Who Will Be the Big Winners in 2023?

Cynopsis polled industry experts for their thoughts on what success will look like in the coming year. Here’s what they had to say…

“The big winners in 2023 will be those media companies who deliver the greatest value – to their affiliates, to ad agencies, or directly to the consumer. In a year of likely belt-tightening, everyone will be taking a hard look at the dollars they are spending, and how far those dollars are stretching. Also, it will be a great time to be an easy company to work with.” – Adam Sumrall, Executive Vice President, FETV

“Consumers will be the real winners next year. As retailers are increasingly seen as media and data platforms, our success will correlate to our ability to deliver value to consumers. People see value in using retail loyalty programs like Kroger’s because they earn meaningful offers and rewards. That usage results in powerful first-party data which fuels retail media’s ability to better apply and measure advertising.” – Michael Schuh, VP of Media Strategy and Product, Kroger Precision Marketing, 84.51°

“There will be four winners in 2023. Multi-Currency Measurement: There are four currency grade providers – Videoamp, iSpotTV, Comscore and Nielsen – that simply make advertising better. These four have separated themselves from the larger pack and the competition among them will continue to drive innovation. This is a prime example of capitalism at work. Amazon: Thursday Night Football was bigger than most people realize. In addition, AWS is bigger than most people realize. In short, the Amazon way of allocating capital is world class. Data Owners: He who holds the gold (data) makes the rules. And Bob Iger and Disney: Buy Roku? Buy DC Comics? Sell ESPN? The possibilities Disney are endless, Iger’s legacy of insanely successful acquisitions is likely something he wants to maintain so watch for more.” – Cory Davis, VP, Media & MadTech, Verisk Marketing Solutions

“The addition of NFL Sunday Ticket is a game changer for YouTube TV and will help them differentiate among other vMVPDs and drive growth in the coming year and beyond. Also, nobody has ever won betting against David Zaslav, so I expect Warner Bros. Discovery to be primed for a big year in 2023.” – Bill Abbott, President and CEO, Great American Media

“With the pandemic causing a 70% increase in telehealth services, there is a continued need for individualized messages served to physicians within telehealth platforms. I believe we will see programmatic marketing take center stage in 2023 as pharmaceutical marketers focus on tailored communication strategies to reach healthcare professionals.” – Harshit Jain, MD, CEO and Founder, Doceree

“In 2023, SaaS providers will be the biggest champions of the creator economy. With the rapid expansion of social platforms, the metaverse and Web3, content creators will need the right tools that provide integrated and efficient workflows to be able to navigate this rapidly changing landscape. The innovation over the last year has created countless opportunities with new and unique audiences – ultimately requiring SaaS companies to adapt their current offerings to meet this new demand and support the future of content creation in this ever-evolving industry.” – Joe Hyrkin, CEO, Issuu

“In 2023, the biggest winners will be brands that can connect with consumers in real-time and maintain their authenticity while doing so. Those are the brands that can define their core mentalities and leverage them to make smarter, data-driven decisions –
and take action quickly and confidently. They will avoid more risks, capitalize on more opportunities and align with target customers and employees more completely in 2023 and beyond.” – Adam Katz, CRO, Sightly

“We can expect to see a proliferation of technologies that enable brands to more efficiently connect with their audiences who are tuned in to live spaces. On the backend/activation front, this means new and innovative ways to feed ‘live event’ data into the creative – think real-time information tied to sporting events, gaming, shopping and more, and across different channels (CTV, Social, even certain DOOH environments).” – Oz Etzioni, CEO, Clinch

“Audio investment saw multi-digit YoY growth tracking back to July 2020. While this trend slowed in late Q3 and Q4 – transforming into single digits growth for the last four consecutive months – it’s clear that digital audio is a lucrative medium and showing value for advertisers. We predict that trend is likely to continue in 2023 and beyond.” – Darrick Li, VP, North America, Media Owners at Standard Media Index

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ADVERTISING

“Sure it’s been said before, but THIS is going to be the year things change in how TV advertising is bought and sold. Creative leaders like Disney won’t be put into a simple box defined by a few weeks in May. And we know other big media players like Paramount and Warner aren’t sitting idly by.” – Kevin Krim, CEO, EDO

