Brands set to be more playful with gamification in 2012: Millward Brown

That is the top trend emerging in the digital media sector for the next 12 months highlighted by Millward Brown’s Futures Group.

Principles of gamification like points, level progression, badges, achievements, virtual currencies and puzzles, will be applied to non-game campaigns by brands next year, it says.

Dave Barrowcliff, a specialist in social media measurement for Millward Brown, commented, “There will be huge changes in how brands adopt and develop emerging technologies to engage digital consumers in more enjoyable ways.” 

Among other trends in 2012, the consultancy believes that "virtual togetherness" will radically alter the way in which marketers interact with consumers via TV and social media.

Innovations in social tools and technologies that enable people to interact with TV programmes in ways previously unheard of will "explode" next year. TV is seen to become a bigger echo-chamber than before for social media. "Throw in Twitter, a backstage blog, a handful of hash-tags and an interactive app, and TV will be on social steroids," the report states.

Also, services in social TV analytics from Bluefin Labs and GetGlue indicate traditional TV ratings may be augmented by “social ratings” in the near future to understand how well a show is doing beyond the TV audience. 

Another digital media prediction identified for 2012 is real-time decision making taking centre stage, fueling the emergence of intelligent and automated processes for campaign optimisation on the part of advertisers.

That will be a significant improvement on current click-based systems. Industry players are expected to invest heavily in demand-side platforms that provide real-time ad evaluation and become accustomed to responding to real-time analytics with creative recalibration of campaigns.