This year is slowly coming to an end and if you aren't exhausted, you may have done something wrong.
Digital professionals saw massive changes to the Internet landscape in 2013, from search and social to advertising and analytics. Despite this, the industry adapted and innovated at a rapid clip, which bodes well for the New Year. It's an exciting time to be a digital professional, and the 17 experts interviewed here promise even more good (read: challenging, yet potentially lucrative) times with their bold 2014 digital predictions.
2. Location Becomes the New Retargeting Signal for Mobile. Next year brands will begin utilizing location-based data to more effectively reach consumers and successfully convert customers across the Web and mobile. Mobile ad campaigns will start to leverage comprehensive analytics to hyper-target existing customers in real-time and identify avenues to connect them with their next customers on their most trusted device. Wearables and other innovative technologies analyzing consumers' movements are a sign of what's to come.
3. Artificial Intelligence is a Black Box. Automated Intelligence lives on. Many vendors currently fail to demonstrate how their artificial intelligence based on common third-party data brings any value to marketers. In 2014, marketers will seek those vendors using intelligent software that automates media to produce new insights that no one else has gleaned by combining their brands first-party customer data and linking it with location-based and proprietary data. Brands will crack the code of big data by using these findings to drive data-informed decisions on the right course of action to take, at the right time, with the right message and over the right channel.
At the same time, the growth in data will lead to consolidation in the data management space. Several DMPs have been in the business for 3-4 years and will start looking for exits. The big players that already own the data (Experian, Acxiom, etc.) are still missing pieces such as analytics suites. Watch for these companies to buy up smaller DMPs, building shortcuts between the end client and data ingestion.
2. The Other Shoe Will Drop on Fraud. Fraud has been sweeping through the online media press like a fever, with nearly everyone throwing up their hands and suggesting there is no true cure. This conversation will get much louder next year as one of the most prescribed remedies - behavioral targeting - is shown to be riddled with fraudulent traffic as well.
Cookies are regarded as one of the best defenses against fraud under the theory that a cookied Web user moving across several sites and exhibiting the behavioral traits of a real human must therefore be a real, living, breathing human. We know that's not true, but what we don't know is just how badly cookie pools are inflated by bot traffic. We'll get a sense next year as brands and tech companies clamp down on the practice.
3. Big Gains in Programmatic Premium Spending. The buy-side has given every indication that it wants to utilize RTB and programmatic buying to access online ad inventory, rather than deal with the old method of sending in orders. While it's popular, programmatic is still quite complex and primarily addresses remnant inventory. Next year, we'll see more publishers make their premium inventory available through programmatic means. However, expect this to go well beyond the basic (yet technologically complex) private exchanges we see today as publishers understand the bigger boost to their bottom line and new and existing toolsets make it easier for publishers to offer their inventory through primary publishing ad servers.
2. Big Data is Here to Stay: Big data will start to have more meaning as leading retailers and technology vendors use big data to solve real world problems. To start adding real value, big data will move beyond reporting and visualization and we will see more retailers using big data driven applications to drive relevant, personalized real-time experiences for shoppers.
3. Adapting the Showroom Experience: Showrooming was one of the big trends in 2012 and early 2013. Retailers now realized the issues that drove consumers to shop in-store and buy online and they have offered price matching, altered return policies and created unique products to make buying in-store a more appealing process that will bring some people back to stores. If you need a reminder there are these great commercials from BestBuy.
4. Luxury Brands Will Lead with Personalization: Knowledge of the customer is key in the retail experience, especially in creating loyalty. We will continue to see luxury brands invest in creating more intimate, personalized experiences for their high-value consumers with interactive shopping tools and other innovations that will pave the way for the rest of retail to follow. In particular, I am impressed with how Tori Burch and Burberry are integrating the digital and physical worlds together in their shopping experience.
