I'm not as concerned about glamor as I am about effectiveness. Our measurements are imperfect, and there is some lag time across multiple messages that makes it difficult to ascertain cause and effect, but in the end advertising needs to positively impact consumers.

That consumers don't trust advertising speaks as much of our narcissism as it does their hedonism. We want to talk about ourselves and they want to experience pleasure or be free from pain (i.e. not be interrupted).

Strange.

Great post, though, TT.

TT, I like your wideness and ability to step out of the flow to see where are we actually going.

My idea to the final question in your post: it's advertising in any digital communication channel (TV, net, mobile, movies, photo,...). Nothing more, nothing less.

Yet due to the complexity of the "digital world", there's like thousands of possible usages and if you combine that with thousands of possible target groups, thousands of possible products and just few basic human needs to be satisfied, what do you get?

Science? Or lottery? Or Matrix that extends beyond limits we can imagine in one simple thought?

Yet if you would ask me about digital marketing, I say there's no such thing. There's marketing and there are digital appliances that offer possibilities to marketing to help reach business goals.

"Digital marketing" is a phrase that can be used to perhaps narrow our thoughts, to "look cool in front of your friends", to help some programmer sell some "new amazing solution", or something else. Yet it might hurt to think of it as a "complete marketing"?

Just trying to raise some conflict here. :-)

I agree with Dusan: "I say there's no such thing. There's marketing and there are digital appliances that offer possibilities to marketing to help reach business goals."

Toad, great post that makes us think. Your examples represent tools available within a marketing strategy, no more, no less. No definition required--only an integrated strategic marketing plan that includes the best tools to do the job, digital or otherwise.

Digital Marketing is not online marketing. It is marketing in a digital age.

As consumer's live become increasingly digitally connected, as convergence and "always on" connectivity become increasingly mainstream, new doors are opened to marketers.

Marketers now gain the ability to enhance, empower (interrupt?) and otherwise live within ever deeper segments of consumer's lives, well beyond the interruption and often irrelevance of the 30 second spot.

The tactics you list above are just that, tactics, not strategies or definitions. Digital marketing is about more than a tactic, is about marketing reborn again in a digital era. It is about persuasive and at times pervasive engagement. It is about reinventing the brand experience.

For more check out my blog at www.jonburg.com

Jon: do you belive that marketers now really have the ability they didn't have before? (live within ever deeper segments of consumer's lives) And can do so without interruption? Please tell me a case where marketer couldn't reach 10 years ago and can reach today without interruption.

I'm not sceptic, I just like to be convinced on "totaly new stuff".

And why do you feel marketing is reborn? Where did it die?

Thanks all.
Jon's comment, while I'm sure heartfelt, is a great example of the source of the confusion. It's the sort of broad, sweeping statement that leads every reader to his or her own interpretation of what phrases like "marketing reborn in a digtial era" mean.

Here's an example of something we couldn't have done years ago: location based marketing services. Ten years ago, marketers couldn't serve up a relevant and unobtrusive offer on the go, on demand. Now, utilizing the web connectivity of GPS devices in cars, we will soon have the ability serve up coupons and discounts to movie theaters when someone searches for a nearby theater.

And this is only the beginning. We will soon have the ability to serve up movie times, nearby eateries, etc. The possibilities are endless.

This is user prompted, unobtrusive and facilitates a better user experience - while driving marketing objectives. The same can be said for mobile search. And with the new Google Mobile Maps, it's only a matter of time before Google Mobile Search links through to the mapping suite.

Does this make sense?

And Tangerine Toad, I respect your position and your point of view. However, I believe that exuberance around the possibilities of digital marketing is to be applauded, so long as it is rational. To dream of serving ads onto the walls of a user's bedroom - that is irrational. However, dreaming big (so long as it enhances the user experience) is a necessary trait for success digital innovators.

We need to think about marketing beyond the ad. We need to market within the user experience, and not by interrupting it, but by enhancing it. There is a place for brands in our everyday lives beyond the scope they had in a purely analog world.

And as digital technologies increasingly drive/empower/enhance our everyday lives, brands will have deeper and richer opportunities to market in ways that have never been previously feasible.

Think about what digital media and the digital manifestations of social media have done to and for direct marketers.

As our media experiences shift from analog streams into digital on-demand experiences, marketing is going to continue to change. Sure, there will be a place for 30 second spots, but there will also a be place for interactions and cross platform integrative interactions that had never before been feasible.

Is this not marketing reborn?

So, does it mean that one of us won't define Digital Marketing in an acceptable way to all.
Please, get the pros in marketing to give us their best shot at this subject.
For now, I reserve my comment.

So, does it mean that one of us won't define Digital Marketing in an acceptable way to all.
Please, get the pros in marketing to give us their best shot at this subject.
For now, I reserve my comment.

