Reflect on the last 12 months of your life. Does it feel like
time passed by much faster than in reality? And there is always more to do,
right?
Information
overload is driving many of us to seek new ways of distinguishing what matters
from what doesn’t in an effort to create a truly personalized world. One
innovation already addressing our overly taxed attention spans is what’s called
discovery technology.
Platforms such as Amazon, Spotify, Netflix, Yelp and Facebook
use intelligent, predictive algorithms to match people with things they want,
from articles, movies and products to food, services and even other human
beings.
Think of discovery as the connective tissue of the future Web.
It helps people navigate options by cutting through the clutter. This service
is hugely important to humanity, because our biggest asset in life is time, and
we will never have enough time to read all the books on our shelves or listen
to all the music we want to listen to. So in what order should we engage with
things we never knew existed?
Over the next 10 years, discovery technology will begin
answering these questions with increasing sophistication and accuracy. In a
hyper-connected, localized and brand-focused world, discovery will become as
mainstream as search because users will expect engaging, personalized digital
experiences. And as discovery platforms explode, advertising budgets will
follow suit, similar to what happened in search marketing.
If I had to bet, I would say that in 10 years, desktops will only be found in
musuems while over 90 percent of Web browsing will take place on mobile devices.
Wearables and connected appliances will be everywhere. Consequently,
advertising on the Web, a $120 billion dollar market, will look pretty
different than today’s CPM-based display model. In a mobile world, “above the
fold” challenges become meaningless and “right-rails” are non-existent.
I predict that by 2024, tens of billions of dollars will shift
into paid discovery, with many of the current players—Amazon, Yahoo, Facebook
and Google—participating in a meaningful way. Discovery will be a global phenomenon.
People around the world, both online and off, will discover new things that
they love and never knew existed. Or, more accurately, what I think will happen
is that these things we love will find us.
As a marketer, you can think of discovery like search promotion
in reverse. Instead of people looking for products, where your brand is
promoted at the top of search results, your product or story can look for the
right audience wherever they spend time online. For example, a busy mom reading
an article about how to choose a pediatrician might discover a healthy,
kid-friendly recipe right under the story. Or a marathon runner reading about
the stock market may learn about a new sports wristwatch that can help track
his training regimen.
So what can you do to prepare for this mobile, discovery-centric
future? First, personalized content will become even more influential, so think
about why people would buy from you, and then create content that is compelling
enough to make that potential customer educated about your products and share
your content with others.
Second, think strategy—not a campaign. Compile a long-term
strategy to ensure you reach your target audience at scale working with the
right partners, and make sure it’s effective where it will actually matter—mobile.
Third, focus on ROI. You will never conquer discovery like you
did search if you don’t build performance metrics into your workflows. This is
the key to understanding the value of users as they discover your content and
products in the wild.
There will soon come a day of mobile domination, and we all
better be ready.
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