2. Technology Meets Financial Services Grows. The two markets are merging in an unprecedented fashion. Innovation is increasingly becoming a priority for financial service companies as innovators ranging from Google to PayPal and Square gain traction - how can financial services companies be more nimble? Visa and Mastercard are no longer the only ways to pay - thousands of companies are vying to take a bite out of their revenues.
3. Mobile Payments. 2013 was a great year for mobile and it grew quickly. Braintree claims their mobile transactions grew 400 percent from $1 billion to $4 billion. Over the next 5-7 years, mobile will grow at a higher compounded rate than anything else. Forrester Research estimates mobile payments will each $90 billion by 2017. If e-commerce companies lag in their mobile strategy, they can expect a decline in revenue.
2. Online Sales Taxes Become More Complicated. Dropshipping and fulfillment centers lead to an exponential increase in sales tax complexity for small businesses. As e-commerce grows and more businesses are selling online, we'll see much faster adoption with drop shipping and merchants using fulfillment centers around the U.S. for faster shipping and help with inventory management. This means nexus in more states, and a significant increase in sales tax compliance requirements in those states.
3. Change Will Happen. At least one state will step up and simplify sales tax laws for their state. Some states are more forward thinking than others when it comes to sales tax compliance. As an example, some states determine sales taxes based on the seller's address (which tends to stay the same) and some depend on the buyer's address (which changes...). Not only does the complexity lead to small business challenges, but also many choosing to simply avoid filing. At least one state is 2014 will figure out that simplicity of sales tax laws will lead to higher compliance and therefore more tax revenue generated.
4. Bitcoin and Digital Payments Aren't Going Away. Bitcoin will meet sales tax requirements in 2014. As things stand today, the sales tax laws loosely say bitcoin transactions are subject to sales taxes. As bitcoin popularity grows, states will get more explicit that bitcoin transactions follow the same laws as other currency like $USD and the rules will become clearer for compliance.
2. By 2016, Mobile Devices will Generate More E-Commerce Sales than Desktops. Existing prediction: by 2014-2015, mobile devices will generate more Web traffic than desktops.
3. A few years ago, Google rolled out personalized search, with search results customized by geographic location, past activity and a number of other factors. In 2014, websites will deploy equally sophisticated personalization. No two website visits will be the same; instead, they'll be tailored to the individual.
4. The Role of the Community Manager Continues to Rise in Strategic Value to Organizations. In 2014, the community manger enters the C-Suite, as more organizations appoint Chief Community Officers (CCO).
5. In 2013, we talked a lot about Penguin, Panda and Hummingbird. In 2014, Google will deploy a far smaller number of updates, but each update will be larger in scope. This will make the job of SEOs more challenging, not less challenging.
2. A/B Testing and Usability Become Core Issues. There is now a much greater awareness of website usability and its importance to online business success. Companies have come to the realization that simply gathering 'big data' is not enough, and that they must actually conduct tests to understand what's working and what's not. As we enter 2014, ClickTale expects analytics tools to move to the next step and provide not just data, but real actionable insights that can be translated to website improvements and the achievement of business goals.
3. Web Analytics Goes Pro. 2013 was the year in which analytics became a true profession, with e-commerce businesses launching analytics departments and seeking increasing numbers of analysts. In 2014, ClickTale expects to see greater investment by organizations in this area, on both personnel (hiring, training and building dedicated teams) and tools/infrastructure to support their business needs.
2. The Golden Revenue KPI is No Longer Customer Count, But Customer Engagement. Traditional marketing/sales KPIs will become secondary - as usage and engagement is the cornerstone for other successful performance indicators.
3. Revenue Growth Will Come from 'Farmers' Not The 'Hunters'. There will be a major shift away from 'Hunters' to 'Farmers' who will focus on nourishing current customers and ensuring customer lifetime value vs. continuous new customer acquisitions.
4. Marketing and Sales Teams Will Unite to Create an Organizational Shift to Customer Success. In 2014, technologies will begin to follow this evolution of the customer lifecycle, instead of disparate systems, from lead, to customer acquisition, to customer success.
