What Marketers Should Expect From CES This Year

Tens of thousands of industry professionals will descend on Las Vegas this January for the first full-scale in-person Consumer Electronics Show in three years. After an all-virtual show in 2021 and a scaled-down version last January, organizers expect this iteration of the tech industry's largest trade show to be a return to form with at least 70% larger footprint than last year's show, which drew 45,000 people, and more than 3,000 exhibitors and 2.1 million square feet of show space. The event's programming will also broadly adhere to an over-arching theme for the first time this year—"human security for all"—in partnership with the United Nations. Below are some of the trends that could shape this year's show. Art Basel Miami Community Embraced Web3—But Use Cases Remain Stuck in Web2 Health and transportation tech on the rise The show's bread and butter is of course its futuristic gadgetry, which has included an increasing number of electric vehicles, health-related devices and all manner of smart appliances in recent years. Those trends are expected to continue this year with an even wider range of mobility and transportation devices—including a demo of an actual flying car—and a health tech industry supercharged by a pandemic-driven surge in demand, said Kinsey Fabrizio, senior vice president of membership and CES sales at the Consumer Technology Association, the trade group that runs CES. Even before the pandemic, the CTA had been making a concerted effort to lean further into healthcare tech like remote monitoring, telemedicine and wearables, a trend which the Covid-19 pandemic only accelerated. "Key leaders in healthcare are going to be at CES this year," Fabrizio said. "Moderna will be at CES—their CEO will be speaking—Teladoc will be at CES for the first time ever." While fitness tech and electric vehicles aren't a natural destination for marketers, new platforms like in-car entertainment systems or home exercise programming could provide sponsorship opportunities. Metaverse and NFTs will appear throughout the show floor Virtual reality and augmented reality devices will no doubt play a big role as well with talk of the metaverse set to permeate every part of the show floor this year. Aside from the actual hardware, organizers say the show will be leaning heavily into all things metaverse and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), despite recent turmoil in the cryptocurrency markets making some execs wary about anything related to web3, the umbrella term for technology that proponents say will constitute a new version of the internet. "Metaverse and web3 is a new theme for us," Fabrizio said. "This is just going to be widespread across the show floor. Every sector of CES and the tech industry is talking about this." But the recent bankruptcy of FTX and the subsequent crash of cryptocurrency markets could cast a shadow over this part of the event, despite that controversy having little bearing on tech like the metaverse, according to Michael Kassan, CEO of management consultancy MediaLink, which is known for having a big presence at CES. NFTs had also been experiencing slumping sales for months before the FTX meltdown as their initial wave of hype seemed to be subsiding. "Marketers right now seem to be conflating the FTX of it all with blockchain and NFTs. People are just kind of bucketing it all together, like, 'Oh, it's all of that stuff.' And I don't think that's the case, obviously," Kassan said. "That's going to be a distraction to the growth of that space, for the moment at least." Retail media networks will have a bigger presence While show-goers typically come to CES with an eye towards the future, getting a glimpse of technology that might shape the world a few years down the line, looming economic uncertainty in the new year may also push budget-constrained marketers towards practical tech that better serves a bottom line in the short term. "2022 was about escapism in a way ... trying to find a new playground for us all to play in," said Elav Horwitz, McCann Worldgroup's svp of global innovation and creative partnerships director. "I think CES 2023 will be more about being realistic and realism." Top of that list are retail media networks, which are set to have a bigger showing in the event's advertising and media-focused C-Space this year. Walmart will have a much larger presence at this year's show as it tries to boost its Walmart Connect ads arm, as will Amazon Ads. "A big area of interest is this explosion in retail media," said Kassan. "The projections that 12% of media is going to be retail media spend with Walmart, Kroger, Albertsons, Target and every other retailer rightfully looking at that as a massive potential growth area." Economic uncertainty might curb attendance Experts say an expected downturn in the first quarter of next year might also dampen attendance as travel budgets will likely be reined in for the first week coming out of the holidays. That could make for a more muted presence for some industries hit particularly hard by economic shake-ups, like advertising. "I think people are looking at it and saying, 'I'm going to be more choice-ful in which travel I choose, and a bunch of companies, particularly in our industry put out not only the hiring freezes but travel holds in the last half of this year, and I think that's probably carrying over a little as well," Kassan said. Staying ahead of the streaming landscape As the connected TV industry faces flux this year with major streamers retooling their strategies, Netflix will appear for the first time as a major advertiser as the service attempts to jump-start its new ad-supported tier with speaking slots in the C-Space. The advertising arms of Roku and Comcast as well as Samsung and other device manufacturers will also have a big showing. Marketers will be looking for answers on how to stay ahead of streaming services' latest moves around ad-supported video, like Disney+ launching its own advertising-based option, Kassan said. "Everybody's going to be watching the tea leaves there and understanding how brands are going to really survive and thrive in a streaming in a connected TV world." 'Human security' will shape the show Many of the activations and exhibitions put on by attending brands will also have a sustainability or social good bent in accordance with the event's theme this year. LG Electronics, a major player at the show each year, will spotlight its sustainability goals with an exhibit called "Better life for all," and Samsung will present its vision for "sustainable innovations." "I have found that sustainability is going to be big this year," Horwitz said. "I'm hoping the innovations we see will be more practical, humanized and aimed at doing good in the world this year."