For Digital Marketing, It’s Boom Time, Baby

What a difference a few years make. Until recently, my industry, digital marketing, had been the little kid brother to real advertising. We acted cool, for sure, but the real money always went to the big, traditional agencies.

That’s changing—fast, furiously, and forever. Brands are quickly shifting their marketing budgets to our side of the table, and it’s causing huge disruptions in our industry. The facts speak for themselves:

By the end of 2016, brands will spend more on mobile advertising than desktop.

By 2018, they will spend $32B on marketing technologies.

By 2019, they will spend more on digital than broadcast in the U.S.

According to Gartner, digital marketing is now the #1 priority for CEOs of technology-enabled businesses for the next five years.

What has this meant for us? It’s boom time, baby. My company will add 300 people this year, a growth rate of 25%, which is huge for a services company. That’s made things a little crazy in the management suite (not that we have a suite). But for the creatives and other people, it’s been great. Digital talent is in heavy demand, and the pressure is on to provide a great workplace culture. Dog-friendly offices, gourmet snacks, craft beers, and a positive culture are the order of today. If you’re a student wondering what you should do with your life, we should be on your radar.

At the same time, growth is bringing challenges. Aside from talent, the biggest one by far is that we’ve all found ourselves in the content business, and no one has it down to a science. We know we have to make content that’s original, timely, relevant, and cool enough for people to share. And it has to sell stuff too.

The biggest barrier is that our content has major competition. Not only is Coke fighting for attention with Pepsi, it’s got to deal with entertainment companies and every other brand out there. What’s worse (for brands and agencies, but certainly not for you), the Internet has uncovered a wealth of quirky, hidden talent. The most subscribed to channel on YouTube today, for example, is not HBO or AMC. It’s a hilarious, foul-mouthed video game commentator named PewDiePie. He has 36 million subscribers, more than YouTube’s main channel itself! With guys like him out there, we have our work cut out for us.

A number of additional trends are also rapidly shaping the industry. First, digital and traditional marketing have merged, and that’s changed things on both sides. Digital agencies are now expected to be one-stop shops. And advertisers at upfronts (the galas where TV networks pitch their shows to marketers) are now demanding that broadcast ads target households individually.

We’re also seeing a big shift to mobile, but it’s happening more with consumers than advertisers. People are spending more time on their mobile devices than anything else, but mobile remains tricky for brands. 58% of users say that ads interrupt the experience, and some studies have shown that on small screens, 49% of clicks are accidental. Not cool. But while it’s easy to understand why brands are moving cautiously, they shouldn’t be. We’ll only get better at mobile if we try things out, fail honestly, and learn what works.

Finally, digital marketing trends have not moved across regions evenly. With the explosion of mobile adoption and aggressive expansion of content services and platforms, we should be sharing best practices across cultures. But right now that’s more of a wish than a foreseeable trend.

In any case, it’s a dizzying time to be in digital marketing. We spent a long time being the fun nerds who never got invited to the big game. Now, we get to play with the cool kids, and it feels good.

You can follow Shane on Twitter here.