The challenges student marketers face when future proofing your advertising: From cookies and distrust, to echo chambers and old news

Students are a dynamic, complex, ever-changing demographic, and since that’s the audience for your advertising, it’s no surprise that there’s a need for student marketers to live up to that too. 

And with change, comes challenges. 

At Think Student Live, our Advertising Director Tom Setter lifted the lid on emerging digital trends and walked us through what you need to know in order to truly future-proof your digital advertising. And keep up with this innovation-hungry audience. 

If you missed it, you can still catch up here on demand, but in the meantime here are our key takeaways to give you a head start on where to take your advertising in 2021.

There’s a trust issue that needs mending

With trust in traditional information sources at a record low worldwide, audiences are becoming more and more sceptical about the adverts they see. But post-pandemic, social media use has never been higher, and digital advertising spend is booming. There’s opportunity here, if you know how and where to invest your advertising budget, what messaging and creative to use, and who to target. 

The challenge of the creative choke 

During lockdown, lack of human interaction has led to creative blocks, with everyone looking in the same places for inspiration, spending more time in online echo chambers, and isolated from new people and experiences. 

To keep your content fresh, look to the passions, habits and temperaments that unite us for inspiration; don’t think stereotypes of Gen Z vs Millennials, think music, food and travel to connect your audience types, use the Akero briefing form to drill down even further to truly target your messaging and make sure your creative is right for the audience you’re targeting. 

Dodge the danger of becoming a dinosaur

While the big players, such as Amazon and Google are still seeing huge growth, TikTok now has the highest rating for global ad equity, showing adverts that audiences actually value. And, with it still being in its advertising honeymoon period, TikTok is performing both for consumer trust and effectiveness, so being an early adopter here could really pay off. 

Read our student marketer’s guide to getting started on the platform here. 

The cookieless future

With the advent of iOS14, opt-in for ad tracking is now extremely low at just 15% worldwide and 6% in the US. So, with this new-found focus on privacy, has Apple revolutionised online advertising just like they did with the iPod and the music business?

And, from the beginning of 2022, advertisers are facing further challenges as the cookie is eliminated from Google Chrome for good. But with the mobile advertising industry being worth £189bn alone, there’s a huge potential market if advertisers can pivot away from their reliance on third-party cookies. 

The first thing to do? Invest in first-party data. First-party cookies will continue to exist and vendor solutions are improving all the time. Contextual targeting offers opportunity, altering ads shown based on the content or context of the website being visited, not the individual. And there’s still time to plan and get it right; our guide to future proofing your advertising is the perfect place to get started. 

Whether you’re looking to overcome the cookie challenge or jump the ad-blocker obstacle, Akero’s advertising solutions can help. Get in touch with our experts today.