Digital advertising is all about delivering promotional ads to target audiences on assorted channels by leveraging the Internet and its properties. Like traditional advertising, digital advertising helps in showcasing the story of a brand. However, as compared to traditional advertising methods, digital advertising is more flexible and universal, allowing a business to tell the story of their brand through text, videos, images and more on the channels that are mostly used by their potential buyers.
Evolution of Digital Advertising
Since its beginning in the year 1994, digital advertising has evolved considerably. Here are some of the key interesting things related to digital advertising, have a glance:
- With more than 16 million Internet users in the year 1995, Yahoo, one of the first famous web services providers, became the first platform to introduce search ads.
- After a few years, Google introduced AdWords that became an inevitable boom in the digital advertising sector.
- By the mid of the 2000s, various social media channels started overcoming each other by coming up with innovative ways to integrate as content.
- The evolution of digital advertising became evident on Facebook where it was introduced in the form of small display ads and ultimately evolved into very precise ads that are targeted for the users according to their interests and demographics.
Digital Advertising in Today’s Time
In today’s time, digital advertisements are almost everywhere. You can see these ads on the websites you visit, on your smartphones, on social media channels, and on many other platforms. Several companies have already started investing in various innovative advertising techniques and content-led marketing strategies. As advertising is flourishing everywhere across so many channels including personal channels, companies need to be more mindful than ever before regarding providing useful and at the same time, engaging content. Although native advertising is one of the key strategies that most companies are open to exploring, the future of digital marketing might be just Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) integrated advertising. Today, digital advertising is sprouting faster and the industry is moving towards adopting strategies that are immersive instead of all-encompassing.
With digital advertising continuing to gain momentum, it is imperative than ever before for marketers to make it an integral part of their holistic marketing mix.
Digital Advertising Trends 2020
There are certain digital advertising ongoing trends such as Chatbots, Voice Searches, and Video marketing that are really effective and will continue to remain popular in the coming years. In 2020 and beyond, we will also see various new advertising trends, some of which are mentioned below:
1. Social Commerce:
Also termed as shoppable posts is the new trend in digital advertising. Earlier, most businesses were wondering and finding ways to get their followers to visit their online stores. However, with the growing popularity of shoppable posts, they no longer need to worry about getting their followers to visit their store. So, what exactly social commerce is? Well, it is a process in which buyers can directly buy their choice of products through social media posts or ads without leaving the app or site. Since the launch of Instagram Checkout in 2019, these shoppable social media posts are rapidly gaining more and more attention. About 54% of people on social media use these kinds of posts to research product purchases. Just with a few pieces of branding merchandise, sellers can experience greater returns by allowing transactions through social media.
2. Direct messaging:
Several brands prefer taking the conversation to direct messages with the intent to get more personal with their customers. Brands are using various messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Viber and sending private messages on social media channels like Twitter and Instagram to build stronger connections with their customers. Whether it’s about addressing customer’s complaints, receiving sales orders or any other thing, brands are finding direct messaging an effective way to build better relationships with customers.
3. Artificial Intelligence:
Artificial Intelligence or AI has already taken over various simple jobs and is expected to be a dominant trend in 2020 and beyond. It is sure to stay at the forefront in global business and industry in the coming years. Many organizations are adopting Artificial Intelligence in their business because it helps in analyzing customer behavior and search patterns, thereby help businesses to understand how their customers find their products and services. Artificial Intelligence has already been implemented in many areas including basic communication, product recommendations, content creation, email personalization, and e-commerce transactions. Soon it will be the driving force behind many other services. Businesses that are planning to adopt AI in 2020 for their digital advertising efforts will be able to save more on staffing costs, accelerate growth and expected to get an edge over their competitors.
4. Video Marketing:
Video marketing is one of the most important digital advertising trends these days and likely to remain popular in the coming years as well. Here are some of the key facts that suggest businesses to incorporate video in their digital marketing strategy in 2020
- a) About 70% of customers say that they have shared a brand’s video,
- b) 72% of businesses say that video marketing has improved their conversion rate, c) according to 52% of consumers, watching product videos makes them more confident in online purchase decisions,
- d) 65% of executives visit the marketer’s website and
- e) 39% customers call a vendor after viewing a video. Apart from YouTube, there are plenty of channels such as Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn to drive higher engagement with video advertising by creating a video post or start a live broadcast.
Some other video marketing trends that are gaining more and more traction include live video, 1:1 video, video SEO, and 360-degree video content.
5. Influencer Marketing:
Influencer marketing is another digital marketing trend that gradually becoming popular among a lot of businesses. It is a kind of word-of-mouth marketing that mainly focuses on using key leaders to strengthen a company’s brand message to a larger market. Influencers can be renowned celebrities. In the digital advertising world, these celebrities are mostly Instagram or YouTube personalities with a massive niche following who can help spread the word about a business through their social channels. As influencer marketing is considered as more authentic than corporate advertising, about 63% of consumers trust influencers’ opinions of products much more than what brands say about themselves, and 58% of people have bought a new product in the past six months because of an influencer’s recommendation.
Conclusion:
So, these are some of the key digital marketing trends you can’t ignore in 2020. In order to gain an edge over competitors in the field of digital advertising, it is vital for businesses to embrace new technologies. By developing a roadmap to enhance digital capabilities and skills, while integrating various effective digital advertising activities, businesses will surely be able to survive in the tough competitive market conditions.
