How has technology revolutionized marketing and advertising?
The world of advertising was affected the most by technology. Especially, the arrival of digital technology changed it like nothing else. Together, digital technology and the internet ushered a new era in advertising. Technological innovation provided advertisers with new venues and channels of promotion. It made their task easier while also reducing costs and increasing their reach. Online advertising, social media and mobile advertising have together altered the landscape of advertising. Now, marketers find it much easier to target and engage various customer segments.
Targeted Advertising
Advertising has become more targeted. It is easier to serve advertisements only to the most relevant customers. It also means increased effectiveness of advertising. Marketers can reach their customers everywhere and anywhere. Text messaging, email marketing and other methods have enabled the marketers to reach their target customers anywhere anytime. Increased use of mobile devices has also led to higher focus on mobile advertising.
Google’s search technology revolutionized the world of marketing and advertising. It knows the search preferences of its customers and the products they are looking for. This helps Google serve only targeted ads before customers. Whenever someone searches online, he leaves a lot of data behind inadvertently. This data is used by search engines like Google and Bing to serve targeted ads. Even the social media channels like Facebook, twitter or Google serve their visitors with ads based on their preferences. Online retail has also shifted marketers’ focus towards online marketing. The collection of data by search engines and marketers gave rise to privacy related concerns. Still, marketing received a major boost due to the advent of social media and other technological innovations.
Personalized ads
With the traditional media, the main difficulty was personalization of messages. Marketers were forced to relay the same messages before a large customer segment. Targeting a small or specific group was even difficult. This all has changed with the internet technology and search engine based marketing. Anyone searching online on Google can come across advertisements for his most searched products. Major marketing agencies like AC Nielsen have provided the marketers with several tools. They can easily use them to target their customers. These agencies help the marketers to segment the customer base per their demographic, psychographic as well geographic profiles. Based on the segmentation, the marketers cannot just target their customers but also send specific messages. In marketing, it all depends on the targeting of the right customer segment. This became easier with the world wide web. Marketers are equipped with sophisticated tools and have workable data at their dispense. It enables them to achieve their targets without much ado. The revenue from online advertising is a sizeable revenue of the global ad revenue.
Increased access and efficiency
The growth of technology has also aided the growth of advertising at another important point. It increased its access and reach. First of all, while the costs of online advertising are lower, the accessibility and reach are greater.  marketers and businesses can find unlimited space for advertising online. It is easy to advertise there as you hardly need to fill a few forms.  All the tools to design and submit ads are also available. Even the least experienced find it easy to run an ad campaign. When compared to traditional media, the digital media helps reach a larger number of people and that too without difficulty. Millions of people visit Facebook, and twitter daily. Similarly, a very large number of people use email. Not just this, there are millions of websites that are visited by millions daily. Based on their demographic and psychographic profiles, the marketers can target customers and serve them the right ads. According to a survey, Americans spend half of their day consuming media. Half of this media is digital media. People’s addiction of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube is not a secret anymore.
Mobile advertising
Mobile advertising is a very important area for the marketers. More than a billion people on the earth keep mobile devices. Devices like smartphones, tables, I-phones, I-pads and I-pods have grown very popular during the last decade. Their proliferation made mobile advertising the central attraction of marketing. This has also reduced the use of desktops. More and more people are using smartphones and apps to surf the internet. Technological advances happen daily. Many bigger changes to the world of advertising might be underway. The rise of the social media impacted marketing significantly. The audience size available on the social media is much larger than any other channel. An important thing that the internet did was to break the oligopoly of the traditional channels. As the online channels reduced the cost of advertising, it broke the oligopolistic power of the traditional channels.
Short history of technology in advertising
The first major technological advancement that changed the world of advertising was the radio. During the 1920s and 30s radio controlled a vast part of the advertising world. However, it changed with the arrival of the television in the 1940s. Such more changes have continued to happen in the advertising world. Technology has boosted the effectiveness of advertising at various points in history. After television, several waves of technological innovation touched advertising at several points. Particularly, the biggest advancement came with the worldwide web. Advertisement took its giant step with the internet. Even during the recent global recession, internet advertising continued to grow.
New Trends
Wireless advertising is one of the most important recent trends in the world of advertising. It refers to the use of wireless networks for delivering advertisements. Apart from promotion and sales, wireless advertising helps at creating brand awareness. Not only it has huge potential but also provides some unique and important advantage. Most important thing is accessibility. The wireless devices are portable and personal. People keep them with themselves all the time. It is easier to carry a smartphone than to carry a laptop. So, the amount of exposure to ads can increase with the mobile devices. Moreover, mobile devices provide the benefit of user oriented advertising. It is easier to track the users through their mobile devices. Thus, technology has benefited advertising in terms of cost, reach, personalization and overall effectiveness. Advertising more or less has become everyone’s art. Several of the retailers use the data collected from customers to predict future sales as well as to advertise. Thus, technology provided dual support to marketers. It made it easier to advertise. Another thing it made possible was to collect vast amounts of data from the customers.
Overall, technology has brought the biggest changes to the advertising world. During recent years, social media advertising and mobile advertising have received the highest focus. Most of all, digital technology has sped up the world of advertising. However, it has also benefited the customers. They are being served with relevant ads which somewhere speeds up the process of purchase. Still, they would not like being bombarded with ads all the time. This makes the privacy concerns related to advertising important. It is also a crucial area that advertisers would need to focus upon. The cost effectiveness of internet should not lead to invasion of privacy by marketers.