Two words: Video - Mobile.

Internet marketing will continue to thrive well into the future. New technologies in the tablet and smartphone markets will insure hundreds of millions of people can be reached almost any hour of the day all around the world.

Present university education will start to look more like internet marketing training, and internet marketing training will start to look more like university educations.

I think the future is in a well rounded approach. You have to dabble in both real world and virtual world marketing to have a truly successful marketing campaign. I also agree that it's going to become more mainstream. There are a lot of universities already teaching Internet Marketing strategies to their students. Will they be able to keep up? Probably not. But the future of Internet Marketing is going to be just called marketing.

with the almighty google making it harder for small sites to rank, I think only big companies will get direct organic traffic. IMO

Branding, Mobile, Twitter kids (with tiny attention spans), and the death of email! (dun dun dun dunnn).

Hi Mark Andrews!

The internet especially Google is working hard to make more social connection to their readers and searchers. They are also planning a "knowledge base" search wherein every keyword you type will have more specific information that you are looking for.

We can only guess at what technologies will be coming online over the next half century, and even less so beyond that. That part doesn't worry me in the least - we'll adapt, maybe kicking and screaming but we'll adapt.

The only real downside are the treats from politicians, bureaucrats, and self-anointed do-gooders who are determined to seize control, regulate, and tax the Internet to oblivion if we allow it.

The future is video, and mobile sites/apps. Just follow the trend.

anywhere where there is internet.. how about internet TV? imagine the programs you are watching can promote relevant products to you.. no more commercials.. hahaz, my 2 cents~

Obviously, I believe there will be more advanced tools that will be created and introduced.

On a personal note, I am crossing my fingers that many of the Internet Marketers will still continue to outsource to the Philippines.

I would like it to be geared towards adding value instead of gaming the system.

Right now IM is getting bad rap because of people abusing things like blog comments, google search, facebook, youtube, you name it.

I think I know this one. It's more regulation where you can't do this and can't do that. Mark my words and in 10 years you will see what I wrote is true, IM future is more regulation!

Mobile Apps will be the new website. More people are checking the Internet on Smart phones, iPads and Tablets.

I guess that mobile marketing will be hot trend internet marketing in the future time. For this time, tablets are hot trend. The tablets considered as mobile.

The make money online niche will always be BOOMING in my view. A lot of people think that this market is now saturated which it is not true at all.

Think how many babies are being born today just in the US and Canada. In 18-20 years from today, they will go online for the first time and want to get into some sort of a home based business.

There will never be a shortage of prospects even offline. Millions are being spent each day in this niche alone each and everyday.

More sales for me that's for sure.

Internet or the virtual world is now growing up and it is starting to sense and feel by way of our social media likes and dislikes. Everyone now has the power to watch, study, research, socialize, with who they want and how long they want. Social media, Social Connection, Social Truth

The future of I.M. is using holograms to make sales.

I've seen it.

Forget video.

People will be able to download your 3D presence into the heart of their living room and EXPERIENCE your pitch on a level that truly captures the emotion you intended.

Mark

The bright future of internet marketing is that every single person that tries to get rich quick will do exactly that. All of the 'push button, auto-pilot, make money overnight in your sleep' type systems will work for everyone, especially the newbie.

The Guru's will still provide their $1997 coaching programmes and they will actually mentor their students and only consider a launch a success when their customers have made at least all their money back and made a profit.

Everyone will have an iPad and will be watching split screen videos while listening to free music and playing the latest angry birds app game.

Either wishful thinking or I have joined Rodney in fantasy land

Nowhere.

In the 1400s all you could efficiently deliver from place to place was people and things. So you sold physical products or live performances in person. Then along came Gutenberg. Suddenly you could deliver written works. In the 1900s we had film. Sound and radio arrived in the 1920s. Colour in the 1930s. Television in the 1950s. And in the 1960s we invented marketing.

Today we have the internet, mobile marketing, and social networking. And people say they are "new."

But we are delivering effectively the same stuff today as we always have, using effectively the same strategies and methods, because the core component is still the human psychology. And while our understanding and nomenclature has changed... the core notion of AIDA dates back to the 1890s, the seminal Robert Collier Letter Book was written in the early 1900s, and as late as 1983 David Ogilvy's most material contribution to the AIDA model was to identify "social proof" as a major component of the Desire element.

Nothing will change, because nothing HAS changed. We are still the same people with the same drives for the same things. We are machines made of meat, and the design is precisely what it has been for thousands of years. The Romans, the Greeks, the Arabs... they had markets. They marketed. And three thousand years ago, they still did it pretty much the same way we do now.

