Digiteam - 2023 vs. 2024

It's time to take stock of 2023, its main events in the sector and look ahead to 2024.

Recent years have been marked by global crises, and although the world is still buzzing, it seems as if the worst blows to the industry have subsided, at least for a while. To put it in a nutshell, last year was a good year for Digiteam as a company - not great, but good. A similar message is coming from other companies in the sector.

Digiteam's growth story is nice to watch, but growth has slowed in recent years and this should now change. But before the growth plans, let's briefly look at what happened in the industry last year and how it will affect Digiteam's future.

Key events in the sector in 2023

Digital marketing The industry has undergone many significant changes and will continue to do so in 2024. The operating environment is constantly changing in the crosscurrent of technological developments and legislative changes. Here is a summary of the most significant events in the industry in 2023.

AI - the rise of artificial intelligence

Throughout the year, talk of the role of AI and how to harness it continued and accelerated. The use of AI has perhaps been most prominent in sales and advertising speeches, especially when people want to sound like they are riding the trend.

The role of AI should not be underestimated, but on the other hand, it is good to remember that it is not AI alone that brings happiness, but how you use it.

When people talk about AI in the context of advertising, they are almost always referring to algorithms and data-driven machine learning used by advertising media based on the goals set by the advertiser. After all, advertising media algorithms have been around for years, so so far AI-based advertising is largely a new name for an old one. The most tangible changes brought about by AI have mainly been in content creation - the creation of text, images and video.

AI is therefore a tool that requires skilled use.

GDPR, digital marketing and analytics

The GDPR legislation caused a storm in the EU water glass with threats to ban Google Analytics. Some EU countries have already started to fine people for using GA, and in Finland a few organisations made headlines after being reprimanded by the data protection authority. The EU-US agreement in July put oil on the waves and on the business side the use of Google Analytics seems to continue almost as before.

There's also talk about the loss of analytics data and how remarketing is going to disappear. Certainly some data will be lost, but so far the changes have been manageable.

The importance of proper implementation of cookie settings and cookie queries has become more important, the latest being Google's Consent Mode 2, which is currently affecting many. GDPR and other data protection issues will certainly continue to change and influence industry practices.

Google Analytics 4

Withdrawal of the old UA and mandatory migration Google Analytics 4was one of the biggest changes in the sector during the year. Practically everything changed and for many the change in the user interface was the biggest thing. For many, there is certainly still a lot to learn.

The sale and purchase of digital marketing services has changed

The change in buying and selling has been happening little by little for many years. The change is being driven by a change in people's behaviour. In the past, smart devices were only used intermittently and the use was concentrated on a few platforms, e.g. when searching for information and the search for information was concentrated on a search engine. Now smart devices are always present and information search is not necessarily an active search. Information is abundant and available in multiple channels, some found by searching, some encountered by algorithms fed by platforms and media.

Vision, planning, right choices and quality execution

As usage and information search has become more decentralised, it is no longer enough for marketers to advertise in one channel. Target audiences need to be reached in many different ways, on many different channels at the same time. Customers are increasingly fragmented across different platforms. As a result, the purchase of marketing services will continue to focus on agencies that can offer insight into how to plan advertising, what media to use, how to do multi-channel, measurable digital advertising using modern AI and algorithms.

Digiteam in 2024

As I said, last year was good, but not great. This year should be at least excellent, preferably brilliant. Digiteam's structure, skills and practices already fit the changed buying and selling model, but we are not yet satisfied.

This year, we will focus strongly on refining Digiteam's production and service processes. The service experience, customer feedback, customer care and results have been excellent over the years and this has been achieved through strong expertise, but also intuitively, driven by vision and passion that comes from experience.

By systematically developing our processes, we want to ensure that as Digiteam grows, the quality of our services from the first contact to the end of service production is first class. Quality is not just about advertising design or technical channel execution, but cuts across the entire operation and must be visible at every point of contact with the customer. Quality has been our main differentiator to date and will continue to be so.

For us, it's not enough that the customer is happy or that we are perceived as good. Our goal is to be wanted, rather the most wanted, something that others cannot do.