Journal of Advertising

ISSN: 0091-3367 (Print) 1557-7805 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ujoa20

Conceptualizing the Evolution and Future of

Advertising

V. Kumar & Shaphali Gupta

To cite this article: V. Kumar & Shaphali Gupta (2016): Conceptualizing the Evolution and
Future of Advertising, Journal of Advertising, DOI: 10.1080/00913367.2016.1199335

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Published online: 14 Jul 2016.

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 Journal of Advertising, 0(0), 1–16
Copyright Ó 2016, American Academy of Advertising
ISSN: 0091-3367 print / 1557-7805 online
DOI: 10.1080/00913367.2016.1199335
Conceptualizing the Evolution and Future of Advertising
V. Kumar
Georgia State University, Atlanta, Georgia
Shaphali Gupta
Management Development Institute, Gurgaon, India
Technology has irreversibly changed the way that firms
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identify who is more likely to buy, what they are more likely to
buy, when they are more likely to buy, why they are likely to buy,
and how they are likely to buy, repurchase, and recommend. It is
now easier than ever for firms to have a body of evidence in the
form of actual insights, as opposed to having mere guestimates,
on consumers’ apparent intentions to buy. Power dynamics have
changed in the marketing climate, and firms have to factor in not
only aggressive competitors but also empowered customers with
limited attention spans. In such a climate, what lies in the future
for advertising? And how can marketing managers make the
most of the changing climate and maximize their returns on
advertising? How can academics advance research related to
maximizing the effectiveness and efficiency of advertising? These
are the questions that this article addresses via an integrated
framework that expounds all the factors related to customers,
firms, technological environment, and data resources, as well as
the contextual factors, including product life cycle, customer life
cycle, and so on, and their collective impact on advertising
strategy, which includes advertising content, media selection,
message, and targeting.
Advertising has an ability to move markets and minds,
products and perceptions. It interests, intrigues, entices, enter-
tains, and creates lifestyles. It builds a relationship between
customers and brands (Jaishri and Shruti 2006). Ads are
everywhere. You are woken up by a ping on your mobile
phone; it is there when you switch on your radio and
Address correspondence to V. Kumar, Tower Place 200,
Suite 204, 3348 Peachtree Road NE, Atlanta, GA 30326.
E-mail: vk@gsu.edu
V. Kumar (PhD, University of Texas at Austin) is a Regents
Professor, Richard and Susan Lenny Distinguished Chair Professor,
Executive Director, Centre for Excellence in Brand and Customer
Management, J. Mack Robinson College of Business, Georgia State
University. He is also a Chang Jiang Scholar, HUST, China; Lee
Kong Chian Fellow, Singapore Management University, Singapore;
and ISB Senior Fellow, Indian School of Business, India.
Shaphali Gupta (PhD, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay,
Mumbai) is an Assistant Professor of Marketing, Management Devel-
opment Institute, Gurgaon, India.
1
television, when you log on to your social media network,
when you drive by attractive flex signage and banners outside
stores, and when you read a newspaper. Marketers are relent-
lessly seeking your attention and subtly entering your system
and touching your senses. The primitive history of advertising
can be dated to the beginning of civilization, with word-of-
mouth advertising by hawkers announcing and publicizing
their articles for sale and merchants roaming from town to
town spreading awareness of their art and goods. However,
over the past hundred years, it has evolved from having one
simple objective of informing people about products and serv-
ices to being a highly sophisticated and personalized tool of
persuasion, from being restricted to print media and transcend-
ing to digital media, followed by revolutionized interactive
social media and mobile short message service (SMS). Even
so, sailing through various stages and media, advertising has
come full circle by stopping right back at the word-of-mouth
promotion stage. The big question here is this: Will advertising
keep rolling in the same circle or, with the current technologi-
cal and digital advancements, will it take an unprecedented
path?
Product proliferation, easy Internet connectivity, and social
media have radically changed the advertising space. With this
change, however, come many challenges. Today, consumers
are not only better informed but are also better connected with
the rest of the world. They no longer trust advertisements until
endorsed by personal or virtual positive word of mouth by
credible sources. At the same time, the proliferation of multi-
national firms has brought several new challenges to the ad
world, such as issues related to cultural relatability and appro-
priation, technological exposure, and consumer perception.
Digitization has drastically transformed the overall media
space, leading to increased investments in Internet advertising.
Moreover, the increasing penetration of tablets, smartphones,
and mobile applications ensures that global mobile advertising
spending in digital media continues to increase. At the same
time, the steady decline in the audience for print media
has adversely impacted print advertising. Digital media adver-
tising spending is increasing at the cost of print media
 2 V. KUMAR AND S. GUPTA
investments, and it is foreseeable that they will continue on
this upward trajectory.
The objective of this article is to look briefly into the evolution
of advertising and dwell deeply upon the future of advertising.
What it will be? Which vehicle will be most impactful and effec-
tive in the next decade? Which medium will consumers trust the
most and why? Where should the large chunk of marketing resour-
ces go, and on what basis should they be allocated? What exactly
influences consumers today? Through an integrated framework,
this article expounds all the factors that would significantly deter-
mine a futuristic advertising strategy. The proposed framework
elucidates the following factors related to customers, firms, tech-
nology, and information: what customers demand, where the
firm’s focus should be, which kind of disruptive technology is
required to optimally reach out to the target market, and how infor-
mation should flow in the world of business to make an everlasting
impact.
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WHAT LIES AHEAD FOR ADVERTISING?
Advertising has always kept up not only with changing
times, trends, and mind-sets but also with changing technology.
The nature of advertising too has evolved over the years.
Advertising started off from essentially a one-way broadcast of
a sales pitch, to taking an interactive form, to eventually taking
the form of two-way conversation. Marketers moved from a
product focus to a sales focus, to eventually a relationship
focus. The focus shifted to developing and disseminating com-
munication that inspired consumers to not merely buy but form
a lasting relationship with the brand. The future of advertising,
however, lies in taking advertising beyond even the relationship
focus to the engagement focus. Therefore, a worthwhile area for
research is developing an integrated framework that organizes
the macro and contextual factors that are likely to influence the
effectiveness and performance of advertising.
INTEGRATED FRAMEWORK FOR THE FUTURE
OF ADVERTISING
In this article, we first present an integrated framework to
organize the discussion of the current state of advertising (see
Figure 1), and offer some generalizations with respect to the
future of advertising. Following Figure 1, we discuss the
macro factors that would affect the advertising strategy of a
firm in the future. This section discusses the four macro factors
related to customers, firms, technology, and information—in
other words, what customers seek from advertising communi-
cation, what the firm’s focus should be while designing its
future communication strategies, how technology affects the
communication space, and how information is disseminated
via various modes of communication. We suggest that all four
macro factors would mutually affect the firm’s advertising
strategy encompassing of advertising content, advertising mes-
sage, advertising channels, and advertising targeting.
However, as shown in the Figure 1 framework, a few contex-
tual factors exist that moderate the relationship between the
macro factors and the firm’s future advertising strategy. These
include the product life cycle, customer life cycle, location
(categorized as per country’s development index/developed
and emerging countries), mobile disruption, product category,
competitive intensity, and consumers’ willingness to go digi-
tal. The framework further emphasizes how firms should be
able to measure the returns on their advertising investments by
assessing the differential impact of their advertising strategy,
message, content, channel, and targeting due to the influence
of the macro factors and the contextual (moderating) factors
on various performance indicators.
Customer Demands
Personalized communication. Customers’ expectations
for relevant messaging are evolving; they seek customized
communication designed to fulfill their specific needs. The
advances in digital technology have made “mass custom-
ization” of products and communication a reality. Personalized
communication also helps firms accelerate a consumer’s deci-
sion-making process and increases the likelihood of response
and purchase/subscription (Ansari and Mela 2003). For exam-
ple, beauty retailer Sephora encourages customers to build
their profiles online and update them with their preferences.
Sephora then sends personalized e-mails that feature a selec-
tion of products particularly customized to complement the
recipient’s distinctive beauty profile and preferences (Yadav
and Pavlou 2014). Needless to say, consumers find such per-
sonalized communication worth their scarce resources—in
other words, their time and effort. It is safe to assume that pre-
senting perfectly matched products to consumers has a note-
worthy impact on Sephora’s profits and customer retention
rates, helping them win some brand love and effectively gain
consumer trust. With detailed data on customers becoming
increasingly available, the future of advertising is expected to
see more such personalized communication across industries
and markets.
