Nowadays, digital marketing is brimming with ever-growing opportunities, and people don’t want to miss those opportunities as they believe that this will boost their business growth. These days due to the advent of the internet and smartphones, more than 170 million people are using social media regularly and thus, digital marketing experts are trying to educate themselves with the core principles of digital marketing so that they can get attention from more customers.
Digital marketing basically helps a company to promote its products or brands through various online channels so that they can reach out to the targeted customers without any hassle. Nowadays, the popularity of digital marketing is unparalleled, and very soon, it is believed that digital marketing will completely engulf the traditional marketing. With its unfathomable features and opportunities, digital marketing will conquer the offline and traditional marketing utterly.
Since people are now becoming tech-savvy and are using smartphones, laptops, and tablets, hence they are preferring digital marketing over the traditional marketing.
Some advantages of digital marketing are,
- Very affordable and profitable.
- Mileage is extraordinary which means you can reach a larger audience within a few minutes.
- It provides two-dimensional way communication.
These days everyone is aware of the benefits of digital marketing. But do you have an adequate idea about its history and origin? If not, then keep reading as we are going to discuss the history and evolution of digital marketing.
The term Digital Marketing was first invented and used in the year 1990. At that time Web 1.0 platform was developed which helped users to find out their necessary information. But, it did not allow them to share this information over the web. This time the marketers and the experts are unaware the uses of digital marketing. They were not sure whether their strategies would work or not because at that time the internet had not yet seen widespread deployment.
Then, in 1993, the first clickable web-ad banner went live. At that time, HotWired purchased a few banner ads for their promotion and advertising. This marked the beginning of the digital marketing era.
In 1994, some new technologies (First e-commerce transaction was done over the internet) were invented and entered the market with a new mission. Yahoo was also launched in this year. Within one year of its launching, it received 1 million hits. Yahoo has changed the definition of digital marketing, and the companies have tried to optimize their websites so that they can get a better rank in search engine.
In 1996, some more search engines and tools like HotBot, LookSmart, and Alexa were launched.
The first social media site Sixdegrees.com was launched in the year 1997.
The year 1998 was the golden year for digital marketing as Google was launched in this year. Moreover, in this year also Microsoft launched MSN, and Yahoo launched Yahoo web search.
Two years later (in 2000), the internet bubble burst and all the smaller search engines were wiped out. This creates more space and opportunities for the giants in the business.
Then, the professional social media network LinkedIn was launched in 2002.
The year 2003 was witnessed the release of WordPress and the launch of MySpace.
In 2004, Gmail was launched. The same year Facebook has gone live, and Google went public.
Next, YouTube was launched in the year 2005.
The year 2006 was another remarkable year because search engine traffic was reported to have grown to about 6.4 billion in a single month. This year Microsoft launched an MS live search and simultaneously, Twitter was also launched. At the same time, Amazon e-commerce sales have crossed near about $10 billion.
In 2007, Tumblr was launched. Moreover, web streaming service Hulu was also founded in this year. Mobile giant Apple launched its iPhone in the same year.
In the year 2008, Spotify was launched and Groupon went live.
In 2009, Google launched Instant for real-time search engine results. Google introduced products like AdWords, which are 3 line ads that show up at the top or to the right of search engine results, and AdSense which is a cost-per-click advertising scheme. In time, Google started to target ads based on the interests of the customers and thus became a key player in the world of digital business.
In 2010, Whatsapp was launched along with Google Buzz.
In 2011, Google+ and Google Panda were launched. People have already started to spend time on these mediums, and these mediums have surpassed the television viewership too.
2012 is the year of social media. The companies have increased their social media budget up to 64%, and Google knowledge graph has also launched. Myspace and Facebook are the popular social media sites among the people. The companies have realized that these sites will help them in spreading up their businesses over the internet and thus, they were desperately trying to promote their products and brands on various social media channels. They have also tried to leverage social media to their businesses.
In 2013, Yahoo acquired Tumblr.
In 2014, the number of mobile and smartphone users had surpassed the number of PC users. Facebook messenger app along with tailored ads on LinkedIn and iWatch was launched. During this year, Facebook acquired Whatsapp.
In 2015, Snapchat has launched its Discover feature. In this year several new technologies like analytics, wearable tech, and content marketing have also invented. Facebook has also launched its “Instant articles” in this year.
The cookie was another significant milestone in the field of digital marketing. The first cookie was designed to record user habits. The use of the cookie has changed over the years, and cookies today are coded to offer marketers a variety of ways to collect literal user data.
Popular social networking sites in 2017 are Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, etc. Facebook has a user base of 2.01 billion (as per the record of June 30, 2017).
So, it can be concluded that the digital marketing is growing exponentially and every day it brings a chunk of opportunities to the users as well as the company owners. If you want to establish your presence firmly in this digitalized era, then you need to use all these opportunities meticulously.
Aviv Digital is one of the leading digital marketing training institute in Calicut, Kerala. We offer a wide variety of globally recognized certification programs which includes SEO, SEM, SMM, Email Marketing and Inbound Marketing course. For more details, Contact us at: +91 9037 489 577
