Digital Media is a comprehensive form of media that entails in it a wide variety of platforms through which it becomes feasible to spread the information to the distant masses. Digitized content in the form of text, audio, video, infographics etc. can be transmitted over the internet or computer networks.
Digital Media has come across as an indispensable part of not only individuals but also for companies and large organizations. It has been displayed as one such platform through which it becomes feasible to reach out to masses spread across different parts of the world.
Of late, digital media marketing has been evolved and over the years it has been witnessed that several industries have been leveraging upon different avenues of digital media for the success of their ventures. Some of the major trends to look out for in the year 2015 will revolve around not only targeting but also geo-targeting. Moreover, social media marketing and email marketing will act as two strong pillars of digital media industry.
So, aforesaid were some of the generic digital media marketing trends to look out for in this year. Now, let us have a look at what the digital marketers belonging to different sectors have to say and what kind of changes would they like to see in the Digital Media industry in the year 2015:
Sree Vijaykumar
MD, TradeBriefs
Mr. Sree Vijaykumar is the founder and Managing Director of TradeBriefs –a company that produces industry-specific newsletters for professionals belonging to different domains. He substantiates that ‘Digital is occupying a bigger mindshare amongst marketers which is going where the consumers are spending time. Gen Y is not reading newspapers anymore; many of them have also stopped watching television as they are online on their phones, all the time!’ His input to the advertisers is that ‘just because you can measure conversions online, does not mean that every cam campaign should be a cost per sale/lead/click campaign. You still have to build a brand. The consumer still needs to trust you.’
Punit Modhgil
Co-founder, Octane.in
The Managing Principal of Octane Research, Punit is has been actively involved in this customer engaging company. Here are the top 3 changes he would like to see in Digital Media Industry in 2015:
Digital Marketing to be less spam, more consent driven
Marketers to use digital as listening posts and not just push messages
Digital media in India to look beyond English
Reema Prasanna
Director, Briefkase
An ex-Googler, Search Marketing & Display Specialist, Reema Prasanna focuses on Google AdWords. Here is what the Director of a digital marketing start-up has to say about the changes in digital media industry in 2015:
More regional content across languages online so a wider audience can get online.
Organizations must start treating their digital marketing agencies as counterparts and partners instead of expecting them to turn around impossible solutions just because they pay them for their services. Digital marketing is a coin with two sides. If you cannot keep your end of the bargain, then it’s unrealistic to expect the agency to deliver results that you expect from digital marketing.
Standardization of agency commissions across the geography. Unhealthy competition and lack of sustainability is the direct result of fluctuating and unfair commissions among agencies. This needs to end and the services sector needs to stop behaving like an unorganized sector. The first step is standardization of rate cards. Let organizations decide who their digital marketing agency will be on the basis of deliverables and creativity thought, not who demands the lowest commission.
Ajay Jain
Author, Photographer, Journalist, Traveler
A serial entrepreneur, consultant and a professional has been an avid author who has been writing on new technology, travel and business sector. Here is what Mr. Ajay anticipates as the changes in Digital Media industry:
Internet speeds meet at least the levels promised by all service providers. From his personal experience and empirical evidence, no one seems to be happy with the network speeds they get, whether over wireline or wireless. The Indian consumer pays amongst the highest rates for broadband/3G without getting due service. When speeds improve, consumption of digital media (especially with videos and photographs) will go up.
He would definitely like to see greater entrepreneurial activity in the digital publishing space. This will happen when:
We have entrepreneurs who understand new media and are willing to explore this medium. Only then will we see the likes of Huffington Post come up in India.
VCs look at content as an important area to invest in. Currently, investors don’t hold content based ventures in high esteem, this should and will change.
Brands need to appreciate the power and value of content marketing. They are still fixated on traditional models of calculating ROIs. In the absence of influential of digital publications relevant to their audience, they need to make investments themselves in branded media like e-magazines, YouTube channels etc. They will have to wake up to it sooner or later.
Nithyanandan Ramakrishna
Lead Trainer at Digital Vidya, Email Marketing
A content distribution specialist and email marketing expert, Nithyanandan stated that if at all there are any changes in 2015 then, those must be pointed towards:
Winning trust and confidence
Creating transparency and
Empowering customers to act
Chirantan Ghosh
Head: Communications, DES
The head of communications at DES, Chirantan Ghosh expressed his views on Twitter through ‘#HolidaysAreIn – The gift that I want from Twitter as a #DigitalMarketer’, here are the excerpts from the same:
1. Additional text box for mentioning connections and followers: Personally, I agree with Twitter’s vision that communications should be precise and crisp i.e. the gag order of 140-character limit is a good idea. However, if you have an impactful message then mentioning by @handle becomes wastage of the precious character count. Maybe, twitter can include another field/text box under the tweet area where you can select Lists, Followers and mention people who might not be your followers … mocked up the suggestion as below.
