CES ‘23 Wrapped: Our Big Learnings for Marketers

This year’s Consumer Electronics Show has wrapped, and in between flying cars, new VR headsets, and wireless TVs, the tech was truly something to behold. But, as always, it’s important for marketers to separate the signal from the noise in order to determine what’s actually going to be relevant to our business in the near and medium term.

Infillion’s team spent time both at the marketer-focused C-Space activation as well as all over the show floor of the Las Vegas Convention Center. And we’ve spent the past few days publishing trend reports about the latest tech at CES on our LinkedIn page. 

Here’s what we recapped:

In the auto sector, it’s all about electric cars. This is a market that’s about to get more crowded. As marketers, it’s also a fascinating sector of the industry to watch because competitors are going to have to scramble not just to tell the story of what makes their vehicles different, but also to dispel concerns consumers have about electric vehicles – like, for example, the limited availability of charging stations.

VR/AR is something to watch and experiment in, not to dive headlong into. There were countless VR and AR technologies showcased at CES, but many of them don’t have a consumer product timeline yet (more likely, they want developers to start experimenting). Making an expensive commitment to one platform or headset is probably premature for the ad industry, especially due to the likelihood that developments in immersive video technology may well “leapfrog” the need for many headsets and other ancillary devices.

First-party data sources are everywhere – but how can marketers take advantage in a consumer-forward way? At MediaLink’s C-Space, talk of retail media and data clean rooms were front-and-center. And the volume of smart home devices with potential troves of first-party data was overwhelming. How will these two trends intersect, given the fragmentation of data sources and eagerness of advertisers to find new ways to target?

New creative canvases for advertisers abound, from the practical to the absurd. Maybe someday you’ll be able to have an animated label on your beer bottle, or be able to feel like you’re physically grabbing items in a shoppable VR activation. Or maybe not. Either way… CES is one of our favorite events of the year when it comes to top-notch creative inspiration. 

Want to know more about what happened at CES? Our VP of Innovation and Business Transformation, Charles Adelman, is going to be hosting the AAF’s next Creative Caffeine Chat on Tuesday, January 17 and he’ll be answering questions about just that. You can register for it here.