Will we all be walking around in virtual reality headsets and getting personalised offers delivered to our mobiles in 2016? Apparently we will.

Hot off the press, here is a round up of the latest marketing predictions for next year from the most influential voices in the industry…

1. Video Ads Arrive In Google

According to sources in the know, Google is testing promoted video ads in search results. The video ads would be the next step in Google’s evolution of search advertising, which started as simple links but increasingly include photos and other media formats.

This means marketers will have to start embracing more visual forms of content, Blake Cahill, Global Head of Digital and Social Marketing at Philips tells the Guardian.

“People are increasingly using video to share their stories and marketers need to follow that trend,” he says.

2. 360-Degree Videos on Facebook

Philip’s Blake Cahill adds that the evolution of video marketing in 2016 will see more brands taking advantage of Facebook’s new 360-degree video feature.

The videos are created using special cameras to record all 360 degrees of a scene simultaneously and users can touch the screen of their smartphone to move the pictures left, right, up or down. They can also hold up their phone and, as they turn, the 360-degree video will follow them, creating an immersive ‘virtual reality’ type experience.

“Whether consumers will embrace this on social remains to be seen, but the ability to control the perspective and have a unique experience on each view is something that merits repeat watches – as the video for the 360 Star Wars experience and others have shown,” he says.

3. Virtual Reality Becomes a Reality

2016 will see the arrival of the first consumer virtual reality (VR) headsets – the HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift. These VR devices have the potential to introduce an entire new medium of online advertising.

Daniel Newman, author of ‘The Millennial CEO’ and ‘The New Rules of Customer Engagement,’ tells Forbes: “Virtual reality literally drops people inside their favourite TV show, provides an on-the-ground preview of their next vacation, or puts them behind the wheel of their next car.

“Customer experience is priority number one and—although it’s still evolving—3D technology is poised to move from novelty to mainstream. It will start most heavily in the gaming industry, but as the technology to create and consume becomes more accessible, smart marketers will look for ways to bring their products to virtual life.”

4. Dawn of the ‘adblockalypse’

2016 is predicted to be the ‘age of ad blocking,’ otherwise known as the ‘adblockalypse’. Hot on the heels of ‘mobilegeddon’ (who comes up with these doom-mongering terms?!), it will see content marketers enter an arms race against ad blockers, as more and more consumers download them on their computers and mobile devices.

Sarah Wood, Co-founder of Unruly and Made in Britain tells Marketing Magazine: “We’ll see many emergency drills and some strategic plays to survive the ‘adblockalypse’.

“Publishers will launch more native and consumer-friendly ad formats as they endeavour to keep people on-side and slow the rising tide of ad-blocking; this is the year they’ll get their first-party data fit for purpose as they focus on maximising yields.

“They’ll be in experimentation mode, building in-app audiences and trialling new monetisation models and partnerships, such as Facebook instant articles.”

5. Facebook Instant Articles

If you’re wondering what Facebook instant articles are, the social network announced earlier this year that it would begin the native hosting of publishers’ content.

Designed to help streamline the user experience (no more waiting for third party sites to load), instant articles offers snazzy multimedia features such as tilt-to-zoom high res images, auto-play videos, animated maps and audio commentary.

Facebook will allow publishers to keep 100% of the revenue they sell against the articles and, with brands like National Geographic, BuzzFeed and BBC News already on board, it looks set to shake up publishers’ monetisation models.

Katie Vanneck-Smith, Global Managing Director at Dow Jones agrees: “One of the biggest priorities for Dow Jones in 2016 will be modernising our paywall. We need to create the next ‘new normal’ with it, staying nimble in a world where the blogosphere and social media are increasingly becoming the new home of breaking news.”

6. Beacon Rollout and ‘Appticipation’
With 2015 being all about selling and testing beacon technology, Matt Kojalo, VP of advertising technology products at Skyhook Wireless, believes 2016 will see the first big spike in distribution.

“Now companies have budgeted for them in the new year,” he tells Venture Beat. “This uptick in distribution means providing mobile user context will require indoor location, thus beacons will become even more prevalent.”

He adds: “People are excited about reducing friction, and we think that the first places we will see a more streamlined experience is with retail apps, which are already only a small step away from automating these dynamic experiences.

“Having the capability of understanding a user’s precise location will make a targeted experience, such as ‘Store Mode’, a reality — where apps will begin to deliver based on the behaviour of the user, not the other way around.”

Kojalo calls the process of apps adapting their functionality based on the data they have about what users do in the different places they go ‘appticipation’ (don’t blame me, I don’t make them up!).

“With the introduction and prevalence of beacons increasing in popularity, we will start to see ‘appticipation’ integrated with more sophistication,” he says. “This level of audience intelligence can do wonders for your customer experience and your KPIs.”

7. Virtual Assistant Apps to Impact on Search Indexing

Search engines are continually evolving, but one change to the algorithms in 2016 will be the incorporation of data from virtual assistant apps, according to Jed Singer President of digital marketing consultancy Socialight Media.

“A major change will be in how search engines incorporate virtual assistant app data, like Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, Microsoft’s Cortana, and Facebook’s M,” he says. “These apps have different user context and expectations than someone searching statically at their computer.

“In addition to your traditional keyword-based, social signal-based, and link-based SEO, B2B firms will need to re-evaluate how their content is crawled and indexed for the on-the-go user leveraging one of these assistant apps.”

