Digital Dive into 2017 – Top 8 Predictions

Source : EconomicTimes

The digital world expects to see a lot of change in 2017. Here are the top 8 predictions for 2017:

1. Social will eat away Search Budget

Social media has gone beyond just being a networking tool and these platforms are quickly gaining ground as effective lead/sales drivers. eMarketer predicts 26.3% increase in social ad spends in 2017 which translates to over 35 billion USD. These budgets will be taken from search. Social media program’s success will depend on how well it harnesses the power of data. Because that alone will determine how to allocate budgets more intelligently, ensuring that users have an awesome experience.

2. Brands to Benefit from Augmented/Virtual Reality

The average user spends 33 minutes a day on Pokémon Go, which is more than Facebook (22 minutes), Twitter (17 minutes) and Instagram (15 minutes). It had a record adoption of over 100 million users in six days. Pokémon Go generates $1.6m revenue daily. There’s more to this popularity than just nostalgia; and that’s a combination of augmented reality and social interaction. Brands are waking up to this trend. Ford and Audi allow users to preview cars with AR apps. Many others are following suit.

3. Native Advertising will Grow

While content promotion has so far been able to drive top-of-funnel awareness and engagement, a perfect native advertising can drive results at all stages of the funnel. Native ads have the capacity to enhance prospects across all channels, delivering subtle brand experience on scale. They are the classic tick-tock model of development. 2016 was the tick when most advertisers came to native; 2017 will be the tock when it will truly scale. Publishers, big and small, have already embraced native ads enthusiastically, and they will do more of the stuff in 2017 as it comes as a relief from banner blindness, ad fraud, ad blocking and ineffectiveness.

4. Live Streaming will become Prominent

Now that smartphones and Internet are ubiquitous, video will play a major tool to attract new customers to business. The catch with live video is that through live feeds brands can listen to the users and design content around them. If done well, live streams will bring generous returns in terms of engagement, leads and publicity. Most platforms in social media have already shifted their focus to live video.

5. Content to be Genuine on Social Media

The Web is a democratic space, and the rise in the volume of fake content has already warranted action. Many well-intentioned organizations have found themselves in the mess of clogging search results, puzzling users and undermining trust. Despite Mark Zuckerberg’s denial of responsibility, Facebook has been accused of allowing the spread of misinformation, which led them to introduce the news feed click-bait detector. Google had announced that it would penalize ‘fake news sites’ by banning them from advertising on its network. So, 2017 looks great from the perspective of genuine content.

6. Chatbots will Take Away a lot of Work

Chatbots will definitely take away a lot of manual work in 2017. Investment in artificial intelligence will grow tri-fold, according to Forrester Research, contributing to the rise to interfaces where amply personified bots with enough predictive capability will directly communicate with consumers. Salesforce’s Einstein software, Apple’s Siri, Facebook’s news feed ads that open directly into Messenger chats and Google’s Allo with an integrated AI assistant are just the beginning. When Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella highlighted that “the future of technology lies in human language” in his keynote speech, he was referring to enhancing user experience by augmenting human language at the machine level.

7. Programmatic Buying will Increase

Programmatic buying is taking valuable data segments into consideration while targeting individuals in intelligent ways. In 2017, organizations will focus on data collaboration and audience sharing along with cross-device and UX behavioral insights. Programmatic expenditure will grow from 51% in 2016 to 58% in 2017. Mark Abay, Content Director at Ashton Media, predicts “Programmatic is going to drive 100% of advertising trading execution by 2020.”

8. Infographics will be the Key to Content Marketing

There has always been a growing demand for visual content, which is why infographics is integral to content marketing. Research has proven that our brain processes more information when it is presented in a visual format rather than in text form. Web content with images get 47% more clicks than those without. Apps such as Piktochart and Venngage meant to create infographics are gaining popularity, which can be used for creating infographics without incurring the costs associated with expensive designers.