The evolution of digital marketing in 2022

The Future. It’s been a wild year for social media platforms. Economic anxiety, privacy concerns, increased competition, and an evolving user base have shaken up the digital landscape, changing how we search and pay for things online. This is why the advertisers that fund these platforms are going back to the drawing board and reconsidering their tactics. As platforms scramble to maintain relevance in a competitive era, their formats and capabilities could begin to overlap, driving marketers to generate transcendent content.

Always updating
Advertisers are rethinking everything from data practices to content strategies to e-commerce efforts, reports Digiday.

• 75% still rely partially on third-party data, but 68% plan to move toward first-party data, according to a survey of 6,000 marketing leaders conducted by Salesforce this summer.
• Advertisers are prioritizing user-generated content, the creator economy, and generative AI in 2023.
• They’re noticing that younger people use search engines on social platforms to find information and research products, with TikTok and Reddit being popular alternatives to Google.
• Marketers’ efforts to integrate online shopping strategies with their social media ones have led to the growth of “social commerce,” where the entire shopping experience — from product discovery and research to checkout — occurs right on the platform.

Glitches in the matrix
The rise of TikTok has lit a fire under platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube to keep users in their apps.

“As TikTok and Instagram compete for audiences’ attention, the content differences between the two will continue to blur,” says Claudia Ratterman, director analyst at Gartner Marketing.

Regardless of what platform we spend the most time on, we’re still essentially a part of the same online audience. Advertisers now see the importance of taking content and repurposing it across channels, as content isn’t just something that lives on one platform. It’s every story we tell, from every TikTok video to Facebook post to IG caption.