Marketers, retailers, content owners and technology firms are more focused than ever on obtaining results from investments in digital marketing. If past years were about amassing data from the touchpoints between companies and consumers, 2012 will be about curating, filtering and measuring that information to drive outcomes.
To that end, retailers are synthesizing increasingly vast and complex data streams to inform decisions about inventories, pricing and merchandising. Marketers are taking a similar approach with the data they gather from the ever-expanding social web. Content owners are also using data-centric methods to analyze how people are consuming and sharing media. No longer satisfied with collecting “likes,” fans, followers and viral hits, companies are now asking harder questions about the real value of these social network interactions.
More and more, marketers are realizing that traditional notions of interruptive advertising need to be rethought. Many are experimenting with branded videos, games, apps and online contests that blur the line between advertising and content. In some cases, these forms of “magnetic content” do a better job of brand projection than more conventional online video or display ads.
One of the keys to the success of magnetic content is that audiences are primed to consume media in increasingly diverse and fluid ways. People use smartphones, tablets, laptops, desktops, ereaders, game consoles, connected TVs and set-top boxes to access video and other content, and they expect that content to flow seamlessly across devices and media platforms. This presents opportunities for brand marketers and content owners that understand how to deliver to increasingly demanding customers. But it also challenges these companies to strike difficult balances between unfettered access and revenue generation, between intelligent targeting and privacy concerns, and between new and old content licensing models.
The collision of content and advertising will accelerate in the coming year as the political establishment gears up for the 2012 US presidential election. The upcoming contest promises to push the digital envelope as candidates make novel uses of viral videos, social networks, blogs and other sharing sites.