What does 2018 hold for changes in mapping, voice-activation, search, social media, attribution, and artificial intelligence?

As our coverage of how location technology has evolved over the past year has shown, the use of place-based information has spurred myriad ways for brands and consumers to connect online and offline.

It may be hard to imagine the shape of things to come in 2018, but we surveyed several executives in the space to peer into their respective crystal balls on what to expect over the next 12 months:

Collin Holmes, founder and CEO of Chatmeter

Mobile localization and the arms race for A.I:
Consumers are tired of pre-fab marketing messages, and are turning to each other as sources of what to do and buy. In addition, with the introduction of ad blockers which more than half of the U.S has installed on their devices, it’s getting harder and harder for brands to effectively reach their target audiences.

This will continue the rise of mobile and location-based marketing. Consumers have become more comfortable with enabling geo-location services on their phone, due to the value they are getting from many apps being able to access their location. This has tremendous value from a marketer’s perspective, but will rely on new tech, like A.I., to provide detailed and actionable insights on massive amounts of consumer behavior data.

Multi-functions of social:
Social is evolving a lot as well over the last couple years. Seems like people are still maintaining significant spend, many are even increasing, but they don’t feel it may be contributing much to company performance. In the local space, we are seeing big growth of social on driving customers, and big shifts in the review space from Yelp to Google and Facebook in terms of usage and review generation.

Google Maps is getting five times the number of reviews compared to Yelp, and two times that of Facebook. Facebook climbed to number one in total reviews, and most reviews per location. Yelp has seen a 12 percent drop of reviews being created monthly in the last 12 months.

The growth of voice search:
AI and voice search will require more careful strategies for marketers in 2018. These advancements will turn content marketing upside down. People speak and ask questions in natural language, not keyword-based searches, which means your content will either have to include FAQs or be peppered with questions and answers.

Gil Larsen, VP of Americas at Blis:

Cost-Per-Click vs. Cost-Per-Visit
2017 saw the emergence of a powerful new marketing metric: Cost-per-Visit (CPV). With this model, brands pay for an ad only when a consumer that’s been exposed to it visits a specific location. Using the CPV model not only helps brands increase foot traffic and boost sales, but also helps foster a more trusting relationship between brands, agencies and vendors. In 2018, CPV will continue to gain momentum as the metric of choice. Tech partners will need to abandon click-based measurement schemes and work towards building transparent relationships with advertisers to compete.

In 2018, brands will place greater emphasis on location intelligence. Previously, brands focused mostly on proximity advertising but now we’re seeing advertisers turn to more sophisticated uses of location data to inform their campaign. By analyzing historical location data and detailed behavioral patterns, brands gain comprehensive insights into consumer preferences and habits which can be used for hyper-targeted campaigns.

What Blockchain Means For Online-Offline Marketing
There are many technologies that will make impact next year but the most interesting one is the rise of blockchain. By enabling marketers to conduct transactions in a secure and transparent marketplace, blockchain has the potential to solve for many industry issues.

With blockchain, the end-to-end processes of booking, buying, and placing digital ad space will be recorded and stored. And because all these transactions would be available to the public and verified by common consensus, blockchain will help bring about greater transparency and end ad fraud. Integrating blockchain technology into our existing advertising ecosystems will take time.

Larger players will take longer to adapt, and organizations from across the industry will need to come together and agree on a common set of standards. We’ll see more and more startups adopting the technology, and the IAB and other industry bodies will begin setting some key standards. Within five years, the ad industry will transition into using blockchain as a transaction leger. And within a decade, we’ll likely see it become a new industry standard. It’s time for brands and their tech partners to prepare.

On Location And Viewability
To promote transparency, more technology vendors will (and should) develop visualization tools. Throughout 2017, concerns over brand safety, viewability, transparency and ad fraud have led to calls for greater transparency across the industry. These concerns have led some of the loudest voices clamoring for change to make significant budget cuts and many others to tweak their global contracts. In order to heed the calls for greater transparency, companies need to develop tools that foster trust between vendors, agencies and brands.

Gilad Amitai, Ubimo Co-Founder & COO:

Using location data in real time for foot traffic attribution has been widely adopted as a core KPI for measuring retail campaign effectiveness.

By implementing cross device matching techniques, this metric can now be used also to measure other channels besides mobile. Arguably the best indicator of this new standard is Snap’s reportedly $125M purchase of Placed. This acquisition exemplifies the recognition of the growing need to demonstrate ROI for advertisers by connecting the digital world to store purchases and visits.

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