1) a move up the value chain away from thin EMD sites to thin Authority sites. (I already see this)

A person with a real passion for fitness, becomes a personal trainer or gym owner or coach. An internet marketer with a passion for fitness, will create a "livestrong lite", which will essentially rewrite "high quality" content and then place ad's and e-books for the users.

This may force the search engines to reward "original" content, but until computers can actually read, this will be a problem for them, because the crowd sourced way of determining relevancy is essentially broken.

If it can be gamed, it's broken. Most systems in life are broken.

2) Mobile - The biggest hurdle here is convincing people to buy things when they really can't do the research on the phone. But as the phones get better and the bandwidth gets better, commercial messages will be optimized.

3) Further integration with Brick and Mortar businesses.

A smart B&M would keep have their entire in store inventory online. If I have a hankering for a "Baby Ruth" or some other out-of-favor candy bar, my "Sweet Tooth" app will tell me that the independent convenience store that I normally avoid has 36 available.

If I need a part for my car, rather than wait for it to be delivered in 2-3 days, I could find out where I could buy it online locally, without having to wait for Bubba in the Service Department to pick up the phone. I will have to of course have to wait for Bubba to retrieve my power steering pump from the back....

4) Online Reputation Management getting deeper into B&M and regular people.

I wouldn't be surprised by there being less anonymity online and in the real world for both businesses and regular people.

All the noise in Yelp Ratings, Chowhound postings, will only increase as the local McDonald's Franchisee hires ORM companies to distort what is being said on all the online forums.

Not So High Net Worth Individuals will of course hire people to police what is being said about them online, facebook, twitter, linked in, "don't date him girl/don't marry her dude" or do some propaganda SEO to improve their ratings amongst nosy daters.

Now is the time to get involved, even though many of the low hanging fruit have already been plucked.

Stras.

I think that Google will continue to keep moving away from its base business, and the more it does that the more it will put itself at risk until a new competitor comes along and sweeps them away.

There still might be a Google like there is still a Yahoo, but they will be beat where their core business is concerned.

Then the cycle will repeat again, with this new business building up becoming as powerful as Google was, and then it will do something that will cause it to lose and be replaced by another business.

It depends on how you look at it. Here a possible way.
TEDxToronto - Nicholas Schiefer -- Redefining the Word - YouTube

There will always be opportunities for small businesses to use the internet to make more money for their business.

The opportunities for people engaging in the "business of internet marketing' will probably be shrinking.

Can't think of a World without Internet in the future. And if Internet is going to be there for ever, naturally Internet Marketing has to be that long.

The techniques used have change significantly over the years and it should only grow bigger and effective in the future.

I think the future of internet marketing is healthy. As long as you can get traffic and sales from your sales page, you're good. And make sure backend marketing is a priority. With this, internet marketing in 2050 will still be profitable.

Harder, varied, and fun (it's my forecast)

It appears is internet marketing may be the wave of the future in a time where physical employment is getting smaller and smaller people are looking to earn their income from the web.

The great part is although there were a lot of people doing it before us we're still light years ahead of people that will turn to it as the career becomes more popular some of us will be the bill gates of this business. There are endless possibilities!

i think over time internet marketing will be more regulated. I do think it will be fine overall.

If you want two things to focus on in 2013, they should be:

1. Social proof
2. Mobile

The desktop PC is dead - consumers are only really buying phones/tablets/Kindles now. If you disagree with me then go look at HP's stock chart before you reply. Heck, people don't even want printers now, even at $45.

Mobile is WIDE OPEN for new entrants. Neither Google or FB really own mobile, and some small companies are just killing it in mobile (e.g. PlaneFinder).

Social proof is gonna be a hugely important factor in ranking well in 2013. So get on LinkedIn, FB, Pinterest and go do something great.

The future looks promising unless there is a massive cyber crash and we go completely backwards, All I know is am excited to be finally on board this mighty rollercoaster

Hi,

Perhaps paid forum posting for off-topic sig exposure/backlinking is the future of internet marketing?

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First of all we will become robots, but before then id say social and mobile (-:

Well yeah no one has a crystal ball, but the data appears to be that mobile devices are taking over in terms of people buying them over regular computers. The future of IM will still be the same though, just the medium in which it is seen might change.

hopefully the future is that we will have robots to do all this work for us and we can just rake in the money

The future belongs to the best hackers; those that can hijack the drones sent by competitors to attack their servers (or them personally), and turn them against the sender.

I know that sounds ridiculous, but that is the nature of predicting the future. All the reasonable sounding posts are that way because they aren't talking about the future, but rather trends which are already underway, (the recent past), such as more mobile surfing and more video. Boring. Drones and killer robots are far more exciting.