Generalization (G)1: Personalized communication will play a
more pivotal role in advertising.
Relevant messaging. Today, across most product catego-
ries, a plethora of brands is vying for consumers’ and pros-
pects’ attention. In addition, these brands tend to jump at any
given opportunity to broadcast their message to consumers, in
hopes that the consumer will not only notice them but also pro-
ceed to purchase whatever it is the brand is selling via that
message. Unfortunately for most brands, that is not how con-
sumers conduct their purchases. The fact that consumers are
usually media multitasking and switching between devices
and platforms poses an additional threat to the effectiveness of
advertising messages. However, as a study by Angell et al.
 CONCEPTUALIZING THE EVOLUTION AND FUTURE OF ADVERTISING 3

Macro Factors
Customer Demands for:
• Personalized Communicaon
• Relevant Messaging
• Contextual Trust
Contextual Moderang Factors
What firms have to focus on:
• Profitable Customer Engagement Customer Life Cycle Compeve Intensity
• Data-driven Adversing
• Real-me Adversing Adversing Strategy
• Permission Markeng Locaon (Developed
• Co-creaon vs. Emerging) Adversing Content
• Earning Trust Adversing Media Selecon
• Experienal Adversing Adversing Message
• Capturing Customer Feedback Adversing Targeng

Technological Environment:
Product Life Cycle: Product
• Media Convergence
• Social Media New Purchase/ Category
• Futurisc Technology Repeat Purchase
• Data Analycs Consumer’s Willingness
Mobile Disrupon to Go Digital
Informaon Disseminaon:
• Word of Mouth
• Social Influence
•
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Bloggers Return on Adversing

• Expert Opinions

FIG. 1. Integrated framework of the future of advertising.

(2016) establishes, as long as the advertising message is rele-
vant to either the content that is being viewed by the consumer
or his or her consumption goals, the effectiveness of an adver-
tisement is not adversely impacted by multimedia usage. A
study by Baker and Lutz (2000) also emphasizes that advertis-
ing is likely to be effective when the type of information pre-
sented in the advertising message matches up with the
information that consumers are looking for at the time and are
inclined to process and mentally register. The widespread
availability of technology to broadcast messages on demand,
online and offline, has an adverse effect where firms face the
risk of coming across as intrusive to their audiences. However,
by increasing the relevance of their advertising messages,
firms can ensure that their advertisements are not perceived as
intrusive by their audiences (Edwards, Li, and Lee 2002).
G2: Advertising messaging will be increasingly targeted and
contextually relevant.
Contextual trust. Trust, according to Rousseau et al. (1998),
is defined as “a psychological state comprising the intention to
accept vulnerability based upon positive expectations of the inten-
tions or behavior of another” (p. 395). This definition describes
trust as a state of mind, which persuades a person to accept the risk
of something due to positive expectations or intentions drawn
from the shown behavior. Contextual trust could be generated via
celebrity endorsements, reviews from experts, opinion leaders,
and customer testimonials, among others.
In the context of advertising, we define contextual trust as con-
sumers’ placing their trust in advertisements influenced by the
credibility of the context, such as celebrities endorsing the product.
This kind of trust is more cognitive and perceptual in nature; the
positive image of an endorser can form a positive attitude toward
the ad and, in turn, the brand. The credibility literature confirms
the notion that “celebrities owe some of their effectiveness as mar-
keting devices to their credibility” (McCracken 1989, p. 311). It
has been suggested that their trustworthiness and source expertise
significantly affect attitude change and product evaluations
(McGuire 1985). Moreover, the endorser’s credibility affects the
attitude toward the ad, product perception, and image (Atkin and
Block 1983). The likability of the endorser creates a persuasive
impact on the minds of the consumers (Tripp, Jensen, and Carlson
1994). This likability can be subject to the attractiveness/appeal of
the endorser due to his or her behavior and physical appearance
(McGuire 1985); and the celebrities who are liked are perceived to
be trusted product endorsers (Friedman and Friedman 1979).
Endorsements are a form of advertising that use famed person-
alities who command a high degree of recognition, reliance, and
respect among the people. Celebrity endorsement can be defined
as “any individual who enjoys public recognition and who uses
this recognition on behalf of a consumer good by appearing with it
in an advertisement” (McCracken 1989, p. 310). In comparison
with other endorsement types, celebrity endorsements are more
effective, as they convey a sense of trustworthiness, believability,
persuasiveness, and likability through advertising to the viewers
(Freiden 1984; Till and Shimp 1998). For instance, using an inter-
nationally known sports celebrity like Roger Federer to endorse
Tag Heuer watches can help emphasize the aspirational nature of
the watches, influence people that consider him a role model
across the world to develop a favorable impression of the brand,
and eventually buy their products. A recent study by Jin and Phua
(2014) on the effectiveness on celebrity endorsements on
 4 V. KUMAR AND S. GUPTA
microblogging and social media sites like Twitter found that
celebrity endorsements work extremely well on Twitter owed to
the combined leverage of positive electronic word of mouth, social
network influence, and celebrity power. Customers focus more on
the benefits rather than the source unless they are experts in that
category. For instance, Nike reaped the benefits of hiring Tiger
Woods as their brand endorser, saw an additional profit of
$103 million, and recovered more than half of their monetary
investment in his endorsement via sales of golf balls in the United
States alone. Nike also witnessed the dark side of celebrity
endorsements and the risk associated with hiring an endorser who
is also a category expert: After the personal scandals associated
with Tiger Woods became common knowledge, Nike incurred a
loss of more than $1 million. However, the extent of financial
damage in this case was limited, as the celebrity endorser’s per-
sonal character was called into question but not his professional
abilities or credibility (Chung, Derdenger, and Srinivasan 2013).
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G3: Credibility of the advertisement context will continue to inspire
customer trust/brand trustworthiness, but less so than in the past.
Firm’s Focus
Profitable customer engagement. In recent times, compa-
nies have begun to realize the importance of having not just a large
customer base but a profitable customer base. As a result, the focus
has shifted from a sales-centric philosophy to an engagement-cen-
tric one that helps companies establish and maintain lasting rela-
tionships with the customers who help them turn a profit (Kumar
2013, p. 2). While taking an engagement-oriented perspective of
value, it is important to go beyond mere purchase behavior and
take into account the numerous other ways that a consumer
engages with a firm. As such, the concept of customer engagement
value (CEV) is more relevant and comprehensive, as it takes into
account (a) customer lifetime value (CLV): customers’ first-time,
repeat, cross-category purchases; (b) customer referral value
(CRV): customer referral behavior and the value it brings to the
firm; (c) customer influence value (CIV): the extent of customers’
influence of other customers and prospects; and (d) customer
knowledge value (CKV): the value that customers bring to firms
by providing feedback or facilitating idea generation and product
development (Kumar et al. 2010). Effective advertising can
enhance not only customer engagement and profitability (Hogan,
Lemon, and Libai 2004) but also overall CEV. For example,
advertisers would emphasize the benefits of incentivized referrals,
illustrate the power of influencers, and focus on the prestige asso-
ciated with cocreation of products and services.
G4: Advertising focus will increasingly be directed toward building
profitable customer engagement.
Data-driven advertising. The growing consumer demand
for personalization has rendered information the status of
being the most valuable currency. Firms are quickly adopting
smart data management techniques and spending a big chunk
of their resources on data-driven marketing and advertising.
Customer databases are consistently getting richer, more
deeply layered, and multidimensional. These big data can
make all forms of advertising much more efficient, especially
online display advertising. As a result, firms are now begin-
ning to focus on collecting data, accessing data, analyzing
data, and generating and acting on insights on an ongoing
basis. However, while more firms are collecting and access-
ing data, few firms have actually built the capabilities to
analyze these data and develop usable and relevant insights.
The premise of data-driven advertising and marketing are
based on two rationales: the desire to know and interact more
relevantly with customers; and to maximize return on invest-
ments. Looking ahead, it is expected that, to attain the largest
gains, firm spending on capturing relevant customer data and
data analytics will take over the major chunk of the marketing
budget, eventually surpassing the budgets for traditional
advertising.
G5: Data-driven advertising and measurable, targeted, and data-
based advertising campaigns will increasingly become the pre-
ferred form of advertising.
