2016 Digital Marketing Predictions

[Ryuzaki]

Source: http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/2016-seo-digital-marketing-predictions/

This is entirely the work of Bruce Clay and his guests. I'm going to paste in the short-form list below, but the full explanations and discussions can be found at his site above.

I'm chopping out the inane crap like "Mobile will grow some more," "Links are dead," "Links still matter."

1. Mobile devices will surprise everyone with new wireless “attachments” rivaling the power of desktops, and by 4Q we will see an accelerated mobile use in the USA.
2. Google revenues will grow exponentially as they continue to place ads above organic results. For some queries there will be 4 or fewer organic results well below the fold.
3. Google will emphasize local results for all queries.
4. Apps that load web content will be the rage.
6. We will see the demise of link building as a prime influence in SEO.
7. Internet marketing becomes Internet advertising in order to survive.
8. HTTPS will be much talked about in 2016 but little action will be seen with relatively few sites making the swap.
10. Podcasts will see continued growth in popularity due to their ease of production/consumption.
12. Facebook and Amazon will launch actual search engines.
14. Yahoo will get out of search.
16. Website owners will put more effort into reaching mobile search customers that use mobile devices as the first step of their “buyer journeys.”
18. 2016 will be the year Bing Ads search and display traffic will be seen by more advertisers as a viable platform.
20. PPC will be broken down into specific areas of expertise.
27. The power of paid social as tool to drive content marketing campaigns will also become more mainstream.
28. Wearables will show a disappointing level of growth.
29. Personal assistants from Google, Apple and Microsoft will continue to battle through the year.
31. In 2016, Facebook will open up Facebook Messenger as a service.
33. Removing steps in order to convert the mobile searcher


What do you guys think of these? Do you see any opportunities to exploit or gain a leading edge?

 

[built]

I'm still wondering about the rise of Adblock etc and what alternatives can take its place

 

[Ryuzaki]

1. Mobile devices will surprise everyone with new wireless “attachments” rivaling the power of desktops, and by 4Q we will see an accelerated mobile use in the USA.

I don't know about this. I suppose you could process graphics on an external GPU and spit the result over wireless. We do it with 1080p Netflix for instance. I'm not sure what else this is getting at. Mobile CPU's are already rivaling desktop ones (not workstation CPUs for workstation tasks, mind you). I think I read the new Macbook Pro's are already using Mobile CPUs. Only if everything becomes modular, shrinks by several 100%, and demands far less power is this statement even sensible. Unless cellular bandwidth explodes even more and everything, and I mean everything, is handled in a cloud situation, do I see this working. Then your phone / tablet / watch / glasses / whatever else just becomes a display and input device.

2. Google revenues will grow exponentially as they continue to place ads above organic results. For some queries there will be 4 or fewer organic results well below the fold.

This is definitely already happening before 2016, and even more real estate is eaten up by Hummingbird answers and Knowledge Graph sidebars, maps, etc. They want to keep everyone on the Google network, of course. The challenge will be doing this while still doing its job of pointing people to helpful information. It's mutually exclusive to a degree unless nobody ends up having a problem with them scraping and displaying things other than meta data.

3. Google will emphasize local results for all queries.

This goes with the above. It's all about displaying more ads that are more specific to more people and getting more advertisers into the game, driving up the competition for more terms. Beyond this localization, I believe we'll see an increase in personalization as well. The level of specificity can be busted into sub-sub-industries in certain locales for certain personalities and interest groups. The only thing standing in the way is data collection and any regulation stopping that's been going out the window anyways. This is most definitely on its way.

4. Apps that load web content will be the rage.

I'm not a believer in the App revolution in terms of the general internet. It works for communities and media content, but for general text and image content, we already have mobile-first design that will continue to spread. Users can make apps for any site, app icons to bookmark, etc. It's kind of redundant.

6. We will see the demise of link building as a prime influence in SEO.

I think we'll see a decrease in a link's weighting to make room for continued inclusion of social signals, but it'll always have a role and not a small one. But as locality and personalization becomes more prevalent, the rankings will be based on that more heavily than anything else, I believe.

7. Internet marketing becomes Internet advertising in order to survive.

I agree with this only in the sense that most members of this industry were never marketers to begin with. The industry is maturing and the barrier to entry regarding skill is rising, and the spammers and less skillful will have to pay to play, sure.

8. HTTPS will be much talked about in 2016 but little action will be seen with relatively few sites making the swap.

Google's push for this was a flop partially because it's too technical for the common webmaster to implement correctly without damaging their positioning as it is. The other reason is that it's stupid and part of a psy-op anyways. There's great reason to have HTTPS anywhere sensitive data is being transferred, but those kinds of webmasters already have it in place where it matters, and then you have companies like Stripe who use tokens and never let the data leave their own servers. Of course you still have security issues like man in the middle interceptions and what not.

But I think it really boils down to two things: advertising companies want to protect the data they are collecting to use themselves or sell to someone else. It's not worth anything if everyone has it. And the NSA, GCHQ, and every other country's hyper-surveillance squad is going to force company's to fork the info over anyways. Google wants you to think your data is safe, as does Facebook, etc. It's damage control.

