The drivers of change are complex and interwoven in the world of digital marketing.
The trends are not islands but together amplify and accelerate the way we market and grow our businesses. Mobile phones made social networks even more viral and powerful and their inbuilt cameras just added more content in what was already a noisy online world.
Faster and cheaper wi-fi and telecommunication networks made broadband an essential utility that is now demanded just like electricity. This development allowed video to move from the desktop to the mobile and everywhere.
So what digital marketing trends are driving change and what can we do about it?
There are many platforms, apps and tools that we all use to create, control and market our brands.
But as the trend towards paid digital advertising accelerates Google and Facebook are becoming in effect a duopoly. Google and Facebook between them share 90% of the growth.
This year the total spend of $83 billion in digital advertising will be dominated by the two big players. And Google is projected to achieve 40.7% of US digital ad revenues this year (double Facebook’s share)
Google will continue to dominate search advertising with an estimated $28.55 billion of spend in 2017 and Facebook will dominate display with a projected $16.33 billion in 2017 while Google’s will be only $5.24 billion.
The rest including Twitter, Yahoo and other players will pick up the crumbs.
This dominance of revenue will then allow the duopoly to snap up more social networks, startups and technology companies that fit into its growth strategies and continue to concentrate power.
We have already seen this with Facebook buying Instagram, WhatsApp and the virtual reality company OculusRift.
This concentration of power is also creating other problems.
Trust is a big factor in who and what we believe. Marketing is no different.
Facebook has recently reported that its video metrics were inflated and YouTube (Google) has been running questionable ads next to brand content.
The rise of fake news, alternate truth and the domination of the walled gardens of Facebook and Google who are reluctant to provide transparency on their data is also reducing trust in the data reporting.
The rise of social networks humanised the web.
Playing online was no longer just the domain of the geeks. It was nice and simple. You tweeted or published a Facebook post. You created content and built organic distribution by growing your followers on the social networks.
But it has become complex.
More social networks, complex digital advertising options and more types of content.
Despite the concentration of power there are still a lot of social networks to play with and new ones are still popping up. Mastodon.social is a grass roots bootstrapped alternative to Twitter that stuck its head up just 6 months ago. But has proven so popular that it been temporarily closed to new users until it builds out a more robust infrastructure.
The types of content and media you need to master has gone way past the simple analog formats of print, radio and television. Now we have Interactive infographics, GIF’s and augmented reality media just to name a few.
More tools…..or better ones?
The options within digital technology have also exploded and the number of technology tools just for marketing have been estimated at over 4,000.
But the only way to manage the rising complexity is with marketing automation. There are many options and just choosing is hard.
Marketing automation is still just in it’s early phases and this next trend is where it starts to get interesting.
The rise of “AI” is a term that frightens some people and excites others.
The scary part is often seen as people losing their jobs to machines or even taking over the world and replacing humans. The good piece that others are embracing is taking away the drone work that de-humanizes workers.
