Converge Weekly

1. Growth of digital ad spend

Due to the lower cost of entry, together with all the possible measurement, particularly return on investment, digital marketing will become increasingly attractive over the next year. Next year will see interruptive communication being more and more replaced with persuasion and engagement; a trend that is already happening as mentioned during 2009 and will continue into the next year.

2. Mobile will grow

Mobile as a medium has been one of the hot topics over the past year. Many predicted it becoming a major channel. It has done much globally (especially in developing nations); in terms of mobile money transfers and now more recently with the commercialised roll-out of payment options such as MoWaly and wiWallet. As an extension to an integrated campaign however, marketers still need to get their head around how to use this medium effectively. We feel that 2010 will be the year we see many brands and campaigns getting it right. A phone is no longer just a phone, this is truly exciting and brands need to understand how and what they can communicate on mobile devices that is both effective and non intrusive.

3. Social media and social networks will continue to be on the forefront of growth

“Social media” has certainly been one of the buzz words of 2009 and we don’t see this fact changing in 2010. What we anticipate is that it will become even more ubiquitous and the amount of time, interaction and people seen in these spaces will increase steadily; as too will the importance of consumer generated media as an element of life in 2010. So much so that more communication that used to happen via telephones and email will now take place through social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook where the bonus is that it’s completely permission based and you don’t need an address book or telephone numbers to reach people. With this trend of an increasing digital presence in an increasing number of places, the “one-sign-in-fits-all” will become prolific and more rapidly adopted over the coming year – hopefully alleviating the frustration of yet another new website registration.

4. Digital advertising

Advertising inventory in digital environments will continue to become an absolute premium as the number of unique browsers continues to climb but the available inventory hits a ceiling. This will pose further challenges to digital media strategists and planners as they have to truly refine their strategies in order to find the web savvy consumer they want to connect with and meet campaign objectives. This will see marketers and strategists pushed for smarter and more creative ideas. We still need to be mindful of the fact that budgets are still going to be cut and will remain tight. On the positive side though is that this will further encourage creative thinking.

5. Media measurement

As more companies, people, advertisers, marketers and communicators adopt and use social media and interact with consumer generated media it is going to become increasingly important in 2010 to measure the impact these mediums have on business, brands and services that are actively involved in these spaces. New metrics will need to be set up to measure the awareness and engagement factor these mediums deliver, along with identifying the measurables versus the business objectives.

6. Broadband culture

As broadband prices continue to drop and monthly bandwidth caps continue to expand in size, the culture of “true broadband” will slowly start to begin its journey into South African homes and business’ and ultimately change the way we experience being “connected” in ways we, as South Africans, can hardly yet imagine. This will also mean that we will see richer ad and web site content becoming standard placement.

7. 2010 FIFA World Cup

The 2010 FIFA World Cup will be the biggest event of its kind that has ever taken place in South Africa and the build up to the event and the event itself will dominate through two thirds of next year. Anticipate a massive chase to buy up available digital inventory from now until August, after the World Cup. This event will also be the catalyst for some of the most creative, interactive advertising campaigns and viral stunts yet seen in our country. We will see digital being used as an extension to traditional mediums during the campaigns that will roll out over this period.

8. Cloud computing

Cloud computing is a general term for anything that involves delivering hosted services over the Internet. We believe that this will become more attractive and adoption of this new way of doing business will increase next year due to the attractive benefits it offers in terms of lowered costs, overheads and a reduced need for location based management structures. As with all new technology and shifts in thinking, this will take time and some getting used to. Just like Google Wave – at first you sit and you stare and you wonder how this is going to benefit your experience and then you have your first interactive document review and you are blown away. Or Twitter, when you first begin you have to follow random people to join conversations and eventually you find that you have no idea how you lived without it. Or even the mobile phone. We see the same sentiment being applicable to cloud computing in a few years from now.

9. The role of the digital agency

On a final note, we believe that 2010 will see the next generation approach to the role and relationship of the digital agency with regards to brands, products and services. In our vision this relationship is considered to be one of the most important and fundamentally essential partnerships a clients’ business will have. We see this coming to fruition over the next year.

SOURCE: bizcommunity.com