IAB’s Annual Meeting: The Most Critical Event In Two Decades?

The IAB Annual Leadership Meeting is always one of the most important ‘advertising’ events of the year — at least it has been since the early 2000s. The 2023 event could be the most critical gathering in nearly two decades for two reasons. First, internet advertising is, in many ways, the foundation of today’s global ad market and, second, a confluence of equally demanding macro and micro issues are having a somewhat debilitating effect on the economy, in general, and the ad market, in particular. Add to this fact, the emergence of Connected TV and Streaming Audio as key advertising tactics and issues related to identity, addressability, measurement and attribution, and there is certainly a lot to talk about. While the leaders in Marco Island will not be solving the inflation problem over the next few days, or tackling issues related to rising interest rates or far-reaching corporate layoffs, they will be solving issues that effect daily life in the ad sector.

Here are a few things I hope to be discussing over the next two days…

Privacy

• Privacy and what privacy means for both brands and consumers.

First Party Data

• First party data and issues related to privacy, sharing, measurement and transparency.

Omnichannel Marketing

• Omnichannel marketing and the tracking of buyers across channels. There is an immediate need to respond to measurement and attribution gaps.

• Omnichannel conversion measurement technology to significantly increase the value of digital identifiers.

• Cross device, multi-touch attribution and measurement (closed loop) and the customer’s complete journey to conversion.

Customer Segments

• Attribution assessments and how they transform 1st party lists into actionable customer segments.

Identity Graphs and Household Targeting

• Identity graphs and household targeting tied to privacy-compliant digital identifiers.

• The household graph and how it drives revenue across devices and channels.

Identity Graphs (Household targeting) and their effect on reach and frequency

• Enhanced reach and frequency measurement tools (to limit over exposure)

• Managing reach and frequency across every biddable channel.

TV Attribution

• Tracking TV attribution in a CTV and Linear TV world.

• TV attribution and how automatic content recognition and device graphs can track cross-device conversions.

CTV

• What growth rates should we expect in the post pandemic world.

• How sophisticated is today’s CTV fraud detection and prevention technology.

Streaming Audio

• What growth rates should we expect in the post pandemic world.

• Will Podcasts continue to flood the market and how will they affect the market at large.

• Will CPMs in streaming audio moderate in the months ahead or will they remain relatively high (as they are now when being compared to CTV rates).

Advanced Reporting

• Advance reporting and multi-touch attribution.

• How do we properly communicate advancements to brand marketers.

We are mid way through day one and so far the engagement at ALM has been awesome. It will be interesting to see how actionable things are going to be when I get back to my desk.