Digital marketing trends for 2016
Digital marketing and advertising experts agree that 2015 has been a milestone year. We have cut a clear line of evolution from advertising with text and image to leaning more toward personalisation, customisation, and video platforms.
Here are our top 7 digital marketing trend predictions for 2016:
1. Viewability
‘Viewability’ will become a buzzword in digital marketing and advertising for 2016. Viewability is related to the growth of ad spend, and raises concerns about advertising being paid for and never reaching a consumer’s screen. Digital advertising still harbours the risk that a paid ad will only be viewed by bots, so this is key for digital marketing success in 2016.
2. Ad blocking
Ian McClelland, Managing Director of The Guardian, Australia, has noted that there are serious concerns about the proliferation of ad-blocking tools available online.
“To counter this, there will be greater emphasis on context and audience behaviour in an effort to improve and respect the experience for consumers, which is likely to shift the focus to more trusted ad environments,” he said.
Digital marketing will evolve to tackle this cookie-based ad targeting issue.
3. Video content
2015 has seen significant growth in online video for advertising and digital marketing. However, experts agree that video is set to exponentially grow in 2016.
Video is the key to many digital marketing challenges, including being vital to reach Generation Z, who prefer YouTube to television. This is correlated with business sentiment regarding video production skills, with a significant increase in spending on the recruitment of skill in Adobe After Effects and Motion Graphics, as well as video production for 2015.
4. Small business drivers
Small-to-medium businesses have embraced digital marketing and advertising for 2015. Social media enables people to reach their local or specific market without having to overspend or overquantify their message for the masses. Applications that support social media for business have become increasingly sophisticated and are set to continue to develop for 2016. As the number of small businesses in proportion to large businesses continues to grow, we will see connections between micro to small businesses and their local customers becoming more important than ever in the coming year.
5. The customer is always right in focus
The customer experience is refocussed, with marketing embracing the customer experience as the platform for which to streamline omnichannel marketing and mutually reinforce brand with digital marketing, and allow digital marketing to be controlled by the brand.
Whilst many companies already say they focus on customer experience, the many small ways that a brand touches a consumer creates an experience that has a different reality than the company intended. In 2016, companies will spend more time addressing the gap between the expectation of the experience and the reality.
6. Customisation reaches hyper-personalisation levels
In order for companies to break through the digital advertising noise online, they will need to personally address the consumer. Most of the time, this will need to have a real-time application that creates personalised messages for end-users.
“Not many companies are doing hyper-personalisation well, or at all,” Teradata Marketing Applications, principal consultant, Umporn Tantipech, said. “It’s likely that it will become far more prevalent in 2016, as companies become increasingly aware of its value to drive higher Net Promoter Scores and campaign return on investment.”
7. Smart phone, smart marketing
Mobility is no longer an optional marketing channel. The attraction of smartphone data, including the user’s actual location, is too important to resist. The level of sophistication in converting the web into bite size Android chunks has also grown, with Google index now able to analyse app content and stream it to Android users without requiring them to download the app.
If you want to harness the power of video in 2016’s digital marketing evolution, iFactory are here to help. Call iFactory to plan your 2016 marketing campaign with video.
