NAF’8 results: how will online advertising develop?
The National Advertising Forum (NAF’8) was held for the eighth time and became a record attendance: 9 thousand people visited it from November 12 to 15. A comprehensive review of trends in digital communications was held as part of the NAF’8 special day. The Digital Day was held with the support of the Association for the Development of Interactive Advertising (ARIR). E–commerce is officially recognized as the driver of the online segment, as the focus of most experts is on the capabilities of e–com.
The effectiveness of interactive advertising: challenges and trends
In addition to the departure of foreign platforms, the main challenges of the digital advertising market are the growing economy and new regulation. At the same time, as noted by ARIR President Boris Omelnitsky, among the important trends in the Internet advertising market are innovative segments, investments in the creation of new inventory, repositioning of sites, investments in AI, and budget growth from BRICS and friendly countries.
According to the research company Mediascope, the Internet audience in October 2024 is 103 million people — 85% of Russians over the age of 12. Irina Suanova, head of the company’s customer relations department, said that e-com is one of the key user activities on the Internet: 80% of Russians visit e-com sites at least once a month. However, social networks and blogs (21%), video resources (19%) and messengers (18%) occupy the largest share of time in Russian Internet activity.
The volume of digital TV consumption has been growing by 30% for several months in a row against the background of the slowdown in YouTube. Streaming is obviously an important part of the media landscape, as stated by Alexey Filia, director of the Department of Strategy and development of advertising products at GPM Advertising. The expert noted that it was easy and convenient to create brands 30 years ago. In modern realities, the creation and development of brands is a non–trivial, but still solvable task. GPM Advertising (sales house of Gazprom Media Holding) sees its key task in maintaining affordable quality inventory for brands.
4 hours and 57 minutes is how much an average Russian resident spends on the Internet per day, said Victoria Kinash, sales director for Yandex’s key customers and partners. The expert stressed that the development of user tools will become a trend for the next few years.
In order for brands to be able to sell through content, it is necessary to develop technological self-service tools, enter into partnerships with the largest e-com players, as well as actively work with bloggers. Maria Dobromilskaya, Director of new Initiatives at VK, reported that 66% of consumers trust user-generated content 12 times more than the brand.
Cross-channel communications have a multiplier effect: sales growth should be expected only if it is caused by a combination of promotion and image activity. Boris Peshnyak, managing director of the joint Media Department of Wildberries & Russ, noted that advertising formats should follow the audience: outdoor advertising has become a digital media — the share of DOOH in advertising budgets has reached 72%. The experience of Wildberries & Russ proves that combining e-com tools and outdoor advertising qualitatively changes the sales funnel.
Retail media, according to Avito Media Sales Director Yakov Peisakhzon, should be perceived as an engine of advertising progress. First of all, this is due to the localization of the business and the growth of new players. Avito Advertising experts conducted a survey of 10,000 Russians and found that 80% treat brand promotion in the digital environment positively or neutrally, and 57% of respondents are determined to purchase through banners.
A diverse technology stack, inflation and inventory shortages, an increased volume of marketing tasks, and operational inconveniences are the key challenges faced by advertising industry players in 2024. At the same time, as Nikita Fominov, Director of business development at MTS Ads, notes, the expected revenue of the interactive advertising market in 2024 is 1 trillion rubles. The speaker is confident that such a tool as Telegram Ads can satisfy the advertiser’s needs, since advertising in it is as native and understandable to the user as possible.
TV streaming is an advertising niche with high-quality inventory and great potential. The audience of the Online TV Digital Alliance is 30 million users, which is comparable to the coverage of the top 5 TV channels. 95% of advertisers are increasing their investments in online television. Alexander Zakharov, Chairman of the Digital Alliance Board, stressed that digitalization of the audience is changing the market: 34% of Russians watch linear television via the Internet. TV streaming is a familiar environment for the user.
