By: Harsha Oberoi, Associate Director – Digital Marketing at Pivotroots

As the media landscape evolves, businesses need to gear-up and venture into the most important thought of how to utilize different platforms to stay high on consideration, relevancy, and most importantly to connect with their consumers. So here are a few most need-to-know trends for anyone looking to understand the consumer mindset in the year ahead and planning the potential within the digital media ecosystem.

  • Social Media will continue to be a game changer.

Global index studies have stated that the use of social media for product discovery has risen by 43% in the last 5 years, making it the next go-to channel with the ads space as it opens new and exciting opportunities to reach the consumers. With the market getting dominant with younger generations, TikTok and Instagram are becoming key platforms for brand discovery. Interestingly, 46% of Gen Z and millennials make an impulse purchase online at-least every 2-3 weeks, and about 65% at-least once a month. And as the ads are crafted to be more personalized, these numbers would just be surging in coming months. Not limiting to this, the recent studies show that about 58% of consumers turn to social media to get the news, globally.  An overwhelming statement came across recently from the biddable giant – Google, remarking that the younger audiences are using social media apps (majorly Instagram and TikTok) for brand discovery instead of Google’s Search or Maps. 

Fresh Updates to watch for:

  1. TikTok tests out a new ‘search’ feature that highlights keywords in comments section and links them to search results.
  2. LinkedIn’s latest update offers users a much wider scope of possible matches.
  •  Audio Streaming dominates the overall Streaming Service Consumption

Audio streaming is on rise with our favorite Spotify at the first spot with 44% of consumers use the streaming service every month, globally. While music, radio and audiobook content continue to attract the audiences, the podcast segment is up for the game with 67% of the young users prefer listening to podcasts on Spotify over YouTube (53%) and comedy dominates to be the most popular genre. Apple Music has stayed relatively steady and Soundcloud is popular in the MEA. TV subscriptions continue at 10% growth rate, but 52% of internet users say price is the most important factor and TV subscriptions are becoming too expensive.

  • Gaming Consoles and Smart Device Ownership are on Increase.

TV viewing on consoles is growing 15% year-on-year as more gamers are watching TV on their consoles than ever before. Insights says, consumers who game and watch TV on their game consoles spend 41 minutes more than the average consumer watching broadcast tv. Interestingly, the demand for smart home products has increased by 41%, with smart watch, smart wristband and smart TV being the top products. This highly indicates the shift towards CTV and DOOH in the digital world, as brands are now game for the first name benefits with this new opportunity to reach their consumers effectively.

  • Web3 – The virtual world of Metaverse is gaining momentum.

In 2023 we will start to see some sorts of cultural ripple effects to come from the immersive 3D spaces and becoming more popular. The likes of Roblox and Fortnite have brought user-generated content in gaming to the mainstream and are continuing to grow. Adding the number value, the adult gamers playing Roblox increased by 32% in the last year, and they play an important role when it comes to digital identities. The likes of Tommy Hilfiger and Gap opened virtual offerings in Roblox with community-oriented experiences, acing the individual style and expression and a thing that the future metaverse audiences value, specially, Gen Alpha while Gaming remains their favorite pastime.

  • Biddable Media is here to stay.

With all given and said, biddable continues to dominate the digital media with Google and Meta being the popular and traditionally the best allies of advertisers and brands. Going by the numbers, 48% of consumers actively discover brand, products or services through search engines and 34% consider to purchase from brand websites. Having said that, voice search is picking up by driving 30% of all queries from some countries.

Updates to watch for:

  1. In April 2022, Google introduced a new “multisearch” feature that offers to search the web using both text and images at the same time. Hinting towards using AR glasses as it can visually search across multiple objects in a scene based on what you’re currently “seeing” via a smartphone camera’s viewfinder.
  2. Google confirmed a few months back that it was working on feature that would allow engines to index Instagram and TikTok videos in Search. You can see the progress already by searching for a keyword followed by the word “TikTok” and your SERPs will show results of TikTok videos before you’ll see any standard webpages.

Bottom line – Every business needs to be powered by consistent research, dynamics, market understanding and most importantly by the goal drivers. The most suited trends as part of your media marketing strategy would help boost the results for your brand.