5 digital advertising trends that spurred the industry in 2010

5 digital advertising trends that spurred the industry in 2010

By Rhia George

Marketing Communications Manager @ Innity

As the New Year has just begun, everyone is looking forward to new beginnings and making wish lists of what we hope the year ahead will bring us. Keeping this in mind, let’s reflect on some of the key trends in digital advertising that have helped the industry grow over the last year and will continue to play a key role this year in advertising and marketing.

1. Social Media reaches its peak

The use of social media to market brands increased significantly over the last year as more marketers realized the power of this medium to influence consumers’ perceptions such as their buying decisions and brand loyalty. In fact, in March, Facebook overtook Google and became the most popular site in the U.S. Then in August, people began spending more time on Facebook than on Google. Part of the reason of this increased adoption was the ease of access and partly because of mainstream media’s uptake of social media in a big way.

2. Mobile advertising takes off

Spending on mobile advertising is set to grow by nearly 50% to top $1 billion in 2011, according to the latest numbers from market researcher eMarketer. The reason for this is that mobile offers advertisers and marketers many attractive possibilities. No other device is as personal, interactive and constantly as accessible as a cell phone. Today, people use their cellphones for more reasons than one such as comparing prices, making payments, shopping, etc.

3. Interesting and interactive online ads

Increased use of more creative advertising and content models online such as attention-seeking page takeover ads, video along with other mechanisms aimed at greater engagement and interactivity have helped to drive web development significantly over the last year.

4. Video advertising continues to surge

According to eMarketer, video will become the third-largest online ad format by 2014. The reason for this is that with video ads, marketers are able to generate the same emotional response from their audience as a TV ad is able to. Video ads are also easier to measure and implement targeting techniques as opposed to TV ads.

5. Moving beyond the click

While CTR may have been the best way to measure the effectiveness of an ad campaign, this is no longer the case for more reasons than one. Perhaps most notably is the fact that most Internet users do not click on display ads, and this percentage of users is continuing to diminish over time. The solution to this problem is using the effective payment mechanism better known as CPE or Cost Per Engagement. CPE is an advertising model wherein advertisers only need to pay when a consumer engages with the content related to their brand thus providing a risk free means to delivering highly targeted rich media content. These features include advertising games, videos, rolling over an ad for more information or even social sharing.