Be it a really creative and hilarious ad during the interval of a movie, or an upgrade reminder when you were listening to music, advertisements are all over our smartphones and television screens or any gadget you would want to name. With almost 59.5% humans on this planet connected digitally, any private firm would have to be out of their minds to not use internet and social media for publicizing their product and services. Every company is spending big bucks getting social media managers and Instagram celebrities to endorse them once. To understand why it’s so appealing, let’s take a further look.
- Advantages of digital marketing: First and foremost, internet, social media and search engines are extremely easily available. They open the door to nearly 5 billion people in one click. They are cost affective and the variety of ways one can make their advertisements catchy and trending is just bewildering. Celebrities use it to promote their upcoming art while fans use it to promote their fan page and fantasy stories. Teachers, coaches and mentors use it to promote their institutions while students use it to propagate their meme column. And so the list goes on.
- Online shopping and cashless transactions: Gone are the days when you would carry a pocket full of coins of small denomination in order to avoid the “change” conversation at a local food stall. The auto rickshaw you just used or the zoo ticket you just bought or the veggies you bought off from a roadside vendor, everyone has QR codes flashing at their stalls and it has just made transferring money very easy. Pair that with online shopping which is replacing the trend of going to ten stores hunting a perfect dress, digital marketing has accelerated and strengthened the two of them using the two of them. Companies invest in publishing advertisements based on your search history derived from third party sources and send you targeted ads before you watch a YouTube video or open a site in your Chrome.
- Some shortcomings: Nothing in excess is allowed, not even life saving medicines. Digital marketing and the transactions that follow sometimes end up saving a consumer’s bank details which can be hacked into. Even top brass like Facebook once reported that 533 million account details were wrongfully publicized. Other than this, sometimes obscene or indecent content, or ads containing malware have also been reported.
To sum it up, digital marketing is an economically feasible and fair space for all firms to sell their goods and all people connected to buy them. But unless regulated and tracked, it may end up hazardous for the society in general too. Because, not all that glitters is gold. Some of that will come off after the product has been delivered. Pun intended.