Real-time advertising. Firms respond in real or near-real
time to their customers. Real-time advertising is about focus-
ing on up-to-date events and creating a strategy based on ongo-
ing trends and immediate consumer feedback. The main
objective of real-time advertising is to connect with the con-
sumers in real time and address their needs immediately. This
goal can be achieved by listening to and anticipating consum-
ers’ needs and responding by sending relevant messaging.
Advances in social media and technology environments have
enabled real-time optimization of display advertising, making
it more effective than ever. With Facebook, Instagram,
Twitter, and other popular social networking sites and applica-
tions, firms can gather almost all relevant information about
their users and can use these data to design and deliver
relevant messages to consumers in a time of need. As a result,
consumers are more likely to buy products or services because
they will recognize the immediate utility that they can receive
from them and with the better offer conversion; it provides a
win-win situation for marketers and consumers.
G6: Real-time, relevant advertising is an integral (dominant) com-
ponent in the firm’s integrated marketing communication strategy.
Permission marketing/advertising. Permission marketing
is an approach where marketers seek customers’ permission
before sending them marketing messages. Though the idea of
permission marketing was proposed in 1999 by Seth Godin, it
has emerged as an effective solution to the challenges market-
ers face in today’s digital age. Permission marketing facilitates
two-way interaction and engagement in the process of
 CONCEPTUALIZING THE EVOLUTION AND FUTURE OF ADVERTISING
marketing, where customers proactively interact with firms
and participate by joining their marketing campaign voluntar-
ily. Given its interactive nature, permission marketing is con-
sidered crucial for firms’ value creation. It is based on the
premise that customers are not reluctant to receive marketing
materials if firms first ask for their consent (Kumar, Zhang,
and Luo 2014). Permission marketing can be exercised by
carefully maneuvering a firm’s new media channels (social
media, mobile, Web, e-mail). The main goal of permission
marketing is to have authentic interactions with customers
without intruding on their privacy.
In addition to respecting consumers’ right to privacy, one of
the key focal points of permission marketing is to get their atten-
tion. Attention is an important asset; when customers choose to
pay attention, they actually are paying you with something pre-
cious. It is something to be valued, not wasted; it is an invest-
ment. But what is one person’s permission worth? AOL pays as
much as $300 to get one new customer; American Express shells
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out approximately $150 to get a new cardholder. Wall Street
spends $15 in media acquisition costs just for permission to call
a potential customer on the phone (Godin 1999). But do these
firms earn enough to justify this expense? Probably not. How-
ever, the benefits attached to permission marketing outweigh the
high investment cost for getting a new customer to the firm. It
allows firms to cross-sell products, track consumer behavior, and
tailor offers designed to address the specific needs of existing
and prospective customers. The monetary gains from opting in
to a marketing/ad campaign is six to 10 times the investment
(Kumar, Zhang, and Luo 2014).
G7: Permission marketing will become the default approach for the
customer contact strategy of firms.
Cocreation. Cocreation, crowdsourcing and user-gener-
ated content are considered imperative in today’s media com-
munication and advertising space. However, contrary to
popular belief, cocreation, particularly in advertising, is not a
new concept, having existed for years in the form of quizzes
and contents; but it has become ubiquitous in recent years. It
provides a channel for more participative, dynamic, and inter-
active relationships between organizations and their stakehold-
ers. When a firm decides to invite customer participation, it
provides a platform to hold an interactive conversation, and
hence ensures more active participation. However, it is not
always essential that participants are aware of their participa-
tion in the process. When firms track customer behavior online
or investigate their buying and browsing profiles, the customer
has little or no information on the nature of information that is
being collected and studied. This fact is also one of the most
controversial aspects of the “cocreation” phenomenon and
continues to spark debates on privacy concerns, need for regu-
lation, and so on. However, the implications of cocreation are
much more relevant and pervasive; firms are altering their
communication strategies to be more interactive with their
5
consumers and to provide them an experience that goes
beyond products and services. In the process of cocreation,
firms tend to be more transparent, authentic, and creative to
bring in new ways of engaging consumers and turning them
into brand ambassadors.
G8: Cocreation will play a critical role in making advertising com-
munication more interactive and in creating two-way conversations.
Earning trust. Trust is a fundamental element for human
relations as well as for consumer and seller relationships
(Luhmann 2000; Gambetta 1988; Moorman, Deshpande, and
Zaltman 1993). However, there is a consistent tendency among
consumers to distrust advertising. Previous research has recog-
nized trust as an antecedent of persuasion and reported its
correlation with liking, information acceptance, and other
processing effects (Petty and Cacioppo 1996; Hovland, Janis,
and Kelley 1953; Menon et al. 2004). Research on trust in the
context of various advertising media has found that, in spite of
their inherent skepticism and ambivalence toward advertising
messages, customers in general tend to like commercials more
than they dislike them. They find commercials to be pleasing,
informative, and valuable in their search process (Soh, Reid,
and King 2007). In an overcrowded, saturated market, under-
standing how consumers feel about a given advertisement and
how they would react to it is a complex phenomenon.
Consequently, it is challenging for marketers to develop an
effective media allocation strategy. Therefore, it would be a
wise move for marketers to understand the trust dynamics of
various media and optimize their advertising spends accord-
ingly. A lot of variation can be seen in consumer trust across
advertising media.
G9: Earning and keeping consumers’ trust will continue to be both
a key challenge and major opportunity for advertisers.
Experiential advertising. Experiential advertising is a
form of advertising that focuses primarily on facilitating con-
sumers to experience a brand. In experiential advertising, firms
directly engage consumers and encourage them to participate
in helping evolve and build the brand. It allows the consumers
to live the brand via engagement and cocreation, and as a
result they are able to develop a relationship with the brand.
Experiential advertising differs from traditional advertising.
While traditional advertising is more focused toward the ver-
bal and visual communication of product and service benefits,
experiential advertising tries to immerse the consumers within
the product. In the competitive marketplace, experiential
advertising allows firms to stand out from the clutter, as con-
sumers who have shared moments/memories with that brand
would like to relive those memorable experiences, thereby
influencing their purchase decisions. A study by Singh et al.
(2000), found that direct experience with a brand is more
 6 V. KUMAR AND S. GUPTA
effective in generating recall and positive intent than tradi-
tional advertisements.
G10: Advertising is evolving into an immersive, experiential plat-
form that encourages participation from consumers.
Capturing customer feedback. In interactive advertising,
consumer feedback can be used as a strategic tool through
which consumers give suggestions on how the firm should run
its business. An advertisement is found to be effective if the
consumer has understood a message that is similar to what
marketers intended to communicate. Feedback from the con-
sumers can help marketers adjust the message if it is not well
comprehended by the consumers. Receiving instant feedback
from consumers is imperative; that the feedback process
should be interactive in nature, because noninteractive pro-
cesses will decrease the speed and effectiveness of the adver-
tisement, which would be a detrimental result (Pavlou and
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Stewart 2000). Building friendly relationships should lead to
customer engagement. While relationships are based on trust
and commitment, engagement goes a step further and ensures
that a customer is also satisfied and emotionally connected
with the firm (Pansari and Kumar 2016). An engaged customer
is expected to provide feedback. Customers with positive
experiences with the firm and its brands are more likely to pro-
vide genuine feedback to the firm. The better the relationship
between the firm and its customers, the more the firm can rely
upon them to give powerful testimonials and positive reviews.
Customer feedback helps firms gain a better understanding of
how the brand is performing and how it is being perceived. At
the same time, people find themselves in a fix when they are
asked to provide their candid feelings about their experiences
in written testimonials because it is not “off the record”. How-
ever, asking them to provide feedback ensures the end product
will be more organic and natural-sounding. Therefore, it is rec-
ommended that companies take even the minimal feedback
from customers in a positive way and implement those
concerns.
G11: Advertising will more actively engage customers to solicit
customer feedback, and will also showcase examples of implemen-
tation of the feedback as a strategic choice.
Technological Influence
Media convergence. Convergence can be explained as a
blend of media, telecommunications, and computer industries. In
the process of convergence, the boundaries between media plat-
forms become blurred and unite them into one digital form.
