DMEXCO: The advertising industry is booming
Topics at the online advertising trade fair and conference: artificial intelligence everywhere in the advertising value chain and the canceled end of cookies.
(Image: Koelnmesse)
- Jo Bager
The gates of the DMEXCO trade fair, where everything revolves around (online) marketing, open again today, Wednesday, in Cologne. The industry is doing brilliantly. This can already be seen from the figures for display advertising published by the Online Marketing Group (OVK) in the industry association BVDW on the occasion of the trade fair.
(Image: OVK)
According to the figures, revenue for display advertising will exceed the six billion euro threshold for the first time in 2024. According to the current forecast, it will increase by 11.7% year-on-year to EUR 6.155 billion. However, display advertising only accounts for a good 40% of total revenue in the online advertising industry. In 2023, total revenue in the online advertising industry amounted to EUR 12.801 billion. By way of comparison, only 4,949 billion euros were generated in the "print" category and only 3,469 billion euros in linear television.
AI everywhere
The motto of this year's dmexco, "Prompting the Future", refers to a central theme of the trade fair – AI in all its facets: Technology is simplifying the production of advertising copy, product presentations, explanatory videos and social media posts. This can overturn entire value chains - and probably also jeopardize some jobs in agencies.
The panel discussion hosted by our sister publication t3n will also focus on AI. Luca Caracciolo, Editorial Director at Yeebase, to which t3n belongs, will discuss the question "AI made in Germany: Why we need AI solutions from Germany and Europe" with Antonio Krüger, CEO of the German Research Center for AI, Elisabeth L'Orange from Hamburg-based AI startup Oxolo and Christoph Poetsch, Senior Advisor AI Ethics and Quality at TÜV AI.Lab.
End of cookies only slowed down
The canceled end of third-party cookies will also be an important topic at the trade fair. After many years of announcing the removal of this technology from its Chrome browser, Google backed down in July. This gives the industry the opportunity to continue using this technology, which is central to many forms of advertising, for example for retargeting, whereby a surfer who has shown an interest in a particular product is repeatedly shown advertising for this product.
Despite Google's insistence, however, third-party cookies remain a discontinued model, partly because other browsers such as Safari or Firefox no longer support them. At the same time, mobile traffic in the apps – is increasing without third-party cookies. In addition, cross-device use makes the use of third-party cookies more difficult, as the cookies are device-specific.
The advertising industry must therefore look for alternatives. These include alternative ID solutions with which the user remains identifiable even across device boundaries. One alternative is called first-party data. This is data that a company collects directly from customers and target groups via its own channels, for example through customer interactions, website visits, transactions and other forms of direct contact.
Until now, the switch to first-party data was also seen in the industry as an opportunity for website operators to become less dependent on gatekeepers such as Google, which dominates the search engine market and controls both the Chrome browser and the Android mobile operating system. However, this could be a different story, as Google is putting out feelers in the direction of first-party data. In the run-up to DMEXCO, the marketing group presented a solution that allows companies to use their first-party data with Google's advertising products.
(jo)