2. Help me filter out the unwanted/junk profiles: We all want followers in Twitters but when you are running/managing corporate/official handles, the last thing you want is rude/profane/illicit twitter profiles/handles to associate with your brand. We sure can manually weed out but when one is promoting a handle for a global scale event/campaign, it becomes quite cumbersome. Wouldn’t it be great if you could select ‘Keywords/Mata Data’ and make a rule on who couldn’t follow/associate with your brand? In effect, not only keywords used in profile/tweets but images uploaded can be auto-scanned by the platform to make the life a bit easier for the corporate/official citizen of Twitter… and in general, make the twitter world a bit smut free.
3. Auto-suggest Hashtags & Handles Relevant to my post: In the social world, we want to be relevant and meaningfully contribute to the cause or discussion/s. It would make my life a bit easier if twitter auto-suggested me the hashtags or handles that are talking about “Making Twitter Better for Marketers”, while I’m publishing this post. Maybe, I could have changed a bit of the content to better suite my audience… or, try to answer some questions that are being asked on the topic… or, just meaningfully share some insights to an ongoing conversation.
Sanjay Mehta
Joint CEO, Social Wavelength
Mr. Sanjay Mehta who is the Joint CEO of India’s largest social media agency, Social Wavelength enumerates the top 3 digital media changes that he expects in 2015:
Digital and Social Media agencies should get better retainer fees. The work we do is demanding and if we need to keep pace with the required changes and challenges, we need to be rewarded better!
Companies and brands that think they need to run 24×7 call centres for their businesses, should also start thinking about running 24×7 Social CRM cells. Few brands have taken the lead in this direction, while the rest are still working in a 10 hours a day x 5 days a week mode. THAT needs to change fast!
Brands need to loosen up a bit on social media. Obsessive focus on the tiniest of things, with each FB post being reviewed by a committee (of sorts) or each tweet having to go through multiple rounds of iteration, just doesn’t work. Be nimble, quick and fun!
Bhupendra Khanal
CEO, Simplify360.com
The Chief Executive Officer of Simplify360.comlooks forward to the following three major changes in digital media industry in the year 2015:
India should have more companies and agencies adopting technology, and we should move towards a economy of DIY when it comes to Technology
There has to be more work and development on the use of Indian local languages (both in terms of communication and technology in Digital Media)
PSUs should join the move in the big way when Government is favourable towards use of digital and social.
Mohit Garg
Product Manager, Adobe Marketing Cloud
Mr. Mohit has been associated with Adobe Marketing Cloud–a platform that provides information not only pertaining to social and advertising field but also to analytics, targeting and web experience management solutions. Here is what his inputs are:
More regional language mobile apps should become available for accelerating the adoption of the mobile internet in India
BigData analytics should become a more visible part of business strategies driving real time marketing decisions
Mobile data should be democratized by reducing data tariffs and improving coverage across India.
Manish Vij
Entrepreneur and Investor, Digital Media and Consumer Internet
Mr. Vij highlighted upon the media trends that prevailed in 2014. These are enumerated as follows:
Mobile app consumption and therefore Mobile App spends saw highest growth
Consumption and Sharing of content grew thereby leading to creation of an industry focused on Producing and Distribution of such content.
Budgets being moved to digital video saw a huge growth however limited to a single player
Traditional digital display media (banners etc) saw a decline in interest and therefore most of the growth was captured by Video, Native (performance) and Content platforms.
Based on the aforesaid trends, he expects the following changes in digital media industry in 2015:
Programmatic buying that people have been talking about will take over most of the display spends therefore technology driven agency trading desks and consolidated programmatic buying by clients will grow
The above will continue to see huge growth
Dr. Vikram Venkateswaran
Marketing Business Partner for Digital Business Services, Dell
Prophesying what lies ahead in digital media marketing industry in the year 2015, Dr. Venkateswaran stated:
Fragmentation of Media- The rise of Digital has led to a fragmentation of media globally, India has not been affected to that extent for now, but that would change in 2015. Media houses would try to master the Digital techniques and would compete with boutiques specializing in Digital. Also, the agencies would become publishing houses providing intelligence to brand managers. The manager themselves would have to become digital savvy and would spend more time experiencing and analyzing digital trends..
Growth of Location based search and local marketing- LBS would become a big market, not only for services but also for manufacturing. The opening up of Google to Hindi advertising would lead to further growth in this area.
Rise in Fraud- measurement of digital and off line marketing statistics would come under scrutiny. From TRP ratings to certificates for Advertisement telecast on TV, Social media fraud to Digital Phishing, India will see a rise in marketing fraud and more money will be spent on regulating and detecting fraud.
