Buzzword:
“A word or a phrase which has become fashionable or popular, or sounds technical or important and is used to impress people”
This is one of the many available definitions for “buzzword”. Different from buzzwords in the general usage, many E-Commerce buzzwords do have a meaning and describe a method or technical description of available or upcoming trend in our field of work.
Apart from “sounding good” to “impress people”, the knowledge of these terms also means that you, as somebody working in Online, are aware of the changes in our extremely fast evolving working environment. One example is the buzzword that came up around 2 years ago: “Content marketing”. By now, everybody even slightly involved in Online marketing knows it and either uses this marketing technique or advises his clients to do so. From buzzword it went to mainstream and is now widely acknowledged as useful and effective.
Accordingly, most of the following buzzwords either already are relevant or will become so in the near future. Your knowledge of them might prove to be useful in the near future, if you want to outsmart your competition and stay one step ahead in gaining market share and revenue for you or your clients. It is evident that most terms revolve around mobile internet usage, making advertising personal for the viewers and technological developments. We at Ola Online Consulting are always looking for the latest trends in E-Commerce and use this knowledge for our customers. Not everything possible is useful, but not knowing the possibilities is never good.
12 buzzwords in E-Commerce that will become relevant in 2017 and beyond:
1 | Proximity Marketing:
A technical solution to display online advertising depending on how close the client is to a certain location. The technology behind it is Near Field Communication (NFC), Beacons or WLAN-Hotspots. It is relevant for business, as the usage of mobile devices keeps growing and business can use this technique to send tailored messages to potential customers as they are close enough to enter the location.
Relevant for: Stationary business, shops, bars, restaurants, etc.
2 | Hyperlocalization:
A word combined from two words, “hyperlinking” and “localization”. Again, aimed at mobile customers. This feature is already used by Google in Google maps and Google search, as the displayed Ads are different, depending on the location of the consumer. Since June 2016, all Android handys have the beacon based “nearby” function that is aimed to display “hyperlocal” content.
Relevant for: As above, for stationary business, etc.
3 | Server-to-Server-Integration
The direct connection between two online advertising systems. An enhancement from the Header Bidding. A big amount of display advertisement space in websites display different ads, depending on many factors. You might have noticed, how long it takes sometimes, until an ad is displayed. The reason is that the “negotiation” of which ad to display is based on reading out a bunch of Javascript codes, sorting them, etc. The new technology shortens this process massively, making the ad appear much faster.
Relevant for: Anybody doing display marketing.
4 | Holistic Yield Management
At the moment, online ads are either sold directly, or over a bid management (programmatic) system. Accordingly, they are monitored separately and optimized for revenue also separately. The new holistic approach combines both channels and optimizes the combined revenue.
Relevant for: Advertiser, publisher, websites offering advertising space.
5 | Programmatic Creativity & Branding
This term comes as a new member of the “programmatic” family, describing one of the biggest general trends in E-Commerce and online advertising, meaning the automation of certain tasks by intelligent machines, without human interference. This term describes the idea that advertising content should be available in different formats (for males, females, young, old, in the morning, at night, etc) and the “right” content should be chosen automatically (programmatic) by a machine. This way the opening rate, the conversion rate and many other key performance indicators (and ultimately the revenue) should get better. In central Europe the share of programmatic advertising has reached 32%, raising by 51% from 2015. Accordingly, this trend will have high impact on the online advertising landscape in the future.
Relevant for: Advertiser that do programmatic advertising and branding to raise their KPIs
6 | Agile Marketing
In our fast paced environment, the classical “3 year marketing plan” has long been replaced by a “1 year marketing plan” and now, even this approach is becoming obsolete. The current “best practice” approach is that of small, connected marketing teams, constantly working on new ideas and solutions. Best example in 2016 was the “Pokémon Go” hype. Agile reacting business, next to Pokémon Go hotspots, changed their Google Maps entries, offering special deals for the players. Generally, this concept describes a state of mind, a blueprint for organizing marketing teams and helps to make your whole marketing efforts flexible.