The development of the World Wide Web, digitization of media
content, and high-speed computer networking have radically
enabled the convergence phenomenon, especially media conver-
gence. Therefore, convergence can be examined in terms of social
as well as technological changes within society. Media
convergence is an ongoing process and should not be seen as a dis-
placement of old media; rather, it is interaction, collaboration, and
cooperation between previously unconnected media forms and
platforms (Jenkins 2006; Erdal 2011).
Convergence by its very nature facilitates a synergy among var-
ious media channels. Television programming that is delivered
digitally via cable, telephone, or satellite hookups is a great exam-
ple of convergence. In addition, media convergence has paved the
way for a plethora of opportunities for marketers to hone in on and
target customers at a level of precision and customization that was
formerly not available via traditional forms of advertising. For
instance, thanks to media convergence and the advances in tech-
nology, a specific household can now be targeted with a unique set
of commercials during a TV program, while a different set of com-
mercials may be available to another household watching the same
program. The most striking feature of the convergence phenome-
non is that it is not restricted to just a few media types but rather is
all-encompassing.
To reap the maximum benefits from various media chan-
nels, it is essential that firms adopt a data-driven, optimal bud-
get allocation strategy to identify the most effective media
channels, and reallocate media investments in line with the
overall marketing objectives of the firm. This approach of con-
verging and optimizing media was implemented at the world’s
second-largest aquarium, Georgia Aquarium, leading to a 10%
increase in attendance, 12% increase in revenues, and setting
it on a sustainable growth trajectory (Kumar et al. 2015).
Examples of media convergence can be seen across industries.
For instance, the ability for customers to have a monthly digi-
tal subscription to the New York Times is a result of media con-
vergence. The future holds even more convergence
opportunities, especially in the domain of advertising. Media
convergence has impacted advertising as well. For instance,
the ability of a supermarket to broadcast a relevant deal to a
customer’s mobile phone while passing/driving by the store is
the result of media convergence. Media convergence in adver-
tising can be seen as an opportunity for optimum coverage, to
deliver the right message at the right place and ensure its rele-
vance to the receiver, in other words, an ability to target the
right consumers with minimal waste.
G12: Media convergence is an inevitable result of the widespread
adoption of integrated marketing strategies and the advances in
technology.
Social media. “Social media are fundamentally changing
the way we communicate, collaborate, consume, and create”
(Aral, Dellarocas, and Godes 2013, p. 3). The social media plat-
form enables individuals to engage in multifaceted communica-
tion ranging from one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many
levels. As noted by Barnes, Lescault, and Andonian (2012),
The use of social media among Fortune 500 companies surged in
2012. According to a study conducted by the University of
 CONCEPTUALIZING THE EVOLUTION AND FUTURE OF ADVERTISING
Massachusetts Dartmouth, as many as 73 percent of these compa-
nies now have an official corporate account in Twitter, while 66
percent have a corporate Facebook page. In addition, as of 2011, 28
percent of the companies had blogs at the corporate level, repre-
senting the largest increase since 2008.
Social media have been defined as a series of technological
innovations in terms of both hardware and software that facili-
tate inexpensive content creation, interaction, and interopera-
bility by online users (Berthon et al. 2012). A participant in
social media is not only a consumer but also a producer. Social
media has dramatically changed the advertising space and
presents many challenges to firms as well as advertising agen-
cies. The rise of blogs in the 2000s as well as the emergence of
social networking sites brought about a revolution in the way
the Internet was used. It decentralized the Web and ushered in
an era of participation and self-expression. This new wave has
also permanently shifted the power dynamics on the Web and
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gives consumers a way to control, process, and act upon/reject
communication that was broadcast to them.
Given the increasing popularity of social media, it is imper-
ative for firms to leverage this channel effectively as an adver-
tising vehicle. Social media is an excellent vehicle to activate
social influencers and offer relevant and hypertargeted content
to customers to ensure optimally effective advertising (Kumar
et al. 2013).
G13: Social media will assume a permanent place in the marketing
and media plans of firms, as social media platforms continue to
hold appeal across various demographics.
Futuristic technology. Although it tends to seem like pure
science fiction, it is not far-fetched to say that technology
could enable telepathic communication in future. Such tech-
nologies will have a large and disruptive influence on society;
there would be disruptions to established norms and broad
societal challenges. Business leaders, policymakers, and indi-
viduals in the United States and around the world will confront
change on many fronts. The emergence of such disruptive
technology allows customers to live the moment via products
and engage with them experientially. Cloud computing, next-
generation genomics, and advanced robotics are a few disrup-
tive technology examples, which are set to change the face of
advertising in the future.
G14: Technology that tracks behaviors and attitudes of consumers
and provides a platform for two-way engagement between firms
and consumers is increasingly being adopted by marketers.
Data analytics. The world of customer analytics is
increasingly making a shift from individual/personal data to
metadata. Needless to say, the ability to collect, interpret, and
act on such metadata will be a key strategic competency for
firms and advertisers in future. Metadata offers two inherent
advantages: (1) From the marketer/advertiser’s perspective, it
7
accurately reflects macrotrends for segments, as opposed to
individual, idiosyncratic information that cannot necessarily
be generalized. (2) From the customer’s perspective, given its
inherently “meta” or “macro” nature, data and behavioral pri-
vacy concerns are automatically voided. In fact, it is expected
that if customers are engaged with a firm, those customers will
be more willing to share their private information, which can
then be used for effective advertising (Pansari and Kumar
2016).
G15: Crystallized metadata will help marketers achieve the thus far
elusive balance between respecting consumers’ privacy and track-
ing their consumption footprint.
Information Dissemination
Word of mouth. Accordingly, marketers are realizing that
spending millions of dollars on elaborate advertising cam-
paigns probably would not pull consumers’ attention and per-
suade them to purchase. Word of mouth and consumers’
reviews have been recognized as a powerful marketing tool
that cuts through the noise quickly and effectively and incul-
cates trust among consumers (e.g., DeCarlo et al. 2007). The
effective influencers in an online social network may signifi-
cantly affect customers’ purchasing decisions via trust in elec-
tronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) marketing (Liu et al. 2015).
Brands can outgrow their competition by actively driving posi-
tive conversations among their consumers. However, it is vital
that reviews on e-commerce sites and social media communi-
ties should be not only positive but also authentic and accurate.
In the case of Google’s viral Gmail campaign in 2004, the
company used word of mouth in real life. They spread infor-
mation about their new e-mail service through Internet-based
networks and extended their campaign by allowing their cur-
rent users to distribute new invitations themselves to their own
social networks until Gmail became available publicly (Scoble
and Israel 2006). Today, more than 450 million people use
Gmail worldwide. Thus, in the era of digitization, word of
mouth is no longer an act of intimate, one-on-one communica-
tion. It also operates on a one-to-many basis, with product
reviews and opinions posted online and disseminated through
social networks. More conversation about brands takes place
in offline than online environments, and more positive out-
comes are discussed than negative (Baker, Donthu, and Kumar
2016). However, in the future, online communication will
grow to become decisive and a significant force in influencing
and retransmission of positive interactions.
G16: Electronic word-of-mouth communication will become the
most relied-upon source of information in the future, assuming the
communication is positive and that the spread of information is
among family and friends and not strangers.
Social influence. People are influenced by societal norms,
and their buying decisions are influenced by their social
 8 V. KUMAR AND S. GUPTA
circles. For ages, social influence has played a critical role in
life decision processes. Societal influence is also gaining
prominence in the digital world, where for every purchase
decision consumers first look for opinions and read reviews by
fellow customers on the Internet. As a result, marketers are
now becoming more and more interested in learning about,
organizing, and managing virtual communities in Internet
space (Bagozzi and Dholakia 2002; Balasubramanian and
Mahajan 2001). The Internet, with its vast scope, not only pro-
vides a rapid dissemination of knowledge and perceptions for
the new product in the market but also offers various avenues
to build strong customer relationships through active customer
engagement (Dholakia, Bagozzi, and Pearo 2004). Online
social networks are becoming more widely recognized as an
essential source of information that can directly influence the
adoption and use of products and services (Subramani and
Rajagopalan 2003). Firms are relying on the standard practice
of merging customer characteristics and past behavior interac-
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tions between the firm and customers to compute the customer
score used for targeted retention efforts. However, firms can
now consider and calculate the impact of customers’ social
influence in assessing their potential value and identifying the
most valuable customers and most viable strategies for
targeting and communicating (Kumar et al. 2013). Big data
analytics can provide a solution to this problem by actively
leveraging the power of social influence.
