Evolution of online marketing

Let us know the history and development of individual online marketing disciplines in numbers. This information is not absolutely necessary for practical work. On the other hand, in an age in which more and more budgets are being shifted from conventional media to digital marketing, a deep understanding is not a disadvantage either. For readers with an extremely tight time budget, here is a brief summary:

Affiliate Marketing

The golden years of growth are over in affiliate marketing. After many years of double-digit growth rates, affiliate marketing suffered for the first time in 2014. Evidence for this was low growth rates and, for the first time in the history of well-known affiliate networks, layoffs. The affiliate network market is consolidating faster and faster after 2014.

Email Marketing

Email Marketing is one of the older disciplines of online marketing and has already seen many ups and downs. Both the problem of spam e-mails and the various tightening of laws over the last ten years have led to turbulence in e-mail marketing. Nevertheless, email marketing has established itself as an integral part of the online marketing mix of many companies. The opening rates as well as the click rates from email marketing campaigns have decreased significantly compared to the early days. However, they have been comparatively stable for a number of years. The provider side of email marketing software has also consolidated over the past 20 years. In recent years, the industry has addressed the specifics of mobile devices. That is obvious because around 2.6 billion smartphones are used worldwide today. This number is expected to grow to over three billion by 2021. Half of the smartphone users already prefer to access messages and e-mails while on the move.

Keyword advertising

Keyword advertising is one of the most colorful disciplines in online marketing. The growth rates have been very stable for over ten years. The success of keyword advertising can be seen in the sales of Google. Google, or the mother alphabet, is one of the most valuable companies in the world today and generated over 116 billion US dollars in sales in 2017. Ten years ago it was just 17 billion. The lion’s share of this is likely to come from keyword advertising.

Online Advertising

Online advertising has also enjoyed steady growth for many years. Except in the years of the economic crisis, double-digit growth rates were also often achieved. Due to the smartphone boom and a change in consumer behavior, online advertising is benefiting from the shift in marketing budgets from conventional marketing channels (print, TV, radio) to digital media. In 2011 the market share of online advertising was still below 20 percent. In 2020, according to the online report, it was around 50 percent.

Search engine optimization

Search engine optimization is a very “colorful” online marketing discipline. A lot of dubious actors bustle around here. Nevertheless, many reputable companies have recognized the business relevance of well-optimized company websites. The market has therefore also developed positively in recent years.

One indication of this is the development in the area of ​​so-called SEO suits. However, concrete figures are not available. What began over 20 years ago with an advertising banner is now an important and efficient sub-discipline of marketing. The hour of birth of online marketing came in 1994 with the first graphic browsers, because with them the static banners returned to the websites. At the time, banners were more like graphic links such as logos or images, but just a year later, animated banners in GIF format were used specifically as advertising. Nowadays online marketing is an important economic factor and an important sub-discipline in the overall marketing mix of many companies. Online marketing in turn now encompasses several different disciplines, including a. search engine marketing, email marketing and affiliate marketing. The development of these sub-areas, and thus of online marketing itself, are described below and visualized using graphics.