It’s hard to believe another year is gone, but while we’re making every effort to remember to write down the correct date these first few weeks, the team also decided to tap into our clairvoyant side to make some marketing predictions for 2015 2016.

Dan Herbert – Digital Campaign Manager

• M-Commerce is going to be the key to 2016.
• Ensuring that purchases can be made on mobile devices will be essential for 2016 strategy.
• Google Ads share of the the Paid Market will drop because it’s too expensive. Bing Ads will pick up the slack.
• Users will become more interested in social media ads as they become more precisely targeted to their audiences.

Rio Ziegler – Social Media Coordinator

• We will see an increase in conversions from social ads, and more advanced tracking to measure the ROI from social commerce. I believe that all social networks will be releasing new features to support social commerce and it will be a priority for 2016.
• Instagram and Pinterest will roll out new ad features.
• Instagram will continue to develop with businesses in mind and release tools that will make it easier for them to manage their Instagram business accounts.
• Social reporting tools like Sprout Social, Simply Measured, Hootsuite, etc. will be releasing more in-depth reporting features for LinkedIn and Pinterest.
• More social apps will be created to cater to niche communities/specific target demographics.
• Instagram will see a shift in age demographics as more 40+ users get on board.

Evan Poe – Digital Campaign Manager

• Google will make more money and continue to roll out new ad features that allow them to “quietly” control more visible real estate.
• Video content will grow across the web and more “over-the-counter” video creation services will make it easier than ever for people to create and utilize video in marketing.
• Local advertising/targeting will continue to see an increase in powerful, easy-to-use tools that Google will offer you (for the right price!)

Drew Friedrich – Strategy Consultant

• I foresee a big swell in Instagram ad revenue, but in addition I think brands who can utilize custom, personalized engagement on social (video replies to tweets, etc.) that make followers feel valued will be the ones on top at the end of 2016.
• Google is going nowhere but up.

Jake Barker – Marketing Outreach Coordinator

• Sponsored content will become more utilized as adblockers threaten website ad revenue.
• More sites will begin to block content on browsers that are using adblockers.
• Google will release a native ad platform where you partner with a site to run content on approved sites as a native advertisement.
• Instagram and Twitter will create algorithms that mimic Facebook’s timeline, pushing content that you’re more likely to be interested in rather than the standard chronological appearances. Twitter started tapping into this idea with “While you were away…” summaries.
• Content marketing will continue to put emphasis on being the best answer to the questions asked by searchers.
• Digital advertising to people offline will grow exponentially with the use of Beacon, interactive displays and (more than likely) Amazon Echo.

Sydney Banks – Social Media Coordinator

• Instagram will fine-tune their business platform to make reporting more advanced and overall improve the use of the platform as a marketing technique.
• Google will figure out what it wants to do with Google+.
• The use of videos and short GIF-like clips will become more prominent in marketing and will be easier to do with social apps.