Four key digital trends in 2022

The pandemic and social distancing have driven the digital transformation. In both our personal and professional lives, it has become the norm to do most things digitally, a habit that persists as we re-appropriate our desks and physical meeting rooms. In this blog post, we take a closer look at some of the key digital trends for 2022 and how they will affect us in B2B.

Digital privacy is on the rise

Most websites today use cookies, a text file that is stored on your computer to make it easier for you to browse. Like not having to log in next time you visit a site. And so far (almost) everyone is happy. But there is a difference between cookies and cookies.

In recent years, so-called third-party cookies have been hotly debated. These are cookies that are used to collect your personal information and use it in other contexts, for example to create targeted ads based on your interests and the pages you have previously visited. Great for advertisers, but at the expense of user privacy, according to many. One problem that has been raised is that it is not always clear when and how these cookies are used, which has led to guidelines such as GDPR.

Third-party cookies are now on their way out. Back in 2017, Apple restricted third-party cookies in its Safari browser. Two years later, third-party cookies were blocked in Mozilla Firefox. In the same year, Google announced that it would phase them out of its Chrome browser. One of the largest browsers with almost 70% of all market share. For a long time there was talk that this would happen in 2022, but it is now leaning towards 2023. Regardless of when it happens, you need a plan to get your potential customers to share their information - voluntarily.

Physical and digital merge with AI

You've heard it many times before, that the lines between physical and digital are blurring. With expressions like omnichannel and the preaching of including all touchpoints when mapping the customer journey. But in 2022, we're taking it a step further than that.

Chatbots are an example of this evolution. What was long an anonymous chat box on the company's website has been replaced in recent years by a real person. Or so it seems, because the person you're chatting with may not be sitting at the keys on the other side. As AI becomes smarter, they are also becoming more human and can do the job at least as well as their physical counterparts. By 2022, chatbots are also expected to be endowed with emotional intelligence, fully understand the intention behind a question and become self-learning.

Another example of the merger is one of the biggest talking points of the year - the return of Abba. Physical studio recordings of new songs will be performed by a digital version of the members, Abbatars, in a physical arena in London in 2022. Or maybe version isn't the right word, at least according to Ben Morris, creative director at ILM, the agency that created the Abbatars. He emphasizes in a video clip from a press conference that "The artists in the show are not a version of Abba, or a copy of someone pretending to be Abba. It is really the real members you will see".

Is 2022 the year we do away with the concept of offline vs online? It remains to be seen, but at least your brand should, like Abba, be the same wherever the customer meets you.

Video is Queen

Mobile media has grown like wildfire in recent years, especially on social channels where it is a sure-fire way to flirt with algorithms. But it doesn't stop there.

According to Google, 80% of all internet traffic is predicted to be video by 2022. Of which 13% of traffic will be live streams. Not surprising, as video is a convenient medium for quickly absorbing new information. Whether it's an instructional video, a training video, a seminar or a sales video with 5 reasons to choose product X or service Y. But reaping the benefits of video as a business requires more than a nicely packaged message.

In 2022, the length of videos will become even more important. We'll see more shorter clips and longer videos split into chapters on YouTube. You may have already noticed when searching on Google that a snippet of a video is presented in response to your search, rather than the whole video. In other words, you can no longer count on watching a video from start to finish.

Fast site becomes success factor

Last but not least, we have to talk about search engine optimization. In mid-2021, Google rolled out Core Web Vitals. This is a collective term for the factors used to evaluate your site's usability based on performance, load time, and how the page performs while loading. According to Google, this will evolve over time, but so far three new metrics have been unveiled:

Largest contentful paint (LCP ) measures the loading time of the largest element on the site, within the context of what the user sees on their screen (viewport). For example, the header image.

First input delay (FID) measures the time between you interacting with the site, for example clicking on a link, and the browser responding.

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS ) measures visual stability. This means whether, for example, the site's layout, images or fonts change while the page is loading.

Why is it important? Insights from Google's own user testing show a clear correlation between slower sites and visitors leaving quickly. The data presented by Google indicates that when page load time increases from 1 second to 3 seconds, the bounce rate also increases by 32%. If, instead, the page takes 6 seconds to load, the abandonment rate increases by 106%. We simply no longer have time to wait for a site to load, not even a few seconds.