This month, we are looking at Millward Brown's Futures Group 11 digital trends for 2011. It makes for interesting reading, especially in light of the article on these pages in September, exploring the issues that social media poses for brands and marketers. In some ways, the themes are the same: how to harness social media and new platforms in a way that enhances brand equity and customer experience, rather than exploiting the new media without thought to the impact this has on the consumers' perception of the brand or the brand itself.

The global findings go well beyond the realm of social media as the likes of viral content, gaming, geo-location and search capabilities all combine to drive digital marketing across all delivery platforms. What is apparent overall is that the trend of media fragmentation, which marketers and advertisers are well aware of in the context of traditional media, is greatly accelerated when one enters the realm of digital marketing strategies.

The myriad of platforms, websites, social networking opportunities, apps, games, video and viral opportunities presents a dizzying array of channels and strategies for marketers to navigate and master for their brands, products and services. Hopefully, some of the global trends identified will provide insights in our ever more complex media and online universe.

‘Marketers must decide whether to have different offers on Twitter and Facebook, than on the brand website… experience and research will pull the pieces of the puzzle together'

1. The first prediction made by the group is that brands will be forced to straddle their presence between the web that is open to the public and ‘semi-walled gardens', as surfing the web is increasingly replaced by running apps or viewing pages on Facebook etc. These applications and fan page ‘gardens' are popular because they allow marketers to control and simplify consumer interactions. But brands will need to tend multiple ‘gardens', often building different applications for specific platforms, to ensure they are relevant and present everywhere their consumers want them.

“It may be easier to drive traffic to a fan page than an ecommerce site, so brands need to be increasingly clear about whether their online objective is engagement or sales,” Duncan Southgate, global innovations director, Millward Brown, said. “They must also decide whether to have different offers on Twitter or Facebook, than on the brand website. Experience and research will help marketers pull the pieces of the puzzle together.”

2. Evolution of online shopping as augmented reality technologies bridge the intangibility gap. Despite some remaining fears around disclosure of personal information, online shopping will continue to grow strongly. Many countries will follow the US in their enthusiastic uptake of collective buying services like Groupon. In the UK, mobile shopping apps will be particularly popular, while we expect to see growth in India in online travel ticket purchasing which helps consumers bypass long queues at stations. Globally, we expect brands to use innovative new technologies, including augmented reality, to help bridge the ‘intangibility gap' that exists because consumers cannot touch and feel a product they purchase online.
3. 3. Online display explodes out of its box. Marketers will increasingly attempt to deliver immersive and engaging branding messages within the ad itself, using expandable formats and interactive features which often replicate part of the experience of a microsite or social media page.
4. 4. Viral video is no longer an afterthought. Viral potential is no longer considered a nice to have, but is becoming a key success criteria for any new communications idea. Butthe creative challenge could get ever harder as each new viral hit raises the bar of consumer expectation. Advertisers may need to be more distinctive than ever. To counter this, more advertisers will promote their ads in a viral environment, particularly since our recent YouTube research shows that paid online promotion generates a ‘free' incremental viral bonus over and above the paid views.
5. More ‘made for web' video content. With online video advertising spend in a high growth phase, marketers globally are likely to invest more inr online video creative. Our sister company, Dynamic Logic, showed that repurposed TV ads can effectively generate awareness, but made-for-web video is better at driving persuasion.
6. More mobile eyeballs. The improved performance capabilities of mobile devices mean that more people are online, more of the time (there is almost a ‘presumption of connectedness'). Marketers need to seize this opportunity, particularly since newer devices enable better mobile ad experiences. Mobile spend was up significantly over 2010 and the brand impact achieved will continue to outperform online through 2011.
7. Brands find their places with geo-location. Geo-location is all about ‘checking in' but 2011 will provide a more rewarding experience, once the user has checked in, we also expect to see more “check out” features – like suggestions of where to go next.
8. Search: increasing personal, mobile and impactful. Consumers will trade privacy for relevance. Links with social media profiles, search history and behavioural segmentation will allow greater search relevance for users prepared to share this information with search engine providers. Mobile search will make further gains as developers take full advantage of the unprecedented breadth of information available and consumers realise the benefit of searching via applications such as Google Maps. Search results will become more visually impactful, increasing the need for marketers to understand the brand impact of search.
9. 9. Gaming on the move. The launches of Sony's Move and Microsoft's Kinect have breathed new life into the PlayStation and Xbox consoles and will drive further innovation in game design. Casual gaming, driven strongly by the capabilities of Apple's iPhone and iPod touch, is likely to grow further as these gamers continue to feed their app-snacking habits and developers take full advantage of the iPad.
10. Social graphs will make targeting more relevant. Relevant social integration can delight consumers. A recent Millward Brown study revealed that people are looking for brands in social media to be more relevant to their needs. Consumers will remain active in the biggest social network because so many contacts are there but they may become more engaged in other niche networks which play to their particular interests. Facebook's scale provides targeting for brands but, to be effective, sophisticated algorithms are needed to make sense of the people's complex relationships.
11. The battle for online privacy will intensify. Marketers will aim to avoid regulatory measures to protect online privacy by enabling users to manage their own profiles and by being clearer about their data models. The battle will continue between regulators and the industry about the scope of personal information and online identity.

'Marketers must decide whether to have different offers on Twitter and Facebook, than on the brand website… experience and research will pull the pieces of the puzzle together'

With these trends in mind, it is instructive to look at some of the key statistics for the Irish market. Smartphone ownership continues to accelerate as a key platform for consumer on-line access: one in three Irish phone owners are now ‘smart' enabled.

This puts us mid-table in the overall European league compiled by Eurobarometer. But we still have a long way to go before we can match our Nordic cousins on this measure, almost six in ten mobile users in Sweden can surf the net, log on to their social media sites, upload, download and go viral on their iphones and Androids.

The effect on the domestic advertising industry of digital media also continues apace. A report by IAB Ireland/PricewaterhouseCooper showed that digital advertising is bucking the trend of the overall decline in advertising. Overall, the industry was down just over five per cent for 2010, while digital advertising's growth is just north of 12 per cent. The lion's share is taken by Google with paid search accounting for 45 per cent of the market.

Of course, the next question for marketers is how do we measure the effectiveness of our digital campaigns? With the ever-growing number of digital media options available, more sophisticated measurement techniques than simple click-through metrics are required to help understand the impact campaigns are having on consumer behaviour.

New methodologies, which allow for a real time convergence of digital media advertising and more traditional attitudinal ad tracking, can deliver much more insight on ad performance than purely quantitative measures of site viewing alone. By tapping into techniques such as these, the digital marketer will gain a much better understanding of how brand communication is performing in the brave new frontiers set out before us.

james.morrogh@millwardbrownlansdowne.ie