“The biggest winners in 2023 will be brands that are bold enough to challenge the institutionalized thinking of Big Tech conglomerates and rethink their customer journey. We are entering a unique inflection point in the advertising industry, at which there is ample opportunity for brands to build and implement their own innovative ad platforms that is right for not just their customers, but for their business and advertisers. For too long, ad tech giants have held all the power. It’s time for brands to take matters into their own hands, ‘take back the Internet,’ and usher us into a new era of smart and strategic advertising that puts the customer in the driver’s seat.” – James Avery, Founder and CEO, Kevel

“As we enter 2023, winning advertisers are clearly focused on customer acquisition, retention, and the ability of their cross-platform media campaigns to drive conversions. The key to success for publishers next year is to provide their advertising clients with the highest quality targeting data possible, so that they can reach the audiences that matter most to their campaigns. Linear TV, OTT/CTV, and Digital advertising solutions can all work together to deliver results for marketers. The publishers who focus on moving beyond impressions, to impact, with high quality audience data, will be the big winners in 2023.” – Dennis Cook, SVP of Sales Marketing, Nexstar Digital

“Data will be king. As budgets tighten, advertisers will need to become more efficient with their buys and have smart data strategies. Efficiencies come from reducing waste and increasing targeted media buys. For example, investing in the audiences that are most inclined to buy your product or service instead of mass reach. There will be a greater need for transparent attribution and measurement to show the value of audience-based buys. First-party data will continue to become increasingly important as more privacy legislation comes into play. Both brands and publishers need to own their relationships with their consumers.” – Lynette Kaylor, SVP Advertising Sales, FuboTV

“In 2023, we’ll see marketers go back to creative and focus on this more than targeting with an emphasis on incremental reach. Also, we will see more marketers utilizing Microsoft’s Xandr platform for programmatic buying since Netflix will now have CTV ad inventory exclusively.” – Ken Harlan, founder and CEO, MobileFuse

“The biggest winners in 2023 will be the publishers who adequately prepare for the impending cookieless future by adopting ID systems at a level that will enable advertisers to also easily adopt them. Those who understand the great potential of a privacy-first alternative ID system for publishers, marketers, and consumers will ultimately capitalize off of this inevitable cookieless future. Change in this industry is constant which is what makes it exciting — we should not fear change but embrace it through tactical preparation.” – Jeremy Fain, CEO and Co-founder of Cognitiv

“We believe the biggest winners in 2023 will be publishers who are future-proofing their businesses and prioritizing monetizing their audiences. The winners in 2023 will be those publishers who can deliver the best quality audience to programmatic players. Programmatic advertisers can start by understanding who their target audiences are as well as their media consumption habits at a granular level for more efficient targeting strategies. Armed with this knowledge, digital advertisers are better positioned to optimize every dollar per impression.” – Gwen Wiscount, Chief Revenue Officer at diDNA.

“As advertising IDs disappear and brands lean into attention and engagement metrics, ad creative will reign once more. In particular, digital advertising will see the rise of AI-powered adaptive and dynamically optimized creative, in unexpected formats such as native, as a way to fuel personalization and drive higher attention and engagement rates without reliance on IDs. The result for consumers will be a better user experience with higher quality ads, less intrusiveness and more relevance.” – Alistair Goodman, CEO, Emodo

“The retail media buzz will continue for another year. Any brand with a substantial audience base, first-party data, and captive communication channels with consumer consent will jump into this race and win big. It will be the fastest growing media market with over $100 billion annually coming from advertisers across a wide spectrum of vertical industries. Additionally, given the risk of a widely anticipated recession next year, advertisers will seek media fluidity in near real-time. This will bode well for programmatically traded media platforms that can reallocate media spend more rapidly than the traditional media companies with IO-driven business models.” – Seraj Bharwani, Chief Strategy Officer, AcuityAds

“The biggest winners in 2023 will be the programmatic advertisers who prioritize 1st party data, data enrichment, and interoperability between platforms to measure performance and provide personalized and relevant advertising. As walled gardens make it increasingly difficult to share data, it is imperative for advertisers to optimize their first-party data sets coupled with personalized creative optimization for precise audience targeting and improved business outcomes at each touch point.” – Stephen Magli, CEO and co-founder, AI Digital

“In 2023, media brands that develop new ways to package their content and reach audiences based on unique user data points like content consumption preferences, to avoid becoming commoditized will be the winners. Media executives will need to remain agile and prepare to accommodate shifting strategies of advertisers that will include an increased ad spend within the OTT streaming category in 2023 and beyond.” – Jay Kulkarni, Founder & CEO, Theorem

