2013 Digital Marketing Recap – The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

2013 was the year of mobile marketing, social media game-changers, interactive content and Google domination. With 2014 just around the corner, here is a quick review of what happened in digital marketing in 2013:

There has been a significant rise in mobile and tablet spending during 2013. According to Google, about 73% of mobile searches led to an additional action and/or conversion, which propelled mobile ad spending to double (going from $4.4 billion in 2012 to $9.6 billion in 2013). This is due, in large part, to the fact that 1 in 5 people own a smartphone and 1 in 17 people own tablets. Forget waiting in lines and shopping at the mall, you can do it all from the comfort of your couch.

Infographics, .gifs and memes. Do I really need to say anything else? .gifs, memes and infographics have flooded the Internet this year making marketing that much more fun. I mean, who doesn't love a good Sad Keanu pic? Infographics help us digest a large amount of information in a visual form and it's been shown that brands that use infographics can increase traffic by at least 12%.

2013 started big with the introduction of Vine and Facebook Graphs. Vine was the first of its kind with 6 second looped videos. And Facebook made searching for specific questions, pictures certain people have liked–and all the scary stuff in between–a whole lot easier. Instagram, not to be left out, added their own 15 second videos to compete with Vine. This was all done to try to gain traction with the younger demographic. Social media has seen a vast change in the last year and now brands are using these tools to their creative advantage.

Earlier this year Google has "checkmated" SEOs with keyword data. All search information is becoming private and they are limiting the amount of insight you can expose to improve your rankings organically. But not to worry, we have our analytics team working on gathering reports in other ways. On the paid search side of their business, Google introduced their enhanced campaigns. Enhanced campaigns gave most of us a headache for while, but in the end, they simplified campaign structures and improved the impression share of search keywords.

With 2013 wrapping up, it will be interesting to see how these changes will affect marketing in the coming years, as digital marketing keeps moving it's way toward the mainstream.