TOP 4 MUST KNOW DIGITAL ADVERTISING TRENDS
Digital advertising trends shift quickly in an effort to keep up with the growing advancement of technology. It is not enough to follow a digital advertising trend. Rather, a successful company will pay attention to what is happening now and analyze the current marketplace to best predict new trends.
Here are four digital advertising trends that are important to know for 2018.
1. Grassroots over Influencers
With the rise of social media came so-called influencers. These influencers were celebrities that had amassed millions of followers on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Celebrities were then paid by companies to promote products in a subtly authentic way, thus reaching a giant audience.
Examples of successful influencers include Selena Gomez, who has over 133,000,000 followers on Instagram and Katy Perry who has over 108,000,000 followers on Twitter. However, there has been a growing backlash over the power that these influencers wield.
In 2017, the Fyre Festival was heavily promoted by celebrity influencers like Bella Hadid, but turned out to be a giant scam. In February of 2018, Kendall Jenner posted that she no longer uses social media app SnapChat, and as a result, shares plummeted in value by 1.3 billion dollars.
Celebrity influencers are proving to be too volatile, so a return to grassroots promotion will be one of a few major digital advertising trends of 2018.
2. Live Video
Long live the era of online videos. Ask any teenager what TV show they watch, and they will undoubtedly answer with a YouTube or Vimeo video channel. And as teenagers get jobs, they become the consumers targeted by companies.
Teenagers and young adults also want information right away which is why they look for live video streaming. Amateurs become experts and relay their new information to others. Digital advertising trends will look to use these video platforms more and more. Smart companies will find ways to advertise within popular YouTube channels and the more innovative companies will start their own.
Live video can also be used for customer support. While live chatting has become a mainstay with many companies, live video chat will continue to increase in popularity. It’s refreshing to know that you are talking to an actual person, and live video will confirm this.
3. Voice Searching
As voice recognition software improves, so too does one of the most important digital advertising trends: voice searches. Yes, people still google their questions, but are increasingly doing so while talking into their phone.
Voice recognition is now the norm in all smart home devices like Amazon Alexa and Google Nest. There is talk to text and when accessing a telephone directory, instead of having to press numbers, you simply state a command.
How this relates to digital advertising is that voice searching is the future. Products that use this technology will be heavily marketed. Tie-ins need to take place to capitalize on the new way the people want their information.
4. Video Game Tie-Ins
Generation X was the first generation raised on video games and instead of growing out of this activity, they have stayed with it as video games have involved. And now, despite amazing new graphics, there is a nostalgic return to video games from the 1980s and 1990s. In fact, classic video game collecting has created an industry of its own, and Nintendo smartly capitalized in it when the released an updated version of both the Nintendo and Super Nintendo.
Digital advertising trends that are aware of the popularity of video games will tie them in to their product. Stranger Things, a series on Netflix which focuses on the nostalgia of the 1980s, brilliantly tied in video games with their marketing. They created a teaser for Season 2, which ran like a video game. They also created their own retro-inspired computer game.
Whether they be video games, computer games, or app games on a smart phone, people want distractions. There is more free time to be had now, but that free time is quickly taken up with so-called time wasters. Companies that take advantage of these online hobbies can greatly benefit from the different digital games.