So, does it mean that one of us won't define Digital Marketing in an acceptable way to all.
Please, get the pros in marketing to give us their best shot at this subject.
For now, I reserve my comment.

Dusan Vrban - sorry, I forgot to address your last point. Marketing didn't die, but traditional "in the box" marketing strategies under-perform in a digital era.

That's not to say that these tactics are useless, but the new marketing dynamics of the digital era, dynamics that embrace the bridge of digital and analog media and lives, these strategies will be the future of marketing.

And that is where marketing has been reborn.

Jon: I admire your energy and idealistic view over this digital era. I would just like to try point you out some things that are perhaps needed to take a bit slower pace to see them in different perspective.

1. Location based marketing services existed tens of years before. Yet they were performed with much higher costs then today. (You had nice looking students giving the coupons, which I prefer more then my mobile phone :-))

2. Enhancing the customer experience does not depend on technology. It depends on ability of the "experience producer" to predict the customer needs and meets them. There are two small problems to this. There are 7 bilions different customers in the world and for most of them enhancing is intrusive.

Jon, I belive that digital era is changing the way we interact with customers in zilions of ways. Yet the ground of marketing is not sales and communications. So I think traditional marketing strategies and some theories from 80's will actually have to be learned again for companies to perform better in the future.

Are we talking of the same "marketing" actually? TT, you should have made another post first: what is marketing? We are perhaps not even using the same word for the same pheonomenon. :-)))

@Jon:There's nothing wrong with your exuberance. If I was Digitas, your employer, I'd be thrilled.

But as a marketer, you need to address your customers needs. Here, we are trying to point out the fact that "digital advertising" means different things to different people. What you've written is a credo on the wonders of digital advertising, a point that's never really been in question. I think what you're trying to say is that digital advertising is so ground-breaking, it's almost impossible to define it?

OK, so I think we're talking about apples and oranges.

@Dusan - Looking at the four Ps of marketing, I believe that advertising and branding play a heavy role in promotions. Additionally, the lines between product (another P)and total brand experience (from start to finish) are becoming blurred. As digital technologies continue to change the way we interact with one another, it becomes increasingly important that digital marketing reflect these changes. Scale WOM monitoring and direct conversational engagement (within unbranded conversations) did not exist 20 years ago. Sure, if you happened to be in at a restaurant and someone next to you was talking about your brand, you could join the conversation. But if you weren't there, the conversation went untracked. Digital conversations place brands "perpetually in the restaurant".

Digital marketing provides scale to interactions that was never before available. Once digital marketing goes semantic, personalization and targeting will become increasingly more common place. Amazon sells and markets to me differently than any pre-digital store ever could. I don't get how that ISN'T marketing.

@Tangerine Toad - I completely agree. Providing a set of definitive tactics that are digital advertising (OR marketing) would be impossible.

@ TT - and to your point around enhancing user experiences. That is the role of brands - to enhance your life by delivering on a branded product or utility. I use Tide because it enhances my laundry experience by ensuring that my clothes are clean.

And my shopping behaviors change because of the new dynamics presented by digital opportunities, marketing strategies need to adjust themselves to address this new dynamic.

I think everyone would agree that technology has changed our day to day lives over the past 100 years. I would suggest that Marketing strategies and overall sociology have shifted as well. Today's teens have different shopping, spending, influences, and social human experiences than their parents did It's not about porting an experience or a tactic onto a new platform. The future of marketing strategy is going to be about the fusion of time tested learnings and strategies with new user behaviors to create a new marketing dynamic.

Digital marketing allows good marketers to perform better, and bad marketers to perform even worse.

It doesn't need a definition. We know what it is when we encounter it. The important thing is what it does.

Digital marketing can be used for good or for evil. And it usually expedites and increases the results of each one.

Bottom line: what it is holds little weight. How it's used is all that matters.

Oh Ryan, it *so* needs a definition.

Why? Because every single one of us has a very different idea of what it is.

Of course we "know it when we encounter it."

But that encounter is very different for everyone.

We spend a lot of time as advertising and marketing professionals talking about "digital marketing" but we're rarely all talking about the same thing.

Tangerine,

What benefit would a specific definition provide?

The beauty of digital is that it can wear so many different hats. If you had an exact definition, how would it change your approach?

To me, it's the values and principles that matter. Digital is just another way to exemplify those values.

Good conversation, we're starting to come closer on opinion. :-) Jon, actually I have read your last anwser to me almost the same as my opinion.

"Digital marketing provides scale to interactions that was never before available."

Scale, timing, costs. Yes, this all somehow changes in digital. Yet you were mentioning classical 4 P's. You can take even some other concept if you like, it will somehow hold up in the digital as well. Take product as in my opinion one of the most important aspects of marketing (and should be discussed much more than it is in all the blogs arround the world lately). What is a product? Does internet change product? Yes it does.