G17: Marketers will increasingly look to customers’ social influ-
ence as a metric of choice to develop targeting and advertising
strategies.
Bloggers. Consumers today increasingly explore blogs
to seek information, advice, and reviews on products and
services. They find blogs to be genuine and trustworthy
sources of information that assist them in making sound
purchase decisions. Noting the power of blogs, firms nowa-
days are opting for microblogging platforms to quickly
communicate with their customers. This helps firms ensure
that every time they announce a piece of information on
Twitter or another microblogging social platform, millions
of people will be notified immediately via the Internet. The
speed, reach, and perceived credibility of such messages is
incredibly high. Moreover, because blogging presents a
platform for two-way interaction and develops a sense of
familiarity and affinity, it is more effective than online
advertising. Through their interaction with “friends” and
“followers,” firms are using microblogging for social media
marketing, which is helping them in two ways: First, they
can build a social network of users or potential buyers and
can influence their purchase decision. Second, they can
monitor public opinions, feedback, and reactions (Hsu and
Tsou 2011).
G18: Blogs and microblogs will increasingly be considered trust-
worthy sources to disseminate product information by advertisers
as well as by consumers.
Expert opinions. The expert-opinion technique in adver-
tisement can be more influential in explaining the benefits of
products that are more technical. The technical expert in the
field is the subject-matter expert, thereby adding credibility to
the brand. This also helps alleviate fears that consumers might
have about trying something unfamiliar. An expert can be
defined as a source of valid assertions (Hovland, Janis, and
Kelley 1953), one who identifies the correct stand on an issue
(McGuire 1969), or one whose statements have been con-
firmed empirically (Birnbaum and Stegner 1979). Expert
endorsements are considered to be more effective because
communications endorsed by an expert produce greater con-
formity with the subject than the same communications
accredited to a nonexpert (Tedeschi 1972). Because the pur-
pose of most advertisements is to convey certain meanings
and/or views associated with the company and the brand to
persuade trial or repeat purchase, featuring an expert endorser
in advertisements likely makes viewers and buyers more
agreeable to the conveyed message (Biswas, Biswas, and Das
2006). For instance, an advertisement showing a doctor wear-
ing a white laboratory coat explaining the benefits of using a
certain brand of toothpaste can create a positive impact on
the audience because of his or her perceived expertise and
implied authority on the matter. Sometimes, celebrity
endorsers, who are best in their fields, are also considered
experts in their own fields; however, this connection is not
always required.
G19: Consumers will increasingly seek advertising as a platform to
hear expert opinions and obtain technical advice.
Contextual Factors as the Moderators of the Relationship
Between Macro Factors and Future Advertising Strategy
Product life cycle. The theory of a product life cycle was
first introduced in the 1950s. The main purpose of this theory
was to elucidate the expected life cycle of a product from its
inception to obsolescence. Though life cycles of products are
very diverse, typically the life cycle of a product can be classified
into five stages: introduction, growth, maturity, saturation, and
decline. Based on the life-cycle stage of its product, a firm
decides on its advertising strategy—whether the ads are intended
to inform, persuade, or remind. At the introduction or market
entry phase, the product is new in the market and starts with its
distribution and first sales. At this stage, the product is still a nov-
elty and the technology has not yet been mastered. At such a
stage, it is beneficial for firms to invest in informative advertising
to build initial demand for its product by attracting the interest of
potential buyers who seek information about the advantages of
the new product over existing alternatives. Here, prices are
 CONCEPTUALIZING THE EVOLUTION AND FUTURE OF ADVERTISING
usually high and sales volume is small. Competition in this phase
can make only substitutable products. The main objective of all
marketing activities, including advertising, is to create a market
for a new product. Therefore, at this stage, if the firm is able to
build a personalized relationship with its prospects via relevant
messaging and active engagement, its potential consumers can
be persuaded to buy the product in future. In this phase, there is a
very high degree of uncertainty. Consumers seek assurance
about the value and performance of the new product and are
keen to reduce perceived risk when buying the product. There-
fore, if a firm is able to incorporate trust through the medium,
content, or messaging of its advertising, it can substantially
enhance its return on advertising investment.
Firms should adopt new ways of advertising with the help
of disruptive technology to disseminate the information
through appropriate channels. At the growth stage, buyers
have accepted the product and the product is rapidly going up
on the demand curve. However, the competition is growing,
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with other firms now offering their own similar products.
Therefore, this stage of the product life cycle demands creation
of a positive environment around the product. Firms should be
focused on generating positive word of mouth and involving
consumers to modify products per their needs. Cocreation is
the way through which firms can allow the engagement as
well as new ideas to modify its product and make it better than
its competitors. Astute utilization of social media can leverage
the advertising activities of the firm.
The maturity stage of a product life cycle is characterized
by the fact that most of the buyers have already purchased the
product, and thus it is expected that sales in the future will fall.
At this stage, new product alternatives of better quality and
value propositions are entering the market. At such a point,
firms need to keep abreast of the needs and latent wants of
their existing as well as potential consumers. Data analytics
can help firms dig deeper into consumers’ profiles and pull out
the relevant information required to rejuvenate their mature
products. Moreover, with the help of social influence, loyal
consumers can serve as advocates of the product to potential
consumers. Further, futuristic marketing technologies that
facilitate experiential marketing, as well as feedback captur-
ing, can help firms design suitable advertising strategies for
their mature-stage product.
The saturation and decline phase demand that firms con-
stantly engage with consumers and work on maintaining con-
sumers’ trust in the product. It is important to bear in mind that
the product life cycle is also influenced by external factors such
as the economy in general, consumer lifestyles, inflation, and so
on. However, with the spread of positive word of mouth through
the use of experts and social blogs, firms can make efforts to reju-
venate the product and probably extend its life cycle to the fullest
before it enters saturation and finally the decline stage.
G20: Firms are increasingly focusing on customizing their advertis-
ing strategies based on the life-cycle stage of the product.
9
Customer life cycle. Loyal customers are some of the most
valuable assets of the firm; however, they don’t just appear over-
night. There are a number of stages, known as customer life-cycle
stages, that firms have to go through to secure and satisfy those
loyal customers. The customer life-cycle concept in marketing
emphasizes maximizing the value of customers at each stage in
their journey with the firm’s product and services. If firms are able
to define their customers’ journey and tailor their marketing efforts
accordingly, they will succeed in developing the most effective
marketing strategies. Here, we define the customer life-cycle
stages on the basis of their interaction and usage pattern: aware-
ness, consideration, purchase, retention, and advocacy. Although
consistent marketing efforts are required to attract customers at
every stage, ad content, selected media channel, and advertising
message effectiveness vary across the life-cycle stages of the
customer.
Creating awareness among prospects is a crucial goal for
marketers; however, the real challenge lies in accurately tar-
geting potential customers who are indeed interested, willing,
and able to make a purchase. Marketers are embracing social
media platforms and the ever-burgeoning platforms of user-
generated content to better comprehend the current interests of
buyers and to be able to speak to these interests and build
awareness by developing and disseminating messages they
can trust. It is now clear that firms should make an effort to go
beyond the standard measures of conversion. Therefore,
instead of asking “How many customers/prospects have come
through various digital channels?” firms should ask “Who are
the ones that have come through different digital channels and
why?” It would be worthwhile for firms to consider, for
instance, instead of looking at conversions per keyword, con-
sumer profile by keyword. Understanding these key pieces of
information would help optimize advertising strategy and
thereby return on advertising.
Once the initial connection between the customer and the
brand is made, which could be either by visiting the site,
through a social network, or by making the first purchase, the
next goal is to induce repeat purchase behavior. Firms should
bear in mind that repeat purchase, retention, and advocacy are
shaped by customer satisfaction and experiences drawn from
the brand. It also depends on the way the firm nurtures the
brand through its communication channels. This is the stage
where firms should try to build their brand communities by
creating a knowledge base of their brands among their
consumers.
