Each year Mary Meeker, an American venture capitalist, presents her Internet Trends report detailing the latest digital advertising developments, which can be leveraged to improve your company’s online presence. This year, Meeker’s report was over 200 pages long, but Lauren Johnson from Adweek has broken the report down into seven individual trends that you should consider in order to impress your market.
- The first trend Meeker touched on regards U.S. internet advertising. Mobile advertising has seen dramatic growth over the past several years, so it should come as no surprise that desktop ad revenue has come to a near standstill over the same time period. According to Meeker, mobile ad revenue grew by more than 66 percent in 2015. Overall internet ad revenue has also risen, reaching an unbelievable $60 billion.
- Meeker’s next digital advertising trend noted that Google and Facebook are taking over the internet advertising game. Facebook’s ad revenue grew by a whopping 59 percent between 2014 and 2015, with a majority of this ad revenue coming from mobile use. Similarly, Google’s ad revenue grew by 18 percent during this time. Together, the two leading companies accounted for 76 percent of internet advertising growth over the time period.
- The third trend focuses on consumers’ advertising preferences. According to Meeker, online advertising isn’t necessarily a hit among consumers. Out of 3,200 surveyed internet users, 92 percent said they’d consider an ad blocker. Sixty-two percent of those surveyed also said they were irritated with preroll ads. Further, 81 percent of video ads are actually muted, requiring the consumer to click the video in order to play sound.
- The next trend Meeker notes focuses on global ad blocking on both mobile and desktop devices. According to new research by PageFair, over 400 million global users block ads on the mobile web compared to 200 million desktop users blocking ads. “The results should be taken with a grain of salt, though, since PageFair’s technology helps publishers work around ad blockers and mobile ad blocking has only been ‘a thing’ for a year,” Johnson noted.
- The increased use of mobile devices stems from consumers’ attraction to devices that ease accessibility, especially since the demand for fast service is becoming greater and greater. In connection to the demand for fast service, being able to retain consumers’ attention long enough to capture their business becomes a main issue. With the average attention span down to only eight seconds, digital advertising has continued to direct its focus toward Meeker’s next trend: condensing content and making sure it captures the audience’s immediate attention. Achieving this task is hard for a lot of advertisers, but one app that has found the key to success is Snapchat. In Meeker’s report, she singled out two Snapchat campaigns that were particularly popular and successful in 2015: Spotify’s top artists of the year campaign and another for Universal Pictures’ Furious 7..
- With so much present-day research focusing on millennials, the next trend regards the current engagement leaders among social networks. According to comScore data shared by Meeker, Facebook sill reaches the most millennials. This is not to say that millennials aren’t varying their activity on different social media sites, but they find that Facebook provides a current/relevant news feed, a platform for big announcements and a medium where they can share what they support and believe in. Following the networking powerhouse in popularity among millennials are Snapchat and Instagram.
- The last trend noted in Meeker’s report is the increasing popularity of chat-based marketing. Unlike declining LinkedIn and Twitter, chat apps like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger have seen a steady increase in popularity over the past several years. These applications are becoming more relevant as businesses and consumers begin to rely on them for not only personal but also business-related conversations. We’ve seen a steady evolution from casual social conversations to strictly professional conversations. Businesses no longer proactively seek out face-to-face relations unless it’s with clients or potential new clients. Internally, companies prefer using these chat-based apps in order to save time and energy.
Digital advertising is going to continue to evolve and transform as more innovative technology becomes available, but by heeding the guidance of individuals like Meeker, we can continue to grow with our consumers instead of away from them. With annual social networking reports, we are better equipped with the tools to not only anticipate trends among social media platforms, but to also take advantage of where our current market is connecting and browsing.
Need help staying ahead of these trends? Either comment below or contact The Brandon Agency at (843) 916-2000 to learn more about our services and what we can do for you!
For more information on the latest digital advertising trends, make sure to view Meeker’s entire presentation at kpcb.com.