We’re often so focused on the next big thing or mesmerized by the daily innovation of new services, tools and technologies that emerge on the web that something goes unnoticed. We slowly lose our stable footing and begin to get out of touch with reality. Some of us talk about it as “living inside the fishbowl”, and there is truth to the metaphor. While social computing, social media, and social business design may be the future for the web, we’re just not there yet. Change can be difficult. Things take time, no matter how much we want others to join us in the social web. Consider these facts a reminder about what’s happening in the Digital Marketing & Advertising world, TODAY.
- Search is still King of Digital - According to comScore, there were 13.6 billion searches last month by online Americans. Google maintains the lion share of that volume, at 65%. Google’s continued dominance in search is why they continue to rake in the cash, generating $5.52 billion in revenue for Q2 2009. Simple math says Google is averaging $20 billion in revenue annually, while social darlings such as Twitter have yet to demonstrate a sound business model let alone any revenue. At the end of the day, the biggest business in Digital remains paid search advertising and display advertising. Companies spend millions on them and will continue to do so until these channels stop performing. Even Facebook, which boasts 250 million active users worldwide, only generates an estimated $300-$350 million in revenue, a mere fraction of Google’s financial success.
- Email Marketing, strong and still growing – Email has been and continues to be one of the workhorses of Digital communications. Despite all the innovation in communications technologies we’ve seen with the emergence of social, email continues to grow in total spend, offers mature measurement and analytics, and can be deployed very cost effectively as a result of falling CPMs and a high ROI.
- Mobile finally emerges as a viable option – Mobile device penetration is sufficiently high enough that it has become a viable option for companies to pursue cost effectively, and on terms consumers prefer. Already we’re seeing mobile economies generate substantial revenues. The Apple app store sells $200 million worth of mobile software applications each month, putting the iPhone app economy at $2.4 billion. Additionally, the Android marketplace brings in $5 million per month in mobile app sales.
- Online brands declared dead still thrive – Facebook and Twitter seem to dominate headlines and consumer attention, or do they? Myspace is still drawing in ~60 million unique visitors per month. While this trails Facebook by a wide margin, that is TRIPLE than number of active monthly unique visitors Twitter brings in. Now, that isn’t to mean I expect Myspace to win the social network arms race, but rather to demonstrate that it is still a thriving destination where millions of consumers spend their time. Looking at the top 50 most visited Web Properties in July 2009 and you can see other online brands that have been written off, Yahoo, AOL, even Microsoft Expedia.
Don’t disregard these destinations as irrelevant until you’ve done due diligence to understand your target audience, and where they spend their time.
The point of all this is to remember that we live in a heavily diversified online landscape. Resist the allure of shiny objects, and don’t buy into a single channel silver bullet theory (especially social!). Work hard to understand your audience, and craft a strategy to engage that is spread across the relevant channels listed above. An integrated, diversified Digital asset allocation will provide the most effective results, and with the least amount of risk.
