Digital Trends & Future Tech – 49 Key Insights from FIRST

May 1, 2014 | Digital Strategy, Digital Trends

FIRST Process Diagram v2-03

FIRST ON DIGITAL TRENDS & FUTURE TECH

  1. Digital budgets up, understanding of how digital drives profits, down. Back in 2010 Econsultancy found that 67% of companies rated themselves as “good” / “very good” assessing ROI. In 2013 that figure has dropped to 50%. (Source: forbes.com)
  2. As you ponder Gartner’s digital marketing transit map, think about how your organisation is bringing these neighbourhoods together, and the important role you play to make this happen! (Source: chiefmartec.com)
  3. Marketo/Altimeter Group – Jeremiah Owyang on the future of digital marketing: Paid, Owned, and Earned is converging into one single form of media. Couple of nice case studies. (Source: slideshare.net)
  4. Great customer experiences drive loyalty; here are 4 reasons why this matters: “Longer customer tenure, increased purchase value, relationships that are more efficient to serve, and more referrals which drive additional sales”. (Source: econsultancy.com)
  5. Two key aspects of agile marketing: #1 Testing and data over opinions and conventions. #2 Many small experiments over a few large bets. (Source: chiefmartec.com)
  6. Google Compute Engine vs Amazon EC2: Inter-regional file copy delivered at avg 15 Mbit/s on AWS, but took just 15 seconds on GCE (avg 300 Mbit/s). (Source: gigaom.com)
  7. Yes to agile marketing but don’t forget quality altogether: “It comes back to finding the right balance between super-slow perfectionism and super-fast sloppiness”. (Source: chiefmartec.com)
  8. We cannot help but wonder whilst ideas from discussion papers on Quantified/Sensored Self seem a distant possibility from “everyday normal living” right at this moment, in all but a few short years we will have moved very quickly to a new norm of accepted self monitoring (and sharing). – Continuous sharing of biometrics = real-time increase in life insurance premiums..? (Source: blogs.gartner.com)
  9. Two insights on agile marketing from HubSpot’s CEO: #1 It makes the marketing function more transparent. #2 Agile marketing manages activity, not performance (that’s done at a level above the execution of tasks). (Source: chiefmartec.com)
  10. Forrester/BMA: “Marketing must do things that it hasn’t done ever before to be successful” (n=117). (Source: chiefmartec.com)
  11. The most frustrating marketing analytics challenge? Acting on data to improve marketing performance (n=242, 2012). (Source: bufferapp.com)
  12. Nice, but what the report fails to mention is NZ’s disproportionally high budget allocation to traditional channels, when compared with AU. Still a lot of room for growth for digital. (Source: econsultancy.com)
  13. The end of competitive advantage? From IBM’s C-level Exec global survey (n=4,183): “CEOs now expect that new competition is as likely to come from other industries as it is their own”. (Source: chiefmartec.com)
  14. Real-world analytics that provides insight into pedestrian volume, allows for time-of-day analysis and gives retailers an associated “opportunity score”. Nice. (Source: cre-apps.com)
  15. eMarketer (US) is predicting that time spent on non-voice mobile activities will surpass time spent online on desktop/laptop computers for the first time this year. (Source: emarketer.com)
  16. 2018, the year mobile overtakes desktop ad spend? We’d certainly agree that “time spent engaging with advertising content on desktops is declining”. (Source: marketingland.com)
  17. mCom retail sales to represent 25% of total eCom by 2017, tablet share to make up 72% of this (US, eMarketer). (Source: orbitalalliance.com)
  18. eMarketer (US): “By 2017, 29.7% of all digital video ad spending will go toward mobile ads (including ads served to tablet devices)”. (Source: emarketer.com)
  19. 2013 Global Marketing Effectiveness Tracker (n=1,200): “78% of CEOs around the world believe Ad & Media Agencies are not performance-driven enough and do not focus enough on helping to generate the (real and P&L-quantifiable) business results they expect their Marketing departments to deliver” (The Fournaise Marketing Group). (Source: fournaisegroup.com)
  20. The principle of fair use has been upheld in the Google book scanning lawsuit (started 2005), substantiation being: “The crucial point is whether the use to which Google is putting these copyrighted works qualifies as “transformative” – in the sense that it adds value or uses the work in a different and beneficial way. The judge decided that it clearly does this”. (Source: gigaom.com)
  21. “Most marketers create digital billboards and bumper stickers that are ineffective at getting the message across. Those that segment groups, target them effectively, and use digital tools and techniques to deliver a message of value at the right time will emerge as the winners” (Also called ‘Search’…). (Source: cmo.com)
  22. Google Trends now available for YouTube Search. Just as well, given YouTube has now surpassed the 1 billion monthly user mark. (Source: toprankblog.com)
