Top-clicked headlines in marketing and advertising: Social media, consumer privacy and novel promotions - SmartBrief

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Top-clicked headlines in marketing and advertising: Social media, consumer privacy and novel promotions

Read SmartBrief's marketing & advertising editor's take on the latest trends in the news.

3 min read

Marketing

Top-clicked headlines in marketing and advertising: Social media, consumer privacy and novel promotions

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Marketing and advertising are ever-evolving fields, with practitioners and executives alike working toward social media excellence, plotting a course forward in the face of consumer privacy and taking on new and novel forms of promotion. SmartBrief readers have been keeping a close eye on these trends and others in our marketing and advertising newsletters, with social media stories getting quite a bit of attention.  

Here, we examine the biggest trends of Q2 based on SmartBrief’s top-clicked marketing and advertising stories, and what these trends will mean through the rest of 2019 and beyond.

Getting a better handle on social media

Readers were extremely interested in stories relating to social media in Q2 — which is unsurprising considering how much precedence similar stories took in Q1. Strategic moves by social media platforms, as well as advice articles focusing on everything from finding the correct image sizes to determining influencer rates, proved to be the most popular.

What’s next? We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again — having a social media presence is imperative, regardless of the size of your company, what you’re selling or who you’re selling to. Marketers and advertisers are heeding this advice, and are taking steps to ensure they have the tools and know-how to effectively harness the power of social. It goes without saying, but this trend will continue to take hold through 2019 and beyond.

Consumers gain more privacy

The rise of consumer privacy has been a hot topic in the industry, with readers especially interested in a new policy from Google that allows users of its Chrome browser to learn what cookies are tracking them, then manually block and delete them. A similar feature for Apple’s iOS, expected to roll out this fall, will let users sign on anonymously with a random email address assigned by the company.

What’s next? Marketers and advertisers remain somewhat unsure about how these moves will affect consumer data collection and ad retargeting in this new privacy-oriented world. As Marketing Town’s Ken Leren told Digiday, “It will only hurt those that have taken the easy way out and not kept up with the times in terms of privacy.” Expect to see more big companies taking steps toward increasing consumer privacy, while also seeing adtech adapting and adjusting to those changes.

The rise of novel promotions

Advertisers and marketers are going above and beyond when it comes to creating new and novel promotions, and the industry is taking notice. Of most interest in Q2 was Oreo and 360i’s recreation of the “Game of Thrones” title sequence using special-edition Oreo cookies embossed with family crests from the show, as well as Burger King’s geofencing campaign that gave customers Whoppers for one penny — but only allowed them to unlock the deal when they were physically near a McDonald’s.

What’s next? Thinking outside the box is clearly nothing new for the industry, but using emerging technology and data to create promotions that tie into culturally relevant events is seeing renewed promise. We’ll likely see much more of this in the months to come.    

Read all of the top 10 most-clicked stories in marketing and advertising here

 

Emily Crowe edits marketing and advertising briefs, as well as food and beverage briefs, at SmartBrief and writes about both industries for SmartBrief.com.