A Brief History Of The Last Ten Years Of Digital Marketing
Posted on Tue, May 15, 2012
Soon after they cleaned up the confetti that welcomed in the new millennium, the bubble burst. We’re talking about the dot com bubble. For a brief moment, no one knew what would happen next in digital marketing, but by the end of 2001 it all became clear.
Google.
Its new approaches to relevancy ranking changed the way everyone does business today – and with that came the reincarnation of digital marketing.
2002
- ymarketing is founded. After 10+ years of helping clients achieve digital marketing success the company is stronger than ever...see 2012 for more.
- For the first time Internet advertising down 16%, year over year.
2003
- Wordpress is released. Free and open source blogging that now manages 22% of all new websites.
- LinkedIn starts to network. Bet you never thought you had so many friends in the business world. First month, 4,500 join. Nine years later the company gets more than 96 million U.S. users to its site.
- My Space goes social. For a brief 3 years, it was the center of the social networking universe, reaching 100 million users in 2006. But being first is not always everything. By2011 traffic was down to 37 million visitors.
- Skype begins its march to becoming a verb. Who knew you could talk as long as you want to your pen pals in New Zealand. By 2011, 663 million people around the word skype.
- The first commercial Mobile SMS appears. OMG.
- Delicious marks its spot. The tag becomes social.
- Internet advertising makes a rebound – up 21% year over year.
2004
Facebook graduates from Harvard. At first only open to colleges and universities, now experienced by 700 million worldwide.- Gmail is introduced. Another nail in the “You’ve Got Mail” coffin. By 2012, 350 million have a Gmail account.
- Flikr comes to life. With more than 6 billion images, it’s the family of man’s digital photo album.
- Digg gets out the vote. Who knew that digging and burying were two sides of the same coin. About 4 million people continue to Digg every month.
- Tagged starts networking. What started as teens-only is now a favorite with Gen X and boast close to 100 million users.
- Internet advertising revenue in the U.S. totaled $2.69 billion in the fourth quarter of 2004, marking the highest ever quarter of revenue reported.
- Google goes public, opening at $100 a share. Reaches a peak of over $660 a share at the beginning of 2012.
2005
- YouTube tunes in. It all started with “Me at the zoo.” Now over 3 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube.
- The Internet’s billionth user logs on. Wonder if they saw “Me at the zoo”?
- Internet advertising continues breaking records – up 34% year over year.
2006
- You is Time Magazine’s person of the year.
- That’s you as in user-generated content, as in blogs, of which there are as of the beginning of this year, 182,397,015 discovered blogs (source: BlogPulse).
Twitter is launched. A giant leap for humankind as the thought process gets condensed to 140 characters, including spaces. And as of 2012 it also reached 140 million users – that’s a lot of characters.- HubSpot incorporates and marks the rise of inbound marketing for the masses. By 2012 more than 6,000 companies in 45 countries use the all-in-one marketing software to grow their businesses.
- Will the increase in Internet advertising ever slow down? It’s up 37% year over year.
2007
- Tumblr starts microblogging. The age for tumblelogging begins, an obsession for many of its 46 million tumblebloggers.
- Google street view arrives. What’s that truck driving through our neighborhood?
- iPhone changes everything. And it acts like a telephone too!
- World of Warcraft passes the 9 million subscriber mark.
- Hulu streams on. By 2012 the average viewer watches 21.8 hours of online video content a month. 7 of those hours goes to watching You Tube and other Google channels, while almost 4 hours are spent watching shows on Hulu.
- Search revenue accounts for 41% of $21.2 billion in Internet ad revenues.
2008
- Groupon goes shopping. The deal-of-the-day makes its first appearance in Chicago
- Obama elected President of the United States. Our first president who got elected because of his campaign’s dominance in digital marketing.
- China eclipses the US in online usage.
- Spotify streams music. Slowly weaning Gen Y to the idea that music is not completely free.
- Search continues to grab Internet advertising share, with 46% of the bigger $23.4 billion pie.
2009
- Gowalla checks in. Three years later, it checks out.
- Foursquare marks its spot. Now you can interact with your environment. Wait a minute. You’ve always been able to do that.
Ymarketing named HubSpot’s Partner of the Year.- Internet advertising is not immune to the downturn in the economy, marking a 3.4% decrease year over year – the first time that’s happened since 2002.
2010
The year of the milestones:
- Facebook -500 million active users
- Twitter - 15 million active users
- LinkedIn - 60 million users
- Tagged -100 million total users
- Flickr hosts more than 4 billion images
- Pinterest pins its hopes on social photo sharing. By January of 2012 it becomes the fastest site ever to break the 10 million unique visitor mark.
- Ymarketing recognized as fastest growing company private company by Orange County Business Journal
- Internet advertising is back and bigger than ever, reaching the $26 billion mark.
- Mobile advertising brings in approximately $650 million.
- Cyber Monday breaks the billion dollar threshold.
- LinkedIn goes public and has a market cap of nearly $11 billion.
- Gmail goes offline.
2011
- Google+ enters the social fray. Welcome circles, hangouts, sparks and data liberation lead to 50 million users a year later.
- 40% of mobile users browse the Internet on their mobile phones.
- 74% of smartphone consumers use their phones to make a purchase.
- Coca-Cola wins first Super Bowl Social Brand Scoreboard Report.
Inc. Magazine ranks ymarketing as the 20th fastest growing advertising and marketing company in the nation.- The first six months show Internet advertising up 23%, with search almost at the 50% share marker.
- Web based email usage goes down 8%. And forget about emailing anyone under 18.
- Social networking publishers now count for 34% of all display ads.
- U.S. smartphones now account for 25% of mobile phone market.
- eCommerce sales top $200 billion, and projections are for it to grow to 9% of overall retail sales by 2016.
2012
- Chevrolet wins the 2012 Super Bowl Social Brand Scoreboard Report.
- Facebook introduces its new timeline layout. Just so you can see those pictures you don’t remember.
- Google announces two-for-one stock split. We are still in the digital age of Google.
- LinkedIn reaches 150+ million users around the world, in over 200 countries. How’s that for checking your outsourcing credentials.
What do you think will define 2012, 2013 and beyond as digital continues to dominant headlines? Share your thoughts and we’ll include them in an upcoming blog that looks into the future at “The Next 10 Years in Digital."
References
For more information visit
ymarketing.com, follow
@ymarketing on Twitter or call 877.736.4321.
