If there was ever an example of one industry not standing still, advertising is bang on the money. This is a market which moves at a faster pace than most around and means, if you look back through time, some of the changes and advancements have been extraordinary.

For example, at the start of the career of Jonathan Disegi, things were certainly very different to what they are now. Ultimately, it’s meant that the role of the advertising professional has changed at a record pace – from traditional offline means, right the way to online and now, a combination of the two.

To put the advancements of advertising into perspective, we’ve put together some of the biggest movements that this industry has made over the last decade or so.

The emergence of mobile

We probably didn’t need to start with this one – the emergence and progress of the mobile phone is there for all to see. While the handsets have obviously been around for decades, it was probably around 2007 and the release of the first iPhone which have shaped things from an advertising perspective.

Again, if we go too far into this topic we’ll be teaching you how to suck eggs. All we will say is that mobile browsing has suddenly become the norm, apps have become a way of life and in turn, advertisers are able to target their audience at pretty much any hour of the day.

…and all the other devices

This one is a little more interesting, perhaps because we’re still noticing the transition to “other devices”. When we talk about these devices we’re referring to the likes of fridges, cars and even more recently, voice-enabled assistants.

Just like the mobile phone, these devices are paving the way for advertisers to target their audience at most hours of the day. Additionally, it means that different advertising formats are emerging, or perhaps re-emerging. In the case of the latter, audio ads could be the next big thing again – with the voice-enabled assistants in particular being a suitable target for these.

Simplicity wins

If we roll back the clock a decade, simplicity was a turn-off. Now, it’s what all the big brands are toying with and if it takes a consumer more than a few clicks to achieve their goal, it’s not acceptable.

For example, Google’s layout may have once been considered boring. Now, it’s simplicity is the reason it’s pretty much become the definition of the internet. The same applies to Amazon, and every other retailer who has kept things simple and taken away clicks from the user.

A lot of media buy revolves around consumers themselves

This is perhaps one of the most interesting developments and won’t be abundantly obvious unless you are directly involved in the advertising industry.

Media buy used to be dedicated towards a select group of companies – and few others got a piece of the pie. Now, consumers themselves are the subject of media buying. Bloggers and high-profile social network users can have millions of dollars thrown at them, just because companies know they have that ‘genuine’ factor that makes them so trustworthy to other customers. In a lot of cases, companies are turning to this approach rather than many of the traditional forms of advertising which have dominated the industry for decades.