Wherever the traffic is. Like many said that's turning more towards Video, Mobile, and utilizing authority sites with a premium price tag, aka Paid FB ads, PPC, and of course SEO if the search engines still want to offer a useful service / vehicle for their PPC. In short, more of the same until something more groundbreaking than the web comes out.

future will be KERN and JOHNNY REESE coming back with a take action machine that zapps you on the underside of your scrotum every time you slacken off or go to sleep at your key board.

If they need affililates for selling these machines I would be willing to put my hand up! LOL.

A lot is in store for internet marketing. These days it has become more and more apparent that the Internet has become a powerful medium not only for communication but more so for almost everything else like a good source of information, shopping hub for products and services, and so on. Because of this, internet marketing would be very valuable than ever.

technology will finally adapt to how humans work, rather than humans have to adapt to how technology works. Such as voice input, now back to written input w/ the galaxy note2, etc...

the question is: how do you make it easier for people to find what they want, when they want, nearby, at the cheapest price?

I think that it is going to move towards mobile Internet traffic, eventually.

Internet marketing means many different things and therefore will have many different futures. It is hard to make sweeping statements that will hold any real truth because it really depends on what strategy you are talking about. The future for IM agency business might be quite different than the future for information marketing online, etc... Then there are the general ideas like traffic, conversion, etc... You can say the future is video - but what about the guy who makes a million bucks a year with an ecommerce store - I would say that he won't scrap his 10 year old store for a video site. So, I guess my answer is... It depends.

Mobile, which is disappointing because it's so much harder to fit a beautiful website onto such a small screen.

Because of this, video is also becoming the future. Sometimes the only way to get all your information on a mobile website is with a single video.

Written content will always be around in my opinion but I do foresee multimedia becoming more and more of a driving force. Video is something to be capitalized on currently but I think it will become absolutely essential as time moves on. Personally, I'm very interested in where smart phones and tablets will take us. I expect these markets to be just as relevant as traditional computing and web browsing, it's just a matter of when.

The internet is still maturing and the technological advancements that drive its evolution are incredibly fascinating to me. I can't wait to see where developers and programmers take us.

Mobile Monopoly 3

Keeping ahead of the internet marketing pack of the future means keeping your finger on the pulse of innovations in the digital medium.

Makes me remember a documentary made in 1969 that foresaw how computers would be linked up in the future and suggested the future of shopping was for it to be 'at your fingertips'. I wonder who paid attention to that?

In 2008 Google's VP suggested that the internet was going to become interplanetary. I paid attention to that, and now it's actually true. The rovers that are on Mars have extended the internet to Mars. However, I'm not sure interplanetary internet marketing is something to prep yourself for in this life time. :-)

What I am (fairly) sure about is that Internet Television, though rudimentary now, is going to get bigger and bigger. Improving Internet Television will be a key driver that influences how the internet evolves from here and will no doubt bring new IM opportunities with it.

If you want some interesting crystal ball guesswork about the future of the digital medium you guys should search for and watch two faux-documentaries. Both are on YouTube.

The first is titled EPIC 2015.

The second is titled 'Prometeus - The Media Revolution'.

Both are a good watch and there's plenty of food for thought to get your mind thinking about the future.

Internet marketing is great and i think its future is high.
I think in future IM will be very profitable

I would say that in the future people would have to make more original courses. If you look at 60s music and the music now the change is huge. Also, there are so many more styles in music and so many fans of many musicians.

I think that there are so many courses already, yet, there's more to come and they will be in so many niches.

So if you want to succeed today, try to concentrate on one specific market and dig until you get a gold nugget.

IM is still growing as the main leader Google is coming with new updates daily, its been a big mess for a lot of marketers today

But we'll still reach heights in IM...

It is heading towards PPC/PPV or otherwise paid traffic IMO.

If you're trying to keep ahead of innovations and future direction to try and stay ahead of the pack, one thing to contemplate is how much you can contribute to driving the future rather than trying to 'just' ride it.

Those that do the best look at what's available now, look at needs that require solutions now, and then marry the two with either an existing method or an innovative approach. The 'innovative approach' may very well influence or even driven what comes in the future.

That's why I'm less concerned about possible futures in the online world and more focused on what type of a future I can create by leveraging off the tools that are available at any given moment.

Not being a downer though. It's fun to speculate about the future, sure. I just personally believe it should be kept in context and not overshadow the now, when we should be taking the action that ultimately shapes our future.

