7 DIGITAL MARKETING TRENDS FOR 2013 -- DRIVING BRAND CONVERSATION TO ECOMMERCE

 

Mobile, social, gaming, data, special offers —  all converge in new and creative ways. As the big online players acquire technologies that broaden their eco-systems and enrich communications, marketers are seeing tremendous opportunities to augment their messages and capture customer loyalty through digital. In the year ahead, digital marketing budgets are expected to increase by 50%-150%.

Here are some of the trends that will drive their activities in 2013:

• Near Field Communication: According to Juniper Research,  half of all mobile devices will be NFC-enabled by 2016. Powered by this technology, consumers will be able to view customized rich media, receive targeted special offers, share their experiences and most importantly, make purchases, via their devices. For marketers, NFC holds promise because it can directly integrate promotions at point of sale.
• Gamification: To make campaigns more interactive, marketers will continue to turn to gaming, which offers consumers a fun, memorable and sometimes educational way to immerse themselves in a brand experience. Per Gartner,  more than 70% of Global 2000 organizations will have at least one gamified application by 2014. The best will reward consumption and loyalty (My Coke Rewards), feature game winners on brand properties (Domino’s Pizza Hero) and drive even more online word of mouth as winners promote themselves (Ben & Jerry’s Capture Euphoria).
• Second Screen: More than 80% of people use second screens while they watch TV, with 30%+ using them to delve deeper into content related to the first screen. As laptops, smart devices and tablets become even more pervasive, expect to see marketers leverage this trend to engage viewers in real-time conversation, deliver behind-the-scenes peeks and push bonus content that links directly to retail.  
• Wearable Tech: Miles walked, calories shed, even hours of REM sleep – if humans do it, apps and devices can measure it.  According to IMS Research, the wearable technology market is expected to exceed $6 billion by 2016. Used mostly now for health and wellness applications, expect to see more devices for entertainment , like Google Glass. lMarketers will use this technology to acquire rich data on customer habits and goals, making it easy to target deals: “You’re not sleeping well! Test-drive our mattress today – here’s your closest store.”
• Cineprint: Amid an ongoing debate over “the death of print,” technologies like CinePrint will breathe new life into the medium. The most popular example of CinePrint was executed by Lexus this October. In the future, we can expect to see CinePrint used for products with features  enhanced by a virtual tour or motion.
• Geofencing: Retailers are welcoming geofencing as they look for new ways to convert window-shoppers and those who visit their stores to check out products they plan to buy online. Brands can partner with retailers to “close the sale” by providing rich mobile content and deal notifications whenever a consumer walks through their store’s door or visits a specific aisle. About one-third of Americans use location-based services. In a recent survey, many said they would exchange privacy for discounts.  
• Augmented Reality: Use of Augmented Reality ("AR") has been forecast to grow at an impressive rate. Although fairly new and still developing, AR can offer consumers a wealth of reality-bending experiences. One might involve a shopper who wants to try on a dress from the comfort of her home. Through an app (or even her Webcam), AR can show her if it’s a perfect fit before she buys.

Most of these tools will require some work by marketers, which have to make the experience compelling enough for audiences to opt-in. Once they do, the payoff is a wealth of data and point-of-sale opportunities that can take consumers beyond likes to loyal.

COMMENTARY:

Wearable Technology Devices

With 170 million wearable devices forecast to be shipped in 2016, the wearable technology market is already attracting a host of suppliers with exciting innovations for a range of applications. Wearable products, the vendor landscape and factors affecting market growth are discussed in a new white paper,Wearable Technology – A Global Market Overview, by IMS Research (recently acquired by IHS (NYSE: IHS)). The complimentary white paper is based on IMS Research’s report World Market for Wearable Technology – A Quantitative Market Assessment – 2012.

 A major challenge for suppliers is to establish and expand the number of compelling use-cases for wearable devices. Key success factors include device size, non-invasiveness, ability to measure multiple parameters and provide automated feedback that improves user behaviour.  

 Increasingly, wearable devices must accomplish multiple tasks in order to be considered significantly useful. This means integration of multiple sensors and transducers, support for different connectivity profiles and reduced power consumption; thus creating opportunities for both brand manufacturers and component suppliers.

