Glimpses of the future of online are abound with Google looking to obliterate our channel obsessed TV culture with a preference search based youtube model amid increasing bucket-loads of 'connected' TV's being sold in the high street today.
It's clear that our traditional thinking of online will fade as we come up with better terminology to describe what these things represent. I predict three main types of marketing will be prevalent in the future:
- 'On' - any marketing when a consumer is 'on' a device such as PC, phone, tablet, radio or TV
- 'Near' - any marketing medium such as bill-boards, signage which can digitally engage with us
- 'Off' - marketing collateral such as direct mail, door-drop and print advertising
So whether it's video that takes over the internet or the internet that's taking over TV, doesn't matter as the convergence will be rapid and transform everything that's gone before. The unstoppable forces of digital nature are only slowed by our capacity to deal with this change and our willingness to accept new ways of doing old things such as business, lifestyle, family and relationships.