While many principles of marketing remain the same, the tools businesses use to achieve marketing success vary greatly over time. Newspaper and tv advertising was once commonplace; now, digital advertising and artificial intelligence play critical roles in the efforts of businesses.

Every year, there are more technological trends to keep an eye on. For entrepreneurs looking to stay ahead of the curve, here are 10 trends we think you should pay attention to in 2022:

A cookieless future

The past two years have been marked by numerous complaints about the security of  data collection. To remedy this situation, Google is leading the advertising technology industry with a cookie-free future, which is expected to arrive in 2023. By the end of 2022, Google will roll out new technologies that announce type remove the test cookie. While cookies work on customer-provided information, such as personal emails, cookie alternatives will need to have a lot of first-party quality  data to be successful.

How does this affect businesses and advertisers or marketers? Cautious organizations will want to be mindful of the near future where cookies will give way to cookie alternatives as customer privacy concerns and regulations like  GDPR grow.

The metaverse

Metaverse is today's futuristic fusion of Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), delivering a new immersive 3D experience where users physically blur with digital.

For marketers, the metaverse represents an opportunity to engage consumers in entirely new ways while driving internal competence and brand innovation in new directions.

Blockchain

There are several ways that blockchain can help with marketing. One way is by using smart contracts. Smart contracts are programs that run on a blockchain. They are collections of code and data that reside in a specific place on the blockchain. This allows people to exchange anything of value in a transparent, conflict-free way without a middleman.

Blockchain will revolutionize the digital advertising industry. It could allow publishers to access consumers' data directly and improve campaign efficiencies, eliminating fraud by recording impressions on an immutable distribution ledger. Transparency is increased between parties via smart contracts, which serve as agreements between two or more parties that can be executed online. Both parties can transact with full trust, with better audience visibility. Additionally, users' data can be anonymized via blockchain-based solutions to comply with privacy regulations and policies to ultimately give end users a great brand experience.

Data analytics

 In 2022, trends will include predictive data; smarter, scalable, and more flexible datasets; edge computing for faster analysis; as well as hybrid computing that blends off-premises and on-premises cloud solutions. You’ll also see growing use of machine learning-driven solutions that include augmented analytics; engineered decision analytics; and data visualization for better decision-making and insights.

Chatbots

​​Customers expect 24/7 customer support availability. Achieving this level of availability would be nearly impossible without implementing another chatbot from our list of top tech trends.

It is estimated that chatbots will be significantly more human within the next 5 years, thanks to advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence. The evolution of voice bots - like Google Assistant, Microsoft Cortana, etc. - is one of the most promising  marketing technology developments that marketers can leverage to capture more customer queries and increase conversion rates.