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Influencer marketing is often defined as reaching out to popular bloggers and YouTube celebrities, vying for shout-outs in their latest posts. If this describes your influencer strategy, then you are missing out. Just as digital media doesn’t apply to banner ads alone, influencer marketing is not confined to a one-size-fits-all approach.

The 2014 State of Marketing survey asked marketers about their budgets, priorities, channels, metrics, and strategies for 2014. With more than 2,500 responses, we’ve analyzed their insights to give you a current snapshot of the state of marketing.

At this point, you may be asking yourself, “Who is going to shoot our videos?” But that is the wrong question to ask. Rather, the question you should be asking is, “How good do our videos need to be, in order to achieve our strategic goals?”

This report on African Americans and technology is the first in a series of demographic snapshots of technology use and adoption among different groups of adults in the United States.

The San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce declared a new Chair-Elect, Al Aguilar, Co-Founder and CEO of Creative Civilization, for its 2015 Board of Directors. 

This is Ad Age’s 2014 Marketing Fact Pack, our annual guide to marketers, media and agencies. We’ll show you the biggest players, who’s rising and who’s falling, drawing on the Ad Age DataCenter’s rankings and analysis from the past year.

The National Center for Families Learning (NCFL) and the Center on Media and Human Development at Northwestern University release brand new data related
to reading and electronic media use in Hispanic households with young children.

Magid Generational Strategiesreleased new research that identifies unique traits and characteristics of the generation of Americans born after the Millennial Generation. 

A majority of small businesses say they grew in the past year, according to research, but even more expect to do better in 2014 than they did in 2013. Not only that, but four in 10 plan to make marketing a top priority.

What goals and challenges are top-of-mind for marketers as they’re planning for 2014? Mobile marketing and measuring ROI are two big ones, according to this week’s infographic.

Many of our Things to Watch are technology-centric, including the advent of beacons, Internet safety nets, robots for kids and even techno-paranoia. The list also includes new foods and beverages to watch (savory yogurt, soju), new markets opening up (related to marijuana, privacy and Google Glass), new behaviors (contemplative computing, digital grieving) and ideas with the potential to ladder up to bigger trends.

The 2014 Multicultural TV Summit & Leadership Awards, being held on Tuesday, February 4, 2014 at the Grand Hyatt in New York City, will feature leading on-air personalities as well as top advertising and TV executives in a series of three keynote discussions. The first, featuring the Rev. Al Sharpton, host of PoliticsNation on MSNBC, and Jose Diaz Balart, anchor of Noticiero Telemundo on Telemundo, will focus on the impact that television news programming will have on multicultural voters in regard to the 2014 mid-term elections. Another keynote session will feature multicultural market authority Esther “ET” Franklin, who leads the creative vision for the Human Experience Strategy Network at the Starcom Mediavest Group, on how to effectively target consumers within different multicultural segments, such as LGBT, African American and Asian TV audiences.  A third keynote session will be a candid conversation about the impact that sports fans from various multicultural segments will have on the future of sports TV. It features the legendary sports journalist Stephen A. Smith and Lino Garcia, GM of ESPN Deportes, who is a multicultural TV pioneer and has led the Spanish-language network since its launch 10 years ago.  

As our nation prepares to begin the new year, the U.S. Census Bureau projected that on Jan. 1, 2014, the United States population will be 317,297,938. This represents an increase of 2,218,622, or 0.7 percent, from New Year’s Day 2013.

US total media ad spending will reach $171.33 billion in 2013, up 3.8%, or more than $6 billion, from 2012. eMarketer expects a slight uptick in spending in 2014 as well, as marketers allocate more dollars toward the FIFA World Cup soccer tournament, the Winter Olympics and the US midterm elections.

The 21st century has not been kind to the US recording industry. Since peaking at $14.6 billion in 1999, the business has shrunk to less than half its size, barely besting $7 billion in 2012, according to a new eMarketer report, “Marketing Opportunities in Digital and Live Music: More Musicians Say, ‘I’m With the Brand.’”

As we speed toward the end of one year and the start of yet another, here’s a quick look back at some standout 2013 mom-related trends.

Entering 2014, most would agree cross-platform marketing has become a must for any company hoping to reach consumers on their terms. They would also likely concur that such a mandate carries with it an expectation that as marketers tack on additional channels, formats and platforms, they would be met with a proper method to validate those decisions.

International Data Corporation (IDC) hosted a web conference “IDC Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) 2014 Predictions: The Emergence of the Chief ‘Something-or-Other’” highlighting the top 10 market predictions for the year ahead.

Marketing is in the midst of a performance revolution. The application of advanced analytics and plentiful data has allowed chief marketing officers (CMOs) to demonstrate the return on investment from marketing activities with a degree of precision that’s never been possible before. With companies spending as much as 10 percent of their annual budgets on marketing, depending on the industry—a whopping $1 trillion globally—this rapidly developing ability to put hard numbers against marketing performance is music to the ears of both CMOs and CFOs.

This has been the year of the debate over the “Total Market” approach.  The idea is to find a common denominator that different cultural groups can all relate to.  That makes some sense at first glance. After all, most people love their children, enjoy being free, enjoy food and other good things of life.  By Felipe Korzenny, Ph.D.