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Digital Marketing - General Trends
Industry trends specific to the digital marketing industry in general and QuanticMind's competitors such as Marin Software, Kenshoo, Adobe and Google, have been provided. Trends provided revolve around hot topics, new innovations and market drivers. Major general digital marketing trends in 2018 include: augmented reality integrated through social media, machine-mediated customer conversations, a personalized customer journey, video marketing and more targeted ads with specific purpose.
OVERVIEW
1. Augmented Reality Integrated Through Social Media
With the development of mobile devices and the increasing power they hold, brands will look into integrating social apps with augmented reality in order to be more successful in engaging with customers. Currently, Instagram, Snapchat, Tinder and Pokemon GO all other AR experiences.
2. Conversational User Interfaces
Conversational interactions, or conversational user interfaces, namely Amazon's Alexa, Google's Assistant, Microsoft's Cortana as well as chat bots and other offerings, will grow in use and "find their place in consumers' daily routines and lives".
3. Voice Marketing
Google shared that as of now, 20% of its mobile searches are performed as mobile searches. This number is only expected to increase with customers having a wider range of devices that offer voice searches, such as Google, Alexa, Siri, but also smart devices such as cars, fridges etc.
4. Predictive Algorithms
Application programming interfaces are used more often and are the building stone to using more of "machine-learning algorithms, natural language processing and artificial intelligence". Machine learning is considered to be one of the greatest interest to digital marketers in 2018. It is already improving online translation services such as DeepL, but it also has a great potential to grow efficiency for digital marketers as it enables automation of repetitive tasks. NVIDIA is considered one of the leaders in using machine learning for its marketing department. They leverage machine learning to find social media posts that refer to the brand.
5. DIGITAL MARKETING PREDICTIONS
There are two major digital marketing predictions that are expected to become the emerging trends in 2018:
Data: Projections currently in place say that data production by companies will "increase 4300% by 2020 and that mismanaged data will cost businesses $3.3 trillion by 2020".
Importance of full-funnel insights: 67% of chief marketing officers have a plan to invest more in digital advertising, and 63% plan to cut investments in old media channels. Full-funnel visibility is needed to showcase which "parts of their funnel are returning value, and more importantly, which ones aren’t."
6. TRENDS AS REPORTED BY KENSHOO
The company published their review of the main trends they encountered in 2017, and they are as follows:
Positioning of mobile ads led to the increase in social media spending of 40% on a year-over-year basis and search ad spending increase of 10%. Additionally, mobile ads spending overall was up 51% for social media and 45% for search ads while product ads spending experienced a growth rate of 63% on social media and 33% for search ads.
Video ad spending tied to social media also experience a growth and now makes up 30% of the total social media spending. If placed properly, the expanded text ads can reach high engagement and as much as 60% of search keyword ad impressions.
The leading provider of ad space quoted in Kenshoo's report is Google because it "continues to strength in its Shopping campaigns while other platforms ramp up their product-based ad units to compete".
7. TRENDS AS REPORTED BY MARINE SOFTWARE
In 2016, Google and Facebook were responsible for 99% of revenue growth when it comes to digital advertising in the U.S. That leads to digital marketing companies to swarm these channels. For 2018, marketers are turning to "technologies that allow them to mine the search and social gold".
8. TRENDS concerning GOOGLE (MARKET LEADER)
According to a report conducted by eMarketer, Google was the owner of 75.8% of the search market in 2016. This percentage is expected to grow and reach 80% in 2018.
In 2018, Google is planning to embrace machine learning as part of their strategy to switch from "advertising based on keywords to advertising based on user intent".
Additionally, Google introduced the "in-Marketing audiences based on machine learning" which enables companies to "determine prospects who are moving closer to the end of the buying cycle and shows them relevant search ads results to enable them take action quickly".
9. TRENDS AS REPORTED BY ADOBE (internally)
Adobe produced a digital marketing trends report in partnership with Econsultancy in order to see which trends defined the market.
Compelling customer experience was Adobe's top priority. 22% of client responses said that optimizing the customer experience was "the single most exciting opportunity in 2017".
"Content marketing (29 percent)
Social media engagement (28 percent)
Targeting and personalization (25 percent)".
10. HOT MARKET TRENDS AS REPORTED BY ADOBE
Adobe claims that the "emergence of technologies like AR, VR and machine learning will shape marketing in 2017 and beyond". They are counting on machine learning and data science to offer a wide range of productivity opportunities for digital marketing, which would allow the marketers to focus their time on building general strategies and leave the day-to-day analytics to the machines.
Adobe is also counting on video to make a large difference in marketing campaigns: "Adobe’s acquisition of TubeMogul shows our focus on video in marketing campaigns. It will create the first end-to-end independent advertising and data management solution that spans TV and digital formats, simplifying what has been a complex and fragmented process for brands."
CONCLUSION
The four big general trends in the digital marketing space are: augmented reality integrated through social media, conversational user interfaces, voice marketing and predictive algorithms. The industry leaders also reported trends they noticed for 2018, with the most interesting trends including Google and Facebook now being the two companies responsible for 99% of revenue growth when it comes to digital advertising in the U.S., and Google owning 80% of the search market by 2018. Adobe claims that the emergence of technologies like AR, VR and machine learning will shape marketing in 2017 and beyond, and expects video marketing to greatly impact 2018.