Is it too late for a 2010 trends post?
I hope not, nothing wrong with getting a quick look to see if you’re on the right track. The truth is, Sandra Denyer and I presented this topic at our well-received TD Summit last November. We want to stay on top of this and congratulate ourselves if we get it right, and argue until the worlds end if people don’t think what we said came true. Here’s what we talked about (with no changes – honest!).
Important at this juncture to point out here that we avoided fads and fashions when looking at trends. We’d like to understand the key drivers between organisations and consumers that will shape the way online activity develops and use this to direct our marketing activity.
Our predictions were:
- The continued rise in volume and sophistication of voucher and discount sites
- Merchants moving towards greater focus on lifetime values and introducing effective revenue share models
- 3 consumer pressures of cost, quality and time will help to shape the market
- User generated content will develop even further, possibly to live reviews and the rise of the video review
- Mobile ad spend to increase significantly across the year as networks and handset manufacturers make smart phones more accessible and user friendly
- Merchants becoming affiliates in affinity deals to drive additional revenue streams and add value to their users
- Budgets and traffic driven from offline to online in the continued search for trackable ROI
Check back in with us at the end of March when we’ll be reviewing these predictions and how they’re panning out across our search, affiliate, campaign and tracking channels. I’ll look to include examples of where these came true and any trends that we didn’t see in the crystal ball which are coming to the fore.
“I told you so” coming in about 7 weeks…
Harry Hurst
Account Director