Dmexco 2017 is over! After two full days of discussion, trends and insights into the digital marketing environment, we saw many different topics emerging within the industry: digital disruption through voice control, transparency as a challenge for all parties, artificial intelligence as chance, using one’s own data sets and the still standing programmatic advertising as a long-term discussed topic.

Let us have a more detailed look into these trends:

1. Voice Control as a New Advertising Channel

If we look back, there were two big developments in the advertising industry next to television. We saw the shift from print to web and then from web to mobile. It’s not new that mobile is or will become the first screen. Now there is something new stepping up on the advertising stage: voice control. Since Amazon launched Alexa, it is the talk of the town, and the industry is looking for ways to use it as a new channel to reach customers even more directly than ever. This was also a big topic at dmexco this year, and it seems as though there is more to expect from this trend, leaving us to be curious about it!

2. A Call for Transparency

This was on everyone’s agenda. The call for transparency is louder than ever. For brand safety reasons and to avoid fake news, transparency is much needed. Industry experts talked about ways to ensure transparent ad placements while advertisers as well as publishers want to see which ad is placed where. Users, however, are lacking transparency as well. The reputation of online advertising is bad due to click baits and big, annoying banners. Through new formats and a new level of transparency, it would be possible to improve these reputations, offering a greater user experience. In order to reach these goals, the industry calls for clear regulations and guidelines to find a way to meet everyone’s needs.

3. AI – the Innovative Chance

The conference program of dmexco was full of topics on artificial intelligence. AI and machine learning are already part of the digital advertising world, but since it is not only about big data but rather about how to handle the data, AI wins in popularity. As we saw last year, it is now important to use the great amount of data. The approach must be to overcome big data and to instead come to smart data. With smart and innovative algorithms, it will be possible to achieve a new level of online advertising. Dynamic ad creation, for example, is one more step towards a new and even more individualized advertising experience based on intelligent algorithms.

4. Own Your Data

As stated above, data is still a big topic, even when we get annoyed by the inflationary usage of the term, “Big Data”. Today, we instead call it “data driven” if advertisers know how to use ad managers and to set up a target group. However, it is becoming even more important to create your own data base than just simply knowing your target group. “Know your customers based on your data, and use your data set smart” is the key message that we take away from dmexco.

5. Programmatic Advertising

Unsurprisingly, programmatic advertising is again one of the most dominant topics. It seems as though everyone wants to be part of this movement. Last year’s discussions were more on the developmental and growing importance of programmatic advertising in general. This year we see, programmatic arrived also in the German advertising environment. Talks were more focused on real solutions to benefit from this trend. plista even recently developed and launched its own SSP integration to offer publishers and advertisers great monetization and optimized reach through programmatic advertising.

Altogether it was again an exciting meet up among industry leaders.  We had great talks on the near future of digital advertising. We are already curious about next year and look forward to the continuous development of the industry!