Darren Herman

Over the years, instead of writing my own forecasts and predictions, I’ve aggregated them on this blog as a source for everyone to turn to for marketing, technology and media.  Here are the lists for 2008, 2009, and 2010.  This year, instead of aggregating them, I wrote 5 predictions that I think will come true for Advertising and Marketing Technology in 2012.

The predictions are below, but you can read more about them here on Advertising Age.

1.  The vGRP metric gets adopted once released and AdXpose/Comscore finally makes sense to most people

2.  Trading Desks are no longer the bright shiny object for Madison Avenue as they begin to mature and become growth businesses for holding companies.  Holding companies need to make a strategic decision whether or not they are going to continue to support them and if so, they must acknowledge and realize they are building technology organizations.  If not, we’ll start to see some trading desks spinning down (or out) of holding companies in 2012.

3.  Agencies who are not agencies will challenge the agencies.  I like the title on this one:  tomorrow’s madison avenue will look different than todays.  Read more about it in-depth over at Ad Age.

4.  Attribution drives dollars to currently undervalued assets.  By using engagement mapping, TrueCPA, or other fun names for understanding conversion attribution, media buyers will actually be able to purchase sites that aren’t part of the lower purchase funnel.

5.  And of course, what marketing technology trend and prediction list would not include Consolidation and Investment as a headline?  Mine certainly will.

I’m super excited about the above 5.  There are quite a few more but these are my starting five going into 2012.