“With economic uncertainty rising in the year ahead and competition for consumer attention increasing, marketers will need to get even more value from their media investments. The media landscape is becoming even more fragmented. Facebook is no longer the customer acquisition tool it once was, Twitter is facing uncertainty, and TikTok faces a possible US ban. Having quality data to feed into the right platform – whatever it turns out to be – is critical to marketing success in 2023.” – Verl Allen, CEO, Claravine

“In 2023, the most effective marketers will be those who are not afraid to lean into real-time data and new technology. We can find inspiration from within healthcare — artificial intelligence and telehealth are moving medicine forward in a significant way. These advancements offer a more personalized experience for patients and give physicians the ability to meet patients where they are. We must ensure that everyone has access and can meaningfully benefit. Providing addressable and accessible experiences must be prioritized by all advertisers.” – Erin Fitzgerald, Chief Marketing Officer, Sermo

“With a growing number of data management and analysis tools available to agencies, clean rooms being a focal point of this new wave, there is significant opportunity to drive more value than ever for clients. Agencies that invest in data analytics and activation to create tailored planning and re-planning strategies that drive both brand and campaign-level performance will be the true winners of 2023. Tools and warp-speed optimization will enable them to constantly query and cross-reference new data sets, unlocking novel insights that can be leveraged to refine a brand’s overall strategy.” – Jay Friedman, President, Goodway Group

“As the advertising industry continues to face economic uncertainty, the winners of 2023 will be brands that can prove the effective impact of their ads. More than ever, brands will be under pressure to justify spend and to demonstrate that their ad dollars work hard for them. Platforms that can measure an incremental ROAS through closed loop attribution will be the heroes in this market. We will see advertisers shifting their traditional dollars to new mediums and platforms that are proving that they have higher consumer attention in an effort to see their dollars prove incremental efficiency.” – Mark Grether, GM, Uber Advertising

“Privacy issues will continue to take up more mindshare for consumers and lawmakers – and are top of mind for the brands that want to reach consumers. Users are clearly signaling that privacy is a big concern with the rise of online adblocking and more. That, combined with changes in iOS and Google deprecating the third-party cookie in 2023, means that media channels that can effectively wrestle with the challenges in providing privacy-safe advertising, will end up with more brand dollars. – Anna Bager, President & CEO, Out of Home Advertising Association of America (OAAA)

“Multicultural media continues to come into focus – along with associated dollars spent by brands. With multicultural communities becoming more mainstream audiences representing ~40% of population, brands will continue to allocate more of their ad budgets to these important audiences who have significant buying power.”- Mark Walker, CEO, Direct Digital Holdings

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STREAMING

“What’s old is new – and we anticipate that the rebundling of CTV will look similar to traditional broadcast line-ups of old. With consumers inundated by choice and an abundance of content, plus the cost-of-living crisis, FAST will continue to proliferate in 2023, as people increasingly turn to free, programmed sources of entertainment. For content providers, this will create a renewed opportunity for discovery via expanded distribution platforms to curate niche, always-on programming that draws in passionate fandoms through the TV screen.” – Rob Christensen, Senior Vice President, Global Sales & Distribution, Vevo

To take a look at some 2022 industry award winners, along with highlights from Cynopsis’ biggest events of the year, go here!

“CTV will continue to dominate as the top growing emerging channel but we will see a growth in other emerging channels in the year ahead as well. Some emerging channels expected to see growing interest in 2023 include in-game, DOOH and audio advertising, as marketers continue to see the value of investing in emerging channels and the quality of integration continues to improve.” – Tim Vanderhook, CEO, Viant

“Looking to 2023, advertisers and brands who continue investing in audience-based and measurable media solutions alongside innovative ad formats will prevail over brands who pull back their investments. The biggest winners among publishers and distributors will be those who lean into a seamless viewing experience and those who ideate solutions for navigating audience fragmentation in an increasingly complex market.” – Amy Leifer, Chief Advertising Sales Officer, DirecTV Advertising

