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Ho Ho Ho<\/p>\n
As we get into Christmas spirit and everyone digs out their crystal balls and begins to make their predictions for the year ahead, it also gives us time to think about the marketing headlines we read in 2014 and consider that, in reality, we may well put these into practice in 2015. In truth, over the past few years, we have drowned ourselves in content, opinions and ideas to the point where the majority of it falls onto deaf ears and the industry is now so time poor that we rarely action the things that we said we would do.<\/p>\n
2014 was a great year for tools and for choices for brands and agencies, so much so, that,\u00a0in many cases, we missed the point . We can measure almost anything now but, inevitably, just as soon as we had understood analytics and had formed actionable goals and\u00a0agreed\u00a0KPI\u2019s, then the goal posts will change yet again ahead of\u00a02015.<\/p>\n
Elections and Disruptive Industries<\/strong><\/p>\n For me, 2015 will all be about disruption. The UK have a general election looming this year, it will create uncertainty in the industry and it could slow down investment opportunities with so many permutations of how this may pan out. The marketing industry will respond to this and the backlink, social and sentiment tool providers will be quick to point out that they\u00a0may\u00a0have a greater grasp of what the population are thinking than the traditional \u2018publishers\u2019 with their hidden political agendas and favoured choice of polls. Our general election will be more \u2018digitally aware\u2019 and probably more blighted by opinion than ever before (after all, a statistic is simply number until you put into context). Content will become opinionated and sentiment will be realised through branded marketing messages in 2015; make sure you read between the lines, not everything will be as it seems.<\/p>\n Expect to see the US marketing machine limbering up for their 2016 general election next year as well. There\u2019s a lot of VC interest in Europe from both the US and Asia currently, so I can imagine the top providers in data, tech, social and marcoms will all be watched with keen interest as the latest \u2018social listening\u2019 tools take a more prominent centre stage position. The UK general election may change how others play their game plan in the future.<\/p>\n Mobile Video Content and Advertising<\/strong><\/p>\n If 2014 was the year of content, then the star of the show in 2015 will be mobile video content and mobile video advertising.\u00a0Paid search<\/a>\u00a0will still cover more than half of the entire digital marketing spends, but it\u2019s those niche areas like mobile video advertising that will demonstrate the massive growth as the device market grows and the content that works particularly well on it grows exponentially.<\/p>\n Native Advertising<\/strong><\/p>\n \u2018Native advertising\u2019 will be the most hyped, ambiguous marketing service of 2015, as media buyers try and reposition\u00a0Display advertising<\/a>\u00a0away from the agencies that have called it Programmatic. There will be brands that will be fooled by the new sheeps\u2019 clothing and before they know it they\u2019ll realise that their affiliate partners and agencies have been replaced by vendors that are actually selling their media space, not their marketing expertise. In short, too many people are offering a service that people need and there isn\u2019t enough quality digital space to go around. 2015 will still reek of mistrust between vendors, agencies and media buyers, the inevitable outcome will be that clients lose out until the industry matures and eventually consolidates.<\/p>\n