Himanshu Arora
Marketing Mafias, SocialPanga.com
Himanshu who is a digital marketing fanatic elaborates his expectations in the form of changes in digital media industry in the 2015:
More budget allocation for digital media, we generally end up getting peanuts as compared to traditional media spend. And in terms of ROI, a lot is expected from digital.
Stop thinking digital as Facebook & Google only, it’s about building an ecosystem in a company where the management believes in it and support the marketing team to deliver the result.
Integrated marketing strategy. We should have integrated marketing plan where an offline campaign is supported by online and vice versa. It will really help to maximize the reach and effectiveness.
Saurabh Mathur
Founder, Connecto.io
Saurabh has been actively involved in providing help to the businesses not only in terms of improving their conversion rates but also evolving their engagement on their websites. When asked about his expectations in the digital media industry, here is what he had to say:
1. More personalization: While with the advent of many tools, digital marketing is taking a turn and more and more targeting is being used. However, most of this is currently driven by retargeting and such advancements led by the industry leaders. What would be great to see is individual websites responding to visitors in a smarter more intelligent way. In fact, Flipkart’s mobile app does a great job at doing personalized recommendations based on purchase history. It would be great to see more of that and that brings me to my next point.
2. Smartphones: While there is no doubt that consumer behavior is changing in a big way and there is a definite shift towards mobile. However, the industry has taken a cue that mobile apps are going to be the way forward and are focusing mainly on that. While that is driving some innovation by developers like Flipkart, not every app is adding value to the end user. It would be great to see businesses keep the end user in mind and put more thought as to why users will install their apps and more importantly keep it on their phones.
3. The final answer is a rant. The recent move by Airtel to charge for VOIP calls is a setback to digital industry. The reasoning behind it so twisted and hopeless that I can only hope droves of users switch to other providers and Airtel learns its lesson for good. Amen!
Avijit Arya
Chief Mogul (President & CEO @Internet Moguls
Avijit strongly feels that more than ever, it is all about videos.
He feels that social media agencies’ gurus and newbies must understand that it is all about videos and this is the best medium for getting your message across. He also said that all the video content producers should be able to conceptualize a message,
script it, shoot and edit it.
Video is going to be de facto medium for websites and text is going to be almost dead by 2017. You can check Internet Moguls to find the affects of the same.
Besides this, he said that speed is king. If one can understand the new app or marketing software that is making waves or the new video editing software and apply it & make a new experience for your client you are in the game, any delay and your gone forever.
To conclude he stated that the young the restless or the old and the stable all kinds of us humans do not embrace change easily so that’s the challenge in 2015.
Swati Bhargava
Co-Founder, Cashkaro.com
2014 has been a consequential year for digital marketing. Online shoppers grew at an accelerated pace, content marketing and visual media took centre stage and new technologies and platforms continued to make their mark. Stepping in 2015, Swati would love to see the following changes in the world of Digital Media:
1. Facebook could reinstate their guidelines on organic reach of posts to boost social engagement
Recent newsfeed changes by Facebook entail that brands have to pay for almost every post on their company page to reach their large fan base. Such changes penalize brands heavily as first we put in effort and resources to acquire fans and then have to pay to talk to them. By disallowing interactions or making posts paid, Facebook is questioning the core basis on which it was created i.e. to be a social network where interactions can happen. Therefore, in 2015 I’d love to see social networks like Facebook not make interactions paid!
2. Trend of Affiliate Marketing becoming stronger and Cashback and coupon sites becoming an integral part of Digital Marketing budgets
Affiliate marketing sites like CashKaro.com now contribute to about 10-15 per cent of ecommerce sales in India. Acknowledging the mutually beneficial nature of the Affiliate Marketing model and its surging popularity, we’d love to see retailers integrate Affiliate Marketing into their digital media plans even more. With increased commissions affiliate sites will be able to invest better in digital marketing including SEO, Google Adwords, Display Ads, etc. hence driving quality traffic to partner sites.
3. Great transparency and frequent updates from Google
Search Engine Optimization is a key element of any company’s digital media plans. However, ever so often we feel that there is not enough clarity on Google’s s ranking algorithms and updates take time to reflect. In India, a few spammy sites still manage to rank well for highly searched keywords and after a few months they get banned by Google. I’d love to see these sites getting blocked sooner, like it happens in the West. This will bring more transparency and meritocracy in the system.
Top 3 Digital Marketing Changes Industry Experts Expect In 2015 from Digital Vidya
This is what the influencers and leading industry experts expect from the digital media industry in the year 2015. Do you also look forward to these changes or you prophesize something different? Feel free to drop in your views and experiences in the comments section below.
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