Nikhil Lai

Advertising spend is big during the holiday season, but the key ingredient of persuasive advertising — compelling creative — is scarce.

Advertisers today need tools spanning the entire creative lifecycle and creative teams need a source of truth that de-risks creative production as well as media planning and buying. Get a preview of our latest Wave which helps advertisers select tools that accelerate the creative process while synergizing creative with media.

In 1898, Elias St. Elmo Lewis developed the advertising funnel. He was the Association of National Advertisers’ first president and, along with the funnel, developed the AIDA model, an acronym that models a consumer’s journey from awareness to interest, desire, and then action. More than 125 years after its conception, brand marketers are still planning […]

Digital marketers like digital marketing much more than consumers do. A new report explores in greater depth how consumers’ behaviors contradict marketers’ investments.

Last year, the world’s most-awarded creative was Skittles’ “Apologize the Rainbow” produced in collaboration with DDB Chicago. It profusely apologized for Skittles changing its green candy’s flavor from lime to apple and, to citrus lovers’ delight, announced lime’s return in a pantomime press conference live streamed on Twitch and X. The campaign relied on social […]

It’s mathematically obvious to apply AI to advertising, but its efficiencies can come at the expense of advertisers’ control and transparency. Learn more about how AI benefits the advertising process and why advertisers must curate AI.

Despite the delay, you still should move forward in improving your customers' advertising experiences. Here are steps to take now.

I’m often asked about the technologies and processes entailed in planning, buying, and optimizing media. Much is written about that, including Forrester’s research on using technology to develop more compelling creative and how to improve TV advertising’s planning, buying, and measurement processes. I’m rarely asked, however, about the people that improve media’s results. The human […]

Every year, Forrester surveys over 1,000 marketing decision-makers around the world to learn about their priorities, challenges, and plans. For the past few years, four forces — consumers’ dissatisfaction with invasive audience targeting; browser and operating system restrictions; legislators and de facto regulators such as Apple limiting consumers’ trackability; and advertisers ceding control to walled […]

As generative AI becomes more deeply integrated into search engine results pages (SERPs), conversational search will grow. Learn what the change means for marketers.

My favorite holiday-themed ad is Hershey’s “Christmas Bells,” which debuted in 1989 thanks to the creativity of David Apicella at Ogilvy & Mather, among others. Since then, the ad has run every December. In a market crowded with viral creative such as Spotify’s Wrapped, Hershey’s pithy ad continues to perform. In just 15 seconds, the […]

Retail media’s challenges signal growing pains unlike those of other channels. Read more on Forrester’s insights for this holiday season.

Demand-side platforms (DSPs) are defined and confined by the acronym’s connotations. In 2007, when DSPs emerged, they coincided with the growth of real-time bidding, a practice since revealed to be rife with data leakage and brand safety concerns. At the time, DSPs met advertisers’ needs by connecting them to exchanges where publishers’ (mostly) desktop display […]

We tackle two of the most common questions we're hearing about generative AI's potential impact on search engine optimization.

April showers bring May flowers and the TV upfronts. The ritual began in 1962, when ABC first scheduled all of its primetime programming to premiere during a single week in September. Since then, the medium of TV has evolved rapidly, but the upfronts have not. Consumption continues to grow across smartphones and smart TVs, satisfying […]

Both Alphabet and Microsoft featured AI heavily in their Q1 2023 earnings calls. Before Alphabet’s call began streaming on YouTube, attendees were shown a video about Bard, Google’s AI chatbot. During the call, “AI” was mentioned 51 times. During Microsoft’s, it was mentioned 34 times. For Alphabet, AI’s references related to PaLM, its competitor to […]

The question I’m asked most often is “Is retail media overhyped, or is it the next big thing?” This question comes, in part, from media coverage and forecasts, including Forrester’s, that project a significant share of ad spend — nearly $100 billion, according to Boston Consulting Group — being absorbed by retail media networks (RMNs) […]

Yesterday, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) and eight states sued Google, accusing the company of illegally abusing its monopoly on the technology that powers online advertising. According to the Justice Department’s complaint, Google’s dominance enables the company to take at least $0.30 of every dollar spent using Google’s advertising technology. The DOJ is seeking […]

In 2023, marketers plan to spend more on paid and organic search despite data deprecation and economic headwinds. According to Forrester’s Q3 B2C Marketing CMO Pulse Survey, 2022, 82% of CMOs plan to increase paid search budgets and 74% plan to increase SEO budgets in 2023. As search budgets grow, the medium is changing radically. […]