I bought my father a Virtual Reality headset for Christmas. \u00a0Foolishly, I forgot to remove the price tag. \u00a0“He would have though they cost about \u20ac300 if you hadn’t left the \u20ac39 price tag on”, my brother laughed. \u00a0I won’t make that mistake again. \u00a0The headset caused so many rows between the nieces and nephews on Christmas Day that I regretted the purchase. \u00a0I won’t make that mistake next year either.<\/p>\n

In fairness, the quality of the picture and the degree of realism is very impressive and while the range of scenarios is relatively limited at the moment, it’s difficult not to see an explosive growth in this area in the next 12 months. \u00a0Games, travel, education, training and adult content spring to mind as hot sectors. \u00a0Keep an eye out for a company named Oculus<\/a> who appear to the pioneers in this field. \u00a0No prizes for guessing where they’re located. \u00a0I really like their blog<\/a>. \u00a0Interestingly, the company raised $2.5m to develop their core product through a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter.<\/p>\n

So, what other trends can we expect to see evolve in 2016 in the area of digital marketing<\/strong><\/em>?<\/p>\n

Let’s start with the obvious. \u00a0For the first time,\u00a0mobile became the preferred means of internet access for consumers in 2015. \u00a0Companies formulating a digital marketing strategy would be well advised to keep this in mind as the trend is only going one way. \u00a0In time, desktop versions of a website may no longer be necessary but I suspect we’re some way from that yet. \u00a0Personally, I find the viewing experience on mobile unsatisfactory and still prefer accessing the internet on a desktop, particularly for a lengthy read.<\/p>\n

Related to the increased access through mobile is growth in video as a form of communication. \u00a0This has been greatly facilitated by the improvements in speed and also the quality of the picture. \u00a0YouTube now has over 1 billion users and 4 billion videos are viewed every day. \u00a0Facebook and Twitter are auto-playing videos in news-feeds and brands\/publishers are allocating a lot more of their resources to video production and distribution.<\/p>\n

And what about the social media channels? \u00a0Twitter had a shocking 2015. \u00a0Its share price peaked at $52 in April 2015 but has collapsed by 70% to $17 since then, all because the company has been unable to execute a proper revenue generating strategy. \u00a0(Interesting aside: Twitter floated in November 2014 at a price of $26 but the share price rocketed to close it’s first day of trading at $46.) \u00a0Rumours recently that the company is planning to increase the maximum character count from 140 to 10,000 (is that not just a blog?) have not been met with any kind of enthusiasm by the market. \u00a0Monetising a user database is a challenge for all virtual companies and WhatsApp now finds itself in a similar position to Twitter. \u00a0WhatsApp has 995 million registered users and is now trying to figure out how to turn a profit. \u00a0How quickly do you think that user base will vanish at the first sign of an intrusive ad?!<\/p>\n

While Twitter licks its wounds Facebook can take a bow. \u00a0It’s share price increased 30% during 2015 and recently announced that more than 1 billion unique users had logged onto the site in one day for the first time in it’s history. \u00a0The advancements Facebook has made with its news-feed highlight a trend that is going to continue, namely that ‘Social’ is now ‘much more than just Social’. \u00a0Anyone not using the site as a personalised newspaper is missing out. \u00a0From a business perspective, a site that allows you target the specific Followers of your rivals with your own ads that only cost pennies to display has a rosy future, although a company that relies on advertising for 95% of its revenue should have a concern about the growth in ad-blocking technology. \u00a0(Globally, users of ad-blocking technology grew by 41% in 2015, according to Adobe.)<\/p>\n

And a bold prediction for 2016 – Facebook to acquire WhatsApp?<\/p>\n

Conor Foley<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I bought my father a Virtual Reality headset for Christmas. \u00a0Foolishly, I forgot to remove the price tag. \u00a0“He would have though they cost about \u20ac300 if you hadn’t left the \u20ac39 price tag on”, my brother laughed. \u00a0I won’t make that mistake again. \u00a0The headset caused so many rows between the nieces and nephews […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[52,53,86,54,55,56],"yoast_head":"\n