internet marketing trends in 2010

At the end of each year I usually jot down some areas within online marketing that I think are worth keeping a closer eye on the following year and usually easily come up with 3 or 4.

Albeit a bit late posting, 2010 is looking like it will be a year of accelerating change in online marketing.

Here’s some of the areas I am thinking about:

1. Mobile

With the growth of smartphones and in particular the success of the iPhone and Android; 2010 is promising the return of the old guard in the mobile space with Microsoft and Nokia talking about major improvements to their devices so mobile data usage can only continue its acceleration in usage. Add the launch of a tonne of new ereaders; the growth of netbooks and now the launch of the new iPad and it is no wonder that I think mobile is the number one place for innovation in internet marketing in 2010.

Of course, everyone jokes it is always the year of mobile every year so in that sense 2010 is no different. But I don’t remember seeing as much potential in mobile marketing since the launch of mobile data services circa 2003 (though.. umm.. yes that did flop. Big time).

Still, although the answers to mobile marketing are not there yet; ads are being delivered and general usage is growing quickly – Admob released some statistics at the end of last year which illustrate this growth: In September 2007 AdMob had 1.6 billion ad requests, in September 2008 5.1 billion, and in September 2009 10.2 billion.

2. Social Media Marketing
The hottest topic and growth area of them all in 2009 – it is hard to see this juggernaut stopping in 2010. Expect to see some serious advances in metrics and marketing technology in 2010.

3. Video
Having worked in the video ad space for several years before Silverpop this seems like something that has been around for a decade. 2010 might be too soon but expect to see HTML 5 play its role in ads both in email and on the web over time and less flash (which you should not have been using inside emails anyhow right?) .

4. Location
Each year that goes by marketers get hit with more data to deal with online. Did you think it was going to get better in 2010? Not a chance. Real time location data is the latest piece of data to get your head around and deliver better more engaging and relevant messaging. Right now foursquare; Gowalla and MyTown (at least in the US) are leading the way in consumer usage but I expect to see Facebook and Twitter continue to roll out location based technologies integrated into their platforms for a significant increase in both usage and opportunities for marketers to take advantage.

5. Ad Optimisation
Companies like the Rubicon Project are delivering better returns for publishers and better results for advertisers by matching unsold publisher inventory with the right ad all in real time. This type of automation significantly improves the efficiency of buying and selling ads and should deliver better results at the same time.

Some others: Augmented Reality – still a way to go I think. Real time ad testing – with Adobe buying Omniture I fully expect the multi-variate testing capabilities to be integrated into the ads themselves allowing for real time self selection.

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It has been relatively quiet when it comes to launching new webservices/products/companies lately. A global recession does that to the world. But recently there have been a few new services worth mentioning:

foursquare: Not available in London (come on guys!) yet, this company has been launched by Naveen Salvadurai and Dennis Crowley, who was one of the guys who founded dodgeball.com before it got bought (and ruined) by Google in 2005. It’s all about using the location based technology of your mobile phone to have fun and find new ways to explore the city. Like dodgeball, it helps you meet up with your friends and (here’s the game part) let you earn points and unlock badges for discovering new places, doing new things and meeting new people. It sounds like a cross between Qype (a local search website for restaurants, bars etc) and dodgeball (an early location based social network).

lazyfeed: there has always been a tonne of information flying around the net, and google helped you find it all. Then Twitter happened and we all realised that what we actually needed was information about what is happening now as well as yesterday. There is too much information. Lazyfeed pulls in your footprint (or sites/keywords you are interested in) online (through services like Twitter, blogs, Flickr and delicious) and presents you with the latest and greatest content without you having to look for it. Great for lazy people   It is in private beta right now, but if you follow them on twitter here, I am sure they’ll let you know when new invites become available.

[image credit: andy castro]

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Apple just announced their newest iPhone - the iPhone 3G S and is due to launch on June 19th.

The S stands for Speed supposedly, which feels more Microsoft then Apple in style. No that isn’t a complement. It also seems a bit light on new features if you already have an iPhone as you can download the updated 3.0 software using the latest version of iTunes on June 17th (more instructions here).

If you do that you’ll miss out on a longer battery life, a 3MP camera, hands free voice contol and the ability to record video. The battery life is the same as the previous version when using 3G but is approximately a third longer using WiFi, listening to audio or watching video.

Existing O2 iPhone users are out of luck this time though. Whereas previously there was an option for existing iPhone users to upgrade to the new version by extending the length of their contract to O2, this time the only path to get the new iPhone is to pay out the remainder of your contract.

Most of the comments on Twitter when searching for O2 and iPhone are complaining about this state of affairs.

My take: most people will not pay and Apple could stand to take a hit. If Twitter is anything to go by, O2 is taking a bit of a hit to its brand as well. It is certainly not winning any plaudits

One thing is certain though, when those who bought the iPhone 3G when it launched come to the end of their contract (about 6 months from now) the mobile industry could be a different beast altogether in the UK. There is no Palm Pre today and the Google phone (G1) has been slated for its hardware (though not its software). In the next 6 months though, the Palm Pre should be available in the UK (on either  O2(!) or Vodafone) and there are supposed to be a large number of new Google phones (18+!) hitting the market by the end of the year.

Interesting times in the mobile phone market..

Twitter’s current strategy seems to be to woo celebrities to the network and in turn that will drag the mainstream along with it. The problem with this is that whilst reality tv is very popular reading the text of celebrities is not always that interesting. Hello magazine etc do a good job of just showing the interesting bits and can monitor Twitter for them. How many times will the mainstream come back to see if anything interesting has happened. Not enough if the numbers leaving Twitter are anything to go by.

There is one thing that will attract people back – I gave it away in the title – events. I do not mean just the business conferences that have been popular on Twitter with the tech and marketing crowd. I mean the concerts and clubs. There’s enough focus and length of time that people will stay interested in monitoring it via their phones and they’re likely to meet people who are into the same things as they are building up a followerbase.

The end result is that a person reaches a critical mass of followers quicker and even if that fails to happen after one event they are likely to come back for the second.. and third etc etc.

Of course Facebook is still in a strong position due to its size if it can move quickly enough.

A possible problem for Facebook that everyone in the tech world complains about is the lack of asymmetric friendships. On Facebook, you can only see someone’s newsfeed if they friend you back. On Twitter you can choose to follow someone and not have them follow you back. However, the privacy in Facebook is a strong feature for them over time – there are some stuff you just do not want the whole world to see. Facebook’s fan pages may well do the job and allow you to see all the other fans and the celebs and then listen/interact with them.

However, whilst there is greater usage of Facebook’s mobile apps than Twitter right now, the Twitter apps are more obviously able to handle event specific message streams than Facebook using its search functionality. Facebook would need to change its mobile apps at least to accomodate easy access to fan pages.

Finally, neither Twitter nor Facebook have realtime updates on mobiles which would be a boon for this type of usage. But one step at a time

(Image courtesy: Osei)

for the ultra geeks amongst you – this guy made his iphone walk!