Here are some trends that reshaped digital marketing in 2013.
25% of all marketing is now digital
One out of every four marketing dollars is spent online. As more and more marketing dollars flow to online channels, the pressure mounts for digital advertisers to deliver. However, the same problems we’ve had for years – inventory quality, consumer privacy concerns, inefficient and costly media exception – continue to threaten the next wave of growth.
Mobile device usage is now firmly on track to represent half of all website traffic.
There seems to be some hope that technological innovation and changes in consumer device behavior will begin to slow their pace a bit so marketers can begin planning multi-year, multi-million marketing strategies on stable ground. Thus, it is crucial for marketers must overcome the inertia and get a head start before their competitors on the mobile battleground.
The second age of programmatic buying
There have been major moves to build programmatic pipes to premium inventory as well as figuring out how to scale automation to handle more impactful native ad formats.
The imminent death of the cookie
Apple, Microsoft, and Mozilla now all plan to launch browsers with default do not track settings that reject cookies or, at the very least, send out a signal that users does not want to be tracked. Many of the digital marketing technologies that track, measure, target, and retarget are absolutely tied to third-party cookies, and the loss of the cookie will impact almost every company.
Google’s curveballs
This year, Google’s two curveballs this year have altered the landscape of search engine marketing (SEM). Google announced enhanced campaigns in February and forced all of its paid search advertisers over to this new approach in July. This dramatic shift sends waves through the industry with paid search marketers having brought a surge of attention in 2013 to multi-device marketing. Google began encrypting organic consumer search terms that led to site visits in 2012. In September, Google announced the 100% of keyword would show up as not provided. This has been a major blow to search engine optimization (SEO) as the core of these practices has been tracking keyword visitation. With almost half of all website visits originating from natural search terms, and Google representing almost 70% of that traffic in the US and abroad, SEO practitioners had to utterly change their entire approach overnight.
Facebook advertising
In just over a year, Facebook’s mobile ad offering rivals every established mobile ad network, and its Facebook Exchange (FBX) programmatic channel is one of the biggest players in the space. In fact, the social advertising category as a whole is beginning to emerge as a viable channel with YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and others launching more and more paid media opportunities.
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