This was last year’s look ahead.

Digital Media Travel Trends for DMOs in 2018

Part One: Bigger themes in social and digital media—Macro Trends.

Part Two: Trends pertinent to digital destination marketing—Micro Trends.

Part Three: Share your comments.

Macro Trends

1. The digital duopoly: Facebook and Google account for 84% of global digital media and they’re growing at the expense of everybody else.

2. Media fragmentation and the loss of trust is a huge challenge.

3. Decline of Snapchat: Instagram Stories steals Snapchat’s most compelling feature, immediately slowing Snap growth by 82%.

4. Attribution measurement is the #1 topic among marketing/media practitioners.

5. Understanding Gen Z as consumers.

6. a.) Marketers adopt video as the new normal or get left behind. b.) The need to tell a story in 6, 15, or 30 seconds.

7. Goodbye native apps, hello conversational chat bots.

8. AI uses data to enhance customer service; machine learning simulates the human decision-making process by using predictive analysis.

9. Voice search optimization…yet another thing to worry about.

Micro Trends

1. Targeting and retargeting pinpoints niche demographics due to laser-like focus on sophisticated algorithms.

2. Cost-per-engagement models replace “softer” cost-per-impressions to produce more accurate ROI.

3. Video ad production and distribution tools make it affordable for small marketers.

4. Micro-influencers with high engagement in niche verticals to replace macro-influencers.

5. Democratization of video ad production and distribution, providing opportunities for small and midsize marketers.

6. DMOs need a new metric, easily explained and rationalized, to replace website visits as they continue to lose traffic to Google.

7. Online booking sites are expand into tours and excursions.

8. DMO digital department solutions continue to be “all over the map” with various combinations of in-house talent plus outsourced media buying, web services, analytics, PR, content management.

9. What will Facebook’s latest introduction to pre-roll ads mean for tourism marketers?

10. Email marketing: An old-school method that still has skin in the game.

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