8 things to watch in 2008
December 1, 2007
Since this is my inaugural blog posting on our new website, I thought I would give my top 8 digital trends to watch in 2008…
Everyman and his dog is defining predictions for 2008 so I will resist that temptation however there are definitely some that are worth keeping an eye on.
1. Video as an advertising medium
Video is predicted to be one of the fastest growing areas of digital advertising and it’s not surprising.
According to Forrester Research, Australians have the second highest Internet activity index in the world. This is pretty impressive given the third world status of our broadband speeds. You only have to look at the phenomenal rise of youtube to understand the enthusiasm for viewing streaming content and this makes the potential for video advertising even more interesting.
Tech crunch have a good post on the various types of video advertising and the remuneration models that are evolving however I can’t help but feel it is still not really reaching it’s potential. Right now it still seems a bit like the 30 sec TVC meets adwords.
Video also represents a format within which more traditional agencies can find their place in the digital world. While historically these great creative talents have been limited to 30 seconds now have an infinitely more flexible format. It would be great to see the development of more interesting and collaborative uses of branded content. Possibly even those that allow the audience to be part of the storytelling process with brands as their partners.
Examples such as “Kate Modern” through Bebo in the UK are fascinating examples of these less intrusive forms of advertising that more intelligent matching of marketing messages to content and audience. Christine Beardsell from
ClickZ wrote an interesting article on this late last year.
Let’s hope that in their quest to go digital the traditionalists do not go down the route of just plastering a 30sec spot into a streaming video banner and assume the job is done. The scope for creativity in the video advertising model is so much more exciting.
2. The evolution of Social Networking
I would be surprised if in 2008 we did not see the emergence of at least one (if not 5) significant new players in the social networking scene.
While they will probably be niche rather than mainstream, they will spring out of nowhere and gain enough traction to get on our radar. In the Australian market, we are still seeing that the dominant players (myspace, facebook and bebo) hold the market share however the fickle nature of the average internet consumer, the desire for people to congregate in increasingly niche groups and the constant demands for new and innovative environments means that the playing field is still quite open.
Every day, a new venture is launched however the ones that rise to the top of this environment are those that are able to attract a critical mass fairly quickly.
With all this change in the environments I think it will also be interesting to observe changes in the applications of social networking and online collaboration tools such as wikis.
There is enormous scope for these environments to become relevant not only for entertainment and connecting with friends but as tools for companies to internally connect, share information and drive better communications. This has the potential to evolve into a much richer field for B-to-B marketing applications also.
The overall implications of social networking for advertisers and agencies are significant. As the field expands, the complexity associated with social media marketing will potentially lead to the emergence of more specialist agencies whose sole purpose in life is to stay on top of what’s happening and develop complex strategies to target within them. We are seeing this already in the US and the UK but I suspect 2008 will also see such agencies much closer to home.
In terms of the formats of advertising within social networking, it’s almost as uncharted as it is for video. While many of us scoffed at the brazen commercialisation of myspace, shook our heads at the initial faux par made by facebook, and marvel at those companies who can afford to build environments in second life, the base line reality is that advertising is a reality in these environments but we have a long way to go before social media takes much more than a minor share of a digital marketing budget.
While it offers the very rich potential for engagement and viral distribution there is still much debate about the degree of measurability, the effectiveness and ”the right“ and “the wrong” way to do things. I think this will be an interesting year to observe how this develops.
3. Technology standards enable a community of communities
The announcement by Google of open social has also opened up the field for social networking sites to interact and share experiences. It provides users with the ability to freely move between networks.
OpenSocial is a set of three common APIs that allow developers to access core functions and information at social networks:
- Profile Information (user data)
- Friends Information (social graph)
- Activities (things that happen, News Feed type stuff)
Marc Canter a pioneer in the social networking space refers to sites developing functionality and positioning themselves as “digital lifestyle aggregators”. He describes the basic principles of this theory as:
- integrated environment – bringing together lots of things in one place
- aggregated information – from all over the place
- highly customisable – which modules, what look and feel and what UI
- all supporting open standards to create an inter-connected meshed web
In addition to sites being able to share user data, widgets are another phenomenon that has emerged and offer the potential for sites to share functionality.
There are already about 30,000 gadgets available on Google and nearly 8000 third party facebook applications and these offer marketers with both the viral potential of a distributable tool and highly engaging way for companies can “join the conversation”.
They are still in the early stages of evolution so no definitive standards exist however with the impact of open social my prediction would be that standardisation of widget API’s is the next cab off the rank and the sooner we can get to a definitive standard established, the higher their distribution capability and therefore their potential value as a marketing medium.
4. Gaming meets social networking meets Hollywood
Advergaming is a growing industry. To date, this seems for the most part to involve product placement, banners and billboards in games. The evolution of gaming however has come a long way. The quality of graphics alone has now reached new levels with games like Assassins Creed narrowing the gap between gaming and film quality imagery.
