I’ve started thinking about making some new predictions for 2011, but still haven’t finalized the list. One thing I have noticed is that I seem to get a bit of search engine traffic for people searching on the phrase “nudge marketing.” First time I used it here was when I was making my 2009 predictions although I recall using the term prior to this and even was under the impression at one point that I may have invented it. Almost certainly not true, but I didn’t consciously rip it off from anyone else.

So apart from the search engine traffic, what has got me thinking about nudge marketing today – well two things actually, and both of which I saw earlier in the day.

The first comes from Google – here it is:

The idea is to push information to people. It’s location in context. Inside the browser and a toolbar, can we look at where people have been going on the web — then we deliver it. But it’s a big UI challenge. In the browser it might be a panel on the right or bottom that complements your browsing. On the mobile phone, it’s where you are in the physical world. We can figure out where the next most useful information is. In a restaurant maybe it’s a menu. Or maybe it’s a social menu. It’s about explicit and implicit location.

The second comes from a new Microsoft invention. They plan to read through your online photo albums, interpret the context of your photos and then maintain a profile of what you like, where you are etc by the photos you are posting. And then serve ads to you based on this contantly updated profile that they maintain. I would have thought this was impossible not that long ago, but only yesterday I uploaded a 10 minute family video to YouTube that contained about 20 seconds background music from Jamiroquai only to be amazed a few minutes later to receive an automatic email with the following;

Your video… may have content that is owned or licensed by Sony Music Entertainment.

In the past I wrote a couple of long posts on the future of travel search, but the more I am thinking about it, one of my 2010 predictions keeps coming back to me – Data will transform travel. And this data is driving one prediction that I know will be somewhere on the list – personalization will take over from mobile and social as the travel industry buzzword for 2011.

About these ads