LAS VEGAS – An oasis is defined as a fertile spot in a desert where water is found. OMD’s Oasis encampment at CES 2017 provides a similar function, but one based more on providing strategic direction than liquid sustenance.
“From year to year, the changes are enormous, overwhelming,” observes Monica Karo, the CEO of OMD USA. “What our clients really come to CES for and what they love us to do for them is to really help navigate.”
It’s hardly a one-size-fits-all proposition. “It’s different for different clients,” Karo explains. “We’ve got such a breadth of our client base here. What works for one might not necessarily work for another.”
If there is a shared concern, it revolves around helping marketers connect with their customers in deep, meaningful ways. Or, as Karo puts it, “How do we talk one on one on an individual basis but obviously needing to do it at scale.”
Immersion is today’s theme for OMD’s Oasis panels and discussions, covering emerging technologies like artificial reality, virtual reality and artificial intelligence. At the consumer level, this translates into how marketers can provide new experiences that people cannot get on their own, according to Karo. “How do you surround a customer?” she asks.
In the television space, Karo sees two trends of particular significance. One is the “untethered” environment in which viewers can consume content whenever and wherever they want. It requires figuring out how to reach viewers “when the viewership is not happening at the same time on the same night at the same hour in terms of what we’ve been used to for all these years,” Karo says.
The second is the growing ability of advertisers to target TV households based on a slew of information particular to specific addresses, namely addressable advertising. Over the next 12 to 18 months, “That’s finally going to come to fruition and that will be something that we’ll be seeing much more of,” says Karo.
This video was produced as part Beet.TV’s coverage of CES 2017 presented by 605. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.
