The world of digital advertising is changing faster than a lot of firms can keep up with, and it’s essential you’re aware of upcoming trends so you can stay ahead of the game.
In the past you might have been able to get by on good old-fashioned word of mouth or a simple Facebook page to promote your business, but as campaigns become increasingly sophisticated we’re going to see the competition heat up.
AI and Automation Advertising
If you haven’t already got on board with the growing AI trend in digital advertising, we suggest you start checking out some platforms to try out. The technology is changing the way organizations manage campaigns, analyze data, and connect with customers. The best tools are able to examine your audience interactions with campaigns, highlighting what’s popular, what’s not, and what’s engaging your user base across multiple different marketing channels.
What’s more, it automates a lot of the mundane tasks associated with data collecting — freeing up your creative team to work on the perfect campaign. There are digital ad design teams springing up across the country that offer these services on platforms that can be easily integrated into your current marketing setup. AI is here to stay, and the trend only looks set to grow exponentially as we move through the year
Continued Growth of Mobile Advertising
The world has gone mad for mobile devices, with most of us now consuming the majority of our content on phones or tablets. If you don’t have a mobile strategy in place, we suggest you start to draft one immediately. Video has cemented itself as the most popular digital advertising trend plus method of choice, and looks set to continue to dominate this summer.
However, old school ads just won’t cut it these days, you need something natural and attention grabbing that connects with your audience. Demand for personalized content is at an all time high, so your videos need to be telling your audience exactly what kind of problem you’re going to solve. In fact, this couples perfectly with the use of AI, as you can track to the second which parts of your videos are having an impact.
Highly Personalized Ad Campaigns
Speaking of connecting with your audience, we expect to see a massive increase in highly personalized digital ad campaigns. Facebook started a movement back in February to encourage small businesses to embrace personalized digital marketing as a way to stand out and compete.
It could be the key to helping small businesses recover from a cycle of COVID lockdowns as economies start to wake up again this summer. We expect entrepreneurs to try a ‘go local’ approach, using various digital channels to appeal to a regional audience. For those that don’t have the budget to tell their stories via traditional methods like TV or radio advertising, they can instead use targeted email campaigns, social media posts, and text message marketing.
Augmented Reality and Immersive Tech
Augmented reality is still very much in its infancy, but is a tool a lot of marketing agencies have been playing around with for a few years. Now, this doesn’t mean you’ll be strapping your customers into a headset any time soon, because there are many more methods you can use to augment the experience of your audience.
Take something as simple as the Home Depot Project Color App. With just a click of a button, you can digitally try out thousands of different paints and designs on your walls. Or what about Timberland’s artificial fitting room that lets you see how good you’ll look in a variety of outfits?
The point we’re making is that you don’t have to get fancy, simply add an immersive layer that customers haven’t seen before. We’re definitely excited to see where augmented reality technology will take us this summer while watching how digital ad agencies rising up to meet the challenge.
Increase in Voice Search Optimization
We’ve all heard of search engine optimization before, but with the increase in the popularity and affordability of smart speakers and digital assistants, marketers need to get to grips with voice search optimization too.
It might not even be something that’s crossed your mind before, but you need a completely different approach to rank near the top of voice searches than you do in traditional Google searches. Expect to see more and more digital marketers start to offer this as a service, as well as innovative new techniques to boost rankings.
