Dive Brief:
- OnBrand Magazine released its "State of Branding Report 2017," which finds 65% of respondents aren’t planning any investment across a range of cutting edge marketing technology, from 360-degree video to chatbots, according to a Bynder blog post.
- Only 14% of surveyed marketing professionals reported planning on investing in VR and a mere 7% said the same of AR. Just 19% reported planning on investing in 360-degree video this year.
- As for the most significant future impact, 24% of respondents pointed to VR and 23% to machine learning over the next five years.
Dive Insight:
Although virtual and augmented reality continue to earn a lot of media attention, they remain somewhat costly and untested from a marketing perspective, so it's not too shocking that their hype — which seemed to hit a peak late last year following the viral AR sensation of Pokemon Go — has cooled off a bit.
The low figures suggested for 360-degree video, however, are somewhat surprising, especially as a variety of big social and video platforms, including Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo and even Snapchat, rush to put more of a focus on the format.
Even though many marketers appear to be shying away from some of the more cutting-edge tech offerings this year, OnBrand's report indicates they're still pursuing higher levels of marketing technology, with data analytics leading the investment at 58%. Other technologies forecast for higher spend in 2017 include: social media monitoring (49%), customer experience tools (45%), content management systems (43%) and branding automation (40%).
Higher budgets being put toward more grounded, nitty-gritty technology spaces underscores how media mindshare or hype over things like IoT, AR/VR and chatbots doesn't necessarily translate to application or any clear use cases at the industry level.