The future of online advertising will be built around social media outreach. Companies will begin to take their advertising dollars (currently spent on SEO, Adwords, etc) and they will start spending those dollars on making their social media outreach more effective and far-reaching. 20% of customers make up 80% of the business in almost every industry, and capitalizing on those extreme followers will be the best way for any business to drive more revenue going forward. If they can convert a few more people into extreme followers, or get the extreme followers to purchase just a little more often, these businesses have an enormous amount of earning potential in this space.
I believe that companies will stop letting middle managers run their online operations and they will bring in specialists (either paid specialists with internet experience, or online consultants) to run their internet operations to make sure that they are all working towards the same goals. Once companies see how strong relationships can be built online with their customers, they will drive the advertising money into these sites (through contests, content, coupons, promotions, etc). There will also be a lot more promoting of products through these sites through paid advertisements to actual users who promote the company’s products.
The second way that online advertising is going to change is to start focusing on baby boomers. Baby Boomers are still the biggest generation, and therefore have the most purchasing power, this group has not been actively targeted in an effective manner online. Companies will learn how to make Baby Boomer-Friendly advertising that will be easy to understand, easy to take action on, and will convert at a higher rate. Adding in buttons for the Boomers to click that will allow an actual person to call them back in 5 minutes, or having packages put together instead of making them choose each option on several screens (which Gen Y might like, but the Baby Boomers do not) will have an enormous effect on how effective advertising is on this generation.
Those two things are bound to happen in the near future, I hope that helps. Good Luck out there!
Article by: Todd Hagopian