Long gone are the times where we used to rush home to watch a cartoon show at a prescribed time slot, waiting for our favorite songs on TV at a slot we knew it would come, or perhaps checking the newspaper for a list of programs that are about to come on a TV channel, let’s not let the nostalgic attachment effect our decisions because gone are the days when people were only exposed to advertisement through mainstream media such as Billboards & TV`s. These are the days where we need to realize that the times have changed and perhaps we should do the same.

The user and the consumer are spending more and more time online. On an average a person spends 3+ hours in a day on social media and another 2+ hours shopping, surfing or just checking information online. This increased usage has enabled a new medium to rise and shine and let the consumer know and hence make a difference and that medium is the new Digital Medium.

Businesses and advertisers today are spending huge amounts of budgets and not getting the results and wondering why.

In my opinion, your consumer is not present where you are advertising, people today in the world are spending more time online and less time outside because of the current security situation and gadgets have taken a very important place in their lives, here I would like to share a very famous quote by Steuart Henderson Britt that best describes this situation for advertisers.

“Doing business without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark. You know what you are doing but nobody else does.”

Here the girl is the customer and you are the one winking so you need to be at the right place and you’ve got to let her know that you are there...Winking!!

The new age has bought many changes and increased use of technology and less physical use has become a norm for a consumers worldwide, a modern consumer is more likely to check product reviews online such was a case when my mom asked to check a restaurant before deciding to hold an event. The positive reviews helped us make a decision and our decision was in fact driven by Social media.

Customers today look and ask for reviews and are likely to shop on their Tablets/Smartphone’s/Laptops rather than going physically at a store to shop to make the decision as more purchase decisions are made through online information and hence old mediums have become less effective and marketing campaigns are ending without even doing the basics and that is to spread the message and let every potential customer know.

So what should be done?

Answer is simple; be an adapter of technology, learn how the world of digital media is changing the landscape of advertising today. With the help of a Website, Online Advertising, Social Media, Email & Mobile you would not go for any other medium if your marketing campaign is covering these basic important mediums of the modern age because Pakistan is no different from the world and it has internet users in the most remote areas and growing. The user today checks the website or googles it before buying a product or service, customers are likely to engage themselves on social media, modern consumer checks their email every day and we all know we check our mobiles every 10 minutes. Applications like Facebook home are about to revolutionize advertising by advertising on Smartphone home screens and innovations like these are just the start of the digital modern era.

so we can clearly see that there is a huge potential and audience waiting to be found on the internet and if the right tools are selected and the right strategy is implemented Digital Media can take a product or service and its value to the heights never before and we have seen such success stories with Red Bull where millions were hooked up to their live streaming during the famous space jump.

Businesses & Advertisers today worldwide are aggressively adapting the digital strategies and mediums to communicate and engage, it’s high time for those who are not because they also need to adapt and engage customer of today to stay, or lose it to their competition the choice is theirs to make to rise and excel or become a dinosaur.