As we ring in the new year, content marketing in 2017 is all about action! Marketers are feeling the pressure from CMO's and CFO's more than ever before. Be prepared for a greater demand on visibility and proving ROI of every campaign.

In a recent article for Mashable, Shafqat Islam rolls out 10 predictions to prepare you for the year to come:

1. Facebook and Google will continue to dominate. The rest of the industry will shrink.

Even though the digital advertising space might appear to be growing, the industry is dominated by Facebook and Google. The rest of the industry is struggling to surviving off of the remaining scraps.

2. Brands will buy their own media and agencies will have to reinvent themselves.

Brands are starting to realize that the media landscape is not that complicated. With more companies buying media in-house, agencies will not be able to survive on taking a cut of the media spend.

3. Marketers will no longer blindly trust third-party data.

No longer will marketers blindly accept data from publishers or social networks. They’ll work with independent data providers on everything from branded content to social campaigns. Expect the use of real insights to prove ROI and improve campaigns.

4. Personalization will mean more than using just a first name.

Brands will seek out the tools to build custom experiences for individuals that are truly personalized. Personalization will move from a buzzword to a fundamental part of the marketer’s toolkit, across web, social email and every other channel in the customer experience.

5. Death to personas! The birth of journey mapping is on the horizon.

Brands will take a step back and focus on truly understanding the customer journey and determine what those patterns look like to suggest the next best step for each unique consumer. Because let's be honest, people don't fit nicely into generic buckets.

6. Brands will call it quits on native advertising

Brands will realize that there is minimum value on publishing content in full on third party websites owned by publishers. Instead, marketers will run the content on their own properties, allowing them to own their audience and the data. They'll use Facebook or Google to drive traffic and buy a similar audience.

7. Shrinking digital footprints will cause marketers to rethink engagement strategies.

How do you market on Snap when content disappears? Gen Z learned from its millennial predecessors that oversharing on social has risks. This will pose new challenges for marketers who have been spoiled with vast amounts of insights from earlier generations who didn’t necessarily realize the repercussions of the volume of information they shared online. 

8. Marketers won't be fooled by multi-device consumers, single customer profiles will rise.

In 2017, cross-device targeting will take off, forcing brands to create a consistent user experience for each person so that no matter what device they’re engaging on, it’s as if they picked up exactly where they left off. 

9. Live data will breath life into the marketing mix

The days of exporting data are over. Marketers will covet data they can access in real-time that provides “live” insights, making it possible to change course with speed - the speed of consumer preferences and behaviors today. 

10. Agencies will have to adapt to survive.

With technology making it simpler for brands to easily create beautiful and unique content that engages consumers, agencies will rely on their creative juices to reinvent their business.

Follow me on Twitter below and let's chat about what you're planning for 2017!