Finding the next big thing: New creative opportunities at CES 2023

At Infillion, finding the most creative canvases for advertising – and pushing them to their limits – is one of our favorite things to do. Over the years, we’ve become the first company to turn a connected TV remote into a branded game controller, the first to bring voice control to desktop and CTV ads, and more recently, we invaded hockey rinks for Netflix’s “Sonic Prime.” So, naturally, we love seeing what the newest opportunities for brands are in terms of new and emerging mediums, and CES 2023 was the perfect place to check some of them out.

There were signs of unique new opportunities for out-of-home advertising. One of the most prominent entrances to the CES show floor brought you under a massive curved display of screens from LG Electronics , which treated attendees to a rotating display of jaw-dropping immersive video that made them feel like they were floating among the stars, navigating the twists and turns of Arizona’s famous Antelope Canyon, or swimming in the deep ocean with life-size humpback whales. The sheer number of visitors who stopped there at length and held up their phones to take video made it clear that these big, immersive experiences grab the attention of consumers – and they can be a social, collective experience too.

One of the biggest trends at CES was that video hardware technology is getting thinner and more portable. Multiple companies showed off wireless TVs, which ranged from the exciting to the mildly absurd, but from an advertiser’s perspective, the need for fewer (or no) wires can potentially expand the scope of where their brand messaging can go.

German tech company Inuru even showed off ultra-thin OLED product packaging. While this may be a few years off from the mainstream, likely due to the current cost of production, it’s exciting to think that maybe soon your beer bottle will be able to toast you back. 

Tesla gave new meaning to “the right consumer at the right time.” Tesla is notorious for eschewing traditional marketing spend, and true to form, they didn’t have a formal presence on the CES show floor either. Instead, Teslas were used to shuttle CES attendees from one end of the sprawling convention center to the other via the Vegas Loop, a futuristic color-changing underground tunnel built by Elon Musk’s The Boring Company , which the company said could cut down walk times from 20 minutes to 1 minute. 

Especially at a time of tumultuous brand perception for Tesla, the use of very real cars to solve a very real problem at the tech confab – the amount of time it takes to get around – stood in stark contrast to most automakers’ CES concept cars. Being able to literally use the Las Vegas Convention Center’s infrastructure as a marketing canvas isn’t something that most brands could pull off, but for Tesla it was a win as the company faces increasingly tough competition from other electric vehicle makers. The lesson? The right moment really can matter.

Brands can use new platforms to make their marketing more immersive – but which ones will catch on? We’ve already talked about how the rapidly expanding array of connected devices at CES is something advertisers should take note of, particularly when it comes to first-party data. But what about for brand activations?

After Amazon originally debuted its Echo devices and Alexa voice assistant in 2014, marketers rushed to create branded Alexa skills that ranged from guided whiskey tastings from Johnnie Walker to a way to ensure kids brush their teeth for long enough. Around the same time, connected TV suddenly became an environment where advertisers could make their video ads interactive and exploratory. We know this because, well, we do it at Infillion – and there are still opportunities to stretch the potential of CTV. But no new platforms at CES seemed to have the same obvious promise as voice assistants did. There was a ton of AR and VR, but as we noted in our gaming and VR trend recap, those product debuts were often meant for developers and tests with no timeline for a full consumer debut.

At CES 2023, the big theme was creating the most immersive experiences possible, and sometimes the new tech seemed promising and sometimes it just didn’t. Multiple companies were showing off smart devices that diffuse a scent in conjunction with what’s playing on a nearby TV, prompting snarky throwbacks to “Smellovision,” a short-lived technology in the early 1960s that pumped scents into movie theaters to accompany what was onscreen. This certainly has some potential in B2B contexts, like retail stores and experiential pop-ups. But for consumers? It’s unlikely that most people would buy an additional piece of tech just to be able to smell the coffee in Starbucks commercials.

Similarly, the world of haptic technologies also saw a bevy of CES demos, from the reasonable (haptic gloves that let you actually feel like you’re grabbing an object in VR, which we can see having promise in shoppable metaverse ads) to the outlandish, like a wearable VR jacket that simulates all variety of gruesome video game injuries.

In short, there’s a lot out there that brands will potentially be able to use in experiential activations, out-of-home advertising, and even in-home ads. But what really matters in advertising is the human at the center of the transaction, and technology that matters with an end user in experience is not really the point of CES – particularly when tough economic conditions mean that companies may be more reticent to put unproven new gadgets on the consumer market. But balancing genius with the practical is something we always challenge ourselves with in marketing, advertising and ad tech, and CES is no exception. 

For Infillion, we found this year's discussions at CES with clients and agencies were more about tech innovation than dots-and-spots. Refreshing. But whether we are adding AR to every experience we introduce in CTV this year is yet to be seen in a slowing economy. One can only hope, and we won't stop innovating because, in the end, delighting consumers – yes, even in advertising – is the only thing that will get real attention in a cluttered media environment. 

In sum, we’re glad we attended CES for the pure inspiration that makes us better marketers, technologists and consumer advocates. See you in 2024.