Jessica Hawthorne-Castro of Adweek argues that not only has the pandemic accelerated remote work and our adoption of delivery and home-based services, it has also accelerated digital marketing trends by up to a decade.
Her belief is that although millennials and younger generations were already online and using mobile to high degree, the experience of being homebound for months pushed older generations online to a greater degree for entertainment, work and social interactions. "Favorite engagement points included online video, pay-per-click advertising, social, CTV/OTT, sponsored content, mobile and email," she says.
Though she provides no evidence for this hypothesis, this is not an unreasonable supposition. More people at home means more people online. However, Hawthorne-Castro does not acknowledge the impact of the Apple's recent privacy changes and the threat of regulation from government. Apple's changes alone significantly impacted Snapchat's reported earnings and share price, taking other social media giants with it.
But Facebook and Google and resting on their laurels, and are beginning to develop alternative approaches to reaching targeted audiences without relying on cookies and targeting individuals.
However, in my opinion, this could actually drive up barriers to entry into offering digital marketing solutions, removing new entrants, and thus creating a situation where there is less innovation, because there is less competition. So my counter question is, have trends been accelerated, or have privacy changes and the threat of regulation entrenched a duopoly that might result in a decline in innovation in digital marketing overall?
Time will tell.
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