Key trends in media and advertising identified in a recent survey of brands, agencies, tech executives and media professionals suggest certain platform investments will grow significantly in 2024.

Mediaocean wanted to understand intent by omnichannel marketers to maintain or increase media spend across channels, so the company worked with TechValidate in November 2023 to run the study, which contains aggregated responses from 1,085 participants.

Search ranked No. 4 in terms of marketers saying they will increase their media spend in 2024, according to Mediaocean’s survey. While 55% said they would increase spend in search, 40% said they will main investments, and 5% plan to reduce the amount spent.

The big winner is social platforms. Some 69% of those taking the survey report that in 2024 they will increase social media spend, while 65% will increase digital display and video, and 56% will increase connected television (CTV) in 2024.

The number of marketers who say they will maintain investments in these channels is 28%, 30%, and 36%, respectively.

The major loser was print, where only 7% said they would increase spend, 49% they would maintain spend and 44% said they would decrease investments.

This has become a major concern. With the deprecation of cookies, 43% of marketers are most fearful of losing the ability to measure campaign effectiveness.

Some 39% of marketers are concerned with the lack of preparedness for a cookieless future and other changes related to government mandates and deprecation.

About 37% are concerned with consumer ad avoidance and blindness, while 36% cite poor ability to manage reach and frequency across CTV and digital channels, and 33% cited the loss of access to third-party data.

The most critical advertising capability and media investments are with performance-driven paid media at 61% as of November 2023, followed by measurement and attribution at 50%, brand advertising at 47%, creative testing analysis at 29%, and using first-party data at 28%.

The 2024 Advertising Outlook Report also shows that generative artificial intelligence (GAI), connected television and streaming, and TikTok and social video are the most important trends marketers are watching — although each have dropped considerably since earlier last year, and even more so since 2022.

When asked how marketers use generative artificial intelligence (GAI), 39% cited data analysis in November 2023, while 35% cited market research, 26% cited copywriting, 16% cited image generation, 14% cited SEO, and 11% cited customer service. Others use the technology for software coding, website development, and classification of taxonomies.

One more interesting finding from the data is that 89% of respondents said they have not fully combined media and creative processes and technologies.

In a separate September 2023 survey of 100 marketers, 85% reported a gap between creative and media execution.

The study suggests this is the result of over-indexing on media at the expense of creative, especially when consumers respond to and reward customized experiences.

With the deprecation of cookies, 43% of marketers are most fearful of losing the ability to measure campaign effectiveness. This is now a major concern.