“Netflix will surprise everyone with ‘good advertising.’ It’s got the people, pipes and partners to hit it out of the park. With AB InBev onboard, what could go wrong? Measurement won’t be a stumbling block either as TV hasn’t done a bang-up job of metrics and the open web is in disarray. Will consumers balk? Likely not. If they’ll get a break on price due to ads, that may be enough of a carrot to stay. With so much original inventory, Netflix has a real advantage and more runway in global users than newer platforms.” – Hunter Terry, VP Solutions Consulting & CTV Commercial Lead, Lotame

“In 2022, we started to see subscriptions for major streaming services plateau and players like Netflix and Disney introduced ad-supported streaming tiers. In 2023, we predict the winners will be these streaming services that continue to adapt to the evolving expectations of consumers. Consumers subscribe to multiple services and want to pay less for the content they consume, so the companies that can provide that will come out on top. At the same time, the advertisers who recognize streaming as a valuable advertising option and can adjust their strategies to include these platforms will see success.” – Laura Manning, VP, Measurement at Lucid, a Cint Group Company

“As streaming services increasingly socialize ad-supported content, ad monetization in lieu of multiple subscription costs is becoming more and more accepted. Streaming services that offer both SVOD and ad-supported services can leverage both subscription and advertising revenue streams, drive discovery of longtail content within existing libraries, and incentivize subscribers to continue viewing SVOD content that was originally sampled on ad-supported services (particularly FAST!). The result is a more engaged and satisfied subscriber and reduced churn.” – Paul Pastor, CBO and co-founder, Quickplay

“One major positive as we head into 2023 is that TV appears to be recession resistant. Typically, people watch a lot of entertainment during economic downturns; while individuals might cut down on vacations or buying things, they will always want entertainment. With Hulu, Netflix and all the major streamers now offering less expensive versions with ads, there are new, scalable ways for brands to reach lean-back consumers. Smart brands and agencies will realize that the streaming screen is where the eyeballs are.” – Sean Doherty, Sr., CEO, Wurl

“The avalanche of pandemic streaming has ceased and providers are in pitched battles for the attention of ever-more-discriminating consumers. Having a great series may help you attract subscribers in the short term, but what keeps them in the fold? Providers are leaning into technology investments that will drive better content recommendations and discovery, richer apps and UXs, and especially video quality of experience. Providers that commit to those differentiators in 2023 will be able to improve retention and monetization of viewers, including through merchandising and delivery of one-of-a-kind experiences.” – Dr. Abdul Rehman, CEO, CTO and Co-Founder, SSIMWAVE

CYNOPSIS 2023 EVENTS

Mark your calendars 2023!

February 16: Best of the Best & Rising Star Awards (Virtual Ceremony)
March 15: First Look 2023: OTT Virtual Conference
April 18: Sports Media Awards
June 14-15: Measurement & Data Conference
September 27-28: That BIG TV Conference & 2023 Best of the Best Awards
October: Top Women in Media
November 1-3: EBS & Tempest Awards

MEASUREMENT

“The biggest winners in 2023 will be the hundreds of search and social performance marketers who enter CTV. The native digital capabilities of CTV will facilitate the reeducation of legions of performance marketers who were reliant on the last-click attribution for decades. For the first time in television history, performance marketers can connect the dots between television ad exposure and business outcomes in a data-driven, radically transparent way. The rewards are high for advertisers–there are 120M HHs with TVs just waiting to be transformed into the next growth channel.” – Jason Fairchild, CEO and co-founder, tvScientific

“In 2023, a key area of growth for data clean rooms will be CTV, OTT and Television Networks working directly with brands and their agencies to target and measure advertising investment on their platforms in a privacy-safe way. The biggest winners will be those video-based media companies that prioritize developing first-party data strategies and invest in the right solutions to deliver exceptional advertiser experiences in a consumer-friendly privacy-safe environment.” – Adam Gelles, Co-founding member of Clean Room Prime Group

“In 2023, the measurement challenge will be tackled with vigor, and features like ACR and set-top-box data will become more coveted. As with most makings of success, the key to thriving measurement solutions will be data. Better measurement will lead to better optimization, supporting the gold standard of 1.) understanding and delivering the right ad frequencies between traditional linear and advanced TV tactics; 2.) managing the rest of your digital campaigns against those frequencies in the right sequence; and 3.) proving – through measurement – that ROI was achieved, and then optimizing for the next campaign.” – Elizabeth Herbst Brady, Chief Revenue Officer, Yahoo

Cynopsis Team