiple placements and platforms, meeting them where they are.
The Amazing AI Race
- Meta unveiled a variety of AI tools designed for various functions. One capability is predicting ad performance.The tools that support content creation enable creative resizing, creator sourcing, and soon, predictive analysis to determine the effectiveness of organic creator posts versus partnership ads among.
- TikTok announced their use of generative AI to curate relevant content targeting for their Pulse Custom Lineups, which will be released later this quarter.
- Snapchat is focusing their efforts on AR as they’ve found AI generates 6x more attention than the social feed. They have optimized the creation of try-on experiences with an approximate set up time of 30 minutes along with the integration of AR lenses into all products. Snapchat also debuted ML Face Effects, which allows brands to create a unique machine learning model to add face effects to a Lens which can then be used in AR ads.
Takeaway: Social platforms are focusing on AI and AR to enhance the capabilities of advertisers. Brands can implement these new tools to increase efficiency, gain insight into performance, and maximize creative production and ad engagement.
Innovation: Coming to a Screen Near You
- Google announced enhancements to their PAIR identity solution and innovations within their programmatic platform like AI-powered audience recommendations, bidding capabilities and cross-device measurement. They emphasized growing creator content consumption across all devices, especially Shorts on CTV.
- Samsung, Vizio, and Roku are prioritizing new FAST (free ad-supported television) content, home screen units, and AI-based insights and measurement.
- Samsung highlighted new FAST content partnerships, a trivia game ad unit, improved automatic content recognition, and cross-device measurement.
- Vizio is enhancing its home screen for its 19MM monthly active accounts, introducing new hubs for news, gaming, and sports content, along with home screen video ad units and QR code-enabled pause ads.
- Roku launched new Roku Originals FAST content, improved home screen experiences, and formed measurement partnerships with The Trade Desk and iSpot.TV.
- Vevo and Spotify positioned themselves as immersive platforms for building diverse brand connections.
- Vevo showcased its CTV reach potential of 33M+ daily viewers, highlighting partnerships with KERV, Sling, and Telly, with exclusive artist content sponsorship opportunities.
- Spotify emphasized its growth in music and podcast video content, reporting a nearly 50% increase in user video engagement year over year.
Takeaway: Major tech players are aggressively innovating in the realm of screen-based content, focusing on advanced advertising solutions and expanding content partnerships as CTV continues to grow. Advertisers should tap into the expanding reach of CTV and streaming services and equip themselves with the content and customer data to do so.
Innovation is no longer on the horizon; it’s here and now. The 2024 IAB NewFronts presented opportunities and provided inspiration for full-funnel planning and optimizations through 2024 and beyond. These developments highlight the increasing importance of video content, especially in the realm of social video, to align with evolving consumer behaviors.
To keep pace and remain competitive in the rapidly evolving media landscape, brands must embrace transformation and lean into new technologies.