The Evolution of Digital Marketing

The expression Digital Marketing was first coined in the year 1990, the time when the idea Web 1.0 was established. The platform enabled its users to discover useful information. But it did not facilitate sharing that information through the web. Then the marketers and experts were not fully aware about the digital marketing usage. And not very certain whether their strategies would work, because at that was the time when the internet was yet to see widespread distribution. The story goes on!

1993 -The first and foremost clickable web-ad banner went live. HotWired acquired a few banner advertisements for promotion and advertising purpose. Marking the initial breakthrough in the evolution of digital marketing journey.

1994- New technological approach such as the, first ever e-commerce transaction done via internet, was devised and entering the market with a new-fangled mission. Yahoo was launched andwithin one year received a whooping one million hits. Hence changing the digital marketing definition forever.Major companies working toward optimizing their websites to rank higher on the search engine.

1996 -Additional search engines and tools -LookSmart, Alexa andHotBot had emerged.

1997 — First social media site Sixdegrees.com was born.

1998 — The golden year considering evolution of online marketing game because Google came into play. Also, Microsoft started with MSN, and Yahoo put forth the Yahoo web search.

1999 -Marketers started using the earliest SEO techniques of excessive tagging, backlinks and keyword packing to win the high rankings race. The Evolution Of Digital Marketing: 30 Years In The Past & Future, mentions one company, prominent for its aggressive marketing turns was Razorfish. A torch bearer for any SEO agency, India and world over it was a pioneer of “server push” opportunities of the Netscape browser.

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2000 — Smaller search engines were wiped out, creating more space and openings for the titans.

2002 — Professional social media networking page LinkedIn was announced.

2003 — WordPress and MySpace were released.

2004 — Gmail was unveiled. Facebook was live and Google went public.

2005 — YouTube was inaugurated.

2006 — Another notable year, as the search engine traffic was stated to have grown nearly 6.4 billion in one month. Microsoft created an MS live search(Bing) and at the same time, Twitter came to light. Amazon e-commerce sales also came into picture crossing approximately $10 billion.

2007 -Tumblr and a web streaming service Hulu was founded. And Apple’s iPhone had its debut.

2008 -Spotify was initiated and Groupon, the e -commerce market placealso went live.

2009 — Google introduced the Instant app for real-time search engine results. Later it came up withother products — AdWords, the3-line ads that pop up at the top or to the right side of search engine results, AdSense — cost-per-click advertising structure. Google used the concept of target ads as per the liking of the customers and thus became the top-notch performer in the digital business world.

2010 -WhatsApp was set afloat and Google Buzz as well.

2011 — Kickstarted Google+ and Google Panda, slowly these channels surpassing the television viewership.

2012 — The social media year, when companies had started scaling their budget for social media to 64%.Google knowledge graph came into the picture, Myspace and Facebook were the most popular social media sites among the audience. The companies understood that these sites would help them spreading the businesses on the internet. Hence, trying hard to promote their products and brands on numerous social media networks. And making efforts to leverage social media on to their businesses.

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2013 — Yahoo took over Tumblr.

2014 –The count of mobile and smartphone users, exceeded the PC users count. The Facebook messenger app,tailor-made ads on LinkedIn and iWatch were rolled out. Facebook attained WhatsApp.

2015 — Snapchat bought forth its feature — Discover. Lot of innovative technologies ranging from content marketing, analytics to wearable tech, and content marketing were invented. Facebook began with its Instant articles section.

Cookie, one more important milestone in the digital marketing field was an instant hit. First cookie, designed to make note of user habits. The cookie usage application has reformed over the years,today they are coded to offer the sellers different ways to assemble literal user data.

2017 –The social media networking sites — Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit and others became the new normal. Facebook has had a user base of 2.01 billion, as last recorded on June 30, 2017.

Businesses need to enhance their digital marketing communication as the consumers today expect a smoother experience on all the networks and devices. To achieve this the marketers need to provide an omnichannel experience. The country’s evolution of online marketing has to be capitalized upon; businesses must seek a timely intervention from an experienced SEO agency in India which is also good at the creative marketing skills.

The world is engaging with Neuro-marketing, Augmented Reality (AR) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), using the evolution of digital marketing to its advantage. Technologies such as Crypto-currency (digital currency) and Blockchain have come into the scenario aiding the new age business houses taking a leap. Looking for a futuristic digital marketing set up? Click on to Litmus Branding.