Rounding around the bend into the second half of 2009, online marketers tend to get bogged down with back-to-school and holiday sales. The last few months of the year are more focused on using up one’s allotted vacation days, frenetic shopping, and getting together with family than looking to 2010. So, to make everyone’s 2010 predictions easier, Anvil will take a look at emerging trends in the online marketing space:
Facebook Connect
No recent innovation could have as profound an effect in the online marketing space as Facebook Connect. The potential of Facebook Connect is staggering. Conceivably, Twitter, YouTube, Yahoo, Facebook, and the flailing magazine & newspaper industries could owe their survival to Facebook Connect. In the coming year, billions of dollars could be transferred from stagnant display ads (read Google AdSense & Yahoo display ads) to Facebook Connect-powered social ads.
If you are a publisher, an online marketer, a media buyer, privacy expert, run AdSense on your site, work at Google, or study marketing in college, Facebook Connect needs to be at the top of your “get to know” list. Facebook Connect will have a much bigger effect on the landscape of the web than AdSense or Twitter. It will affect user experience across the web and have ramifications for all the major players .
Ruby on Rails (RoR)
As an online marketer, RoR is beyond me. I understand it simplifies coding so that coders don’t have to repeat or rebuild code. Great. Good for them. But, RoR is providing online marketers with amazing tools (e.g. Twitter, Chow Hound, Yellowpages, and countless iPhone & Facebook apps). Companies such as Step Change Group and Wildfire are RoR gurus and leading the way in widget and application development. Online marketers need to understand the capabilities of web applications and incorporate these applications into their marketing strategies.
Google Analytics in Excel
This innovation was much needed for all of us online marketers who use Analytics data in Excel spread sheets. Combine this feature with spreadsheets in the Cloud, and we really have something.
The Cloud
As I write this on my desktop computer, I cannot help but feel I am missing something. The Cloud is growing up, and more and more software is being put in the cloud. It’s 2009, shouldn’t I be in Bali working on a Netbook interfacing with my boss in Portland, my client in Singapore, and my developer in New York?
Google Wave, further WordPress infiltration, and companies like SalesForce & PageVester should help push us in the right direction. As Amazon and others improve the security of their servers, it should be no time until we are all lying on an exotic beach (or at home on the couch).
Unbound Technologies
Social listening and brand monitoring have become common practice for most brands and marketers. Advertisers get that brands need to communicate with their customers in all phases of the buying cycle. The next step in social monitoring is identifying connections and online influencers in your target market. Tools like Unbound Technologies and SEM agencies can help identify the social connections of your customers.
bit.ly
bit.ly is last on this list because it seems the most up in the air. With Twitter’s constant server issues, a solid 40% of Twitterers using third party applications , the impending release of Facebook Lite, and the lag time for users to adopt real-time search into their routine, Twitter might not make it.
However, bit.ly represents Twitter’s best chance at profitability on its own (e.g. not getting bought out or incorporating an ad network like Facebook Connect). bit.ly is a URL shortener that tracks clicks (albeit inaccurately) and scrapes content. bit.ly’s potential stems from combining the Twitterer, the number of clicks, and the content. Throw in other data Twitter is collecting (# of retweets, followers, and following), and you have the makings of a fairly powerful real-time search engine.