8. Employees to Become Brand Ambassadors

Studies have shown that only 14% of people trust traditional advertising, and yet 78% trust peer recommendations. In light of these statistics, Mark Burgess President of Blue Focus Marketing, believes more companies will encourage their employees to ‘live the brand’.

He tells Forbes: “Leading brands are investing resources to create a workforce of engaged brand ambassadors.  The result is a win/win. The company benefits from more authentic communication, and employees build personal brands.

“At the core of this approach is trust, authenticity, and transparency—the cultural pillars essential for activating the workforce around social business best practices. The net result:  Branding from the inside out.”

9. Marketers and Geeks to Team Up

The next frontier for marketing teams is finding cohesive alignment with their data science counterparts, says Kevin Brown, Head of Marketing at Credibly.

“Although traditionally thought of as two totally different animals―analytical number-crunchers vs. message-obsessed creative types―both groups serve a brand’s goal of deeply understanding the customer persona.

“In the new world of data-driven content and advertising, data science and marketing must operate as a coordinated unit, with predictive analytics driving targeted communication with consumers. Data is the rocket fuel for marketing’s future.”

10. Intent-Interpreting Tech to Revolutionise Online Marketing

Gleaning buyer intent from visitors’ browsing behaviour and then being able to act on it by presenting the most effective messages or calls-to-action, could revolutionise online marketing says Andy Zimmerman, CMO, Evergage.

“For a long time it was just a pipe dream,” he says. “That’s no longer the case, as technology can now interpret behavioural data in real time and instantly deliver a relevant message, recommendation or experience at the 1:1 level – and we’ll see marketers capitalise on these capabilities more in the year ahead.

“Newer systems even incorporate machine-based learning and response automation, helping unlock the full potential of intent-based marketing.”

11. PR to Become the New SEO

Legitimate backlinks from trusted news sources are the only way to go with SEO in 2016. And, in order to build them, companies will have to do it the old fashioned way – by producing quality content and being a site that others genuinely want to link to.

Lauren Wilkison, Founder of marketing agency CSC Interactive, tells Examiner: “Anyone who knows anything knows that link farming is old news and no longer the standard (or even a good idea at all) for companies employing an SEO strategy.

“In 2016 you’ll seen an increase in PR companies collaborating with SEO companies to bring about earned media backlinks for clients.”

12. Live Streaming to Hit the Mainstream

With the arrival of live video streaming apps such as Periscope, Meerkat and Blab, 2015 gave everyone the ability to become instant content creators in a powerful new way. This technology will only get more popular in 2016, says futurist and New York Times Bestselling Author Joel Com.
“I think we’re going to see more on-the-scene journalism and original content flowing from creative individuals who embrace this technology,” he says.

Michael Stelzner, Founder of Social Media Examiner adds: “2016 will take some of these live broadcasts to an entirely new level with the introduction of live 360 degree broadcasts that will allow people to move their mobile phones and experience the action as if they were actually present.”

13. Mobile Internet Advertising to Overtake Newspapers

For the first time, mobile internet advertising will overshadow traditional newspaper advertising in 2016, says Zenith Optimedia.

It will grow by 38% to become the third-largest advertising medium behind television and desktop internet, emerging as the “driving force behind the growth of the entire advertising market”.

Steve King, ZenithOptimedia’s Worldwide Chief Executive, tells The Drum: “Mobile technology is rapidly transforming the way consumers across the world live their lives, and is disrupting business models across all industries.

“We are now witnessing the fastest transition of ad budgets in history as marketers and agencies scramble to catch up with consumers’ embrace of the mobile way of life.”

14. Social Media Traffic to Websites to Decline

As more social networks turn down the visibility of content shared by brands organically, marketers will clock up fewer clicks and less traffic. But this isn’t the only reason social media traffic to websites will appear to decline in 2016, says Chad Pollitt, Adjunct Professor of Internet Marketing at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business.
“The more people go in-app with their social media use, the more it will appear as though social traffic is on the decline,” he tells the Huffington Post. “In actuality, it’s likely an attribution error. Many mobile apps strip out what’s known as UTM parameters from links or simply obfuscate itself as a source. This causes analytics programs to view the traffic as direct as opposed to social or referral.

“Also, Twitter has been making changes to its API as of late, the result of which has led to the disablement of some third party software and the ability to track tweet counts for some widgets. If this isn’t a fluke and was done on purpose it may have an impact on RSS-driven spam bots, too. This may make some content marketers social share count numbers smaller overall.

15. Brands to Narrow Their Social Media Use

Ever more social networks joined the throng in 2015, stretching brands’ resources as they try to utilise them all. However, according to Stephanie Sammons, author of ‘Linked to Influence’ companies will become pickier about where they focus their efforts in the New Year.

“As the major social networks mature, it has become more difficult to gain traction just skimming the surface of all of them,” she tells Social Media Today. “Marketers who go deeper with one or two primary social networks will experience much greater success.

“Another trend that will likely continue is a greater focus on ‘owned’ content. As social and content platforms continue to change their rules and make it increasingly difficult to get visibility, marketers will place more emphasis on the web properties that they own and control.”

Conclusion

While 2016 looks set to present marketers with a whole host of new tech to get their heads round, it also offers a world of exciting possibilities. Time to get creative!