  23. Google China <5% market share, Alibaba.com’s Aliyun will mean even more fragmentation.
    (Source: searchengineland.com)
  24. Most banking customers prefer to go online to learn about new products and services (Gallup, US). Are you dedicating sufficiently large budgets to the digital channel to maximise this opportunity..? (Source: businessjournal.gallup.com)
  25. HBR – When people are the channel itself, the rules change: “Top marketers know that they can’t put one over on the customer, nor can they control the message or their customer’s behavior. It takes humility, appreciation, and an orientation towards openness and inclusion”. (Source: blogs.hbr.org)
  26. Forrester is probably right. Google does have the broadest set of affinity data (most varied by source): Spending time (YouTube), connections/sharing/liking (Gmail, G+) and let’s not forget the actual search index itself…(Source: venturebeat.com)
  27. Apparently Facebook Home’s “people first” OS experience has been available on Windows Phone for years. Unfortunately that’s a bit of a moot point. (Source: marketingland.com)
  28. 81% of Inc. 500 now use LinkedIn, up from 73% a year earlier (n=170), though survey does not define specifically what is meant by “use”. (Source: marketingprofs.com)
  29. Rapid response marketing: Some great examples of reactionary campaigns. (Source: econsultancy.com)
  30. We’re picking July 2015. (Source: stoppress.co.nz)
  31. The future of quantified self likely accelerated by implanted and ingestible technologies, with possibly far-reaching commercial consequences? – “Hi this is Sovereign. Let us monitor your body and we’ll give you a lower premium on your life insurance”. (Source: thenextweb.com)
  32. Consumer TV viewing habits are changing rapidly: “iTunes users have downloaded more than one billion TV episodes and 380 million movies from iTunes to date”. (Source: apple.com)
  33. eMarketer – In 2012 Australians spent an average of US$ 3,547 per person (who bought online) – the highest pp in the world and 54% more pp than the US. That is pretty good going really. (Source: marketingmag.com.au)
  34. Newspapers continue to struggle turning traditional advertising dollars into digital dollars: “In 2012, approximately $16 in print revenue was lost for every $1 in digital revenue” (up from $11 in 2011, Pew Research Centre). (Source: paidcontent.org)
  35. Congrats to Luke, Guy and the entire Torpedo7 team – May you always conduct your business in true entrepreneurial style! (Source: idealog.co.nz)
  36. APAC registering the strongest improvement in outlook in Global Marketing Index (n=1,225). (Source: marketingprofs.com)
  37. Fascinating to see what factors are affecting the value of Bitcoin. (Source: venturebeat.com)
  38. Skype is not slowing down: “Skype’s increase of nearly 51 billion minutes in 2012 is more than twice that achieved by all international carriers in the world, combined”. (Source: gigaom.com)
  39. Google’s user base, along with PayPal’s (?), will likely be the reason YubiKey Neo / U2F will gain widespread acceptance. (Source: forbes.com)
  40. We’re excited: Amazon has announced 30 minute delivery times using drones, subject to FAA approval. What could possibly go wrong. (Source: amazon.com)
  41. Choice, control, charm, connectedness and calibration (measurement) – Five core ideas that are shaping the future of advertising (Google / ad:tech). (Source: forbes.com)
  42. “The Drag and Drop utility provides users with an agile mechanism for engineering DNA” – The ultimate goal? Creating a marketplace for synthetic DNA. (Source: genomecompiler.com)
  43. The Apple unofficial official PR machine is in full swing. It better have biometric data. (Source: venturebeat.com)
  44. We’re quietly excited about The Internet of Things. Take ReelyActive’s cost-effective RFID solution, for example: “They have taken some of the smarts out, simplified the receivers, and moved the intelligence to the cloud.” (Source: venturebeat.com)
  45. Ok so Apple is working on iWatch, what other wearable computing will we be seeing in the near future? Interesting to read Google hoping for Glass to drive 3% of revenue by 2015. (Source: bits.blogs.nytimes.com)
  46. Interesting. (Source: networkworld.com)
  47. Just in time for the reboot of the Terminator franchise…? – But seriously, this is exciting from the perspective of Robotics gaining accelerated funding and consumer-minded focus. (Source: nytimes.com)
  48. Content provider fragmentation prevails for consumers even for “pure-play” digital providers: As we’ve thought about this, there isn’t really one “box” as yet that gives you Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube (and HBO) “native” and all on the same box? (Chromecast – sort of?). (Source: venturebeat.com)
  49. Heard the term “API” thrown around but you never quite figured out what that actually is? Here’s a good explanation, and why it’s important. (Source: blog.compete.com)