At Bowery Capital, we spend a lot of time thinking about the marketing technology ecosystem and what the future holds for the space. With investments like MOAT, mParticle, and ActionIQ we are continuing to invest in and around this market. As we start 2019, we thought it would be good to put pen to paper and lay out some marketing technology predictions for 2019.
Prediction 1: Smaller Marketing Budgets Means Smaller Tech Stacks. Through 2017, the marketer was able to build people and budget, two things necessary for power in any organization. The ensuing consequences were overspending, less and less ROI, and a lack of managerial oversight, but the CEO suite is getting smarter in 2018. It is not surprising that Gartner now predicts marketing budgets are leveling off. One of our marketing technology predictions is we expect to see CMOs devote further attention to integration, consolidation, and less spend in 2019.
Prediction 2: Walled Gardens In 2019 Will Make Life Tough. For the past decade, tech giants like Google and Facebook have been amassing huge amounts of user data that includes users’ personal information. In particular, Facebook and Google’s data stores account for more than 90% of annual growth in the industry. By restricting access to data, massive tech companies have created walled gardens in which virtually all user engagement and digital ads can be controlled by the respective data collector. Another one of our major marketing technology predictions is that 2019 will be the year of unintended consequences benefitting these walled gardens.
Prediction 3: Rise Of The Machines. As AI continues to revolutionize the digital landscape, we predict that marketers will increasingly depend on this technology to maximize consumer reach and sales. AI within marketing technology means more effective customer segmentation, advanced and updated customer analytics, and efficient marketing strategies. We believe this will create a domino effect: businesses will want to compete in order to capture consumer demand, leading to the further rise of AI in marketing. While we are still early we do think that 2019 will be a banner year for AI and call this one of our top marketing technology predictions.
Prediction 4: Offline + Online Will Actually Work. In a report published by Statista, retail e-commerce sales in 2018 are expected to surpass $2.8 trillion dollars globally. Online transactions are growing at three times the rate of offline transactions. However, almost 50% of Americans still prefer to shop in-person and 64% of the country’s total shopping budget is spent in-store. We predict that as competition drives improvements in merging these platforms, the disconnect between companies’ offline and online services will reduce and interactions across these channels will become a more fluid process. Traditional department stores who’ve been too slow to invest in online marketing platforms consequently faced waves of closures and shrinking consumer demand. Our final marketing technology prediction is that companies will bring omni-channel capabilities to a level that consumers will truly start seeing the difference in 2019.
As the technology landscape continues to evolve rapidly, these developments will continue to reshape the way marketing is conducted. 2019 will be an exciting and interesting year in the marketing technology ecosystem.
If you liked “Marketing Technology Predictions For 2019” and want to read more content from the Bowery Capital Team, check out other relevant posts from the Bowery Capital Blog.