Yet we were thinking of it before the internet. Marketing was developing products since 1950's (or even before with Henry Ford?). So did digital era change marketing? No, it changed the way we interact, it changed the speed, the feeling, the costs. Yet it didn't change the marketing concept. Marketing is dealing with needs, wants and desires. And that hasn't change.

So I agree that some things are beyond imagination of the past. Yet the marketing isn't reborn or revived. We simply got some new tools and toys to play with. :-)

It is all that and more. Check out this excellent summary of digital advertising/web marketing

http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2008/01/01/a-complete-list-of-the-many-forms-of-web-marketing-for-2008/

Even tough it's not all, it's amazing and attractive. Really good and first time I've seen such a list done. Useful. Thanks, David!

From a marketing service company point of view, the harder question is how do we explain digital media, new media, etc., to clients? In addition, how do we differentiate ourselves from the myriad of competitors selling digital media?

If we can not explain it ourselves we have little chance of making it clear to our clients.

@Harry: Yes! That is my point exactly: we spend a lot of time trying to convince ourselves and our clients of the value of something we have trouble explaining.
Now the simple answer may be that it's just too complex and rapidly changing to explain. But just acknowledging that - Ryan + Jon B - is a big step forwards.
You (we) need to realize that we sound like a bunch of snake oil salesmen at a carnival as we wax poetic about something that we can only define as "oh, you'll know it when you see it."

You amaze me, TT. Nice and true comment. :-)

Thanks to everyone who has been discussing this topic - I've found it very helpful.

As I read through the post, I simply had the answer of "Yes" to all of your questions.

It's a huge category. I'd suggest, though, that while so much fits the description of "digital" it doesn't necessarily fit the descriptor "marketing"

How about this:

Digital marketing is the act of successful marketing in an increasingly digitally connected age. As digital experiences often feature different dynamics than those traditional observed, digital marketing requires the embrace of and incorporation of the constantly evolving user experience.

This definition should fit most of what we're describing above.

To be honest, I don't think a definition does any justice to digital marketing. It would just be another set of vague buzzwords about "connecting with consumers and promoting/branding your stuff through digital channels."

However, I think these lists are a good place to start. If someone is unclear about what DM involves, why not provide some specific examples? From there you can elaborate much more effectively.

BTW, Toad. I apologize for approaching this from the wrong angle. I was attempting to define it for someone in the know, rather than explain it to a party unfamiliar with the landscape.

I'm starting to get a feeling of my masters work on satisfaction. I was reading like thousands of definitions what is satisfaction to finally find out there's no such thing. :-)

Jon: I think you're moving a right way perhaps, I just can't explain it.

"I was reading like thousands of definitions what is satisfaction..."

Priceless!

Thanks to everyone for commenting. I particularly enjoyed your comments Dusan and will be checking out your agency's site.

If I accomplished one thing with this post, I hope it was to make everyone realize how foolish we sound when we spout the buzzwords-du-jour, things like "provide a meaningful interaction with the brand" or "provide value for consumers" -- those phrases are so vague as to be meaningless and for someone on the outside they're almost comically transparent.

There is much value in digital media. We just need to control our enthusiasm and provide actual, real life examples of why it gets us so jazzed.

TT: thxs, I enjoy your posts over and over again actually. But you got me obligated to translate more of our site into english now. :-) Or you can learn slovenian? :-)

Cam: I was working on this for 5 years. :-)

Toad. Right on! Oh I guess I dated myself with that comment.

Great discussion and very useful contributions from especially Dusan, David and TT.

One question for you (and all other members), translating your comments to concrete actions:
How, in your point of view, can the biggest accouting firms such as Deloitte benefit from digital marketing?

Is it through blogging and the share of valuable knowledge on the web, through advertising (searching valuable prospects), or rather through something totally different?
Looking forward to your expertise!

Appropriate channel selection, optimization, operation within Digital Context (Online, Offline, Game, TV etc) defines Dijital Marketing Scope...

Once upon a time in the 50's & 60's the buzz was how we were living in the "Television age" not unlike discission now about the living in the "digital age". We're all big on labels aren't we; some wear them like a badge. They provide validation, comfort and sometimes intrigue. I got to this blog in 0.31 seconds, according to Google. I got here because I am trying to resolve this very question. I accessed all your intellegence thought- provoking insights to help me form a deeper view of the true on-going relevance of positioning our business as a digital agency. Now that's something I couldn't have done so quickly twenty years ago. So for me the digital age facilitated value in the form of access to shared thinking with a group of people all working their backsides off to create great solutions for their clients. In hindsight, that very precise science, the "television age" was only ever about affecting human emotions, feelings and thinking. For me the "digital age" is about those same things; it's just that there are many more choices to share stories, ideas, thoughts and feelings and many more people can choose to be involved or not. One last thought if I may: In New Zealand we have one great person who in 1953 stood on the roof of the world as the first man to scale Mt Everest. A humble bee keeper from a small country on the other side of the world. Sir Edmund Hillary, or Sir Ed, as he became affectionately known, was a true hero, not just for his mountain climbing feats but for his work with the poor people in Nepal over 50 years. He died last Friday, aged 88. Now here's the rub; Would we have thought any differently about Sir Ed's deeds if we'd read about it on a blog, or watched it on You Tube, or saw them on TV? I think not. What touched us was not the medium but the actual deeds. Cheers doug watson

