a view into the future of advertising, submitted to the Wharton Future of Advertising initiative.

1. Rubinson Partners, Inc.
Submission to the “Wharton Future
of Advertising” program
Advertising 2020:
What forces shape the future of advertising?
What could advertising look like?
What will it take to get there?
Joel Rubinson, President
joel@rubinsonpartners.com
Blog.joelrubinson.net
Twitter: @joelrubinson
Also on LinkedIn and Slideshare
Ideas herein are property of Rubinson Partners and cannot be used without permission. joel@rubinsonpartners.com

2. Let’s look at forces already emerging that are
shaping the future of advertising…
 “The future is already
here — it's just not
very evenly
distributed.”
 William Gibson, Science
Fiction writer and futurist

3. All media and advertising, including TV, are becoming
digital, interactive, social and connected across devices

4. TV remains the primary media behavior
 People’s TV viewing is
stable, averaging over five hours
per day, more than twice the time
spent on any other media behavior
 No other medium matches (or will
match) TV for reach and achieving
marketing scale
 However, the nature of the
experience is changing, becoming
social and interactive (via second
screen behavior)
 For this reason, TV is the next
battleground for the technology
leaders, Google, Apple, Microsoft. I
expect Facebook to enter this
battleground in a social way.

5. Paid advertising is not dying…it is
growing…and eventually gets into all media

6. Brands are building
their own
audiences...making
them always
accessible
 Starbucks benefits from
over 100 MM monthly
“touches” per month from
Facebook, Twitter, website
visits, app use, and
searches
 Apps bring messages right
to point of purchase
 Creates customer marketing
possibilities

7. Mobile life is the coming sea change, bringing
together consumer and shopper marketing
 Smart phones account for more than half
of mobile phones
 Tablet ownership is exploding, mostly
cannibalizing laptop use
 Time spent accessing the internet via
mobile devices will surpass computers
 We take our smart phones to bed, to the
TV room, and to the store while we shop
 We are starting to pay for things using our
phone, often from within branded apps
like Starbucks. Brand communication and
transactions converging…
 Smart phones literally and figuratively are
with us across the full path to purchase

8. Ideas can be shared socially, and spread like wildfire
 Coupons and free sample offers
spread like wildfire via mommy
bloggers and Twitter
 Commercials can get tens of
millions of views on Youtube
 Brands can be praised or
pounded in social media and
you need to be increasingly part
of the conversation.

9. The mix of art and science is shifting in
advertising
 In the mad men era, there were only small lifts to be
gained by finetuning demo-based ad placement. The TV
creative that caught lightening in a bottle was the thing.
 The majority of digital advertising placement will be
affected by behavioral data and predictive modeling
algorithms, much of it as part of search and real time
bidding systems
 Advertising has become a naturally occurring
experiment that can be optimized in near real time
 Profiles are being connected across online, mobile, and
offline behaviors via connectors like Facebook log-in or
program sign-up (like Starbucks).
 Facebook is now connected to frequent shopper data for improved
targeting and ROI assessment capabilities
 The lift in advertising ROI from Math men is significant
and repeatable

10. Retail is becoming digitalized
 Shoppers are bringing their
smartphones to
retail, showrooming (buying online
while standing in a store) and
reverse showrooming (doing all
research online but buying in-store)
 Stores will all have Wi-Fi (gated by
shopper log-in).
 Mobile devices and wearable Wi-Fi
like Google Glasses will have
shopping capabilities that become
a portal to purchase across all
three types of retail
environments, online, offline and Virtual store in Australia: scan virtual
virtual. images of products you want to buy, pay
 Advertising will connect to such with mobile phone, order is delivered or
shopping apps. assembled for pickup

11. What could Advertising
look like in 2020?...what
will be different?

12. The Transformation of marketing
Traditional Marketing (past)
Advertising builds awareness,
meaning and meaning which hopefully
translates into purchase
intention and shopper action
Digital and Social Marketing (current)
Users can now share ideas,
“join” with brands they feel a
meaning connection connection to (e.g. by liking
the brand on Facebook),
giving marketers a 2-way
communication and marketing
Path to Purchase Marketing (future) channel
People will be able to do things
Shopper with advertising…act on
meaning connection
impact curiosity, connect with the
brand, bring offers to point of
purchase via apps.

