Ten Top Trends for 2023: What Brands and Marketers Need to Know

And speaking of thriving, that's what we're all trying to do! With our favorite festivals, conferences and special events back at full strength, consumers are getting out and about at unprecedented numbers. Live Nation's Q3 2022 was the company's best quarter ever, with 44 million fans attending 11 million shows. Major League Soccer also set an attendance record in 2022 with 19 million-plus fans attending games. Leisure travel has bounced back too, with business travel not far behind -- according to Exhibitor Insight, tradeshow participation rates are expected to rise by 18% in 2023.

Social and impactful, Gen Z now represents 27% of U.S. consumers¹ and a staggering $360 billion in disposable income. They spend more than twice as much time online as the national average, and 80% of them have purchased something they saw on social media², which makes them the perfect audience for out of home's knack for digital activation. But we'll come back to that.

A significant consumer trend is response to grocery inflation. With the cost of groceries having risen by 12% in 2022³, more than half of consumers have changed their eating and drinking habits, with 48% making an effort to spend less on groceries⁴. Consumers are also trying to save money by eating out less (82%) and going to bars less (73%)². They're also spreading out their purchases over longer periods of time⁵.

Moving on to the media landscape, one of the major challenges for marketers this year is the decline in trust among users of social media platforms, who are logging off due to loss of trust, fake news, objectionable content and intrusive ads⁶. This consumer reaction impacts media spend as one in three media experts think in-feed social media advertising is too risky and 56% are prioritizing mitigation of that risk⁷.

Linear TV continues to lose its appeal for advertisers; CPMs rose 9.9% in 2022⁸ while fewer people than ever are watching Pay TV, with subscriptions are projected to drop by another 4.8% in 2023⁹. Plus, streaming is losing some of its advertising value as platforms battle to retain their new subscribers. While over half of North Americans signed up for a new streaming service in the last 12 months, 38% of them are planning on cutting down on their paid subscriptions in the next six months¹⁰.

With cookies and third-party in decline, our third media trend is seeing increased interest. It's contextual relevance, which means aligning ads with the environment in which they are consumed and 58% of marketers are focusing on this in 2023¹¹, making it the highest-priority content quality initiative of the year. Ads with contextual relevance generated 2.2x greater recall¹² and made consumers 24% more likely to buy the product¹³.

The growth of influencer marketing has become a $15 billion market in 2022¹⁴ and it is paying off as four out of five consumers have purchased products because of social media content¹⁵. Brands are able to impact revenue, awareness, impressions, mentions, and clicks via influencer marketing¹⁴. Consumers increasingly look to influencers' recommendations for everything from clothing and food to travel and streaming services¹⁶.

Fashion brands have embraced the Metaverse to offer exclusive digital clothing items; there's even the NFL Zone within Fortnite¹⁷. Marketers are looking to the Metaverse as one of the top places for innovation and 15% plan to buy ads or monetize Metaverse content in 2023¹⁸.

The phenomenon of digital amplification and engagement that occurs when the right creative is placed in the right location has become known as social out of home -- #sOOH. Two thirds of Millennial and Gen Z consumers have seen out of home on their social feeds, and four out of five would share content themselves¹⁹. As for the right location, our OUTFRONT PRIME portfolio offers over two hundred and fifty of our most socially spectacular assets.

Related, is digital activation. Out of home excels at driving much more than just social posts. Dollar for dollar, it drives 5.3x more online purchases, 4.9x more website visits, and 4.8x more app downloads²⁰, just to name a few.

Increasing interactivity through mixed reality makes OOH more engaging. Augmented reality blurs lines while building brands, and while it's easy to view AR as a toy, it has the ability to increase both purchase intent and brand preference. For more interactivity in ads, there's QRad, OUTFRONT's responsive content control system, which lets consumers change the content of the ads they interact with on certain assets. It's like a choose your own adventure, emphasis on the ad.

Innovative creative, like anamorphic 3D, is capturing marketers' imagination as they can leverage the flexibility and fluidity of dynamic digital out of home to create contextual relevance. Those who want to think out of the box, literally, can add dimension to their campaigns with our XScape technology, which allows for the creation of immersive optical illusions that command attention and can earn viral reach.

Media mix optimization continues to be an advertiser focus. This is an ad medium that plays nicely with others, and can boost the ROI of search by 40%¹ and make consumers 48% more likely to engage with a mobile ad². It can also increase the reach of video campaigns -- 1.3x for desktop, 1.6x for linear TV, 3.1x for mobile streaming, and 3.4x for mobile video²¹.

The final trend we want to share with you today is measurement and attribution. Great out of home campaigns are powered by audiences, but the number of people exposed to an ad is only the beginning of what we can track. With attribution, brands can also measure footfall, website visitation, sales lift, brand lift, even app downloads.

Our full 2023 Advertising Trends Report includes over 40 pages full of must-have insights for marketers. Get your copy at OUTFRONT.com.

This article was written by Jay Fenster and Carly Syta.

[1] E-marketer, 2023
[2] Bloomberg, Nov. 2021
[3] Bureau of Labor Statistics, Dec. 2022
[4] Morning Consult, Aug 2022
[5] EY, Nov 2022
[6] Morning Consult, Nov 2022
[7] Integral Ad Science, Dec 2022
[8] WARC, Aug 2022
[9] Insider Intelligence, Mar 2022
[10] DoubleVerify, Nov 2022
[11] Integral Ad Science, Dec 2022
[12] GumGum/SPARK Neuro, Mar 2020
[13] Seedtag/Nielsen, May 2022
[14] HubSpot, Aug 2022
[15] Oracle, May 2022
[16] YouGov, Sep 2022
[17] NFL, Dec 2022
[18] Integral Ad Science, Dec 2022
[19] The Harris Poll, Nov. 2021
[20] Comscore, 2022
[21] MRI/Simmons, 2019

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