5. Businesses will understand that data is different, will treat usage data separately. Businesses have tapped into a new type of data: customer usage data. These businesses will realize that it needs to be treated in a completely different way and place larger value on dealing with this "different" data in 2014.
2. The Cross-Channel Complex Approach Will Become one of the Most Efficient Ones to Take in Mobile Marketing and Advertising. In particular, social media, mobile and video will remain the most advantageous sectors to mix for the maximization of a company's ad revenue, e.g. sharing of interactive promo videos on mobile and in social networks.
The latest research reveals that most techniques in mobile ad effectiveness measurement will be repurposed and renewed, allowing advertisers to reduce the number of counted false clicks, get more precise data in terms of mobile campaigns performance, response rates, ROI, etc. and improve them in response to audience's reactions and interactions.
2. Open Platforms Will Reign. As consumer attention fragments through an ever increasing number of media channels and devices, the number of niche technologies focused on solving features will continue to increase. Over time this will present an ever-growing tax on the digital dollar, creating inefficiencies in both campaign workflow and effectiveness. For those ad tech vendors serving the demand side (and who cannot rely on selling their own media and data for survival), openness in terms of integrations and willingness to partner will become both a means of survival and a great source of competitive advantage as advertisers crave the ability to put their data to work across multiple channels and experiment with new ideas while at the same time leveraging a consistent workflow for efficiency and data security.
3. Whose data is it anyway? Data has taken on a life of its own in the online advertising world. It has its own value as a currency and commodity and its own ecosystem in the cloud. Consumers are gaining control over "their data" with technologies like disconnect.me that allow them to control and eradicate their data footprints today — and likely monetize them tomorrow. Brands are becoming more savvy and protective about ownership and access to their customer and transactional data. And regulators are working to maintain order. Expect marketers to take more control of their data management infrastructure through trusted partnerships and draw clear boundaries and manage risk in a complicated ecosystem.
4. Targeting Across Screens is the New Black. Over the last three years the topic of every conversation has been RTB and programmatic. It has all been about audience and new ways of buying. Expect to see more comfort around programmatic and as people get more comfortable with the practice they will be talking about it less. In its place the vernacular and the conversation will begin to turn to a bigger challenge - dynamic targeting and messaging across screens. In particular, expect to see more interest in sequencing of messages across screens, as the consumer becomes more and more nomadic, more irritated than ever about a bad user experience and more demanding about the value exchange between free content and targeted advertising.
2. A Year Closer to "The Year of Mobile." Every year people say it is "the" year for mobile. I don't exactly agree, but do believe that it will continue to deliver eye balls at a record setting pace. Despite this, I think advertisers will still continue to struggle with delivering conversions via mobile devices, especially those that drive real dollars. Getting a mobile user to view something and click on something is becoming the norm, however if the goal is to leverage mobile as an additional revenue stream, which to date has not been proven to drive significant conversion dollars, then I think marketers will continue to test the waters, but not jump all in.
2. Market innovations will come from new, unexpected directions and companies, as the millennial generation increasingly rejects platforms they view as "uncool." Services like Snapchat and WhatsApp will come to replace older services that are "used by my parents." Older services such as MySpace and Facebook will attempt to retain the interest of younger users by appealing to narrower audiences, such as music or social gaming fans.
3. Niche and special-interest groups will remain focused around forum communities as a way to conduct more in-depth discussions than the typical social media outlets.
4. Companies will increasingly come to rely on the advantages of a forum-based, crowd-sourced solution as a resource for both customer support and marketing.
5. The continuing trend toward mobile devices for everyday content consumption will move faster, putting an even greater emphasis on designing social media experiences for hand-held devices.
In 2014, e-commerce merchants will tailor their mobile, social and email messaging more toward the individual. It behooves them to implement modern technology to make the experience more personal.