Online Marketing has become a part of any marketing strategy, but understanding and identifying new trends is essential in this complex and changing industry. Paying attention to these changes allows us become early adopters and get a leg up on the competition. Being able to incorporate them early allows us to create new markets that otherwise might have not been captured through other mediums.

We also want to focus on mediums that show a significant increase in audience to which we can leverage our strategies and effectiveness of our message. Mediums that are targeted and show an acceptance to the advertising which in turn generate the impressions and clicks we are looking for.

One medium that has shown a significant increase and acceptance has been video ads which continue to dominate. Social channels have embraced it because of the high engagement rate of the user. Video Ads on YouTube and Facebook have become a norm and with Google set to launch this year with a SERP video advertising platform it’s a sign that people are accepting video ads. So expect to see more video ads this year.

Google’s move to change how mobile devices search on was a huge hit to a lot of businesses. If you were a business that did not make your site mobile friendly you were removed from googles mobile search index. With traffic increasing everyday on mobile devices it is no longer acceptable to have to zoom in on a site to read the text and Google made this clear last year. Business need to adopt and make sure there site is mobile friendly.

With that being said have been inundated with apps these last couple of years and we have seen a trend to move more business websites to become mobile apps to replace mobile website. Mobile apps give us all the functionality of a mobile website and more. The key is for business to get some real estate space on your mobile device, but to get there an often overlooked part is to have your app indexed.

VR is here to stay, with the PS4 announcing their new VR set and Oculus consumer edition coming out this march we are in for the year VR really hit consumers. This new market has a lot of potential in many markets and can be a game changer in the future.

Wearable technology was launched to the mainstream with the apple watch and other devices like Fitbit, but still has been lacking in adoption rate. Look for new technology that may help shape the landscape a bit more. It may be small things that start coming into our day to day lives.