Top 5 Digital Marketing Trends in 2024

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Please see below my thoughts on the top 5 trends we will see taking concrete shape, or accelerating significantly in 2024 ; These will have implications and call to action for Marketers in some shape or form.  I started with a solid list of 12 and ranked all of them on various dimensions to come up with the top 5 list (with a notable 6^th and 7^th).  

SIGNIFICANT ACCELERATIONà

1.    Intense focus on user privacy and data protection. Triple whammy from Apple, Google, and US laws: 

1. Google started deprecating third party cookies for 1% chrome users (30 million) on Jan 4^th and will ramp to 99% by end of the year. It plans to replace the cookies with its own solution called Topics API, which enables interest-based advertising (IBA) without having to resort to tracking the sites a user visits.

2. In 2017, Apple’s introduced ITP (Intelligent Tracking Prevention) to protect user privacy, and it has already diminished campaign ROI by ~35% by limiting the use of cookies in Safari. iOS17 will add more headwind by removing more user-tracking parameters.

·       8 states have comprehensive data privacy laws; 25 states are considering data privacy laws of some kind and some of them will come to fruition.

Path forward-

·       Marketers need to rely on Privacy-centric Marketing with focus on First party data, build trust through security solutions, and communicate with transparency around data collection, use and protection.

·        Also, explore industry solutions such as Google’s privacy sandbox and contextual targeting.

2.    Organic Search continues to undergo Seismic Transformation:

Trend –

·       SEO evolved into SGE (Search Generative Experience), which summarizes, and compiles results from across the web. This means less traffic to publishers. Humans interact with AI results, and do not visit the website.

·        Voice search becomes more prevalent (~27% right now).

Path forward –

·       Marketers need to focus on long tail keywords that align with conversational search patterns.

·       It is important to structure content in a Q&A manner using natural, conversational language to enable voice search optimization.  

·       Finally – focus on quality content – human assured content is and will continue to surpass AI-generated content.

3.    Consumer spends more time with Short-form videos than any other content (50 minutes out of total of 125 minutes per day)  

TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts are at the forefront of short form videos.

Path forward –

Marketers need to surgically leverage social media platforms based on specific KPIs (engagement, discovery, purchase etc.). TikTok leads handily on engagement rate @ 5.4% (likes, comments etc.), and Reels leaves everyone in the dust with a watch rate at 13% (view rate > 3 sec). YouTube shorts used extensively for discovery.

TAKING CONCRETE SHAPEà

4.    Dawn of Gen AI in Art – Advanced Video and Image Generation

·       Advanced image generation enabled by neural style transfer that combines content of one image with style of another (attached slide with examples of mona Lisa art rendered in 3 different styles from world known artists). Top platforms – DALL.E and Midjourney

·       Text to Video generation-   Creation of promotional videos, training materials, and product demos using custom avatars. Features like natural idling, head nodding and seamless transition are available that makes it look like a natural recording.

Path forward –

Continually update the skills and knowledge to stay ahead of leveraging AI for video production, graphic design, and data analysis.  Learn how to leverage these tools cleverly to augment individual skills to stay relevant.

5.    Evolution of Marketing Analytics

·       Emerging concept of central AI application that works across all MarTech tools- Example Adobe Sensei Gen AI, a central AI works across Adobe tech stack.

·       Data clean rooms to activate with first party data especially after demise of chrome cookies.

·       Extensive industry conversion on ethics

Path forward –

·       Create high value exchange so clients/prospects will be amenable to sharing first part information.

·       Also, focus on data quality/integrity is even more critical than ever especially for LLMs (garbage in, garbage out) since the downsides of wrong decisions are highly amplified.

Notable 6^th

-        Blogs replaced by Podcast:

There are 600 MM blogs and 4 MM podcasts with 60 million podcast episodes. Assuming 8 billion people, that translates to blog for 8 people and 1 podcast for 133. For the more established businesses that already have the SEO authority, Podcasts are replacing blogs for certain types of content. 

Notable 7^th

-        Growth of Influencer Marketing:

50% Millennials trust influencers to purchase products on social media driven by transparency and authenticity (versus 38% for celebrities). This used to be ~35% in 2020. This is leading to longer-term and performance-based partnerships with influencers.