With the end of every year comes a “what to watch for” post – this is mine. As 2018 ends, let’s review some marketing and advertising trends to watch for in 2019.

2019 – Can you believe it!

According to Kantar’s recently released media landscape predictions, advanced analytics and Artificial Intelligence will play a big role in helping marketers understand true return on investment. An increase in multi-touch attribution modeling is going to help marketers solve the gap between offline and online conversions.

The surge in the usage of connected devices is going to bring an increase in voice-activated creative opportunities. We have already dipped our toes in these waters in 2018 with a few of our clients, Troy-Bilt® and the Ohio Lottery. This will bring a completely new outlook to creative opportunities in the “audio” space, as well as branded search. I know I have used my smart speaker to search for things in the past year, as I am sure all of you have as well. How will these devices effect product reviews? Would you be more apt to review a product if you could just “voice” your review versus typing it out? All things we, as marketers, will be on the lookout for in 2019 when it comes to voice-activated opportunities.

In 2019, I think we will see an even greater focus on addressing gender and social issues. 2018 brought a real focus on women – showing them in contrasting roles. From Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty to the #metoo movement, women were highlighted in 2018. “Tecate® Beer (owned by Heineken®), took a stand against violence against women in Mexico through their advertising. They asked men who are violent towards women to not drink their beer and that they are not welcome as customers, with the message “If you don’t respect women, we don’t want you to drink us.” The result: a 13.4% increase in sales.

While social media is ever-changing, it is definitely here to stay in 2019. Social platforms continue to find creative and innovative features to keep consumers (and marketers) engaged. Visual will be the key in 2019 social platforms, which means video will continue to play a large role. With visual being a key format, there will definitely be a rise in live video formats in 2019. People enjoy knowing that they are able to interact with a brand and its content right at that very moment. Since introducing Facebook Live in 2016 (very early stages), there have been more than 3,500,000,000 Facebook Live broadcasts! With nearly 2 Billion people watching a live broadcast of some sort at some time. People want that in-the-moment content these days. Read more here.

So in closing, as we say farewell to yet another year – let us keep an eye for how many of these trends we see in 2019!