Trends That Changed in Advertising in 2019 and Predictions for 2020

With the new year and turn of the decade finally here, marketers have already begun looking forward to the future for the latest trends in advertising. As the 2010s brought about a huge emphasis placed into social media advertising and other digital marketing campaigns, there's already a lot of speculation going into what brands need to focus on in order to reach their goals for the upcoming decade.

As last decade came to a close, the most important takeaway when looking at the 2010s as a retrospective was the massive boom of social media and society's increase of their online presence in response. Specifically, with the launch of Instagram at the beginning of last decade and the growth of smart devices, the 2010s spawned a huge reliance on the online world, one that's still present and continues to permeate every aspect of society today.

For the world of marketing and advertising, this shift meant moving from more traditional advertising methods such as print, radio, and television ads to newer marketing ideas built around society's digital focus. Stemming from YouTube's ability to mold independent creators into a new form of celebrity and similar opportunities from Instagram's ability to create connections between brands and their respective consumers, influencer marketing became an important tool for advertising. Mainly as an alternative to traditional print lifestyle ads, influencer marketing has trusted individuals marketing products during their content to their unique audiences, usually by an ad read or tag and caption on Instagram. By doing this, brands can tap into an already established creator-to-audience sense of trust to place their products in front of an audience that would most likely already be interested.

However, while the 2010s in general focused on social media and the online frontier, that isn't to say that certain trends didn't come and go. Notably with social media platforms, many have fallen from their popularity at the start at the decade to almost non-existent by the end of last year. Blogging site, Tumblr, specifically fell from one of the top places to share music, YouTube videos, art, and other posts to garner an audience to a relatively irrelevant spot in today's list of popular social media platforms. Even when looking at 2019, video-sharing social networking service, TikTok, found impeccable growth in popularity, matching and possibly outgrowing their competitors in Instagram, SnapChat, and Facebook Stories. Although it's a safe bet to make that TikTok will continue to grow in usage throughout 2020, it's important for marketers to continue to look into other prospective platforms and what can blossom into the next big thing for the 2020s.

Although it's still too early to tell where exactly digital marketing and advertising will go in the coming decade, 2020 brings multiple notable events that can benefit marketing campaigns. With the Japan 2020 Summer Olympics happening in just a few short months and the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election also later this year, marketers can focus on securing airtime in Canada during these event broadcasts to maximize marketing reach as inventory will be limited in the U.S. market. For digital campaigns, brands often focus on having Olympic athletes endorse products during the event. Beyond these examples, there should always be conscious efforts to stay on top of the latest trends that occur throughout the year. Diversifying a media spend to test the Canadian market is a smart option to consider, especially during a year where U.S. advertisers will be challenged by lack of inventory due to other advertisers.

Kingstar Media is Canada's #1 media buying agency, placing constant effort to always stay on top of the latest trends in advertising. If you're interested in pursuing a successful ad campaign that's conscious of all the newest market trends for the upcoming 2020s, you can contact us right here.