It has been a challenging time for marketers facing online tracking hurdles and new difficulties with emerging tech while trying to satisfy the pandemic-weary consumers. The year started with a similar environment as last year as the chaos continues and brands are set to finalize their agendas for the new year amid emerging technology and supply chain disarray.

“Pandemic-weary consumers are looking for brands that relate to them within the current world we are living in. They have gone through an incredible couple years full of constant uncertainty and doing less of what they love,” Matt Kleinschmit, founder and CEO of Reach3 Insights. ”

Consumers will have shifting expectations

Most brands create strategies around 4 quarters of a year while relying upon data of campaign performances from the previous year. The same idea will not help them this year. This time around, brands have to come up with campaigns that are adaptive to swings in the public mood. With a demanding mindset, the consumers present brands with an opportunity to interact in real-time. This means that the marketers must be prepared for anything.

Planning for cookieless future

Google has delayed its phasing out of third-party cookies to 2023, which gives marketers a year’s time to plan on new ways to track consumers and target ads. Even after following its expected timeline, Google will gradually implement the cookieless future.

“People only change when they’re forced to,” said Greg Sterling, vice president of market insight at location marketing platform Uberall. “They’ll ride the cookie bus as long as they can, even as they test out these alternatives.”

Short form video to rule

Social media has captured consumer eyeballs for years, underpinning marketers’ push to invest in platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. This year is no different, with social media ad spending forecast to reach $177 billion — blowing past TV — while digital channels overall are set to exceed 60% of global ad spend for the first time, per Zenith.

“TikTok will take Facebook’s place as the proverbial social media punching bag as [it] struggles to scale and successfully moderate the unending surfeit of new content,” said Matt Maher, founder of M7 Innovations.

More influencers get brand deals

Influencer marketing continued to swell last year as brands tapped both big- and small-name stars, but micro-influencers are forecast to pull ahead and drive industry growth in 2022. As a top choice for brand collaboration due to their focused, yet small, audiences drumming up strong ROI, micro-influencers comprised 91% of engagement across all sponsored posts last year. The trend is all set to continue in 2022.

Livestream shopping will create new benchmarks

In the year 2022, brands are focused at creating direct communication channels to target the next generation of shoppers. As is evident from preliminary analysis that the younger consumers favor direct modes of communication as they make a decision to purchase. To be more precise, brands will continue drinking from the fountain of youth by targeting Livestream shopping.

Well, these were the 5 trends from the world of marketing that are all set to rock in 2022. To find out more latest news, connect with us at SyCo Digital.