Emerging technologies that will transform digital marketing in 2020

The rapid pace of technology development has definitely ushered a new age when it comes to business. More exciting new technologies have been invented in the past half-century than in the past two millennia! Not only has this fast-paced advancement changed every market in the world, but it also gave way to the rise of new ones as well. For example, the spread of the Internet enabled the existence of digital marketing, a previously non-existent field of advertising.

But as the second decade of the 21st century draws to a close, even brand new fields like digital marketing are being transformed by even newer technologies. With that in mind, we’ll take a look at some examples of cutting-edge tech that will rock the foundations of digital marketing.

Emerging Technologies That Will Transform Digital Marketing

Amazon Alexa and Google Home

Remember the smart homes in old sci-fi movies, the ones which had a virtual AI assistant built-in? Well, that’s really no longer science fiction, at least not in its most basic state. Sure, you may not still be able to conduct an organic conversation with a virtual assistant. But if you want to have a home where you can raise the blinds on and off via voice command, or set the temperature, the technology exists even today. And it’s not just a prototype—there are commercial examples as well!

Smart-home devices like Google Home will change the digital marketing landscape!

Of course, we’re talking about voice assistants like Amazon Alexa and Google Home. While they’re not the AI we’d like them to be, they’ve still got basic voice-management capabilities. You can tell them to play your favorite song or use them to listen to the news. But as their capabilities expand, people will start using them more and more, for all kinds of online searches. In time, this technology could transform digital marketing, especially in terms of search engine optimization. Thus, SEO experts should keep an eye for the evolution of the voice user interface. After just a couple of years, people could be finding all kinds of services this way; so, digital marketing solutions for movers, handymen, food delivery, etc. should be ready for this big change.

Microsoft HoloLens and Oculus Rift

When it comes to technologies that have the potential to transform digital marketing, there are some which are obvious, and some which are less well-known. But the former is definitely the case when we’re talking about VR. Obviously, predicting the future of technology was always difficult, and today it’s harder than ever before, but all futurologists agree that VR will play a significant role in people’s everyday lives. And that rings all the truer when you realize that we’ve got basic virtual reality technology that’s already marketable! Things like the HoloLens made by Microsoft or the gaming-oriented Oculus Rift allow us a peek into the future of tech.

And there’s no doubt about it—VR is an avenue that digital marketers need to explore in the coming future. Just like with the voice assistants we’ve described above, VR is set to fundamentally change the way people interact with their online content. If virtual reality tech keeps improving along with AI tech, we could be looking at a far more human and visceral online browsing experience. People won’t be satisfied with online reviews of a restaurant, they’ll want to walk around the interior from the comfort of their living room. Or, they’ll want to virtually try on a pair of boots they like, and see if they fit. In the next decade or two, the world of the simple website catalogs is coming to an end. That’s probably one of the reasons Facebook bought Oculus Rift—getting in on the ground floor.

VR and voice assistants will dramatically change the basics of SEO.

Google’s Alphabet and Alphabet’s Waymo

Okay, even though Google’s corporate restructuring happened all the way back in 2015, the average layman is still confused about the relations between Google’s new holding company, Alphabet, and their other projects. This establishment of a new parent company for Google was, in part, done because company executives wanted to give more autonomy to Google’s other subsidiaries—and allow the core search engine project to be unburdened with other tech projects.

And that was definitely needed, as Google has become something of a pioneer for cutting-edge technologies in the previous two decades. They’ve financed the most brazen efforts in all kinds of futuristic tech—most notably self-driving cars. While Google’s (or now, Alphabet’s) pet projects all definitely bear a look, self-driving cars may actually transform digital marketing the most. How so? Well, it’s actually pretty simple: with people not doing anything while they’re driving around each day, the scope for advertisement will increase significantly. Not only will they look at their mobile ads more, but the AI-powered cars themselves could present certain ads on internal displays.

New Chatbots

Sure, chatbots have existed for a while now—but they’ve mostly been very crude gimmicks. However, the advent of machine learning has helped propel this technology into something that might transform digital marketing—and a lot more! The scope of abilities that chatbots have is steadily increasing, and their advertisement potential is seeping into the mainstream digital marketing scene.

Chatbots will usher in an era of unprecedented levels of customer interactivity.

The messenger-based bots can have more than rudimentary conversations now, allowing for more interactivity with leads than ever before. Obviously, having a chatbot instantly respond to basic visitor questions on a website will motivate people to review your business well.