“The next 3-5 years is going to be extraordinary disruption unlike any we’ve felt to date,” Myers tells Walsh. Media companies must develop new business models and processes that enable them to reach increasingly fragmented audiences, adapt to programmatic and cope with an overabundance of data. Advertisers have yet to convert that data into real knowledge, Myers asserts. “The actual process of advertising, media buying, and the business models are no different than they were 50 years ago.”
Emotion-Tech could offer a potential solution. When marketers can connect a consumer’s physical and emotional state to data such as purchase behavior, geographic location, and set-top box information, they can create the ideal environment to experience an ad. Instead of CPM, we could soon be measuring CPE – cost per unit of emotional engagement.
Shifting gender roles and expectations are also challenging the advertising industry. Women’s success in education and the workplace have challenged old notions of what it means to be a “real man.” As the idea of masculinity shifts and gender balance is redefined, advertisers have so far only embraced the resulting ambiguity, says Myers. Now they must work to define the new demographic reality.