Relevant for: Everybody doing E-Commerce
7 | Live Content
One of THE buzzwords of 2016 and even more for 2017. There is not a single conference without somebody talking about this. The idea is simple: Everybody knows that videos are the most engaging advertising format available. All the big content websites know that, look at the amount of video content on Facebook as an example. Accordingly, it gets harder to grab the viewers’ attention. Live content = live videos are proving to be a very effective way to make people watch. The most prominent example is Apple. Their famous product presentations have been streamed live for many years now and are one of the reasons for its unique branding power. Being so important, all the big reach companies offer the feature by now: YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.
Relevant for: Everybody addressing young audiences
8 | Outstream-Advertising
This means moving-picture advertising (videos, slideshows) displayed in a content (text) filled enviroment. The ad is displayed between two paragraphs of text. If you scroll it out of your view it stops. Different from Instream-Advertising, it does not need content on your website. It is relevant, as advertisements before videos (like in Youtube) annoy the viewers that mute the tone or open new windows while the ad is displayed. Outstream-Advertising is less intrusive and can be displayed only in relevant surroundings, where the customer might be interested in the offer. Also, normally you only have to pay for the view, if the video gets shown complete.
Relevant for: Advertiser without relevant video-content on their website
9 | Inbound Marketing
Content Marketing and Inbound Marketing are closely related. The idea behind is that the customer does not get pushed to visit a certain website, but that he chooses to do so himself, attracted by interesting content. The beauty of this kind of marketing is, that the customer wants to find out more about something, so his attitude is already positive towards the advertiser. Classic examples are Blog-Postings, White Papers (like this one), Newsletter and Events. Two factors are essential for this marketing technique to work: Relevant, interesting content and the right channels to promote it. Especially relevant are social channels, as many as you can reach.
Relevant for: Advertiser that offer real content that is perceived as useful by the reader.
10 |Instant Payment
This literally means that payments are done within seconds. This is one of the big projects of the European Central Bank that plans to set the environment for this payment method by November 2017. The positive effect of this will be that the whole online buying process will get much faster, not having to wait 1-3 days until the money arrives at the vendor, before the shipping of the goods starts. Already today companies like Paypal, Apple or Facebook are pushing for such solutions, putting pressure on traditional banks to offer a similar service. Customers do not perceive the payment as a separate step in buying online, but as a part of the whole process that should work fast, secure and effortlessly. Instant payment options will soon hit the wider audience and will become a “must have” for all online vendors.
Relevant for: All online shops, B2B vendors and even store owners that want to avoid handling cash
11 | Conversational Commerce
You might not even know it, but you might be using it already. Intelligent “chatbots” are taking over with amazing speed. Fueled by the massive advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and voice recognition, more and more companies replace first level customer support by machines. Have you heard of Amazon Echo? It is incredibly successful and based totally on this principle. Big booking companies and airlines like KLM are using conversational commerce technology to guide customers through their booking system. This technology will soon replace thousands of customer support employees and make high quality customer service available even for small companies that are not able to afford them currently.
Relevant for: Everybody doing E-Commerce
12 | Programmatic Buying (Advertising)
The share of programmatic advertising is rising from year to year and already has a huge share in the display advertising market in Europe and in the USA. The idea behind it is, that you as an advertiser don’t book a specific space on a specific website, but that you give your advertising to a company that has a computer matching your ad to the most relevant ad position, to the best possible price. Think of it as a stock exchange, where advertising spaces are being auctioned, not sold for a fixed price. All the relevant facts like click through rate, conversion rate, etc. are being monitored and taken into account for the next bid. This way, you as an advertiser get the best possible return of your investment and the advertiser can sell all of their advertising space without having to call advertisers directly, which is very expensive. Everything is done automatically, in real time. As a consequence, you might not even know where your ads are shown. Still, being very cost effective, fast and successful for all parties, this technology will continue to rise in market share.
Relevant for: Everybody doing E-Commerce
Any further questions? Do you want to learn more? Feel free to contact us!
Ola Online Consulting