As customers navigate through their life cycle with the firm,
those customers transact with the firm, then build relationships
with the firm, and finally engage with the firm. Engagement
leads to advocacy. Advocacy is the ultimate stage of the cus-
tomer life cycle that every firm desires to accomplish and pre-
serve. At this stage of the customer life cycle, firms should try
to maintain a conversation with its customers to maintain the
relationship. Firms should motivate their loyal consumers to
stay actively engaged in building their brands by being active
 10 V. KUMAR AND S. GUPTA
on social media and keeping blogs updated. As a marketer,
offering relevant and unique content is one of the best ways to
stay top of mind, and to make it happen content resonance
must be tracked continuously. Customer life-cycle analytics
can be a helpful tool to achieve the same. Such a tool integra-
tes data from a number of customer touchpoints:
1. Interaction data—for example, how customers interact with
an online store to understand the overall journey of its cus-
tomers on its website, from product browsing to adding
products to their carts to final purchase;
2. Transactional data—information about every transaction
completed by each customer;
3. Demographic data—information about their age, location,
gender, and so on.
More than ever before, firms that can identify and act on a
customer’s life-cycle stage for their products (Kumar, Lemon,
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and Parasuraman 2006), now possess a powerful competitive
advantage that cannot be easily replicated by their competitors.
G21: Firms will increasingly focus on customizing their advertising
strategies based on the life-cycle stages of customers to better serve
their needs.
Location (developed versus emerging). 29 (4), 59–75.A
key question for global firms is whether they should approach
advertising differently in emerging as compared to developed
markets. A recent study by marketing scholars focused on
identifying the differences in advertising strategy depending
on the developed versus emerging nature of the market (Zaran-
tonello, Jedidi, and Schmitt 2013). This study used data from
tests on 256 television commercials by a multinational con-
sumer goods company across 23 countries. It focused on two
benefits-driven messaging strategies: (1) the functional benefit
approach, where the actual features and benefits of a product
were highlighted, and (2) the experiential benefit approach,
which focused on communicating intangible sensations, feel-
ings, and imaginations. The research team found that the driv-
ers of action/response differed between the two markets. In
emerging markets, functional communication was more effec-
tive; while in developing markets, experiential communication
was more effective. Advertisements that were local/global and
traditional/modern in positioning, tone, and execution also had
differing impacts in developed versus emerging markets.
However, interestingly enough, individualistic versus collec-
tivistic appeals did not seem to affect the persuasion process.
Overall, the study shows that the location of the market (devel-
oped versus emerging) more likely than not plays an important
role in the effectiveness of advertising campaigns.
G22: The location and nature of the target market for a product will
increasingly determine the advertising strategy and focus of firms
even more as customers hold on to their cultural norms.
Mobile disruption. The prevalence and easy accessibility
of Wi-Fi-connected handheld devices have ensured that we
are fast approaching the era where most content will be con-
sumed on mobile devices. The barriers between mobile, TV,
and the Internet are also quickly disappearing. In many parts
of the world desktop/laptop computers are a rarer commodity
than mobile phones. In such markets, technology is cheap, and
smartphones are within reach of the majority. As such, people
in these markets are likely to have their first brush with the
Internet via their smartphones rather than a desktop/laptop
computer. Trends and consumption patterns like these con-
tinue to disrupt the way that people consume content and the
way that firms reach out to customers. Consumers’ purchase
consideration process has effectively changed for the good,
where consumers want to proactively conduct their own infor-
mation search, narrow down their choices, hear what other
people have to say about their choices, and finally commit to a
purchase. Control and on-demand access are the key character-
istics of this new process—and the one device that provides
consumers with both of these coveted characteristics is the
mobile phone. Advertisers and marketers everywhere urgently
need to grab the opportunity for mobile with both hands to
best harness its scale and relevancy benefits.
The media agencies that marketers rely on to buy ad space
also pose a severe hindrance to mobile progress. However,
programmatic and real-time buying are proving to be huge dis-
ruptors to the traditional media agency business model. Pro-
grammatic advertising delivers dynamic content to users based
on their location, time of day, and so on, with guaranteed
impressions on certain sites. Top-down pressure is needed
from chief marketing officers and other members of the
senior/executive-level marketing team to enforce a renewed
focus on the mobile medium if they want their brands to avoid
falling behind. Mobile is here to stay, and it will continue to
grow in marketing importance, literally by the minute.
G23: Fueled by programmatic buying and other dynamic delivery
technologies, mobile Internet will soon become the most important
channel for firms and irreversibly change the way that firms and
consumers interact, transact, and engage with each other.
Product category. Product categories have always played
an influential role in deciding the content, timing, positioning,
and appeal of advertising messages. Products can be either
business products or consumer products. Business products
are the products that are created for and used by organizations
in their routine operations, and these items are usually selected
and purchased by the representatives of organizations based
on comparison shopping or via soliciting competitive bids.
Consumer products that are meant for individual/retail con-
sumers are typically classified as convenience, shopping, spe-
cialty, and unsought products. As the names suggest, the use
case and discovery process for these products differs across
each category. Convenience products are bought primarily for
 CONCEPTUALIZING THE EVOLUTION AND FUTURE OF ADVERTISING
the convenience they offer (e.g., an over-the-counter pain-
killer, such as Advil). Shopping products are bought after a rel-
atively larger amount of research and price/feature
comparisons (e.g., a smartphone). Specialty products are often
unique, aspirational, and luxurious in nature and typically call
for a higher emotional and financial involvement from the con-
sumer (e.g., a luxury brand watch). Unsought products, on the
other hand, are the products that rely on aggressive selling
from the manufacturers’/marketers’ end to persuade consum-
ers to buy them. Examples of unsought products include new
products and most products that are disruptive or breakthrough
innovations with no previous usage history that consumers can
use as reference, as well as products that are typically not
actively sought out by customers in spite of the existence of a
latent need, such as insurance.
Each of these four product categories differs in key pur-
chase-related factors, including use case, target consumers,
involvement levels, purchase criteria, and value proposition,
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among others. As a result, marketing strategies for these prod-
ucts vary. Not only does the key message and benefit proposi-
tion of the advertising message change according to the
product category, but also the medium through which the mes-
sage is delivered and the timing of the message have a huge
bearing on the impact of the advertising efforts.
Another school of thought distinguishes between products
based on the hedonic (abstract, pleasure-oriented) and utilitar-
ian (pragmatic, usefulness-oriented) motivations behind their
purchases. In a study analyzing the impact of product catego-
ries on advertising, Geuens, De Pelsmacker, and Faseur (2011)
examine the effectiveness of emotional advertising in the dual
context of (a) hedonic versus utilitarian products and (b) high-
versus low-involvement products. They find that, in general,
while emotional ads work better than nonemotional ads for
most products, emotional ads do tend to work relatively better
for hedonic and low-involvement products, but this is primar-
ily due to the existence of differences in consumer attitudes
across different product categories. This study underscores the
fact that nature of product categories indeed have an impact
on the effectiveness of advertising efforts and as such should
be taken into account while developing the media and adver-
tising plan for a brand.
G24: Firms will increasingly focus on customizing their advertising
strategies based on the nature of the product category.
Competitive intensity. One of the factors that can signifi-
cantly influence the effectiveness of a firm’s advertising efforts
is the intensity of competitive activity that exists in the market.
Aggressive competitors with big advertising budgets and
widespread, multichannel advertising often overshadow their
rivals who fail to match their might and, as a result, fail to gen-
erate attention, interest, desire, or action. In a highly cluttered
marketplace, the one that shouts the loudest often gains the
most attention. In marketplaces that are characterized by
11
rivalry between two lead players, a common strategy for firms
is to engage in comparative advertising where the rival is
directly or indirectly addressed, acknowledged, and taken
down.
Going back to cola giants Pepsi-Cola and Coca-Cola, these
brands have traditionally been rivals in the fairly cluttered
carbonated soft drink space, with distinct customer loyalty bases.
The rivalry between these two giants especially intensified in the
1980s and 1990s, leading to the term “cola wars.” Both Pepsi-
Cola and Coca-Cola unleashed a slew of tactics directed at each
other, ranging from celebrity endorsements to blind taste tests to
event sponsorships, all intended to establish one brand’s suprem-
acy over the other. The intense rivalry between these two brands
has somewhat diluted since the turn of the new century, owing to
consumers making a more conscious shift toward healthier life-
styles. Another possible cause is a sense of ambivalence among
consumers about the purported differences between the two
products, which is a fallout of comparative advertising. As
pointed out by Donthu (1998), comparative advertising could be
a good way for an unknown brand to generate awareness and
recall, but it is not advisable in the long run because “attitude
toward comparative ads is likely to affect attitude toward the
brand in the same direction” (p. 119).