Vladimir Babkov, CEO of sales house Everest, said about the long-term shortage in video: over the past 4 years, the number of users who do not want to watch ads has increased by 42%. Therefore, the development of the streaming direction in sales house was called strategic due to its huge potential: there is an increase in inventory, the quality of contacts is close to standard TV, and there is access to a high-quality audience.
Adaptive communication is what arouses the interest of brands. Natalia Vesnina, CEO of Independent Media, reported an increase in the effectiveness of advertising integrations due to technology and work with behavioral patterns.
Interactive advertising is becoming more segmented due to the influence of innovative trends: many players are launching their own advertising cabinets and creating their own promotion tools.
The Big ECOM Summit: consumers, platforms and brands
According to ARIR’s forecast, the Retail Media market volume will reach 437 billion rubles in 2024. Anton Honest, Mediascope product manager, reported that 51% of Russians access e-com resources at least once a day. The leaders among the marketplaces are Wildberries (62% average monthly coverage) and Ozon (61% average monthly coverage). Search is not just a tool for navigating the Internet, but also an essential component of e-com. According to Mediascope data for October 2024, Russians make 3.5 billion search queries per month on e-com.
The regions of Russia, the development of other marketplaces, an increase in the number of service platforms and the popularization of click-out formats are key drivers of the growth of the e—commerce industry. At the same time, the dynamics of the increase in the number of sellers is decreasing, which signals the saturation of the market. Andrey Volkov, Chief Operating Officer of Easy Commerce, presented a forecast of the volume of E-retail Media in 2025, according to the calculations of the ARIR profile committee, will be +45%. As the moderator of the big ECOM summit explained, the segment’s growth is slowing down, but it remains twofold.
Among the key challenges is the lack of a unified approach to analytics. The participants of the big ECOM summit expressed a common position that the e-commerce segment needs a common measurement system. Currently, the lack of a common understanding of analytics complicates planning for customers, at the same time, Vyacheslav Nikonov, product director of the Wildberries & Russ advertising platform, believes that sooner or later all analytics will be reduced to self service.
Alexander Khudoley, Director of product portfolio and strategy at Beeline adtech, believes that advertising on ECOM sites provides high-quality contact and high clickability. For the placement to be effective, the audience must have the intention to take action, and the advertising creative must reveal the main value of the offer from the first viewing. Varvara Novitskaya, E-commerce Account Lead at Era (Group4Media) noted that the ability of brands to create inspiring and memorable stories, rather than a banal discount offer, comes to the fore.
Evgeny Khalin, director of the Kokoc Traffic division (Kokoc Group), recommends that when conducting campaigns in E-Retail Media, the audience should be warmed up and divided into streams based on data from the platform. This approach allows you to show ads only when it is relevant to the client, and not be afraid of questions about its effectiveness.
One of the important areas of work of the Big ECOM Summit was the discussion of how representatives of e-com platforms plan to develop click-out. Yulia Dolotina, Director of Operations and Trade Marketing at Ozon, said that an advertiser can assemble both a very wide and a very narrow segment for interaction. In the future, players will need to agree on fair pricing and sustainable metrics.
Representatives of the agencies paid special attention to the discussion of the personnel issue. The active development of e-commerce technologies requires the transformation of employees. Tatyana Khokhlova, General Director of the Adlabs agency (ADV Group), suggests attracting enthusiastic specialists from related departments in conditions of staff shortage. Anastasia Becker, director of Media Instinct Group, admitted that their agency has an internship program.
During the expert discussion, such aspects of Retail Media as the growing popularity of CTV, the importance of high-quality analytics, the fight against invalid traffic and the search for new formats that can attract consumer attention in the era of “banner blindness” were touched upon.
Also during the NAF days, industrial products of the Association for the Development of Interactive Advertising (ARIR) and the Association of Communication Agencies of Russia (ACAR) were presented.
Among the key projects and research carried out jointly with the analytical center RACA/ARIR/RAMU/GIPP:
More news in the channel
@rusadmarketchannel