Digital marketing (also known as
data-driven marketing) is an umbrella term for the marketing of products or
services using digital technologies, mainly on the Internet, but also including
mobile phones, display advertising, and any other digital medium.
Digital marketing's development since the
1990s and 2000s has changed the way brands and businesses utilize technology
for marketing. As digital platforms are increasingly incorporated into
marketing plans and everyday life, and as people use digital devices instead of
visiting physical shops, digital marketing campaigns are becoming more
prevalent and efficient.
Digital marketing techniques such as search
engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), content marketing,
influencer marketing, content automation, campaign marketing, data-driven
marketing and e-commerce marketing, social media marketing, social media
optimization, e-mail direct marketing, display advertising, e–books, and
optical disks and games are becoming more common in our advancing technology.
In fact, digital marketing now extends to non-Internet channels that provide
digital media, such as mobile phones (SMS and MMS), callback, and on-hold
mobile ring tones.
History
The term digital marketing was first used
in the 1990s, but digital marketing has roots in the mid-1980s, when the SoftAd
Group, now ChannelNet, developed advertising campaigns for automobile
companies: People sent in reader reply cards found in magazines and received in
return floppy disks that contained multimedia content promoting various cars
and free test drives.[citation needed]
In 2000 a survey in the United Kingdom
found that most retailers had not registered their own domain address.
Digital marketing became more sophisticated
in the 2000s and the 2010s, when the proliferation of devices' capability to
access digital media at almost any given time led to great growth. Statistics
produced in 2012 and 2013 showed that digital marketing was still a growing
field.
Digital marketing is often referred to as
'online marketing', 'internet marketing' or 'web marketing'. The term digital
marketing has grown in popularity over time, particularly in certain countries.
In the USA online marketing is still prevalent. In Italy, digital marketing is
referred to as web marketing. In the UK and worldwide, however, digital
marketing has become the most common term, especially after the year 2013.
Digital media growth is estimated at 4.5
trillion online ads served annually with digital media spend at 48% growth in
2010.[citation needed] An increasing portion of advertising stems from
businesses employing Online Behavioural Advertising (OBA) to tailor advertising
for internet users, but OBA raises concern of consumer privacy and data
protection.
