Brief: 2024 Online Digital Marketing Trends is now available, see below. As always, we welcome you to our annual report where we present the marketing trends, insights, digital goals and strategies including the latest ideas and tools for the online and digital marketing industry - and we look forward to receiving all your comments and feedback.
This is our 28th annual report and we hope we can continue in our tradition of offering you great insights of what is about to come.
In a recent survey conducted by Anaxstar.com with 819 CEOs, CIOs, and CMO’s, the respondents said they are continuing to shift their marketing implementation and execution towards digital marketing and online campaigns and promotions.
As predicted in the last year's report, AI (artificial intelligence) in marketing started playing a great role in changing digital marketing environment as well as the dawn of video marketing.
In 2023, online digital marketing experienced several noteworthy trends and developments. The continued rise of video content dominated marketing strategies, with short-form videos gaining prominence on platforms like TikTok and Instagram and of course YouTube. The rise of Social Commerce is now expected to be the new eCommerce of shopping growth. The Metaverse emerged as a new frontier for brands, fostering immersive experiences and innovative advertising campaigns.
The integration of augmented reality (AR) into marketing efforts flourished, providing consumers with interactive and engaging brand experiences. Ephemeral content, and live streaming also continued to shape the digital marketing landscape, reflecting a dynamic and rapidly evolving industry in 2023.
Additionally, privacy concerns led to increased emphasis on first-party data and the evolution of cookie-less tracking solutions, challenging marketers to adapt to a more privacy-centric landscape. Artificial intelligence played a central role in personalization and automation, enhancing customer interactions and targeting.
In 2024, we see the growth and domination of AI in marketing, the rapid adoption of video marketing with short-form increasing profitability for all businesses, in particular, smaller businesses, and the continued growth of social commerce. Smaller businesses (less than 100 employees) will continue to leverage content marketing in the form of videos, articles, blogs. to enhance and support their social media marketing which remains the most viable and profitable digital media strategy to replace expensive online advertising (pay-per-click) on Google and Bing platforms as they no longer seem to deliver a profitable ROI.
As always, you can review Anaxstar.com’s previous years' reports: 2023 Digital Marketing Trends, 2022 Digital Marketing Trends, 2021 Digital Marketing Trends, 2020 Digital Marketing Trends, 2018 Digital Marketing Trends and 2019 Digital Marketing Trends for research and archive purposes.
As it has been our long tradition now, each year, we contact about a thousand online marketing experts and industry leaders, and top 100 Marketing Agencies, as well as the top PR company executives to conduct a 30-min interview to find out how they interpret the marketing trends and ask questions about their predictions for the upcoming year, and what changes or transformations they witness during the previous year. We then compile the data and have an in-house discussion among our own leading marketing experts, each of whom have at least 20+ years of digital online marketing experience. Once all the data is compiled, we produce our report: this Annual Online Digital Marketing Trends and Predictions.
AND THANK YOU IN ADVANCE, FOR YOUR TIME.
And we also like to thank all the people who were involved and provided their expertise and knowledge for us to put this report together, and express our deep appreciation for their support.
FINALLY, see if you notice how we tried to make key points
and avoided long and boring sentences, or pages and pages of reading.
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Every year, more and more marketers recognize the numerous compelling advantages of video content in their digital marketing strategy.
Today, most successful business owners, managers, and marketers know and understand why 'video content' is the key to online marketing success. From advertising a product or service, boosting engagement with customers, or expanding their reach on social media, video content marketing is adaptable, accessible, and can give you a powerful lead over your competition. Short-form video marketing has the highest ROI when compared with any other social media marketing strategy, according to 90% of leading marketing agencies in U.S. and Canada.