13. Connecting advertising in 2020 to path
to purchase
1. Shopping will become fully digitized, be it online, offline or virtual. Mobile devices
will have shopping capabilities that become a portal to purchase across all three types of
retail environments. Advertising will connect to such shopping apps.
2. Advertising will be primarily placed based on modeling of behavior rather than
demographics, and integrated with path to purchase activities.
 Facebook advertising can now be targeted using frequent shopper data
 Some TV households viewing behavior are now integrated with frequent shopper data
 Mobile device shopping apps and digital wallets are emerging
3. Marketers will build their own brand audiences by being social and offering
compelling content at their fully mobile-optimized owned media. Marketers will extend
their connections into the shopping process via apps. Get users to sign up so you can
practice 1-1 marketing and for creating single source connections across devices and
from online to offline.
4. The creative challenge is changing. All advertising will have interactive and social
aspects, and be fully mobile optimized so messages and offers can be brought to
the point of purchase. For example, you will be able to capture a TV commercial via
your mobile app and see friends who like the product.
5. Make ideas, content, and offers sharable and find the influencers. For example, the
spread of free sample offers by P&G via Twitter and mommy bloggers is amazing.
6. Create visual, touch, and voice marketing. We touch, pinch, pause, and speak to our
smartphones. Could we do the same with advertising and packaging?
7. Advertising and insights activities will merge via common data streams into a
commitment to real time campaign management.

14. How can marketers prepare for
advertising in 2020
1. Understand path to purchase. Create a synthesized view of the consumer and the
shopper and understand how people make purchase decisions and what the influencers
are along the way.
2. Create digital (including social, mobile) centers of excellence within your
organization with strong technical knowledge. This is too important to abdicate to
suppliers and agencies.
3. Master mobile. Understand the ability of mobile to impact the full path to purchase and
crack the code of how to connect clickstream data across smart phones, tablets, and
computers.
4. Commit to real time campaign management. Build a digital data, analytics, and ad
serving rules infrastructure that supports this.
5. Redefine brand tracking, using the same digital and social data streams for
insights that you use for advertising targeting so that your insights are immediately
actionable and to reflect a picture of what brand success looks like in a digital, social, and
mobile age.
6. Understand customer relationship marketing. Marketers who previously only had
anonymous relationships with consumers can now create connections via social and
owned media that leverage 1-1 marketing.
7. Get to know the influencers. In every vertical, there are certain bloggers who are very
influential and needed for ideas to spread socially.
8. Creating ROI assessment tools that capture paid, owned, earned media
interactions. Prove what works from experiments, modeling, and attribution analysis.
Evidence trumps narrative.

15. How brand advertising might affect
George Jetson’s shopping trip
While George gets gas, he sees an
Having entered his favorite stores’
ad for an interesting product. He
frequent shopper numbers, he can
George wakes up, activating smart images it with his phone to add it to
image any interesting product and
phone controller. Start coffee pot the list. He hears an interesting ad on
have it added to his shopping or wish
the radio and tells his car, “add
list
product”
George arrives at the store with his
George’s smart countertop weighs
smartphone and Google glasses. As
products and reminds him via a daily
Logs into TV with his Facebook profile he parks and as he
e-mail he is running low on Chobani
which automatically turns on viewing shops, suggestions and offers appear
so it gets added to his favorite store
preferences and suggestions. Sees and he says “add” to some. The
shopping list. Because George has
personalized advertising glasses are connected to his list and
the Chobani app, he gets a discount
store layout helping him navigate and
offer. George decides to go shopping.
find products.
He sees an interesting product on the
George has opted into Google’s “ads
shelf, and finds out more interactively.
you want”. He sees ads that are
He scans UPCs as they go into his
relevant to his shopping trip, searches
As commercials run, he sees friends cart by looking at them. He checks
to find out more, and gets rewards for
who like each brand and recipe being out with his mobile pay. Inventory in
his opt-in, as he adds them to his list.
advertised. smart countertop is updated. His
George’s shopping apps check prices
Facebook profile is updated and his
and store inventory to confirm that the
friends see what he likes as they
products are in stock.
watch TV.
Ideas herein are property of Rubinson Partners and cannot be used without permission. joel@rubinsonpartners.com

16. About Rubinson Partners, Inc.
Joel Rubinson is President of Rubinson Partners, Inc.
marketing and research consulting for a brave new world
and a member of the faculty of NYU Stern School of
Business where he teaches social media strategy. Joel is
the former Chief Research Officer at the ARF.
 Started in 2010, Rubinson Partners, Inc. (RPI) is a marketing and research consultancy that has
helped equip marketers, research, firms, and digital marketing companies for success in a digital
age. Selected assignments:
 For a large CPG marketer, evaluate measurement gaps regarding digital data and create a roadmap
 For Unilever, designed one of the most comprehensive shopper insights digital sensing and social media
listening platforms ever created
 For AOL and BBDO, consulted on “7 Shades of Mobile” to understand smart phone owners’ usage and
motivations into a new way of defining what we called “behavior markets”.
 Working with MSA, a leading analytics firm, created a next generation approach to marketing mix modeling
that is specifically geared towards improved estimation of digital and social media impact
 Conducted numerous workshops on shopper and digital
 For ShareThis, led one of the largest analyses of social media sharing behavior ever conducted,
 In partnership with InsightsNow, Inc. RPI created a next generation system for innovation
 For a major marketer, helping to shape a new approach to digital media measurement
 Conducted white paper analyses for leading suppliers
 Contact info:
 joel@rubinsonpartners.com
 Blog.joelrubinson.net