Hello everyone. Welcome back! Grab your extra cup of coffee today and don’t feel guilty about it… Sometimes the hardest part is getting started, but never fear – caffeine is here. 🙂 Anyway, enough small talk, let’s get to the good stuff.

Here are a few predictions for marketing in 2014:

1. Paid social search will become a new way of life.

Facebook certainly put a bug in every marketer’s craw when they changed the algorithm to favor those who pay over those who don’t. Unfortunately, we’re in a crowded spot, paid search helps foster that. I think we’ll see more competition here and I’ll frankly be kind of sad if we don’t…

2. It’s time for the “n^th” screen. Mobile will finally have it’s time in the spotlight.

The numbers are clearly there to support mobile marketing as an industry, but I don’t yet see it capturing the hearts and minds of most CMOs. We work with a lot of CMOs here at CircleClick, but I don’t see many that have a huge passion for mobile. It’s yet another check box that everyone wants to check, but doing so is unbelievably complicated. I’ve seen huge companies try and fail to market on mobile, but the trick will be to keep on testing and perfecting.

3. Traditional SEO is dead. It will continue to evolve and become more social.

We’ve seen the signs of this happening, but it’s really actually true this time. SEO as we once knew it has disappeared and I am happy about it. What’s the point of a game if it’s always the same? Social is going to continue to push SEO forward, the two combined are new besties.

I’m sure we are in for an exciting year. My optimism is cautious, but well informed!