Changes to look out for in Digital Marketing
- YouTube and Instagram saw a 5-6% increase in usage in the past year
- Facebook’s usage dropped by 1%
Mary Meeker, a tech expert, comes up with a yearly report on the developments in the digital industry providing an analysis of social media and digital marketing and engagement trends. Her reports are especially important because they highlight the turns the industry is about to take. As marketers, we should all brace ourselves and make the right preparations to ensure our strategies change with the trends.
To help you with yours, we’re putting together a list of some statistics and trends she point out through her 333 slides. Don’t be intimidated by the big number, we won’t put you through all of it.
Let’s first go to the part that everyone is most curious about probably.
How the various social platforms are doing?
- Facebook usage went down from 31% to 30%.
- YouTube went from 22% use to 27%.
- Instagram went from 13% to 19%.
- Twitter went from 9% to 11%.
- Whatsapp went from 23% to 25%.
- Facebook Messenger went from 14% to 15%.
- Snapchat went from 4% to 5%.
It is interesting to note here that out of ALL these main social media platforms, Facebook is the only one that has seen a decline. Others like Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, and Snapchat saw a very small, almost negligible rise, but it is was a rise nevertheless.
The ones that saw the most growth are YouTube and Instagram. Did you notice what’s common between them? They are both visual platforms. You can only post pictures and videos on both these platforms. That is very important information for any advertiser.
Where Facebook has been doing well is ‘Stories’. 1.5 billion daily active users have been reported on Facebook stories. And again this is a visual platform. So about time, we start paying attention to the power of an image or video over words.
The growth of internet adoption has slowed down.
This might sound like something revolutionary, but it’s really more a development issue. Those who are not online are not rebelling against the modern media. 50% of the world’s population does not have internet connection. That’s just it. To bring them online they have to be given internet access first, and that is a slow and expensive process.
India is big fish
Big platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn are trying to appeal largely to the Indian audience because after China, India uses internet the most. 12% of the global internet usage comes from India. China isn’t much use to advertisers because it is cut off from mainstream internet. So India is the fish everybody wants to fry now.
Mobile usage on the rise
This comes as no surprise. We can see it all around us. However, it’s interesting to note that computer usage did not really decline. This could only mean that humans are moving from one to two internet devices now which are used regularly. A lot of times both at the same time.
Why does this information matter to a marketer?
It matters because you want to be where the people are. This gives insight into what your prospects like. In order to appeal to them, therefore, you need to use their language.
If they like images and videos, start using those media.
If they are on mobile a lot now, make your websites and online content mobile optimized. They will most likely be accessing it through those devices.
If India watches internet content a lot, maybe that’s where your future clientele lies (unless you run a local business, then this bit of information really is a little irrelevant to you).
The fun thing about digital marketing is that it is ever-evolving. It’s fun because it keeps people on their toes. Right when advertisers start to become complacent with their old ways, something new comes up.
Speaking of new things, if you’re interested in knowing about a cool new way to advertise, you can read up on our Google Gallery Ads here(this will link to the Google Gallery Ads blog). A cheeky self-promotion never hurt anybody.
