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Modern marketers are able to reach not only very specifically prearranged target groups, but even specific individuals. The tools they have on hand allow them to create a consumer’s profile based on one’s behaviour patterns and habits related to the use of the net. They reveal what and where we buy, which bank runs our account, what we do in our free time, where we travel on holiday, what music we listen to, and what films we watch. One should not underestimate the analysis of cookie files, which most websites scrupulously collect, and even the overall time in which a given user keeps his or her mouse cursor in a specific spot on the screen, e.g. on a banner.
The ones who process such information are big data analysts, and, clearly, they do not need to lose any sleep over the prospect of losing their jobs in the coming years. These data are used, among others, by Facebook, which, thanks to the analysis of a large number of factors, is able to flawlessly customise advertising. Given that 1.37bn people use the portal on an everyday basis, big data specialists have plenty of work to do there. The majority of funds spent on internet marketing in Poland end up in Facebook and Google; they are earmarked above all for advertising in search engines, and Youtube. Another example of customisation is remarketing, i.e. advertising messages that “follow” a user. For example, when an internet user visits an e-shop and looks at a specific type of shoes, the shop will “remind” him or her about the selected product with a banner placed on a different website that he or she is currently browsing.
Advertising automation is also real-time bidding (RTB) – a system in which advertising inventory is bought and sold on a per-impression basis, via programmatic instantaneous auctions. Whoever pays most, may place their marketing message on the website which the auction is about. The winner of the auction can customise his or her ad by setting the number of hits, and the target group, thanks to which it is possible to pinpoint a given target group with great accuracy. In Poland, such auctions were launched almost eight years ago. The overall value of the e-marketing market in Poland has reached approx. PLN 2bn (an increase by 7.9% against last year), which means that demand for specialists that can combine marketing skills and analytical skills is on the increase.
Mobile marketing
Nowadays, people use the Internet on their mobile devices far more often than on their computers and laptops. This has a direct impact on the marketing industry, which is actively investing in mobile advertising, including applications, messages, and special websites adapted to users of mobile devices. This, in turn, means both bigger demand for experts in technologies – including designers, creators, and application testers – and marketers specialising in mobile marketing. It is expected that by 2020, in the US only, the mobile market will be worth USD 189bn; so, there will be plenty of work for specialists. Statistics confirm the growing role of mobile devices. From October 2016 to October 2017, more than a half (50.87% to be precise) of global activity on the Internet took place through mobile devices (in Poland, it stood at 63.21%). At the same time, the network traffic originating from stationary devices reached 44.78% (35.71% in Poland) of the entire network load, and in the case of tablets – merely 4.35% (1.08% in Poland). There are more figures coming up. According to the DIGITAL IN 2017: GLOBAL OVERVIEW report, more than a half of the world’s population use smartphones, and, statistically speaking, more than one in five of the world’s population has shopped online in the past 30 days. If this trend holds, interactive agencies and digital marketing agencies will surely be on the lookout for developers and application testers.
Outsourcing of marketing activities
Along with the growing number of specialisations in marketing, for many businesses it makes less and less sense from an economic point of view to maintain permanent teams. This is why companies decide to keep only small units that “on the spot” deal with the coordination of marketing activities, and to entrust these processes to shared services centres (SSC), which specialise in marketing. In Europe, one of the pivotal locations for this type of SSCs is Ireland, which attracts marketers seeking employment in this market segment. Large global brands, such as Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Microsoft have their head offices in Dublin. Central and Eastern European countries, such as Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria, as well as Asian countries, like India or the Philippines are also an attractive target for companies that want to outsource their marketing operations. One of the special forms of delegating competences is offshoring: it also rests on the centralisation of selected processes, which, however, can take place within the structures of a group. Offshoring often entails making a direct foreign investment in a given country, and coordinating all the marketing activities of the group from the level of a newly created international hub. The goal here is obviously to reduce expenditure, which explains why these processes are frequently transferred to countries with lower operational costs. In Poland, the outsourcing sector develops dynamically: the country is able to offer competitive conditions and top-quality services, which means steady demand for accomplished IT specialists and marketers who have different specialisations, including the niches ones.