In future, there will be more companies make an online presence. They will bring marketing system to promote their products, so affiliate marketing will be more dominating. But, i think they will not using affiliate network like ClickBank or PayDotCom, they will come with their own affiliate tracking system and payment.

Why are so many people saying "mobile"? I just don't get the mobile hype...

I mean, seriously, who reads a full sales letter on their iPhone? who attends a sales webinar on their Samsung Galaxy?

Sure, you can browse and Facebook and dick around in your iPhone, but actually consuming sales content and placing orders? I bet 99% of people still go to their computers for that.

Technological and economic advances will insure the future of IM. Holographics for one thing will be very cool when mainstream. In Japan they're working on invisibility cloaks just as in Harry Potter movies. For good or bad..... time will tell.

World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) is something that might affect the future of internet marketing, since it's all about governance of it (which equates to the rest of us losing control of it and, therefore, our freedom to exercise business on it as usual).

Internet tv and apps all going to grow, and these will give people the power to become self publishes in any part of the globe, I know these things all available now but be even better and more powerful!

Everyone always says how saturated the internet is but this is not true at all. There will always be opportunity for products, services and information that people think are a necessity. The only thing that will change from time-to-time is the way we market them. Google will continue to change along with other variables affecting internet marketing but we always learn to adapt and always will. Stay tuned to the present time and do it well while there is a constant. Adapt when there is a change and you will have a new constant before you know it.

It will be more of mobile marketing. Mobile media will soon rule this niche market for sure.

Form everything I've see this week alone it looks to be REDHOT!

As far as access and texting to incredible huge numbers of smart phones, combined with targeted mass emails, we are talking to a group of American-Dutch-German programmers and software engineers. They are testing mass texting to certain area codes in the U.S. and Canada at the present time.

Their test runs result in huge traffic and sales increases for any online business, any website, and any affiliate link. The way we understand it so far: People fill out a 'client questionnaire' about their target audience and targeted areas (i.e. area codes 813, 407 for Tampa and Orlando, appr. 1 million smart phones). Their packages deliver much higher quantities than current sms/texting providers. Personally, I think it is 'borderline' as far as legal issues about spamming, but wouldn't it be fantastic to be able to send short text messages to millions of people? When interested, I'll keep you updated. Just send a quick message on here or email me.

Internet marketing is always evolving....What we are seeing is a more integrated approach with both the offline businesses as well as the online sites. Both mobile marketing as well as social media has grown so that the smart businesses are the ones that can appeal to the fastest growing markets which are the smartphone browsers and the consumers who feel more involved in the information gathering/purchasing process.

It's never been more evident than this current Christmas shopping season....You will see consumers in brick and mortar stores that are constantly researching on their smartphones prior to purchasing.

Engaging the online consumer is still the focus (as it always has been) but the vendors/affiliates that can harness the notion that there multiple ways to appeal to consumers and demonstrate responsiveness will win out.

For us, that means we can work with offline businesses and sell them on developing mobile platforms and websites that incorporate social media....It also means that we can develop affiliate sites that can work in conjunction with web 2.0 properties that can reach out to potential customers and win them over with an overall informative experience that also shows them that their input is valued (which social media allows better than even static websites).

Mobile marketing for sure. and video

What do you mean what is the future of internet marketing???

you mean you can't see the future?

weird.

you must be one of these humans thingies

I say as long as your web properties provide people with access to it through different platforms (traditional computing, tablet, mobile/smart phone technology), then I think you are good for the next several years. People will still search for, and buy from, traditional websites for years to come.

I am actually a little surprised people use their mobiles as much as they do for searching information. Tablets I can understand with its 7 to 10 inch screens, but the only time I would use mobile for accessing data on the net would be when I am not at home and if I don't have any other convenient way at my disposal.

Internet will still be a HOT marketplace for trading and deliver contents. Because the time to market is fast. It might become commodity of the future generation. More and more people with ventures online, more and more peoples will find their living online.

Lol! Maybe that conversation will take place as we hobble around on our holographic walking sticks at the Virtual Reality lawn bowls stadium.

Internet marketing is one of the more monied niches online and is innovative also. The concept of online marketing has now been spiraling.
As per my point of view, it appears that the future of online internet marketing is indeed affirmative and there is hardly any doubt about the fact. In a competitive market like today, online marketing stays as one of the most cost effective and feasible techniques for targeting the audience group.And the most easy accessibility of an online marketing is that it is easily accessible.

Mobile! People are using mobiles for everything nowadays. Every activity that was once done via computers can be done via mobiles, and of course, people use it to text and talk. So, yes, mobile marketing is where it is.

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