30 Fascinating Years of Digital Advertising

Digital advertising has come to redefine the marketing landscape since the early 1990s. A key factor that led advertising to turn digital is constant technological innovation, a phenomenon that is unlikely to slow down.

So when did advertising turn digital?

How has this process evolved?

And where are we headed?

From banner ads to artificial intelligence, digital advertising has traversed an eventful journey in the pursuit of delivering the right message to the right person at the right time. Its effective delivery depends a lot on the ability to reinvent marketing strategies in tune with the evolution of customer behavior & advertising channels.

Google, now synonymous with web search, has come to dominate the digital advertising industry as we know it. Marketing strategies have had to either keep up, innovate, or perish. On the other hand, ads are only becoming increasingly hyper-targeted, with Facebook’s increased focus on user interests & demographics.

While mobile traffic left its web counterpart behind in 2015, voice recognition software has taken digital advertising by storm, with Alexa, Cortana, Siri & Google Now. This has been followed by one of the most important changes made to data privacy regulation, i.e., the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR.

Digital advertising is evolving as we speak, and marketing strategies need constant fine-tuning to remain effective. We know just how important it is to stay on top of the latest innovations in digital advertising, so take a look at this cool infographic to find out more about how advertising turned digital, as well as the milestones crossed in this journey.

Let’s dive in!