2023 Advertising Releases: The Most Impactful Industry Updates
We say it every year in advertising, but 2023 was a year of breakneck change. ChatGPT and generative AI more broadly would have represented a huge landscape shift, but there are plenty of other developments that changed the game over the past 12 months.
Blackbird’s experts break down their take on 2023’s most significant new trends in advertising – AI/GPT, measurement, channels, and more.
2023: The year of GPT
Account Manager Alex Capurro: Even if you aren't using the exact outputs from ChatGPT for copy or, it is an incredibly powerful tool for learning and quickly immersing yourself into your client's world and their product. Need to figure out what all the random non-brand keywords mean on a new account? Feed them into ChatGPT to see what other contextual info might be necessary from the viewpoint of your intended customer.
Account Associate Fiona Morris: The popularization of GPT and large language models (LLMs) has had a big impact on both the types of content we run and how we approach marketing. Along with testing AI/GPT/LLM content across client accounts, we've also started using GPT to assist in tasks such as coming up with ad copy, writing RSAs, assessing placements, and more.
Chief Client Officer Jack Stampfl: AI tools have helped substantially with several tasks (ad copy, asset building, trouble-shooting technical questions) that used to take up much more time. The tools have freed us up to apply more focus on analytics and strategy for our clients.
Account Associate Rachel Trac: AI-based marketing, with tools like ChatGPT & DALL-E, is helping us take concepts and produce creative at scale, whether it’s in the form of ad copy, images, etc. Layering AI into content is helping us leverage personalization in new ways without much uplift.
2023’s biggest channel changes
Account Associate Rishita Arora: Across channels, we’re definitely using more AI-led bidding strategy. This results in a lack of control in terms of ad placements and bidding. It’s easier for people with less-developed platform chops to get momentum, and it leaves experienced marketers to focus on creative and analytics to drive differentiated results.
Account Director Flynn O’Brien: There’s more automation everywhere. Campaign types like Performance Max and Advantage + have taken off the training wheels and are beginning to outperform other campaign types up and down the funnel.
Account Manager Ethan Paasch: We’ve put a lot more emphasis on communicating the pros and cons of Google’s automated bidding strategies, with more weighted back-end conversions from client CRMs as a big tool at our disposal for training the bidding algorithms on the right users to engage. This has been good for down-funnel performance and gets positive feedback from clients.
Account Director Thomas Quinlan: Facebook account structure is moving to Advantage+ automation, and Google moving to almost full automation. LinkedIn site conversion campaign performance is falling off a cliff almost everywhere we’ve tried it – they have some work to do on their algos.
CEO Jay Stampfl: We’re seeing more automation in campaigns, from Performance Max in Google to Advantage+ in Facebook. Amazon’s ad presence is growing a ton; in some cases, we’ve seen more efficiency in sending traffic to Amazon than other channels.
How measurement shifted in 2023
Account Associate Anna Seitz: The birth of GA4 and all of its flaws is aligned with the theme of everything moving to AI and automation – 2023 saw a huge shift into machine learning and reliance on tech, but the new tools need plenty of optimizations to be truly useful for marketers.
Jack Stampfl: We’re finally moving away from last-click attribution as incrementality becomes a bigger part of the conversation. Overall, venture-backed tech companies are focusing more on ROI than on growth at all costs as funding has dramatically slowed.
Jay Stampfl: Universal Analytics is finally gone, for better and worse – better for planning for life without cookies, worse because GA4 still has a ton of kinks.
VP of Analytics Ben Vigneron: You’re hearing much more discussion on incrementality in the mainstream and seeing the rapid rise of media mix modeling. At Blackbird, we’ve developed a new user segmentation analysis that allows us precision in targeting that the shift to machine learning has otherwise stripped.
We’ve got more thoughts coming up on the developments we’d like to see in 2024 – and predictions for how next year will actually take shape. Stay tuned.