Piper Blog

DIGITAL TRENDS 2012

2012! Viva la Revolución! The digital marketing revolution continues strongly, changing our lives forever. Here are my predictions for what to look out for in 2012. 

Slow Death of the Mouse and Keyboard 

With explosion of tablets and smart phones that require us to touch the screen to navigate and access information, touch is now moving into computers. We are seeing the arrival of touch gestures already, like on the track pad in Mac OS X Lion, and soon it will graduate to touch gestures directly on the screen. This has influenced media with an insurgence of news aggregator sites like Flipboard which are based on the magazine experience. Flipboard aggregates the content of your social networks and other websites and presents them to you in a magazine like format on the ipad.

Ecommerce

E-commerce will continue to boom in 2012 therefore we will see exponential increase in the number of SMBs appreciating the necessity for an online channel and developing their own online stores. SMBs already using e-commerce will adopt the more marketing savvy practices of the larger companies like, transparent user reviews, the ability see a product in a video and click and buy, and mobile commerce.

Mobility
Due to an escalating take up of mobile devices like smart phones and tablets, 2012 will see an explosion in online magazines presenting through magazine apps. Popularity of ebooks, tablet viewed TV and movies will also increase. This presents news opportunities for advertising.

Second Screen Experiences while you watch TV
We now tend to have our tablets or smart phones on and in hand while watching TV, so companies are creating apps for you to download so you can interact and further engage with the show. These apps will normally use the sound from the TV to trigger elements on your second screen like related photo galleries, polls,or interactive content where you can learn more about something in the show.

APP Marketing
Companies are really appreciating the marketing potential with distribution channel of apps.We are seeing companies not only developing their own super creative apps, but we are seeing companies partnering with some of the most popular apps to feature their product their product within their app. HTML5 has made it cheaper for this cross platform development so expect to see an explosion as apps development become more affordable.

Facebook & F-Commerce
With more then 1 billion people set to be using Facebook by the end of 2012, its no wonder FB is high on the lists as a marketing channel for most companies. 2012 will see an exponential increase in company pages as well the use of Facebook apps, like sweepstakes apps, to grow their fan base, communicate corporate messages and drive sales. It is believed that 50% of sales will be transacted through social media and mobile applications by 2015. Although F-commerce had a disappointing uptake in 2011, expect to see it move in 2012, with either Facebook Initiated Selling or Complete Selling through Facebook.

Near Field Communication (NFC)
This is a technology that allows us to transfer data from our smart phones to a terminal device through simply having it in close proximity. Therefore by simply holding our phone near a paypass terminal we can use our phones as our wallet to pay via our credit card for goods and services. Our phones could also become our passport, our boarding passes, or stadium entry tickets. A simple wave/swipe and off you go.

Touch base soon!
Dena Dillon
Director, Piper Digital Marketing