2017 in Review: Adam Grint

How has technology impacted on the advertising industry in 2017?

2017 has seen the disruptive effect of technology on our industry become more tangible. There is also a realisation that we need to meet technological advances with creative-tech solutions; that this new marketplace requires a response that fuses technology with creativity to produce experiences that speak to people, especially younger generations, in a new way that doesn’t feel like overt advertising. 

Whereas 2016 was about testing the water, with VR primarily, this year has seen a wild diversification into built spaces, sensory installations, room-scale VR and augmented reality filters and apps.

What new tech-based work have you admired or been involved with in 2017?

At the heart of the best tech-based advertising work is a brand willing to take a risk. It would be good to see more brands jumping in at the deep end, rather than waiting for a piece of tech to be proven in the field. Like Audi, whose Enter Sandbox experience (below) allowed you to create your own off-road track in a sandbox and then drive around it virtually. 

Audi - Enter Sandbox - CASE from POL on Vimeo.

The tech giants have a different agenda – to push new platforms and mediums which inevitably throws up technology-advancing work. Whether that be Google’s AI experiments, Facebook’s AR filters or their social VR platform – Facebook Spaces, as well as sponsoring content that highlights their platforms. Other media companies are also straying into tech-based content – such as The Guardian, which has built a strong VR platform of quality journalistic content developed sensitively for the medium. 

2017 has also seen an injection of much needed fun, like the social, two-player aspect of Chris Milk’s The Life of Us or the new Facebook filters to launch Game of Thrones Season 7.

Location-based entertainment is attracting some of the best work. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Carne y Arena was a VR installation in which [the viewer] is dropped into a harrowing run across the US-Mexican border.

The merging of genres and the use of high-end VR for live events is an interesting evolution. The Mill worked alongside Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam on an event that blended immersive theatre with a fully sensory, room-scale VR experience. Corona’s Paraiso Secreto led you on a journey through an old hacienda in Mexico City to a virtual paradise where you could interact with nature virtually as well as physically. Despite this project pushing the boundaries of VR tech, it wasn’t about the tech – it enabled guests to be totally embedded in nature, and by extension the brand message of reconnecting with the outdoors. 

2017 was touted as the year of VR but is it here to stay?

The price point of the higher-end hardware, the lack of quality content and the fragmented distribution of that content are all barriers to wide-scale adoption, plus people need time to incorporate it into their lives meaningfully. But there is simply no other medium that can mainline your emotional senses as effectively. New, cheaper headsets will open up quality experiences for more users and, as the VR language develops, the content marketplace has evolved this year from a place of experimentation to a place of worthwhile experiences.

We are also seeing a demand for VR being used to drive live events, giving people access to high-end equipment that they’d otherwise not be able to afford.

What impact has/will voice recognition have on advertising and how it reaches consumers?

A side effect of voice recognition is the amassing of data. Amazon’s Echo and Google’s Home are already efficient harvesters of information and can now add non-visual searches to their vast data sets.

While the concentration of data in the hands of a few behemoth tech companies is worth monitoring, it should also offer more acutely targeted advertising, refined through AI to better understand people. If Amazon knows our purchase history and searches, we will likely be served content that is relevant and useful. 

Does the rise of fake news spell trouble for advertisers?

The apparent lack of regulation online and the ease and speed with which false information spreads online –especially if that misinformation is being unwittingly funded by automated advertising – has not helped the issue of trust online. 

Google and Facebook are taking a more responsible, proactive position on tackling the issue, but the solution ultimately will be provided by machine learning, which is already a more efficient means of detecting false information than trawling by humans. We can’t amass the analytical power to cross-reference facts and spot irregular patterns at the scale that is achievable by computers that can self-learn. 

We may never get to the level of trust that the walled-garden of TV has enjoyed but through tech-based solutions, and being creatively distinct in our work, we’ll build trust.

What’s been your favourite new piece of tech this year?

I’d have to choose the launch of ARKit (Apple) and ARCore (Android), the two software platforms that allow us to convincingly place virtual objects in the real world through AR.

 “This year has seen a wild diversification into built spaces, sensory installations, room-scale VR and AR filters and apps.”

What do you think the next big trend in technology could be?

An amalgamation of AI with AR/VR and continued advances in real-time rendering to enable us to make more unique experiences that offer more choice. In the social arena, these experiences will open up demand for more realistic avatars – extending the work already being done in facial capture and digital humans.

What do you think the advertising tech sector’s New Year’s resolution should be? 

Set the agenda rather than wait for someone else to steal the march.