An interesting (and unintended) side effect of aggressive
advertising by a firm can be an overall increase in sales for the
product category as a whole and for rival firms specifically. A
study on the spillover effects of competitors’ advertising found
that even in highly competitive marketplaces firms can reap
the positive spillover effects of a competitor’s advertising
efforts. This, of course, depends on the customers’ past experi-
ences with the product, how standardized the alternative
products’ attributes are, and the switching costs involved
(Anderson and Simester 2013).
In today’s postdigital, always-wired age, there is a whole
new dimension to competition. Here, attention is the most
valuable currency that firms can strive to earn from their con-
sumers and prospects. The ability for firms to communicate
with consumers on a real-time, instantaneous basis further
complicates the situation. The challenge that firms now face is
not only that a competitor’s message is now just one simple
scroll or click away but also that competitors have the ability
to reach out to consumers and prospects in a potentially more
targeted and effective manner, which again underscores the
pertinence of focusing on consumers’ needs for more contex-
tually relevant, personalized, and engaging communication.
G25: Attention will become the new currency for firms and the new
metric for advertising.
Consumer’s willingness to go digital. The proliferation of
digital channels and social media platforms has not only pro-
vided additional avenues for firms to engage with consumers
and prospects but has also turned the traditional marketing
pitch into a two-way conversation.
 12 V. KUMAR AND S. GUPTA
The level of comfort that consumers feel toward new tech-
nologies directly impacts the extent to which they are willing
to switch to digital channels of communication and transac-
tion. This level of comfort is often influenced by consumer-
level factors, such as perceived privacy concerns, device
restrictions, age, and psychographic attributes; and firm-
related factors, such as unoptimized platforms and absence of
multidevice touch points.
Needless to say, the level of digitization of consumers has a
direct impact on the advertising and media strategy deployed
to attract, retain, engage, and reacquire them. In addition to
the obvious financial benefits from consumers switching from
print to digital communications from the firm, digital consum-
ers offer several other benefits to firms. The more channels
that a consumer uses to interact/transact with a brand, the
deeper is his or her engagement level with the brand.
As a result, a focus area for brands is to encourage consum-
ers to interact and transact with them across various channels
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and devices. As part of these efforts, an increasing number of
marketers now develop multidevice-focused integrated adver-
tising campaigns that lead consumers to other channels.
Another benefit that firms can derive from the digitization
of consumers is the immense amount of data that can be
gleaned about consumers based on the digital footprint trail
they leave behind on the various digital channels they access.
These data are a potent tool that marketers can leverage not
only to understand the purchase behavior and patterns of con-
sumers but also to design more targeted, relevant, and effec-
tive advertising. Along the same lines, a study by Labrecque
et al. (2013) shows how digitization empowers not only con-
sumers but also marketers via data-driven insights.
G26: Firms will increasingly leverage digital platforms to encour-
age and facilitate customer engagement and a deeper relationship
across all digital as well as nondigital properties.
The generalizations proposed in this article envision the
future of advertising with a single goal in mind that has eluded
the academics and the marketers, which is measuring the
return on advertising. With the perspectives offered here, mea-
suring the effectiveness and efficiency of advertising for each
of the media, for each customer, for each product, and for each
market should be feasible. The returns could be measured in
terms of various performance measures that include sales,
profit, awareness, click-through, conversion, word of mouth
generated, and so on. It appears that the future of advertising is
only getting brighter and better.
ADVERTISING IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE
The future of advertising lies in going beyond engagement
and ensuring that advertising messages serve more as helpful
and relevant tips to consumers as part of their decision process,
rather than sponsored intrusions. For advertising to continue to
stay relevant and effective, it is increasingly imperative that
advertising messages meet the customers where they are at, as
opposed to drawing them to a place where the firms need them
to be. The implications for marketing managers remain cru-
cial. The future will see gradual shifts in some key impact
areas of advertising.
Glocalization
Technology has been bringing customers closer to firms and
to one another, and expansion-friendly trade and economic
policies are ensuring that products and services are also
brought closer to customers, geographical boundaries notwith-
standing. While distance and accessibility challenges are being
resolved, firms are increasingly cognizant and respectful of the
individual cultural identities and orientations of customer seg-
ments and markets. Digitization, increased choices, and spend-
ing power all ensure that consumers are more empowered than
ever before. This reality has shifted the power dynamics in the
consumers’ favor, underscoring the adage that “the customer
is king.” As such, the future will see advertising being increas-
ingly adapted in alignment with cultural and local norms and
practices, but in keeping with the brand’s overarching global
standards and practices. Glocalization—a blending of local
and global norms—will therefore be the need of the hour.
Advertising messages will go beyond mere multilingual adap-
tations and will focus on repositioning brands in a way that is
more in tune with the cultural sensitivities and the market con-
text of individual markets.
This, in turn, will present new challenges to marketing
managers in terms of trying to ensure that their global and
local brand identities are aligned with each other to the extent
possible and at the very least are not contradictory.
Immersiveness
Advents in virtual/augmented reality technology will make
it possible for advertising messages to graduate from being
one-way broadcasts to becoming four-dimensional, immersive
experiences that not only let the consumers “touch” and “feel”
products but also experience product usage and visualize how
the product can actually fit in their lives. The multi-billion-dol-
lar gaming and entertainment industries have already been
making significant investments in virtual reality devices and
software to optimize their user/audience experience. It will
only be a matter of time before virtual reality technology will
be the new area of focus for advertisers and marketers as well.
As a scenario reminiscent of futuristic sci-fi movies, future
advertising will present the consumer with the ability to virtu-
ally interact with the product and “test” it. In the case of com-
plicated products that require hand-holding and product
demonstrations, virtual assistants can help consumers under-
stand the product better and even address any questions that
consumers may have. Advertising will therefore evolve into a
 CONCEPTUALIZING THE EVOLUTION AND FUTURE OF ADVERTISING
truly engaging and immersive channel of communication,
interaction, and experience, aimed at not only starting a con-
versation with consumers but actually helping them buy.
Marketing managers will benefit from leveraging the
immense potential that virtual reality technologies have to offer
by allocating some of their media budgets to virtual- or aug-
mented-reality-driven customer engagement tools, such as
mobile apps, online games, kiosks at retail locations, and the like.
Multiscreen Media Planning
The focus of media plans will shift from channels to
screens. Television continue to be a major channel of invest-
ment for brand advertising, but it is no longer only the screen
that consumers interact with.
In recent years, the consumption of media, content, and
entertainment has begun to spread across multiple screens
used by consumers—the first screen being televisions, the
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second being desktop computers/laptops, and the third screen
being smartphones and tablets. Consumers often use these
multiple screens in parallel with one another and simulta-
neously, in the same context or even different contexts. For
instance, a consumer could watch a network show on televi-
sion and simultaneously research information on the show’s
cast via his or her laptop, and then share a personal impression
of the show via the Twitter app on his smartphone. Given the
lightning-fast streaming/downloading speeds on devices, it is
also possible now for consumers to be consuming all content
on a single handheld device. Marketers will have to be increas-
ingly cognizant of the multitude of such screens and factor
this multiscreen consumption into their media scheduling and
budgets.
While the degree of emphasis on television as a media
channel may diminish to an extent, television is likely going to
continue to stay relevant. On the other hand, there is an unde-
niable shift in content consumption from print to digital, and
marketers will accordingly redirect an increasing proportion of
their investments from print channels to digital channels,
thereby gradually increasing the overall share of their digital
portfolio.
Cross-Device Tracking and Delivery
Taking programmatic targeting a few steps further, the mul-
tiscreen nature of consumption will also make it imperative for
new ad delivery and tracking mechanisms to be established so
as to get an accurate and holistic perspective of consumers as
they traverse across multiple screens. Cross-device advertising
will soon become the new standard for the industry, which
will help marketers in two ways: (1) delivering targeted ads to
the same consumers irrespective of the device, thereby offer-
ing a seamless, measurable experience, and (2) tracking the
consumers’ general browsing/viewing behavior as well as ad
response behavior across multiple devices.
13
This holistic data set will enable marketing managers to
identify consumers at a microlevel and be able to serve highly
targeted and relevant ads to consumers, thereby enhancing the
likelihood of ad response and recall.
