If the digital future is shaped by the digital past of 2011, then a new report from comScore paints an interesting picture of what’s on the horizon. In the 2012 U.S. Digital Future in Focus report, comScore outlines the trends in online search, online video, online advertising, social media, e-commerce and mobile, and predicts how those trends will affect digital media in 2012.
Consumer Behavior Shifts to Social Media for Communications
Telephones and email are so 2010. The world now turns to social media, particularly Facebook, for communication. In 2011, Facebook accounted for the largest share of online minutes across the entire Internet — 16.6% share.
Google Starts to See Its Stronghold Slip
Thanks to Microsoft’s social search partnership with Facebook, the company’s search engine, Bing, successfully surpassed Yahoo! as the #2 search engine in 2011 and has become a real potential threat for the all-powerful Google. Of course, Google is still far in the lead in the search market, but consumers are realizing there are other viable options.
The World of Video Will Never Look the Same
As more people purchase smartphones and tablet devices, they are consuming more video content on those mobile devices. In 2011, on an average day, over 100 million people in the United States watched online video content via mobile devices. That’s a 43% increase over the prior year. You can bet that number will grow significantly again in 2012. There is simply no going back now.
Digital Access Has Far-Reaching Effects
As more people get digital access, particularly through smartphones and tablet devices, content consumption habits, shopping behaviors, and advertising budgets are changing. Companies need to adapt quickly.
In 2011, 4.8 trillion display ad impressions were delivered to Americans. Companies expect to invest even more heavily in digital advertising in 2012 as well as in social media and content marketing initiatives. This shift in advertising budgets is in direct response to consumer content consumption habits — both online and via mobile devices. At the end of 2011, 8% of digital activity occurred via mobile devices rather than through traditional web channels.
The number of people turning to the web and mobile web for shopping is also growing faster than brick-and-mortar shopping. E-commerce growth rates increased by double-digits in 2011 despite the faltering economy.
What do you think? Are you investing enough and doing the right things to market your brand successfully in the digital future?
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Susan Gunelius is the author of 10 marketing, social media, branding, copywriting, and technology books, and she is President & CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc., a marketing communications company. She also owns Women on Business, an award-wining blog for business women. She is a featured columnist for Entrepreneur.com and Forbes.com, and her marketing-related articles have appeared on websites such as MSNBC.com, BusinessWeek.com, TodayShow.com, and more.
She has over 20 years of experience in the marketing field having spent the first decade of her career directing marketing programs for some of the largest companies in the world, including divisions of AT&T and HSBC. Today, her clients include large and small companies around the world and household brands like Citigroup, Cox Communications, Intuit, and more. Susan is frequently interviewed about marketing and branding by television, radio, print, and online media organizations, and she speaks about these topics at events around the world. You can connect with her on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google+.