93% of marketers have landed a customer via a short-form video posted on social media
74% of online shoppers prefer to watch a short-form video on a product/service they intend to purchase
82% of Internet traffic this year will be videos for marketing (including short-form)
Average consumer spends 40 min/day watching YouTube
68% of People will Happily Watch a Business/Product Video if it’s Under 2 Minute
54% of people want to see brands create video vs any other type of content
61% of business videos are less than 2 minutes long
Video content on TikTok & Instagram get 51% higher engagement rates
Video content Gets 48% more views on social media
1% of online marketers believe Harnessing the Power of Internet short video marketing is key to success in 2024
TIP: The rising importance of video and emotional content, the shift towards short-form media broadcasting, and the integration of interactive elements, continue to be the most significant strategy for successful content marketers in 2024. Leveraging the needs and demands of your target audience's unique needs and preferences is the cornerstone of successful content marketing.
AI data-driven marketing tools will shift focus to provide value and getting their brand in front of their target audience. AI marketing tools will be used to find and harness marketing relationships with influencers and strategic partners.
AI marketing tools will help with evaluating consumers' content demand and help marketers quickly create such content. However, there still needs to be a highly talented marketer involved to evaluate trending topics, analyze top-performing content and then produce articles or posts that have a high likelihood of gaining traction.
AI Marketing Tools are being developed for:
By strategically optimizing website content, structure, and meta-information, adding short-form videos, and bringing traffic, businesses enhance their visibility on search engine results pages, ensuring that their offerings are prominently displayed to users actively seeking relevant information or products.
SEO ranking in search engines heightens visibility and drives targeted traffic as well as fostering credibility and trust among users, as websites that rank higher are often perceived as more authoritative. With the majority of online experiences beginning with a search engine, SEO acts as a compass guiding potential customers to a business's digital doorstep, making it an indispensable tool for fostering brand awareness, customer acquisition, and sustained growth in the competitive online marketplace. Using social media posts with short-form video is key to achieving this.
Collaborations with influencers can significantly amplify product visibility and credibility, driving sales and brand awareness.
Social commerce platforms (social media networks) often integrate shopping features, enabling users to make purchases without leaving the social media environment. Enhanced engagement provides valuable insights into customer preferences, allowing businesses to tailor their offerings and marketing strategies more effectively.
Easy and seamless shopping experience can lead to increased conversion rates as it reduces friction in the purchasing process.
Video/Blog marketing are the center of all successful digital content marketing campaigns. Even though content marketing methods such as blog posts and articles are very cost effective and generate leads, they almost always perform better when accompanied with videos that convert.
In 2024, blogs are expected to continue to grow. According to Social Media Week, majority of consumers want to see more blog articles and embedded video content as long as they are short and concise. Blog articles in the form of guides and informational lists, are hugely popular because people can quickly study it to see if the content is relevant before they invest time in reading it - something they cannot do with watching of videos.
80% of bloggers report that blogging drives results.
PPC (pay-per-click) is fast losing favor with business owners and marketing professionals.
PPC advertising use to be a very effective way to drive traffic to a website or a landing page and get attention and audience for your products and campaign. But then with Facebook falling flat on it face as a result of December 2021 privacy issues, losing almost half of its advertisers in a matter of months, and Microsoft Bing not able to take advantage due to poor customer support, resulted in Google Ad platform increasing their Ad cost so dramatically that overnight it was not longer a viable marketing method with a decent ROI.
Google's arrogance and increase pricing also went hand-in-hand with business owners experiencing irrelevant clicks which resulted in wasted advertising budget.
Marketers must be ready and willing to acknowledge that customer privacy plays an outsized role and adapt accordingly.
Cookie tracking, marketing data collection absent of privacy adherence is just not going to be accepted. Facebook and Apple are proof that users will no longer accept these breaches.
Marketers need to consider enhanced customer intelligence where the focus shifts from just looking at your top customers’ historical purchasing and decision-making behavior to considering much deeper mindset and targeting important life moments and be willing to operate in a consumer-centric, privacy-friendly ecosystem.
While change can be intimidating; unlike the dinosaurs, digital marketers should be confident and embrace this next evolution targeting capabilities based on page content and consumer mindset and measurement solutions built on measuring real people, and their choices, across platforms.
39% of marketers say proving the ROI of their digital marketing and online campaigning activities is their top marketing challenge.
