Technology trends for 2020 that every business needs to know

stack, technology spend, technology trends, new world

Arguably, technology is the biggest driver for business innovation and growth. Unfortunately, it also continually prevails as the biggest disruptor and potential risk for both emerging and enterprise business alike, applying pressure to continually adapt and transform or risk becoming irrelevant.

With 2020 already well on its way and in the face of both great potential risk and reward, what are some of the key evolving/emerging technology trends for 2020 for business to be aware and potentially adaptive towards?

The adoption of AI voice search will disrupt search traffic, website content and paid search advertising

2020 is the “year of voice search” with Siri, Alexa, Google and Cortana continuing to push into becoming part of our everyday lives. We will see over half of all web searches being completed using AI-enabled voice search, 30 per cent of all web browsing will be completely screenless, and most smartphone users worldwide will be using voice-enabled technology to search for products they are looking to purchase.

The problem: historically, we don’t search the way we speak. When we type, we have learnt to be concise with our search terms. However, when we search through voice we use many more words and lengthier searches.

Businesses need to be continually aware of this changing trend in 2020, monitor their existing search and traffic analytics and ensure that they are adapting to this changing trend across their website content strategy by using a mix of long-winded keywords which align better with voice target search.

Programmatic advertising will continue to consume paid media

Programmatic advertising – the process of automatically targeting, placing and purchasing ad-media – has been on a path of domination. Previous years have seen accelerated growth across all forms of media purchasing and placement moving towards being programmatically driven. 2020 will see this increase, suggesting that as much as 88 per cent of US digital display will be programmatic by 2121.

These trends towards programmatic ads doesn’t just affect more traditional digital channels like display and social; Voice, (TVC), Digital Out Of Home (DOOH), and even television are set to be targeted, with Google, SKY and Netflix building systems expressly to support programmatic TV ads.

Organisations need to ensure they are implementing targeted programmatic advertising and where possible, enabled with AI, to keep up with the competitive buyers market in 2020.

The belated rise of Geofencing could finally have its impact

Geofencing (location targeting advertising-driven generally through a personal smart device) has been somewhat tempered in the growth of marketing adoption over recent years, especially for smaller to medium business, and although Geofencing isn’t a new technology in 2020, the evolution and innovation of Geofencing products have finally made the use of this technology more accessible and affordable, and 2020 could see the adoption of this technology by smaller to medium business grow significantly.

Predictions estimate that the global geofencing market will grow by up to 2.4 billion by 2023. Business should look to take advantage of the growing accessibility of Geofencing capabilities to supercharge marketing efforts in 2020.

Neuromarketing could finally let you read your customers’ minds

While potentially controversial, 2020 will see a continual evolution of Neuromarketing technology, or more simply, the ability to measure brain activity to determine what types of content people find engaging.

The output of this is marketing and content (website, email campaigns and display ads) that are designed to trigger specific emotional responses and purchasing behaviour by evoking targeted neurological triggers.

While this one is way off from being “mainstream”, the continual rise of AI could see this hitting our emotional trigger points sooner than you think.

Damon McMillan, Co-Founder, Blended Digital