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The walled gardens of social media have dominated the digital marketing landscape for nearly a decade. With massive audiences, data-driven advertising and content-rich formats, advertisers have gone from dipping their toes to throwing their budgets into the wells of Silicon Valley.

But in 2022, the so-called “headwinds” of privacy and economic uncertainty — combined with more competition and an evolving user base — have created a new set of challenges for the giants and the marketers that fund them.

Throughout 2022, major platforms have each had both collective and unique challenges. Along with increased pressure from legislation, regulations, investigations and lawsuits against tech giants, smaller startups and advertisers themselves, Apple’s app-tracking changes have cut into tech giants’ bottom lines and weakened targeting and measurement capabilities. Meanwhile, competition from rivals like TikTok and Twitter’s disarray under the ownership of Elon Musk contributed to the industry’s existential dilemma about where to appear and what to avoid.

“I wouldn’t want to be in the seat of a buyer right now,” said Ryan Anthony, CEO and co-founder of Dirt, a marketing neuroscience startup. “I can’t think of a single advertiser that hasn’t had to blow up their [lifetime value] models this year because of privacy.”

The tumultuous year has left marketers, agency executives, analysts and other experts rethinking everything from data practices to content strategies to e-commerce efforts. TikTok’s rise, younger users’ demands, a growing creator economy and brand safety issues have all further complicated the already complex landscape and prompted some companies to re-consider their usual tactics.

At the center of much of this discussion sits the importance of data. A survey of 6,000 marketing leaders conducted this summer by Salesforce found that 75% still rely at least partially on third-party data, but 68% said they plan to move toward first-party data. Meanwhile, 51% said their measures to protect consumer privacy go beyond regulatory requirements and industry standards, down from 61% last year.

“There might be a little bit of a gap year happening as marketers have been retooling around first-party data to be able to create the right context and the right targeting on those platforms,” said Jay Wilder, vice president of product marketing for Salesforce’s marketing cloud. “Some of that is also shifting audiences from one platform to another, and marketers are going to be catching up with that.”

Read more: How social platforms changed digital marketing in 2022

What are the major digital marketing trends we are likely to see in 2023? No one can say for sure, but based on careful observation of the recent past and without launching into reckless predictions, industry professionals can offer insight into some of the possible developments.

In this post, we will try to identify the trends that might characterize the immediate future of digital marketing. In most cases, these are phenomena that have already existed for a few years but are now unfolding their full potential: more or less subterranean currents of marketing that seem destined to become even more diversified and inclusive.

Marketing that is not just tuned to customers’ imaginations but also capable of taking on their concrete needs.

According to Marketing Insider Group, the most influential digital marketing trends that will take hold in the coming months testify to a renewed focus on all things related to content visualization, and they will especially affect the customer experience and employee engagement.

We can also add, preliminarily, that in order to succeed in fueling the conversation with customers, acquired or potential, marketers will likely need to draw on topics that target audiences may feel are relevant, will need to avoid simplifications in targeting emerging markets (for example, Asian markets, which have grown tremendously over the past decade and are projected to continue to grow over the next decade), or in interacting with cultural groups (such as the highly courted and very often misunderstood Generation Z).

Before we delve into the digital marketing trends that will mark 2023, let’s make a couple of introductions so as to contextualize the role of automation and give an idea of the complexity of the issue we are going to address.

Automation as a commodity
Technology, which undoubtedly continues to come up with innovative solutions, will increasingly be conceived as an enabler and an instrument: the means through which brands can connect with people. After the two-year period of “forced digitization” that organizations experienced due to the healthcare emergency, in 2023 digital marketing will still be marketing that relies on automation. However, the “human” element will increasingly be more central within a communication ecosystem where technology returns to being a commodity in the service of people (from artificial intelligence applications to data management platforms, just to name the most obvious expressions today of this endless hymn to the magnificent fates of technological development).

Read more: Digital marketing: trends for 2023