Predictions 2023: Check In with Partners

We started the year off strong with our 2023 Predictions Series to discover what thought leaders at Rise and our trusted partners thought would happen in the coming year. A few of our partners – Google, The Trade Desk, and Snapchat – shared their predicted challenges and expectations for their companies and the marketing industry in 2023. As we start to close out the year, we needed to know, what’s the status of their predictions as of now?

What They Said

Prediction:

Google is continuing to optimize business outcomes and key metrics (like volume, efficiency, profit or lifetime value — instead of just KPIs) with improvements to automated bid strategies and Performance Max. To do so they’ll combine machine learning with strategic inputs based on in-depth knowledge of brands.

Reality: 

During this year’s Google Marketing Live, Google announced even more automation-based tools. Performance Max users can now leverage a Conversion Lift for a solution that enables advertisers to run controlled experiments to measure the causal, incremental effects of Google marketing campaigns.

Prediction:

Google’s privacy strategy will be based on three pillars: first-party data, machine learning, and creating new privacy-preserving technologies, such as enhanced conversion.

Reality: 

The digital advertising landscape is experiencing a paradigm shift, and rising expectations for user privacy are driving new regulations and browser changes that limit the way user data is generated, shared, and measured. Privacy-centric measurement is still top of mind following Google’s GA4 migration on July 1st. Google shared a bundle of privacy-preserving solutions that work together to build and recover as much observable data as possible and fill measurement gaps when needed. A larger pool of observable data means stronger machine learning models to power AI and maximize performance. 

Prediction:

Video and content will be at the forefront of Google’s investments, innovations, and overall growth for the year. They’re betting on their YouTube Shorts product and creating shoppable YouTube experiences. CTV will also remain a focus in 2023. 

Reality: 

Google’s initial predictions remain extremely relevant. Content and YouTube TV continue to grow and the latter is a key way for brands to connect more effectively with highly engaged audiences. They also continued emphasizing content with a new suite of AI-powered creative solutions that enable video creation, enhancement and evaluation, as well as image enhancements. One example of a new AI-powered creative solution is Google's Product Studio. This feature helps create and enhance high-quality product images by generating scenes, increasing image resolution, and editing backgrounds. Your new images can save you time and resources and help attract more customers when you scale them across your marketing channels. 

Users are now able to talk directly with Google AI to create campaign assets like keywords, images, headlines, descriptions, and more in the Google Ads UI. This pilot program allows agencies and advertisers to engage with the conversational experience as much as they like when setting up a new search campaign in Google Ads.

What They Said

Prediction:

We’re at the beginning of the success story of companies leaning into TTD’s retail data marketplace for more strategic targeting.

Reality: 

The Trade Desk can use retail purchase data for targeting audiences, and many times for measurement as well. This year, retailers such as Macy’s, Bloomingdales, Albertsons, Kroger, and Dollar General have already started using these integrations! 

TTD’s rapid growth in retail media starts with a focus on being careful, objective stewards of data. Retailers know they're here to serve advertisers with more precision and efficacy in ad campaigns — they aren’t here to compete. 

Prediction:

 The Trade Desk also bet on the growth of Connected TV (CTV), predicting that brands will spend across linear and digital channels for an overall more holistic media strategy.

Reality: 

Video is the most effective way for brands to influence the hearts and minds of consumers. Examining Q2 2023 data from across TTD’s Connected TV (CTV) campaigns, they found that adding CTV to your media mix leads to more impactful multichannel campaigns. After seeing a CTV ad, the target audience needed 50% fewer impressions before they visited their website. 

Much like retail media, CTV has also been one of TTD’s fastest-growing channels at scale. Retail and CTV prove the power of data-driven decisioning and are the reason why brands are accelerating their shift to programmatic on the platform. Instead of hunting for ad opportunities with data, TTD is using data as a starting point to direct which media opportunities to hunt for. 

Prediction:

Identity will be a major focus for the year (and beyond). TTD’s UID 2.0 will play a large part in ushering in an industry-wide DSP solution to the way data is accessed and applied to audience targeting.

Reality: 

There has been a broad embrace of UID 2.0 across the CTV ecosystem, driven in part by streaming leaders needing to unleash the value of their authenticated user data to create as much precision and relevance as possible — thereby maximizing their CPMs. The only way to maximize advertising revenue is to increase precision and relevance. The biggest update proving this since our prediction is that Warner Bros. Discovery will be integrating UID 2.0 across all of their streaming properties, including Max and Discovery+.

Reminder:  With UID 2.0, brands can enrich authenticated data with their first-party and third-party data, then find the right relevant audience. This means they can pay (bid) a meaningfully higher price for the value of that impression.

What They Said

Prediction:

It’s clear from the continued growth of Augmented Reality (AR) and the community using it that brands need to start playing more in this space. Snapchat is committed to expanding its popular in-store experience to more places. This goes hand-in-hand with the continued evolution of AR both on and off the platform. 

Reality: 

True to their word, Snapchat has focused this year on AR with the launch of a new enterprise solution and the continued expansion of AR into new spaces. Snapchat launched ARES, a new enterprise solution to enable businesses to integrate Snap's AR into their owned and operated channels with ease and at scale. 

Snapchat's AR has been so successful this year that it expanded into new spaces such as venues and music tours — including the Barclay's Center in Brooklyn, the NBA Draft, Duran Duran's arena tour, and most recently as a camera feature on crow shots during Drake’s "It Was All a Blur" Tour.

Prediction: 

Snapchat is doubling down on performance advertising with a focus on bringing the right tools to the table, enabled by a sturdy measurement framework.  

Reality: 

We are seeing significant adoption of Snapchat’s newest performance advertising tools as well as growth within existing frameworks. Much of the company’s past and predicted success is, in part, attributed to its privacy-first design that leads to happier users. Snapchat has seen early indicators of performance advertising improvements, including:

• 30% more purchase related conversions from QoQ, supported by improved machine learning and systems for ad ranking and optimization
• Record active advertisers in Q2, up more than 20% YoY
• Improved advertiser retention and higher spending on lower-funnel advertising YoY
• Snap’s new pixel optimization model (7 Day Click, 0 Day View Pixel Purchase) contributed to a more than 40% QoQ increase in 7/0 Pixel Purchase conversions for Q2.

As influencer marketing and Snapchat’s creator community continue to see explosive growth, the platform launched Snap Collab Studio, which is a fully managed, end-to-end service to help advertisers identify the best talent for campaigns, execute contracts, and track deliverables with thousands of "Snap Stars" on the platform. 

• Spotlight, Snap’s entertainment platform for creator and user-generated content, reached 51% more average users in Q2, totaling over 400 million monthly active users.
• Those happy users even spent over 3x more time watching Spotlight content YoY and time spent watching Snapchat Stories from Snap Stars more than doubled.

Since launching MyAI, Snapchat’s AI-powered chatbot, over 150 million people have sent over 10 billion messages, making it among the largest consumer chatbots available today.