Digital marketing is a relatively new concept in marketing terms, but has developed much since its first inception in 1990 – Dubai social media marketing being just one example of the type of development we have seen in the past 25 years. Driving Growth, a Dubai based company, are well placed to help their clients exploit the digital marketing opportunities.
Definition
It might be worthwhile looking at what the term digital marketing means before looking at how it has developed. The term digital marketing is an all-encompassing term to include everything that is done using some form of digital technology. This obviously mainly means the internet, but also includes things such as cellphones and display advertising.
Developments 1990-2000
How has digital marketing developed since those early days of the internet in 1990, when the world’s first search engine, Archie, was launched? In 1993 we saw the first ever clickable web banner, with the first commerce transaction taking place a year later. In the same year a momentous event occurred, Yahoo was launched. In 1996 a number of what we would now consider small search engines were launched, all of which have now disappeared. 1997 saw the first ever social media site Six-Degrees.com launched – named after the theory of connections that suggests everyone in the world can be linked by just six connections. 1998 saw the introduction of what is now the world’s biggest search engine, Google, along with MSN from Microsoft.
Developments 2000 – 2010
The new Millennium saw the first ever mobile marketing campaign, from Universal Music and in 2002 LinkedIn, the business and professional social media site, was introduced, with MySpace following the next year. Facebook, the world’s biggest social media platform, was launched in 2004, the same year as Gmail. The next two years saw YouTube and Twitter coming out, and at the same time Amazon’s e-commerce platform broke through the $10 billion sales ceiling. 2007 was a big year for tumblr and Hulu with both being launched. As China overtook the USA for numbers of searches, Groupon and the music streaming site Spotify were both introduced.
Developments 2010 to Date
The messaging service WhatsApp first appeared in 2010, and at the same time internet use became the media of choice for youths. Pinterest was also launched in 2010. Facebook Messenger arrived in 2014, and the company itself acquired its competitor WhatsApp. In 2015 Snapchat launched the Discover application. Since then, the number of platforms has continued to rise, with things such as live streaming with Periscope following in the recent past.
The above outline of the development of digital technology shows how far things have come since 1990, and the only thing that we can be sure of is that things are going to continue developing in this field.
If you would like to know more about the services provided by Driving Growth, and how it can help you with your digital marketing initiatives.
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