The Internet of Things
The ever-expanding network of Internet-connected devices,
or the “Internet of things,” as it is popularly known, is making
it increasingly easy to access information on not just consum-
ers’ content consumption behaviors but also every activity
they undertake on a daily basis. Devices ranging from wear-
able gadgets, virtual assistant devices, and software applica-
tions to smart technology–based home appliances, among
others, are making a plethora of rich, real-time information
available to marketers who will be willing to leverage this
opportunity to the fullest in the near future.
However, the omnipresence and connectivity that the Inter-
net of things presents also brings a significant challenge for
marketing managers. The omnipresence of connected gadgets
means that context, not just content, is of paramount impor-
tance. Sponsored messages and commercial advertising are
unsolicited and tend to come across as intrusive when deliv-
ered via the Internet of things. This makes it all the more chal-
lenging for marketing managers to design and deliver
messages in a manner that cannot be considered contextually
irrelevant or experientially obtrusive. Marketing managers
should rather focus on delivering advertising messages in a
way that actually enhances the overall functional benefit that
consumers derive from these connected devices. This also
means that marketers need to make a conscious shift away
from hard-selling their products via these devices and instead
focus on providing consumers with value.
Social Media Advertising
Social media advertising has undoubtedly transformed the
way marketers reach target consumers as well as how consum-
ers interact with brands. Solicited and customized social media
advertisements can be beneficial for both the brand and the
consumer. However, given the reach to target audiences that
social media networks provide, unsolicited yet personalized
advertisements based on pages viewed could likely be the way
of the future. While social networks like Facebook and Twitter
currently show paid advertisements, this concept could be
attempted on all social networking sites. For example, users
could be required to watch an ad before viewing an Instagram
or Snapchat video, similar to YouTube. In this case, like the
music platform Pandora, consumers would have the option of
taking out paid subscriptions to skip advertisements. Last,
while privacy concerns arise and users would have the option
of opting out of unsolicited ads, many social network site users
would not take the appropriate steps to opt out. Thus, future
research in this area can be explored.
 14 V. KUMAR AND S. GUPTA
ADVERTISING IMPLICATIONS FOR ACADEMICIANS
Media
Over two-thirds of marketers expect the budgets for digital
media advertising to increase in the near future by 71% in
social advertising, 71% in online video, and 66% in search
engine marketing (MarketingCharts 2014). On the contrary,
the budget for print magazine advertising is expected to
decrease by 36%, for print newspapers by 39%, for TV adver-
tising by 24%, for radio advertising by 23%, and for outdoor
advertising by 21%. While these changes reflect the viewing
trends of changing demographics, the relative effectiveness of
the media has not been explored in detail. Furthermore, the
synergistic effect between the digital media and traditional
media is underresearched. Given these dynamics in the mar-
ketplace, the effectiveness of ad spending on sales and revenue
performance measures could vary over time. Therefore, further
research should focus on assessing the optimal budget for vari-
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ous media by taking into consideration both the synergistic
effect and the time-varying effect of digital and traditional
advertising (Kumar, Choi, and Greene 2016).
Content
Given the scope for the growth in mobile apps, text, and
display ads, future research should focus on developing the
relevant content for these media to make them more effective.
The challenge here is consumers’ attention span. Therefore,
the content has to be relevant, targeted, and timely. Another
challenge is to incorporate recent purchase behavior and
update ad content in real time. More studies are needed not
only for measuring the effectiveness of such content but also
regarding how much to update and how often to update based
on customers’ purchase behavior. Because more than one
device in a household could be connected to a customer’s pro-
file, disseminating irrelevant messaging is a possibility.
Research should develop a contingency framework by taking
into account such possibilities. The proposed framework could
include some screening questions to answer before directing
the user to relevant ads. Research relating to the number of
exposures should get heightened priority as the traditional rule
of these exposures in a given time interval may no longer be
valid. Given the proliferation of media, customers often switch
to different media; if ads could begin from where they left off
in a previous viewing, they could be more effective. The future
for testing ad content is ripe and rich, and more studies are
needed to develop continued insights.
Messaging Sequence
Researchers have predicted that mobile’s share of online ad
spending will continue to grow to 46%, will grow close to
$80 billion by 2019, and that online advertising will exceed TV
advertising by 2019 (MarketingCharts 2015). While TV ad
spending is also expected to grow, the growth rate is not as high
for online ad spending. The reason for this shift is due to the fact
that more customers search for information via their mobile devi-
ces but could end up buying in brick-and-mortar stores. As the
penetration of mobile devices increases, every marketer will start
to focus on how to influence a customer’s journey through the
information search and purchase process. While the growth of
desktop and tablets has slowed down, the conversion rate to pur-
chase is still higher in these devices than in mobile devices. To
take advantage of these multiple devices, message sequencing
will become more prominent. Storytelling will become the art
and the duration of the message will be the science behind the
future of advertising. Therefore, future research should attempt
to design studies to evaluate the contextual clues for the develop-
ment of effective ads across multiple devices.
Data
More data have become available not only on ad spending
across media but also related to click-throughs, conversions, opt
in, opt out, open rates, and so on. Further, data have become
more granular and are available at the customer level, product
level, and by each direct media (e.g., telephone, direct mail,
e-mail, text messages). Thus, the challenge for future research
studies is to determine how to effectively combine various data
sources and, furthermore, how to identify the value of each
source. In addition, customers who feel more engaged with the
firm are more willing to share their personal information. Thus, a
true 360-degree view of the customers’ information search and
purchase behavior is available. Firms have to place value on
such information, because they will have to pay for some infor-
mation and research is needed to guide them on how much to
pay. Data are valuable only if they are converted to insights, and
therefore relevant skill sets have to be developed within the firm
or outsourced, which can also be expensive.
Thus, future research will have to evaluate the cost-benefit
tradeoffs of collecting such data across industries and markets.
Few studies have attempted to demonstrate such value (Saboo,
Kumar, and Park 2016).
Modeling
Dynamic modeling approaches are fast replacing traditional
static modeling approaches. While the combination effect of ad
spending across media can be captured, such effects can decline
over time. Therefore, models using Kalman filtering, state-space
modeling, and time-varying effects will be in increased demand.
Further, capturing synergistic effects across media, which can
also vary over time, is essential given the findings of Kumar,
Choi, and Greene (2016). Attribution modeling has become the
buzz in the modeling literature as the demand for teasing out var-
ious effects has increased to all all-time high.
While reduced-form models are still the popular approach,
structural models have emerged, especially using customer-
 CONCEPTUALIZING THE EVOLUTION AND FUTURE OF ADVERTISING
level data (Shah, Kumar, and Zhao 2015). Capturing the effec-
tiveness of ad spending is important, but return on advertising
will be the main focus. This has eluded the ad industry for
many decades as only aggregate data were available. With
aggregate data, researchers attempted to link ad spending to
sales to show the association. But the findings were influenced
by data aggregation bias. There was not any theoretical struc-
ture to explain the role of advertising. But now, with the
advent of structural models, a proper theoretical structure can
be proposed and tested. In the future, with faster computer-
processing capabilities, big data combined with superior
modeling approaches that measure the return on advertising
across media, product category, markets, and over time will be
the need of the hour.
CONCLUSION
The influx of technology and the big data revolution have
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changed the marketing climate irreversibly. Geographical
boundaries between markets are blurring, and “selling” has
been replaced by “engaging.” Consumers are more connected,
more informed, more empowered, and more spoiled for choice
than ever before. The formerly prevalent one-way broadcast of
the nascent years of advertising has given way to a two-way
conversation between brands and consumers. As consumers
take control of this conversation, marketing managers must
resist the temptation to try to wrestle the control back from
them and instead focus on facilitating this sense of control and
engagement and be poised to learn from the process. The
framework presented in this study offers a blueprint for mar-
keting managers to take into account while designing their
marketing and advertising plans. In the future, the effective-
ness of advertising will depend on the extent to which market-
ers incorporate and act on the shifts in consumer and market
trends. The future will belong to those advertisers that
empower and engage consumers through relevant, reliable,
and targeted communications that treat the consumer not as a
statistical data point but as an equal relationship partner.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thank the editor and the reviewers for their valuable
feedback on an earlier version of this article, as well as for
giving us the opportunity to contribute to the field of adver-
tising. We also thank Amalesh Sharma, Gayatri Shukla,
Ericka Robinson, and Hannah Kim for their valuable feed-
back on the earlier versions. We thank Renu for copyediting
the manuscript.
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