16 hot online marketing Trends 2009

Year 2009 is going to be the major challenging year for many business because of the economic slow down and crisis. But online marketing seems to set a good growth rate in future. As an online marketer I did a search in order to identify 2009 online marketing trends and came across with some good trends published in strangecorp.com. I hope these are really fantastic points

Keyword inflation will continue

The need for advertisers to improve the effectiveness and measurability of their advertising spend will become more acute. As more budget moves to digital, the marketplace will become increasingly crowded, with the extra demand pushing up paid search costs. Keyword inflation, also called cost-per-click (CPC) inflation, is running at 20% for 2008 across all markets (according to Jupiterresearch), and we believe the figure for 2009 will remain high despite the downturn.

Conversion optimisation will be key

Assuming the current level of keyword inflation, conversion rates will need to improve to keep CPA at the same level. The pressure will be on for advertisers to find solutions that can really improve their return on investment (ROI) by offering end-to-end optimisation for search, display advertising, affiliate marketing and email marketing.

Consumer thrift will shape online behaviour

As the recession bites, consumers will increasingly shop online in search of deals and bargains, especially through auction websites and ad listings. So Craigslist, Gum Tree, eBay and many more websites will, in all likelihood, see their traffic rocket.

Great Creative will be required

This may sound obvious, but it needs to be emphasised: digital marketing will continue to rely heavily on creative to achieve its objectives and make the campaigns and strategies work. Good creative is what makes your display advertising disruptive, your landing page user-friendly and your website trustworthy. It communicates your message and builds affinity with your brand. And although in times of economic downturns, emotional matters can seem less important to the bottom line, creative is THE key element affecting all online marketing channels and, therefore, ROI.

Internet Explorer 8 will affect online advertising

The launch of Microsoft’s browser Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) is massively important, since it is the default browser on Windows boxes. And while it may not be as sleek as Google’s Chrome or Mozilla Firefox, most consumers will happily muddle along with IE8 oblivious to alternatives. The privacy browsing capabilities of IE8 will have an impact for online advertising if there is widespread usage, since it blocks the tracking cookies at the heart of online advertising and traffic analytics.

CPA buying will become more widely negotiated

The CPA (cost-per-action/acquisition) digital advertising buying model will become more widely negotiated. The biggest online advertisers are already spending over 50% of budget on CPA media and in difficult times, where direct response is more important than branding goals, more advertisers will be looking to this model.

Data privacy and security will stay in the headlines

Data security and privacy issues are likely to continue to hit the headlines throughout 2009. Whether in be Phorm or GCHQ snooping on what we’re up to, or government agencies and businesses losing more unencrypted data in laptops, dongles and CDs.

Qualitative analytics will have greater emphasis

Knowing what your website users did is nice, but knowing WHY they it did will become crucial. We predict that there will be huge growth in the use of qualitative data in analytics and decision making in 2009. User surveys, email questionnaires, internal search analysis, user complaints, customer service forms, FAQ feedback, A/B and multivariate testing, eye tracking and click-density analysis are all going to become essential tools in your quest for qualitative data that will help you improve and optimise ROI.

Mobile advertising will flourish

With Google supplying mobile hardware (G1) and software (Android), and bidding on the wireless spectrum, it is clear that the people at Mountain View wish to develop this market to its full potential. 3G smartphones with large-ish screens, such as the iPhone, BlackBerry Storm and G1 all allow mobile users a close-to-normal web-browsing experience. And as mobile usability improves, so will mobile Internet use. Google is moving fast to develop, exploit and control mobile advertising by dictating the platforms and mechanisms we use to browse the web on our smartphones, while also leveraging the mobile wireless spectrum.

Local search/localised services will grow

Search engines, browsers and hardware manufacturers will continue to put their weight behind the localisation of search. Why? Three main reasons: 1.) Results are more relevant, 2.) advertising can be more accurately targeted, and 3.) it gives search networks a massive additional inventory to sell at a local, rather than regional or national level.

The reason why 2009 is the year for local search to take off is that the Gears project (an open source project that enables more powerful web applications, by adding new features to your web browser) offers a geo-location API, as does Mozilla Geode and Yahoo! Fire Eagle. There will also be high-speed packet access (HSDPA)-ready laptops and netbooks, on top of the existing GPS smartphones and palms, all of which will allow the UK search engines to retrieve a more meaningful geo-location than is currently available via Internet provider (IP) lookup.

RSS newsfeeds will go mainstream

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is an ideal platform for online marketing and communications as it provides marketers with 100% deliverability and a qualified audience. Having come through the early-adopter doldrums, RSS will most likely see a surge in uptake in 2009, moving into majority usage thanks largely to built-in support in the new IE 8 browser.

More user behaviour metrics will be applied to the Google algorithm

Speculation that Google will shift its algorithm to favour more user behaviour metrics is growing. In fact, Google has openly discussed these algorithmic approaches in a patent application called ‘Information retrieval based on historical data’ (http://tinyurl.com/5fpfj) filed back in 2003.

Netbooks will impact web design

Netbooks, the smaller, low cost laptops built for web browsing are the fastest-growing category within laptop sales. They are expected to account for 10% of laptop sales and 8% of all sales (by volume) in 2009. The new crop of netbooks will have HSDPA (3G) built-in, making them ideal for business users on the move.

User generated content (UGC) will be King

A Universal McCann study in 2008 found that only 14% of users trust advertising, whereas 78% trust recommendations of other consumers. This highlights something many online marketers have known for a while: user generated content can be very beneficial.

Social media opportunities will expand

According to research by Universal McCann, 73% of users read blogs and 36% think more positively about brands that have them. In addition, 83% of users have viewed video clips (proven to offer significant uplift in sales), 49% have downloaded podcasts and 38% have subscribed to an RSS feed, while 57% have joined a social network. We could go on, but suffice to say that social media has well and truly arrived and if you don’t use it to your advantage, then you’re missing a massive opportunity.

APIs and mashups could be the Next Big Thing

Far be it from us to predict the next Facebook or Last.fm success story, but the odds on it being a mashup are not bad. Application programme interfaces (APIs) allow desktop and mobile applications to access web data and services directly, giving rise to services such as iTunes, RSS readers, desktop weather widgets, Xbox Live and Play Station Network, to name but a few.

Building on this, mashups bring together, manipulate and present complex interrelationships of data as information resources that were previously inconceivable. Growing fast in number, the beauty of good mashups is that they have real synergy, making them greater than their component parts and thereby providing richer user experiences and deeper information resources.