2020 hasn’t exactly gone as planned.
As the newly appointed president of the IAB, David Cohen barely had time to shake hands with the rest of the leadership team before the nationwide onset of social distancing and working from home.
Meanwhile, IAB Tech Lab President Dennis Buchheim, a frequent flyer who normally spent his time in San Francisco and Seattle with regular trips around the world, is sheltering in place in Seattle.
Instead of stalling projects, David predicts that the coronavirus pandemic will increase the pace of change. “Things we’ve been seeing happen at a relatively modest pace might get accelerated,” he said.
Among his predictions: Agencies will provide insights and strategy, but execution may move in house, especially in programmatic. The next $100 billion to go digital will be “video with a big V,” building on the budgets that have already gone to search, social and display. And the upfronts may be no more – an increasingly common opinion.
While dramatic evolution may be ahead, David’s and Dennis’ respective projects remain mostly unchanged despite the pandemic. The working group for Project Rearc, designed to chart a future for digital advertising without third-party cookies, still has strong participation from member companies, even as the short-term future feels more uncertain than ever.
