The Evolution of Digital Marketing in the 21st Century: Three Periods Analysis

Abstract

Digital Marketing has been in development for more than 30 years. Since 2000, however, it has developed extremely quickly, significantly altering how businesses market themselves. Based on secondary data, extant literature, and internet sources from Google Scholar, this paper will provide a review of the evolution of the digital market in the 21st century and its underlying factors. According to the different motivations for the digitalization of the market, the paper will break the evolution of the digital market in the 21st century into three periods: between 2000 and 2010, between 2010 and 2019, and after 2019. The growth of the digital market will be focused on, and it will be discussed how the new technologies, advertising concepts, platforms, and economic crises affected the digital market. Different tactics for the digital market, including Pay-per-Click (PPC), Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Content Marketing, Social Marketing, etc., will also be discussed.