7 Predictions For Marketing Technology In 2022

Privacy is the number one most important technology, topic, or space for marketing in 2022, according to almost 500 CMOs and other marketing leaders. Also significant: AI, the power of story and content in video and audio, metaverse technologies like VR and AR, web3 technologies like crypto and blockchain, and environmental, social, and corporate responsibility.

Plus the continued evolution of marketing fortresses like Facebook, Reddit, TikTok, Google, and Twitter.

I recently asked 463 marketing technologists: what are the most important technologies or topics for 2022. The result was an avalanche of insight including 616 distinct predictions which I’ve synthesized into seven main themes for marketing technology. (Full disclosure: this was for a consulting client, Singular.) Together they outline major storylines, opportunities, and potential pitfalls for brands in the coming year.

Seven predictions for marketing technology in 2022:

1. Privacy
2. Story (video/audio)
3. AI
4. Metaverse
5. Web3
6. ESG
7. Marketing fortress

Prediction 1: Privacy

Not shockingly, privacy is tops.

Years of breaches, unwanted sharing, and greedy grabbing of all zero, first, second, and third-party data that companies can get their hands on have made people angry, confused, and suspicious. Every time a hack goes public, trust goes down. And every time people see ads that feel too suspiciously tailored to their exact situation, conspiracy theories about Facebook or Google listening to us via our phones gain a little traction.

The bottom line is that when Company 2 knows what we personally told Company 1, we don’t like it. And when a company wants too much data from us, we don’t like it.

The solution is a substantial investment in privacy, marketing leaders say.

“Marketers must be prepared to invest and get the right tech in place to develop its first party data,” Walgreens CMO Pat McLean told me. “This is exactly how Walgreens has differentiated in marketing via our mass personalization strategy and myWalgreens platform as we know this is core to our future growth.”

There’s a few keys in that: first-party data is data a customer shares with you directly. Customers want brands to have this data and want them to use it to personalize experiences. They don’t want brands to share it with others.

But some won’t share data, and for that, mass personalization is a viable strategy: tailoring experiences, content, ads, and products to known segments of consumers. That delivers a “personalized” experience feeling without requiring the data that true personalization requires.

Delivering it successfully demands new skills, however.

“All of us have to be mini data scientists in today’s tech-driven world,” says Prudential Financial CMO Susan Somersille Johnson.

In addition, that means more contextual targeting for advertising as the cookies, IDFAs, GAIDs/AAIDs, fingerprints, and other device and personal identifiers adtech companies have made available for marketers over the past decade to track customers, prospects, and users become less and less accessible, and less and less effective. In other words: all things old are new again, since contextual targeting used to be the primary methodology of targeting: you put an ad for canoes in Outdoor Living, for example.

But it’s not all old-school: the science of context is getting better.

Even in programmatic advertising channels.

“As we head towards more privacy-focused advertising, contextual targeting has become one of the main viable ways to reach a target audience,” says Mateusz Jędrocha at RTB House. “And thanks to technological advancements, the solution has become much more scalable … the key to success will be how well these contextual tools are integrated within the entire programmatic ecosystem.”

The solution, says G2’s CMO Amanda Malko, is for marketers to “double down on building their own audiences and communities, and embrace new types of data like intent-based solutions.” In addition, Malko says, we’ll see a shift from knowing and trading personal information on people to using actions and signals like clicks, app installs, page views, sign-ups, and so on.

Prediction 2: Story

The second most popular prediction is not specifically a technology, though many spoke of technological enablements. It is the power of story and content to build brand and sell product. The technology pieces to enable it include video, including live-streaming, and audio, particularly podcasting.

“Consumers now spend one-third of their media time with audio … audio is now the most accessible medium,” says iHeartMedia CMO Gayle Troberman. “And marketers are waking up to the massive potential of audio to deliver highly engaged, targetable audiences at scale.”

It’s not just audio, and it’s not just about brand.

We’re starting to see the explosion and democratization of Home Shopping Network-style live-streaming video sales, China-style, in Western markets. Influencers are jumping all over the opportunity, and brands like Amazon are taking advantage.

“Brands who have jumped on the live shopping bandwagon are 3X’ing their sales goals during these live streaming events in addition to increasing their social engagements and follower counts,” says Jena Joyce, founder and CEO of Plant Mother, a vegan and organic skin-care brand. “Social shopping is coming to all platforms: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest … Instagram shopping is becoming a profitable alternative to paid ads.”

Joyce says she’s seen revenue double from live shopping experiences in recent months and an almost 1300% increase in referral traffic from Instagram to her website.

Prediction 3: AI

AI or artificial intelligence was actually the fourth most-cited technology or space by CMOs, but the third was a grab-bag of literally dozens of different marketing technologies, so I won’t dive into that assortment.

Marketing leaders see AI as an essential aid through the Great Resignation:

“As The Great Resignation has shown us, teams are overwhelmed and overworked,” says David Council, CEO and co-founder of Drift. “For digital marketers, AI can provide some much-needed relief, and become the workforce in driving revenue, developing relationships, and eliminating gaps.”

It’s also something that can help with personalization.

Using, of course, privacy-safe data.

“Personalization is more than just knowing a customer’s name; it’s about leveraging customer data to build relationships with consumers that deliver relevant and compelling experiences,” says Bryce Boothby, a senior loyalty manager at McDonald’s. “Providing the most relevant content at the right time allows companies to keep their products top of mind.”

And AI can achieve relevance at scale in real time.

CMOs should be hyper-focused on using AI to make better decisions, says Leslie Osman, CMO at IncredibleBank, a neobank based in Wisconsin. Rewarding loyalty in real time is now table stakes, thanks to consumer experiences learned from Netflix, Google, Amazon, and others, she adds.

“[Customers] expect that brands know what they want based on their preferences and data collection,” says Anjali Iyer, a strategy and analytics director at Marriott.

Prediction 4: Metaverse

Given Facebook/Meta’s noisy multi-billion-dollar entry into the metaverse market, it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that metaverse was the…