7 Digital Marketing Trends That Are Transforming Business

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.

Complexity and even faster change are the norm.

So what digital marketing trends are driving change and what can we do about it?

1. The growing concentration of revenue and power

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.

Reduction in trust

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.

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Author: Jeff Bullas