Cross Platform Strategies Form the Future of Digital Marketing

As one of the world’s leading digital media agency, Ogilvy has made many key predictions that pointed towards global marketing trends. In a recent summit, which projected the global online advertising for 2014 to be USD 96.8 billion, the following digital marketing trends were predicted for the South African market:

• The mobile evolution:

Even though mobile phones and smartphones usage in South Africa is increasing, the impact on billions of people with real time connected devices is in its infancy.

The convergence of social, local and mobile digital channels, the South African market will continue to feel an increased push for the use and adoption of applications such as Foursquare as fostered by campaign rewards programes and the increased use of near field communication(NFC) which allows for simplified transactions, data exchange, and connections with a touch.

In addition to this is the increasing use of digital video in the mobile context. The medium has the power to spread campaign elements virally and will command more attention in digital strategies.

• Rise of the digital analyst:

With the increasing trend of more content on multiple channels, it is predicted that employers will be pressed to turn to digital analysts who source, monitor and interpret analytics to ensure the optimum use of mediums for each campaign.

• Integration: a deeper conversation:

Current and future digital strategies cannot depend on entirely on the performance of an individual digital channel such as web, mobile, search or social but rather the best performance lies in the use of inter-relationships between these channels with a strong search strategy at the core of every digital campaign.

“While we recognise these and other trends, Neo’s advantage in the digital category, however, stems from our ‘always new’ rather than ‘innovation approach’ meaning that while Neo will always be an early adopter, we will continue to be channel neutral and use the best channel to meet our client’s business goals,” says Madhany.