6 Promising Niches For AdTech Startups

With so many different opportunities AdTech players can make use of with ever-evolving advertising formats and new data-sets, you need to think very carefully about which opportunity to take. It’s all about having a great deal of foresight. There’s no point in building a solution that addresses only today’s needs, you have to think about where the market is going and which platforms advertisers and publishers will be using in the years to come.

In order to have an impact in the market, AdTech startups need to know the most promising niches in the industry. We’ll introduce you to six of them below:

#1 Voice Is Becoming A New Ad Tool

Analysts go as far as to say that by 2020, more than 50% of searches will be made using our voice commands rather than typing. As more people become comfortable with always-on microphones in their houses, marketers will soon have opportunities to take advantage of this unprecedented access. Just imagine, telling your smart speaker something like “Hey, I need a new shampoo!” and it’s going to send you the first option to show up in a quick search. The brands that sponsor the top position of these search results will likely see an uptick in business.

Going further, when you ask about today’s weather and your smart speaker tells you that it’s hot and sunny it can suggest buying some water, a sunscreen or a cap to be safe. Companies will pay for that premier placement and marketers need to prepare for it by creating content that captures these types of searches and advertising in non-traditional places. Eventually, we’ll see more and more companies investing in voice control as a result.

#2 Brand Safety

Brand safety is front and center in a world where advertising transactions occur in milliseconds and ensuring brand safety requires vigilance across the media supply chain. Fraudulent activity and poor inventory quality can siphon off ad dollars and compromise performance. According to The Verge, one in five ad-serving websites is visited exclusively by fraud bots, so there’s no doubt that fraud is indeed a serious problem the industry must continue to confront.

Beyond fraud, poor ad placement continues to be every brand’s nightmare: no one wants to appear next to inappropriate content or fake news. Just as neighborhood watches keep properties safe, it’s high time we create our own systems of protection online. Companies like Integral Ad Science and DoubleVerify have already developed algorithms and data-driven tools to prevent ads from ever appearing alongside undesirable content.

#3 Programmatic Buying Rules Digital Display Advertising

More than 85% of digital display ads will be programmatic in 2018. Programmatic buying is one of the most powerful tools in the media industry as it automates all of the processes that used to give marketers headaches. According to eMarketer, mobile programmatic ad spending will reach $32.78 billion, or 70.4% of all programmatic digital display outlays, in the US this year.

Mobile programmatic allows you to reach the most engaged audience at scale and lets you target audiences more effectively. Programmatic therefore saves money and resources when targeting audiences across devices. Moreover, advertisers can control the quality of the inventory through private setups, such as private marketplaces (PMPs) and programmatic direct transactions, as buyers continue to be wary of the open market’s transparency and quality issues.

#4 Creativity Is More Diffuse Than Ever

In digital advertising, ecosystems for programmatic bidding, targeting, and delivery should mean that the days of one-fits-all-ads are over. But, according to an AppNexus/Thunder study, 97% of campaigns don’t have a unique creative for each targeted placement though it’s clear that targeted creative variations have big benefits.

Creative Management Platforms are a class of programmatic creative ad technologies that meet the design needs of modern digital advertisers who are looking to tailor, test and optimize the creatives in their campaigns. Marketers get more control in a CMP, not only over the creative for each ad but also over the exact conditions and audience segment when each ad version is displayed.

Viewst, for example, offers some creative mobile addressable programmatic ad solutions. With programmatic, gamified and playful floating ad units, publishers and advertisers can create interactive ads and engage the users in mini-games.

#5 Augmented Reality Finally Becomes A Thing

Augmented reality (AR) was a fancy gimmick for a very long time. As our devices become more powerful and social apps better integrate with AR, this technology takes the mobile ad experience from boring to interesting and makes it immersive. Augmented reality also offers immense marketing opportunities. Plenty of brands use AR to better engage with consumers. For example, using your location, brands can trigger sponsored AR content, which can only be accessed at that location, at that time. Though in a nascent stage, such ads have the power to open up creative promotion avenues which enrich and personalize the user experience. However, there is still a very limited toolset to operate this experience.

#6 Ads Are Quickly Turning To Real-World Tools

Digital ads will no longer stand alone as a separate discipline. Soon, we will see integrate into real-life experiences and the two will become seamless. For example, real-world tools can match in-store purchases with your online identity. There’s a concept that the online identity will be able to track real-world purchases, making it possible for brands to tell whether you went out and purchased an item at one of their stores.

Google is already adding real-world tools to get more customers into physical stores. It will show information for local stores on YouTube ads, such as hours and driving directions to the nearest store. Not far behind is Facebook’s Store Visits which allows companies with multiple locations to easily promote their businesses to people in the area.

Undoubtedly, there can be a few surprise niches that will make waves in a couple of years, but by staying on top of these trends, AdTech vendors can get a head start on the AdTech world of tomorrow.

 

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