Wearable Technology Ecosystem by Vendor Categories (Click Image To Enlarge)

Gamification Market Grows Slowly, But Picking Up Steam

What makes gamification so attractive is the fact that we generally enjoy actively participating and engaging with others through entertainment. It is in our human nature to interact and be entertained with playful applications, particularly when there are engaging game design elements employed.  

M2 Research estimates that the total market for video games, video game rentals, subscriptions, digital downloads, casual games, social games, mobile games and downloadable content will top $50 billion (not including hardware sales) in 2012.  Some of the most successful video games exceed movie sales. For example, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, which launched in November, 2011, was the most successful product launch in history, grossing more than $1 billion in its first 16 days of sales.  In comparison, the most successful movie of 2011, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, grossed $381 million.  

And while Call of Duty breaks sales records across entertainment genres, it is still not a title that resonates with all consumers. The booming success of more casual, social, and mobile gaming touches a wide range of age and gender preferences. Games such as Bejeweled, Farmville, and Angry Birds come from a crop of companies  ‐  PopCap, Zynga, and Rovio ‐ and have helped open the floodgates to the number of people playing games. In particular, social games appeal to a
much broader demographic than traditional games. These games are played by men, women and children of all ages.  Children between the ages of 8 – 15 say they now visit Facebook more than any other site on the Internet.

The Social Element

This explosion of games appeals to a wider mass market audience and has greatly expanded the notion of who and how people play games. Social games today heavily rely on the large
social networks of Facebook in the US, as well as GREE and DeNA in Japan. These social networks provide the perfect environment for social collaboration and user delivery.  

Google's DoubleClick division estimates Facebook's user base at 970 million users (January 2012). This is not quite half of the entire Internet population, which stands at just over 2 billion
users worldwide, according to Internet World Stats. DoubleClick estimates that Facebook receives 33 billion visits from its user base per month, which translates to just over one visit per day per user, on average. Per visit, those users click on 31 pages and stay for more than 23 minutes, generating a stunning 1.4 million user‐years per month.  

Social games are reaching a significant portion of Facebook users. The top five social app/gaming companies on Facebook now reach a combined 430 million monthly active users, according to App Data. The enormous reach of social platforms and their dramatic mass‐market impact makes them increasingly important vehicles for communication and interaction capabilities to deliver on gamification goals.

M2 Research forecasts the market in 2012 to reach $242 million and climb to $2.8 billion by 2016. Enterprise gamification is quickly gaining share of the overall gamification market and is set to capture 38% of gamification revenue in 2012. In 2013, enterprise gamification will exceed consumer gamification revenue.

As with many emerging platform technologies, gamification has quickly gone from a horizontal market to decisively more vertical orientations. There are a number of vertical markets centered on key industries. The primary vertical markets include: Entertainment, Retail, Media & Publishing, Enterprise, Education and Healthcare/Wellness. Each of these markets supports both consumer and employee‐level engagement initiatives.  

There is now a solid core of platform vendors and service providers servicing this market, that includes Badgeville, Bunchball, BigDoor, iActionable, Gigya, Seriosity and PugPharm to name a few. In addition to these vendors, there are a number of agencies developing their own expertise in the space. These agencies sometimes partner with the platform vendors or look to implement their own gamification toolsets. Finally, there is a growing number of companies that go through the build‐it‐yourself model in an effort to create a competitive offering around their own product and brand. Whatever the case, a real industry is starting to take shape with its own trends,
technology components and processes.  

For a thorough discussion of gamification technology, I highly recommend that you read M2 Research's report "Gamification in 2012."  This is a great way to determine whether your business can benefit by adopting gamification strategy in the coming year.

Near Field Communication (NFC) Technology

NFC is a sister to Radio Frequency Identification or RFID.  Both technologies use microchipsthat transmit information wirelessly.   However, RFID is used to transmit a wireless signal over a distance of a few meters like that used in luggage tracking, toll tags, meters, etc.,  NFC, on the other hand, is used over distances of just a few centimeters (thus the "near field") for end-user applications that have some kind of personal identification attached to it, and that is under the control of the user. 

NFC chips are incorporated right into your smartphone’s circuitry.  Juniper Research thinks that about 20 percent or 300 million phones worldwide might have NFC capabilities by 2013.  By 2016, analysts believe there will be 550 million NFC-enabled phones, and when NFC phones have become mainstream, the tags that talk to them could one day be as commonplace as a barcode.

