“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

Ferris Bueller said this in the 80’s and it still stands true in today’s digital space. Sure, he was a fictional film character but he was also a righteous dude with a preternatural ability to figure things out a little bit better and faster than everyone else. With this approach in mind, these are the three trends in digital that we should stop and look at right now.

Before we get granular, a spoiler alert. The trends that we’re about to explore are top of mind and literally at everyone’s fingertips. Innovation is expanding products faster than many of us are using them. We’re talking about the Big Three: Google, Facebook, mobile.

Trend #1: Google AMP

As Google has defined search, it continues to redefine the way we use it by moving the bar that sets the standard. Google introduced Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) and has integrated AMP listings into search results. Expect this to be a game-changer when GPS-based SEO outpaces keywords; mobile search will begin to dominate and affect organic ranking results. Watch as websites lose rank for not being optimized for mobile.

Trend #2:  More Social Conversion

Facebook has recently updated some features in their advertising manager platform. Advertisers can now create a custom call to action to dramatically increase clickthrough rate. Match this feature with the existing deep targeting the ad platform has, the ability to create lookalike audiences, and the use of image carousels with product e-commerce links. Throw in another heavyweight platform –Instagram, which runs through the same ad manager, with the Facebook (Return on Advertising Spending) ROAS analytics and see how this grows. 

Trend #3: The rise of Chatbots

Gen-Z uses messaging apps more than text. And why wouldn’t they? Their whole life has been lived in a connected world. Facebook paid $22B for WhatsApp in 2014. The top messaging apps are WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger (numbers one and two); Tencent’s WeChat; and dark social juggernaut, SnapChat. The next wave of advertising will see ad messages delivered via chatbots that contextualize your conversations in messaging apps to personalize ad messages. The theory is that users will be more engaged with relevant ad content.