Si Muddell: Digital Marketing Growth & Trends (INFOGRAPHIC)

The Rise of Digital...

Back in what now seems like the iceage, when Adwords had just began (Oct 2000), and banner ads on sites were just starting to be served by intelligent adservers, some of us knew-hoped that digital marketing was here to stay, dominate, and rapidly evolve.

Yet in 2006, I remember working down at the annual Internet World Convention in Earls Court London with my Digital Marketing Agency and being amazed at the huge (and I mean massive) line of Marketers lining up to listen to the Google Adwords for beginners seminar. For us as an agency the line and mass of people meant opportunity, an opportunity that resulted in a whole bunch of interesting big business wins for us. I just couldn't believe that some very big brands still didn't practice let alone understand very basic digital marketing tools and tactics.

Well 13 years after the launch of Google Adwords and wow - from mindsets and attitudes, to trends, technology and tactics - how things have changed for digital marketing.

I honestly believe that the masses in the marketing world both agency and client side are finally starting to get the value of digital marketing. Campaigns big and small are now considering digital at the initial stages of the creative and media planning stages and not just as an add on at the end. It really wasn't this way in some big agencies until very recently and for some the situation is still not perfect. That said, it's progress - and progress is good. As a digital man, it's great to see some of the more traditional advertising agencies coming up with some clever and successful digital marketing initiatives.

Below is an interesting infographic that shows just how much the digital marketing industry continues to grow.

Digital Ad Spending Infographic

I first saw the infographic below last week on a very interesting post by Social Media Today, which took the angle of the investment side of digital marketing, I.E we are seeing an increase in marketing dollars spent in digital advertising but how much are we investing into it. Well worth a read.

The infographic by Invesp shows predicted trends in digital marketing budgets and media spends, and it doesn't take a genius to notice that the digital marketing landscape is looking pretty healthy.

In fact just today Adnews posted an interesting article discussing how the ad market in Australia expects a 2.7% annual growth by 2017, largely spearheaded by digital.

"Australia's advertising market is set to increase to $13.18 billion by 2017. Unsurprisingly, digital will fuel this growth as data becomes all the more important." Source Adnews

Key takeouts:

It's clear from the stats below that Google remains to be the very dominant force within the digital marketing eco-system, and that digital marketing industry as a whole is ever expanding with digital-social media marketing budgets on the up. (9% increase in 2013)
Digital ads account for one in every five ad dollars spent - this is estimated to increase to one in every four by 2016
Search remains to be the dominant digital marketing category
Unsurprisingly retail are the biggest category of digital advertisers
Australia, UK, and the US are the countries with the highest digital as spend per user ranging from $219 to $172 per user

Anyway, some interesting stats, and 'times are a changing'. It's a good time to work in the digital marketing industry.