• 2013 - Sales of NFC-enabled phones will exceed $75 billion.  1 in 5 cellular phones worldwide will use NFC technology.
• 2014 - NFC transactions alone will approach $50 billion.  Google predicts that 50% of all cellular phones will use NFC technology.
• 2015 - The value of all mobile money transactions is expected to reach $670 billion.  Digital goods will make up nearly 40% of this market.  Asia Western Europe and North America will be responsible for 75% of all mobile payment transactions.

Here's how NFC technology works:

 

For a thorough discussion of NFC technology please read my blog post dated November 2, 2012.

Augmented Reality Market

As of today, only 0.1% of the users are using augmented reality products. It is estimated that in the coming five years, 1% of the population will be using this application; which is an exponential rise in the overall market. As the market will grow up, many categories of application will incorporate augmented reality features; particularly in retail, travel, and gaming application. The world will witness the use of these applications across all domains.

At present, North America and Europe are the major contributors in the augmented reality
application market; but, in the coming five years, Japan, China, and South Korea will have a major chunk in the market share of augmented reality. Right now, the augmented reality application market is liberated by small companies with talented developer squad. As the augmented reality application market will grow, it is expected that established industry players will increase their involvement.

On April 4, 2012, Google officially revealed Project Glass, a pair of glasses with a headsup display (HUD) that layers digital information over the real world.  The AR HUD glasses are expected to be marketed sometime in late 2013.

Google CEO Larry Page wearing a pair of Google augmented reality headsup display glasses (Click Image To Enlarge)

The growth of the augmented reality applications market is expected to be exponential with the
revenue growth from $181.25 million in 2011 to $5,155.92 million by 2016, at a CAGR of 95.35%
from 2011 to 2016.

The most attractive of all the segments is the smartphones segment; followed by the tablets, and so on. The major players that provide software for augmented reality are Total Immersion (France), Metaio (Germany), Wikitude (Austria), Zugara (U.S.), and Layar (The Netherlands).  

CinePrint Technology

If you happen to stumble across the ad for the 2013 Lexus ES (see below) in your favorite magazine, you'll be able to bring it to life using a technology the carmaker's ad agency is calling CinePrint. But 'technology' is a generous description since all it does is use an iPad placed under the page to play an animation which enhances the still imagery in the ad.

 

So why can't iPad users just download the accompanying app and watch the animation whenever they want? Oh, they can? Then why would anyone wait until they came across this ad in a magazine to try it out—and more importantly—why are people still buying magazines if they own an iPad? Hopefully you put more thought into your vehicles, Lexus. [YouTube viaSlashGear]

Geofencing Technology

Retailers desperately hope the technology—called "geofencing"—can be at least one successful response to the dreaded "showrooming," where a shopper comes into a store to see an item but then makes the purchase online after finding a better price via smartphone.

The idea behind geofencing is to target consumers when they are nearby—and the promotions can get hyper-local, like beaming a special on umbrellas to people within a 10-mile radius during a rainstorm, or touting a markdown on aisle 6 when a customer is walking down aisle 3.

How Geofencing Works (Click Image To Enlarge)

But adoption by shoppers has been spotty, retailers report, underscoring a fundamental imbalance of power when it comes to mobile. While consumers have figured out to use smartphones to retailers' disadvantage by checking the prices elsewhere, chains are still fumbling around for a way to use mobile phones to boost sales.

Some 15% of respondents to a recent survey said they use their mobile phones in stores to compare prices to online-only rivals, according to market research firm Forrester Research. But fewer consumers use their devices in ways that could be beneficial to brick-and-mortar retailers: 8% of respondents said they used their phones to "check in" to stores, and 7% said they used phones to learn about in-store promotions or events.

Courtesy of an article dated December 18, 2012 appearing in MediaPost Publications OnlineMediaDaily, an article dated August 16, 2012 appearing in the WriteUpp Blog, and an a market research report by Research and Markets, a report titled "Gamification in 2012" issued by M2 Research, an article dated October 9, 2012 appearing in Gizmodo, and an article dated May 8, 2012 appearing in The Wall Street Journal

Comments

[Betances Newsom]

Been crazy about these new technology trends. Technology is fast revolutionizing, keeping people's eye glued all the time.

[activestage]

Nice! In latest digital technologies the is one of them which is very useful and knowledgeable for everyone.