The media industry will gain confidence in 2024, fueled by the rise of generative AI and stabilizing advertising revenue. B2C marketing teams are eager to move past the shackles placed on them by a pandemic and economic uncertainty. They’ll start experimenting in 2024, with practicality in mind. Despite some legal setbacks this year, media giants such as Google, Meta, and TikTok are poised for a strong 2024. Meta’s Q2 revenue growth is impressive, and TikTok’s popularity continues to soar. These companies will enhance their offerings and advance generative AI use cases, solidifying their appeal with advertisers. As a result, we will see calculated experimentation from marketers within these already established partnerships with media giants. Forrester predicts that:
- Generative AI will transform Google into the next Google. Organic traffic losses for Google from ChatGPT are overstated, and these small diversions will soon be a blip in the past. As Google harnesses generative AI, it will help the company sustain dominance as the number one search engine. Forrester conducted a pulse check with its ConsumerVoices Market Research Online Community and found that 73% of online adults would rely on Google to verify suspect responses from ChatGPT. In 2024, Google will leverage its credibility and commercialize its C4 data set to deepen its moat as the crawler and repository of reliable information.
- TikTok will gain the lion’s share of linear TV budgets for Gen Z-minded marketers. Eighty-six percent of US B2C marketing executives in Forrester’s Q2 2023 B2C Marketing CMO Pulse Survey said that finding better ways to reach Gen Zers and Millennials is a priority. These audiences are spending their entertainment time on nonpremium video and gaming environments, with around 40% of young adults in the US and the UK saying that they’re on TikTok constantly. In an effort to connect with Gen Z, Chips Ahoy already moved most of its linear TV budget to social and digital channels. TikTok, not TV and CTV, will dominate media budgets for marketers trying to reach this influential audience.
- Deepfake ads will become the primary accelerant for election misinformation. Elections historically trigger low-quality ads from unscrupulous advertisers and dark-money political organizations. Helped by mass adoption of AI image-generation tools, deepfake advertising will hit crisis levels this 2024 election season. In fact, big media platforms such as Google and TikTok stated that they will require AI disclosures on their platforms. The media community, including brands, agencies, SSPs, and publishers, will need to come together to demand creative scanning and curb the spread of misinformation.
Read our full Predictions 2024: Media And Advertising report to get more detail about each of these predictions, plus two more bonus predictions. Set up a Forrester guidance session to discuss these predictions or plan out your 2024 media and communications strategy.
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