A formalized lead management system is essential for helping you track ROI because it will identify where and why lead drop off occurs in your campaigning. No matter how good you are at attracting and converting visitors into leads, sales cycles are complex with many factors impacting your conversion rate. You need to track and analyze your lead generation to ensure all efforts, activities and technologies are coordinated in the most efficient way otherwise you will experience sales and marketing misalignment, sluggish lead follow-up and ultimately you will end up wasting campaigning budgets.
Blog post/article (or guest-post in popular blogs) is the most significant lead generation strategy of 2022. It helps with revenue growth in a cost-effective ROI since it facilitates the entire customer lifecycle, (awareness, research, consideration, selection, loyalty, and advocacy) in a single strategy.
Blog post/article or guest-post article are the most current, cost-effective, and fast becoming the most popular marketing trend right about now. Providing your audience with a steady flow of compelling and engaging content has become a linchpin of a successful marketing campaign that produces quick results, and produces 3 times more leads at a 62% lower cost.
Why is this fastest growing marketing trend so successful?
Useful, relevant, articles allow your content marketing strategy display your desire to help customers and provide the information to help them with understanding the problem at hand, and to connect with your audience in a way they favor and builds trust and loyalty.
As customers and buyers continue to do research online to find answers to their questions and concerns, smarter companies are positioning themselves to answer these questions as part of their marketing process, combining prospecting with the customer cycle, lead generation, and order processing (sales).
Successful companies are quickly adopting a full integration between the front-line sales teams to identify topics for content marketing, and the content marketing team to develop content online to help sales professionals to effectively use this content in the sales process by answering customer questions and concerns and develop loyalty and reputation. Most of this takes place over the blog articles or posts which are promoted in Social Media, where customers are relaxed and are enjoying interactions with their friends. Obviously, a no-brainer.
1. The global digital advertising and marketing market was estimated at $681 billion in 2023 and is projected to reach $786.2 billion by 2026, and $950 billion by 2030.
2. The U.S. digital marketing and advertising market in 2023 was estimated at $460 billion, and 14% growth from this in 2024.
3. Video marketing, streaming, usage, searching, and viewership will continue to soar (even more) in 2024
4. Search accounts for 47% of the global digital advertising market, in 2023.
5. Marketing personalization will continue to grow and increase profitability.
6. 63% of businesses have increased their digital marketing budgets just this past year.
7. Visual searching, e.g. Pinterest, will continue to grow as images in search leverage visual search in more relevant ways.
8. Social Commerce (Live stream shopping) is growing rapidly and will become as big as shopping channel in 1980s.
9. 49% of businesses say that organic search brings them the best marketing ROI.
10. Instagram and TikTok checkout will continue to grow exponentially, in adoption and use.
11. Content marketing and SEO provides the best ROI according to marketers in 2023
12. 72% of overall marketing budgets get put towards digital marketing channels.
13. Omnichannel Marketing will continue to grow, the strategy as ripe, effective, and relevant as ever.
14. Almost 60% of marketing is digital.
15. By end of 2024, mobile advertising to grow to 80% of all U.S. digital ad spending
16. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, marketing job demand is set to increase by 10% by 2026—above the average for all careers.
17. Smartphone users spend about 80% of their time on social media
18.Google holds 92% of the total worldwide search engine market share.
19. Digital ad spend worldwide is estimated at $490 billion in 2023 ad projected to reach $530 billion in 2024.
20. 64% of marketers say "blogging for lead generation" will be their number one priority in 2022
21. 71% of marketers will be actively investing in content marketing strategies and producing informational guides or blog articles
22. Social Media has taken over the globe, and our free time, with 59% of the world population using social media. The daily average time for every user is two hours and 29 minutes.
23. The best video marketing statistics of 2023 was video content can increase your organic traffic by 157%, boost your conversion rate by 80%, and improve your brand recall by 95%.
24. Video marketing is persuasive, as 84% of consumers say watching videos convinced them to purchase.
25. Video marketing statistics show that 95% of consumers retain information better when they watch a video than when they read text.