There has been some talk about the launch of Halo the movie where Peter Jackson (lord of the rings) has got together with Bungie (games company that owns Halo) to develop a movie length feature based in the game.
The integration of social networking functionality in gaming is also taking leaps ahead. Late last year, xbox 360 launched the friends of friends network which will allow you to search through friends (ala facebook) and will further strengthen the eight million strong community people on Xbox LIVE around the globe
The communities that form and the types of interactions that can occur in this environment have the potential to evolved far beyond the game play itself. The opportunities for marketers to enrich these types of environment seems limitless.
In terms of where this will go next however, I think the concept of gaming will eventually evolve to a place where the user community can create storylines and other entertainment outcomes dynamically and were brands are an integrated part of the environment (as they are in our real world lives). If all of this is screened in film quality graphics things should get really interesting.
5. Content, Tagging and the evolution of Search
Web 2.0 and the evolution of user generated content means that we are now almost drowning in information, and it is only going to get worse. Finding what you want, sorting it, storing it and then finding it again is becoming quite challenging for the user.
Search is probably becoming the single most important tool for digital marketers and given the overwhelming volume of content, the search engines themselves will also continue to evolve. We will see more personalised results as well as multiple formats for viewing results.
Google labs is already working on an interface that will present results that are mapped on a timeline, map, or in context of other information types. It will also be interesting to see how sites start to leverage information and functionality across a variety of platforms (e.g. yahoo with Flickr and del.icio.us).
The driving force behind any of these developments is technology and there is a great post on ReadWriteWeb that talks about some of these technology trends.
With the enormous volumes of content, the use of tags is essential. Now that advertisers are getting better with SEO and SEM, they need to turn their attention to more creative ways to segment content, create sophisticated tagging strategies and allow multiple ways to access, store and retrieve content across third party platforms.
6. Data analytics, econometrics and measurement tools
20 years ago, when I studied the art of econometrics and statistical economics it’s focus seemed very academic. In the last few years however I have seen it emerge as the new hero of digital marketing and a cornerstones of great digital strategies.
The Internet has made responses, post click activity and ongoing digital interactions completely measurable. While we struggle to define standards around many aspects of measurement.
This data is already a gold mine for those who know how to analyse, interpret and optimise their campaigns based on what they can learn about their customers. We are now truly in a position to understand so much more about what people care about than ever before.
Although traditional DM companies have been working with data for years, they have never had the level of detail that digital now provides. Unfortunately, few marketers and agencies are fully leveraging this and even less bother collect all the information at their fingertips.
The penny is now finally starting to drop though and I believe that in 2008 we will see more widespread use of analytics in digital marketing. The key to further evolution of this field will lie in two key areas: The sophistication (and affordability) of great analytics tools that integrate across all the digital platforms and make accessible and readable the data that is available.
The second is the ability to integrating third party site data with internal analytics. Open social and initiatives such as this will widen the pool of information that we can study and as any good statistician knows, the bigger the pool, the more valuable the insights.
7. Cross media advertising models
As I mentioned in my article on the evolution of the media industry the media and publishing is undergoing huge transformation also. With the relaxation of cross media ownership, we are now seeing most publishers making some sort of digital play.
The interesting thing is how this will develop and the opportunities that this represents for real multi-channel campaign integration.
Figures suggest that globally 80% of all content will be viewed from PVRs, IPTV, Broadband Web and DVD by 2011.
Content will be consumed across a wider range of devices, in a multitude of formats time shifted to meet the users lives and ad-skipping will be the norm. Content delivered on demand in this type of environment requires the integration of advertising messages that is much more closely aligned with the audience interest.
As media companies gear up for this change, they also recognize that their audience is become increasingly fragmented. Only by understanding the various niches at a much more personal level will the media players be able to deliver this level of targeting.
Social networking will no doubt be a part of this strategy for many however I think that how the various players go about delivering against this will divide the wheat from the chaff in the digital marketing media game.
8. Privacy
With all these communities sharing ever increasing volumes of personal information and the tracking and data analytics that we are using to understand them, this raises a new concern that has been bubbling away in the background for some time.
Do people want to be watched? Do we really want a marketer to know where we shop, what we buy, what our process for purchase is and how we make a decision? My guess is yes, if it removes a bunch of unwanted crap from our media lives but no if that data then makes our private lives susceptible to abuse.
Data protection is not a new topic but it is one that will grow as our intelligence grows and as the fear of big brother grows ever more visible. For marketers that delve further into the field of customer intelligence, security, respect for privacy and transparency in the methods we use will become increasingly important.
A company privacy policy is no longer the only area that needs to be considered. Brands themselves need to be open about how and why they use data and it needs to make the consumers experience better, not just the marketing campaign more effective.
2008 will be an interesting year. I plan to watch these areas with great interest as they continue to evolve.
Entry Filed under: Ideagarden comment, Industry trends. .
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