How Has the Digital Marketing Landscape Changed?

In 2011, digital marketing was still stretching its legs and finding its stride. 

We’d certainly already experienced plenty of online marketing tactics, but with the introduction of “inbound marketing,” digital advertising took on a whole new life.

Now, here we are in 2016, and the furor seems to have died down. Does that mean the effectiveness of digital marketing has also slowed?

How have businesses’ and consumers’ online behaviors changed as technology has evolved? We dug up some interesting stats to showcase some of these changes in hard numbers.

What Do the Numbers Say?

1. In August of 2010, 40% of US companies used blogs for marketing.

Today, 88% use content marketing as part of their marketing strategy.

2. In 2010, 54% more leads were generated through inbound marketing.

Today, companies with an active blog will generate 67% more leads.

3. In 2011, revenue for advertisements on digital sources was $31.99 billion.

In 2015, revenue for advertisements on digital sources was $59.16 billion.

4. In 2011, 35% of American adults owned smartphones. In 2015, 68% of American adults owned smartphones.

5. In 2011, advertising revenues on mobile sources was $1.45 billion.

In 2015, advertising revenues on mobile sources was $31.59 billion.

6. In 2013, 43% of Facebook users reported getting their news from the platform.

In 2015, that percentage rose to 63%

7. In the first quarter of 2012, Facebook reported 900 million worldwide users.

In the first quarter of 2016, Facebook reported 1.56 billion worldwide users.

8. In 2010, 53% of men and 68% of women reported using social media platforms.

In 2015, 73% of men and 80% of women reported using social media platforms.

There are plenty of ways to interpret these statistics.

It’s clear that businesses are more aware of the power of mobile and digital advertising than they’ve ever been. Ad revenues for digital platforms nearly doubled in just 5 years, and outpaced every other platform by far.

Mobile usage is also up, with marketers utilizing social media and mobile ads to target the customers they want.

And content marketing is still highly important and highly effective, as evidenced by the huge jump in the percentage of businesses who blog as part of their marketing strategy.

These fascinating changes are just the tip of the iceberg. 2016 is sure to bring even more enlightening numbers, revealing how content marketing has continued to evolve.

What do these marketing statistics mean to you?