2016 was an eventful year in the worlds of marketing and advertising and highlighted the changing landscape we face. As marketers, it’s our job to stay on top of the digital pulse, which is why we’ve keenly highlighted four big trends we think will influence 2017.
VR
Pokemon Go was all the rage upon its release in July 2016, the work of a little-known development house based in San Francisco. Inauspicious roots aside, Go was a massive success and demonstrated the appetite consumers have for “virtual reality”.
It made use of the GPS on your phone to detect where you were, then “emulated” the world you were in, and populated the virtual copy with Pokemon. As the phrase goes, you had to catch ‘em all, not least with in-game purchases to speed things along.
Though Go fever fizzled out in a matter of weeks, it was proof positive that our phones are powerful marketing tools, and that virtual reality lends itself especially well to short, concentrated bursts of interactivity.
Live Media
With Google Hangouts, Skype, Periscope and Meerkat, almost anyone with a cell phone and internet connection can broadcast live. The days of carefully curated live content carried out by bloated camera crews are over, and frankly, that’s a good thing.
Media is becoming increasingly democratized, meaning there’s no central authority. We don’t only need Sky News telling us what’s what when we’ve got gonzo journalists armed with their phones and gumption giving their own verdict.
A lot of the older generation are dismayed by this change in course, but if the recent Trump election is proof of anything, it’s that the mainstream media aren’t representative of the general public anyway.
Instagram and Snapchat
Instagram and Snapchat are two of the fastest growing social media platforms in the world. They’re well made and easy to use. But most importantly, they’ve been seized upon by a new, young generation of smart phone users.
In a world where change is so rapid, the only constant is that nothing stays still for long, and with a new generation of technology consumers emerging every five to ten years, there’s something to be said for targeting that very audience.
Facebook dominated the generation before it. Now Snapchat and Instagram are poised to grow equally big, and they provide rich content platforms for advertisers to utilise.
Big Data
The term “Big Data” gets bandied about a lot, but what does it really mean?
In short, the idea is that you never create an ad campaign, website or marketing tool without first backing it with Google Analytics (or the analytics program of your choice).
Then, you rigorously inspect the data as time goes on. What are people’s browsing habits? Where are they coming from? What devices are they using to interact with your content?
As time goes on, you measure, optimize and refine your offering.
People like Neil Patel (www.quicksprout.com) are the masters are understanding how people browse online. They’ve tailored their entire websites to getting the most out of fickle web users – and with great success.
Though Big Data is a buzzword today, it’s set to become a core selling point for ad agencies in 2017 who know how to cut through the clutter.