CES Predictions for video advertising. Don’t get too excited.
CES is going to create a lot of buzz about new and exciting products that promise to change the way we all spend our time and interact with one another. There’s always also a lot of predictions for video advertising and how it will be changed by these new products. Remember all that talk about 3-d tvs a decade ago. Or VR a few years ago. A lot less talk about that stuff now.
Problem is, most of them will not change behavior in any meaningful way. The way say Facebook has or mobile devices have changed the way we interact and live our lives. And none of them will change anything at all in the next year or so. CES is certainly informative about what can be done with technology but it’s not always the best predictor of human behavior.
Let’s take VR and AR as an example. There is huge money and energy being put into VR by none other than Facebook. Facebook controls eyeball more than any company has in the existence of humanity (Google is a close second). We’ve yet to see significant adoption of this technology. This will not change anytime soon. VR is indeed compelling technology but most people are not willing to put VR glasses on for extended periods of time or at all. Truth be told, a lot of the technology as amazing as it is makes people ill.
More gimmick technology is going to “blow people away” like holograms and “voxels” that look on the surface like they’re game changers until you start to think about human behavior.
What’s the point here? Don’t get too excited about how CES is going change your business. Most predictions for video advertsing will suck. Like most predictions about the future are a misguieded ego boost for a fake futurist. In the last 40 years there haven’t been that many game changers in the media and advertising business (the internet, social media and the iPhone qualify for me) and they weren’t introduced at CES.
Instead of focusing on the shiny and new introduced as CES, those of us in the video advertising and marketing business should be focused on strategic goals and creating tactical advantages for our clients. We should also focus on mastering our technical skills in the areas that server our clients today.