As we enter another new year, there are a fresh set of forecasts, hopes, and fears about the path of digital marketing in the coming year and beyond.
The recurrence of two themes: Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), is one of the fascinating topics found across numerous trends. Marketing automation, digital creativity, customization, and marketing technology are just a few of the areas where these two closely related topics appear to be gaining traction. However, it’s the impact of AI and ML on future searches, as well as the possible economic and marketing ramifications.
Search is still as vital as ever, and there are a few crucial data elements to consider:
● When it comes to finding new information, 84 percent of individuals say they look to the internet first.
● Mobile devices account for 50% of all search inquiries.
● Every day, 3.4 million individuals in the developed and developing countries receive a new smartphone, a figure that will only continue to increase.
Various Types Of Future Searches Trends
The decade-old content discovery paradigm is challenged when search engines stop steering visitors to websites and instead directly answer users’ inquiries. For many individuals, search engines will become ‘The Web’ in that users will not leave the interface since their questions are answered directly due to their search.
Consumer expectations of what search can offer have dramatically changed due to the convergence of powerful artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and the increase of mobile use. Overall, three essential aspects will influence future searches:
● Voice
● Ubiquitous
● Commerce
While each of these three sectors has parallels and overlaps, marketers and organizations have significant variations and ramifications.
Voice
Voice’s significance is viewed via two lenses:
1. Voice search
2. Personal assistant
By no means is voice search a gimmick. Voice search is now used by 55 percent of millennials daily, thanks to the advent of voice assistants like Google Home and Amazon’s Echo.
It’s a significant step forward for the technology that powers voice search to ask your gadget a question in simple English and have it respond with the information you need. It’s not only about voice recognition; it’s also about being able to “read” a phrase and understand what you’re saying. It all started with IBM’s Watson, which could fool Jeopardy by pretending to know English well enough to win. Then came Apple’s Siri, which paved the way for Google Now, Microsoft’s Cortana, and, of course, Amazon’s Alexa.
A personal assistant is simply a gadget that is always with you, so accessible that you are not even aware you’re using a computer. According to VoiceLabs, 24.5 million voice-first gadgets will be sold in 2017, suggesting that more than 30 million voice-powered intelligent assistants will be in US homes by the end of the year.
As technology improves, personal assistants will do background searches based on information gleaned from chats, customer location, and even biometric data. They’ll consider a customer’s regular commute plan and utilize real-time traffic data to suggest when they should leave home to go to work on time. Personal assistants are already sifting through emails and applications to generate information cards with future searches, flight schedules, purchasing movie tickets, and arriving package shipments, so there’s plenty of room for improvement.
Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple are all focusing on improving their artificial intelligence. The assistant will ask you questions to help you manage your life rather than you asking them. It will remind you of meetings, offer life advice, and get dangerously close to being an accurate artificial intelligence. Over the next three to five years, the issue for companies will be to figure out how to expose their content in these new contexts successfully.
Ubiquitous
According to some estimates, by 2020, more than 50 billion gadgets will connect to the internet. While some may question this figure, it is impossible to deny that we will be considerably more linked in the next five years, implying that search will become more pervasive in our lives. It will no longer be displayed on a screen as part of a search engine results page.
Google continues to dominate the search industry, with a 74 percent market share vs. competitors. However, Google is no longer the sole important participant, especially in light of the changing nature of search. With the launch of new search and discovery platforms and testing new apps, several rivals have built robust search and discovery platforms, most notably Facebook, Apple, and Amazon.
The following are some of the fascinating areas where the search is gaining traction:
● Smartwatches
● Facebook’ M’
● Apple Spotlight
Commerce
Since the introduction of Google’s AdWords in 2000, search and commerce have always been inextricably linked. However, as previously said, the growth of search beyond Google and across a wide range of devices and platforms has meant that commerce has changed as well, allowing customers to engage with businesses and make purchases online. Three areas of particular interest in this field are worth mentioning:
● Amazon
● Visual Search
● New Google formats
Conclusion
The important lesson is that we no longer optimize for search engine bots but a better user experience. It is now necessary to comprehend the online consumer journey to determine which lever should be triggered in a digital strategy. Search strategies must go beyond tactical optimization approaches and provide a custom search experience utilizing Artificial Intelligence to capture the current demand.
So, is your company AI-ready? Are you one of them? If yes, we are here to guide your business with the power of a single platform. Thus, if you wish to switch to AI-based products for your business, contact ONPASSIVE.
