What to expect from advertisers in the new year

BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) – Commercials are everywhere and there are strategies to make sure people’s ears and eyes notice. A Vermont marketing expert offered some insight into trends that dominated 2022 and what to expect for 2023.

We asked people if ads on social media got them spending money this year.

“I’m not a Facebook person, I more decide what I want and I do the research on Amazon and things, a little bit of research,” said Jill Kaplan of Burlington.

For others, keeping up with the Joneses is a tried and true way to spend some money.

“To see things and when I go in if they have a display or something, oh wow, I haven’t had that in a while,” said Peter Hunt of Shelburne.

Many consider 2022 to be a year when COVID restrictions loosened. Matthew Dodds, who runs the marketing firm Branthropology in Burlington, said correlated products and commercials this year.

“We’re seeing the coming back online of things like cruises, travel, even car inventory is starting to pick back up,” said Dodds.

From the pandemic, Dodds said an ongoing trend Vermont entrepreneurs have taken advantage of– and should continue to– is the explosion of digital platforms to get a company or idea to a larger audience.

“You can be in Vermont and be national,” Dodds said. “So that’s one of the things that I think was already going on, but became cemented, cemented over COVID, where you can form and all the tools that you need to form a national following really are your phone and access to the internet.”

He also says he’s had more clients in recent months target online advertisements within counties and towns in Vermont, as opposed to spending money on statewide ads.

“We’ll have a client, Peoples Trust Company that has a footprint in Franklin, Grand Isle county, for example. Well, they can just buy that and be relatively efficient,” said Dodds.

He also says other artificial intelligence features have improved too this year, like chatbots on websites where you need help as it becomes more challenging to reach a real person by phone.

And he expects geopolitics to continue to affect marketing.

“We’ve just seen the last, what seven days a ban on TikTok for government employees, right? So how the Russian invasion of Ukraine, how China’s alignment and I think what we’re constantly or consistently seeing is a kind of desire, US government… looking for sources outside of China. We’ll see – I wonder what that means for brands,” said Dodds.

Dodds also said to expect the continuation of brands advertising in platforms catered toward kids, like the online game platform Roblox.

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