10. Podcasts will see continued growth in popularity due to their ease of production/consumption.

I'm not qualified here to ramble (probably not on the above point either but it was a chance to scream conspiracy, c'mon). It's might be easy to access but it's not easy to consume, since audio is tied to time. If you speed up time, you have to increase attention. They are inversely proportional and make it the opposite of easy to consume.

12. Facebook and Amazon will launch actual search engines.

Maybe not in 2016, but yeah it's likely coming to some degree. Apple will jump in the game too.

16. Website owners will put more effort into reaching mobile search customers that use mobile devices as the first step of their “buyer journeys.”

I'm going to disregard the part about "first step" because mobile users are in all parts of the funnel just as much as they are on desktop. But yes, website owners better be paying attention to mobile... duh. If anything, it relates to the next point.

33. Removing steps in order to convert the mobile searcher

And by convert, that should mean make the sale, get the email address, get the lead, get the yes to push notifications, whatever. But capturing the user is definitely the game.

20. PPC will be broken down into specific areas of expertise.

I'd say it already is, or should be. I don't know, but I'd hope giant agencies have teams or team leaders at least in each major vertical that knows that vertical like the back of his or her hand. Beyond PPC, people have a chance to get filthy rich making industry specific display ad networks too. Adsense just for fitness, for instance, would clean up. The danger is the same that happened in the CPA industry though, with double, triple, and quadruple brokered leads, with more risk to everyone as accounts are floated longer while publishers demand faster payments.

27. The power of paid social as tool to drive content marketing campaigns will also become more mainstream.

Yep. Get in while you can. I'm already a very late adopter of this, and we're already in phase two of the social networks ripping off advertisers. It's only going to get worse. I don't know how they'll do it, but they'll push it as long as they can keep getting this crazy unicorn funding. The bubble will burst though and we'll all lose a lot of these off-site assets too. Strike while the iron is hot.

28. Wearables will show a disappointing level of growth.

Yeah, nobody cares about watches, that's going backwards. When we can do augmented reality on contact lenses, that's when this'll pick up, with a natural progression to implants and full on sensory virtual reality. Technological prowess isn't the problem here... it'll take several generations of slow culture shifting before the masses adopt grey goo in their neurons.

29. Personal assistants from Google, Apple and Microsoft will continue to battle through the year.

Not sure what this is talking about. Are they saying these big companies are going to go after the O-Desk / E-Lance crowd? I know Google tried to push that webcam teaching program not too long ago.

 

[lion1978]

6. We will see the demise of link building as a prime influence in SEO.

Can't help but laughing at this, people said that 5 years ago also and guess what, links still matters, and let's keep in mind that social signals essentelly is links. The only thing that has change with lniks is that google started putting quality over quantity or at least that's what they try to tell us.

 

[CCarter]

PPC will be broken down into specific areas of expertise.

Here is the quote:

20. PPC will be broken down into specific areas of expertise.

As ad platform products and features continue to develop and launch at a fast pace, individual PPC managers will have an even harder time keeping up with all aspects of PPC in 2016. Agencies will hire team members that specialize in those areas to act as resources for the rest of the agency.

Cindy Krum

(@suzzicks) CEO, MobileMoxie
​

This interests me a great deal cause there might be opportunities in these waters...

 

[Phenom]

I like these lists, and I don't want to try and be negative, but I feel like most of these could vary depending on the industry.

For example, I work for an agency that specializes in high end rental properties. We are nationwide, and while we are not VRBO, HomeAway or Air BnB, I have 40 clients that clear well over 2 million a year.

To be honest, I have to fight to get them to pay for a responsive/mobile site. I have to show them why they should worry about reviews on Yelp and 3rd party sites. I have to show them why they need to worry about not uploading a 2mb slider image. I have to tell them not to create a duplicate Google My Business / Youtube account as it de-verifies your maps listing..........

The point being, this multi million dollar industry just now hit 2006, and nobody knows what they are doing.

I fully support most of these will apply somewhere. I'm just a debbie downer.

 

[eliquid]

20. PPC will be broken down into specific areas of expertise.

Already happening.

Most agencies want to hire for their specific vertical need or flow need. Meaning:

• If the agency or client is in EDU, they only want to hire PPC people in EDU. Sure, they will take someone else if the pickings are slim, but they will take a D grade PPC person in EDU over a B+ or A grade PPC guy who has more generalized or other specific vertical experience.
  
  I've personally seen this hundreds of times in the last 3 years.
  
  
• PPC isn't just Adwords or Bing. You have companies wanting Marin or Kenshoo experts, you have companies wanting people who are just Youtube video ad experts, you have companies that just want Shopping CSE experts ( either for just Google, or another tier like Shopping.com or marketplaces like Sears.com and Amazon ), you have companies incorrectly lumping Media Buys as PPC just because the Media Buy has a self serve platform hooked up ( such as Adblade, etc ), you have companies wanting someone that just does Display even within PPC.
  
  The word PPC has become so generic now and incorrectly used. But even when it used correctly, you have companies that are waking up to just having a specific need in PPC. Hell, I even see sometimes a need for a PPC that just writes scripts to automate Adwords task flows ( think Rules and Scripts ) and one that just builds reports all day. This isn't even PPC, but companies are looking for it.
  
  I could go on, but shit I got work to do...