26. Social media is the fastest growing trend in the history of the world
27. AI's Expansive Role in Marketing Channels: 67% use AI for landing pages to attract customers, 82% for SEO, 76% in email marketing, 58% for influencer and affiliate marketing, 52% each in content and SMS marketing, 51% in paid ads.
28. 90% of people will watch your marketing videos on YouTube, rather than any otherr platform (e.g. Instagram).
29. 90% of active Instagram accounts follow at least one business.
30. One of the most crucial video marketing statistics for 2023 is that social media videos attracted 1200% more shares than text and image content combined.
31. Mobile video viewers worldwide reached 3.5 billion in 2023, and the penetration rate of mobile video users among internet is already 56.86%.
32. According to video marketing statistics, personalized videos have been found to increase engagement rates by 93%.
33. 80% of viewers can recall a video they watched in the last 30 days.
34. A whopping 71% of those who invested in AI reported a positive return on investment, emphasizing the tangible benefits of AI adoption.
35. Marketers save nearly 2.5 hours daily using AI tools. This translates to an impressive 25-26 additional working days annually.
36. 82% of marketers say generative AI has reshaped their content creation plans for 2024, and 70% believe it's crucial to their overall strategy.
37. 66% of consumers find short-form videos to be the most engaging content on social media, and 92% of video marketers say they’ve gotten a good ROI from video marketing.
38. There are 244.4 million digital video content viewers in the US.
39. 71% of marketers report that content marketing has become more important to their organization in the last 12-months.
40. 61% of marketing professionals believe SEO is the key to success.
41. 70% of clicks in search engine results pages go to organic, 30% go to paid,
42. 76% of content marketers use content to generate leads.
43. There are more than 600 million blogs (business & informational) out of 1.9 billion websites worldwide.
44. 77% of internet users read blogs.
45. 80% of bloggers report that blogging drives results.
46. The bloggers who publish two to six times per week are 50% more likely to report strong results.
47. Bloggers who use 7+ images per post are 2.3X more likely to report strong results.
48. 65% of B2B buyers cite vendor websites as one of their most highly influential content types. This is followed by third-party websites (48%) and third-party articles by independent publishers (39%).
49. 59% of links shared on social media are shared without ever being read.
50. Tumblr hosts over 518 million blogs, while WordPress hosts over 60 million blogs.
51. WordPress powers over 43.2% of the internet websites.
52. Roughly 70 million new posts are published on WordPress each month.
53. On average, 77 million new comments are added to WordPress posts per month.
54. From 2023 to 2027, the global content marketing industry is expected to grow by $584.02 billion.
55. 44% of buyers say they typically consume three to five pieces of content before engaging with a vendor.
56. More than half of consumers will stop what they are doing if they encounter issues when viewing content, and move to the next content.
57. Only 40% of marketers have a written content strategy.
58. 72% of bloggers making $2,000+/month use either Mediavine or Adthrive as their ad management company.
59. The most profitable niche is the food blog niche. Food bloggers have the highest median monthly income ($9,169) as compared to bloggers from all major niches.
60. The niches that have the highest percentage of blogs with over 50,000 monthly sessions are food (42.8%), lifestyle (13.3%), and travel (10%)
61. 68% of online experiences begin with a search engine.
62. 90.63% of pages get no organic search traffic from Google.
63. Only 5.7% of pages will rank in the top 10 search results within a year of publication.
64. The average page in the top 10 is 2+ years old.
65. The average top-ranking page also ranks in the top 10 search results for nearly 1,000 other relevant keywords.
66. Generally speaking, the more backlinks a page has, the more organic traffic it gets from Google.
67. 71% of bloggers say SEO is the most important source of traffic.
68. Bloggers who earn over $50,000 per year put a lot of emphasis on SEO. Their #1 traffic source is typically Google organic search; also, compared to lower-income bloggers, they are 4.3 times as likely to conduct keyword research.
69. Online ad spending will increase 5.9% in 2024, to $874.5 billion, excluding U.S. political advertising, the report said.
70. The largest market is Search Advertising with a market volume of US$306.7bn in 2024, is U.S. and in the Digital Advertising market, 70% of total ad spending will be generated through mobile in 2024..