@Doug: Great great example and comment. The timing has changed indeed. But the human needs and wants, the way the feelings turn our lives didn't. And cheers to the great man! He's famous in Slovenia as well since we're kinda climbing nation. :-)

@Jaouad: sorry i'm a bit late on the anwser. But Yuce made some nice quick observation of the complexity. Most certainly a strategy is needed, which means anlysing first. What you are doing, what your competitors are doing, what are the needs and wants of your clients. Then with the power of all this information and having in mind the possibilities, build your strategy.

One thing I would suggest just for fun, is to move the menu "About Deloitte" to the end of your menulist in the website. Start with "About You". :-)

Dusan, indeed a good tip, I can see where you're going. We indeed should improve our analyzing part on the visitors.
Thx! ;-)

Glad to help always. Especially to the nice tulips land. :-)

Digital marketing means marketing of IT products such as Laptop, PC, desktop, Plasma TV, Switches, Routers.

Does this really have to be so complicated? This is not a question about how and why it is the what.
What is Digital Marketing?

First, the author asked two questions "What is Digital Marketing" and "What is Digital Advertising". Let's start there. Marketing is the commercial processes involved in promoting, selling,and distributing a product or service. Advertising is a process involved in marketing. They are two different things. Maybe this is part the author's confusion.

To the point, Digital Marketing is a vague term used to represent the digital age and new technology. I always disliked the term Digital Marketing, because it can basically mean any type of marketing using digital technology. Well, that's just silly.

Internet Marketing is probably the correct term to replace the usual usage of the term Digital Marketing. Ad agencies even call their Internet Marketing departments "Digital Marketing", yet the only thing digital about it is the internet.

Social Marketing, broadcast media, and mobile marketing are all digital, but they are different channels of marketing. Different channels would be implemented and measured in different ways. When is the last time you heard a Digital Marketing team buy a cable spot on television?

Again, this is a vague term that someone made up and it shouldn'e be used anymore. Simple as that.

Ryan, you're kinda correct as everyone else is/was. Yet you might reconsider the given marketing definiton? It's way too narrow for my opinion. Marketing is something else if you read some basic books on it.

And as for the digital/internet marketing... I think digital is better since it will fit better into future. Mobile phones will be replaced by "buddies" (in a form of perhaps personall accessories) and will involve everything in a digital form attached to a consumer. Now internet is just a network here, nothing else. A simple wired or non-wired IP's connected to each other. So looking just to the internet is again too narrow perhaps?

The only thing that I don't like about the term digital is that it actually isn't different to analogue. It's just a way of having the information written/read. But in the marketing world... :-)

Thanks Dusan. So what we're talking about now, is that our media is constantly evolving. I can't argue that it will evolve. However I also cannot agree that Internet Marketing is so narrow that it does not deserve a title or department. Out of the many marketing media channels available, there are usually a few that stand out as your basic channels. T.V, radio, print, outdoor, internet... these are all very widely used in marketing.
In my opinion,these other forms such as viral marketing, social marketing, and mobile marketing (as of today) would fit more appropriately into the category "Emerging Media". Digital or not, these various neomarketing channels would fall into that category.

So, when we are giving titles to marketing channels we should probably think more in the context of marketing and media planning. Although digital, Internet Marketing wouldn't necessarily be the same as mobile marketing... even though the internet is making its way to smart phones. It is (today) still a slightly different format and used differently on a PC than on a cell phone.

When our technology grows, our definitions will as well. But like I mentioned, I think in the terms of a marketing planner or media buyer and categorize these channels based on our current "market" and how each channel is currently implemented and measured.

You are right Dusan. If a television commercial is analog on one person's t.v., and digital on another.. it's still broadcast media, or television advertising. Digital is a format.

Digital has also been used to reference the Digital Age or the Digital Revolution. In this context, it is (again)a vague term. It's quite appropriate for Marketing professionals. If it was, we probably wouldn't be debating it so heavily right now!

To the point re: Sir Hillary. Let's take the consumer POV. Isn't advertising about educating, as much as entertaining? To that end, people usually can't explain how they know something. They just do. Our industry has to be careful about being too self conscious. Digital has to be about seemless.