Once upstarts, digital media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat, YouTube and Twitter have become mainstream. Savvy marketers have developed playbooks of best practices, and they iterate rapidly as the platforms evolve.
At Percolate?s Transition 2016 conference, Karl Meinhardt, vice president of social and digital marketing at Albertsons, and I discussed the ways new advertising opportunities are pushing the limits of advertising. Here are three trends we see among smart marketers in as we look to 2017:

Moving from vanity metrics to return on investment: You say your latest campaign got 7 million impressions and broke records for engagement" So what" People may Like the hell out of your Facebook presence, but if it?s not boosting sales, then it?s not working for you. This isn?t a phenomenon confined to social media. Way back in 1996, Nissan ran an ad featuring a toy soldier falling from the jaws of a dinosaur into a tiny sports car, all to the strains of Van Halen?s “You Really Got Me.? People loved it. It was voted the best ad of 1996. There was just one problem: While the ad was wowing critics, sales actually fell. Smart marketers know this and focus on one metric above all others: ROI. Connecting online and offline: Some of the hottest startups in recent years have bridged the virtual with the actual–think Uber, which makes rides appear out of thin air with a few swipes of your smartphone, or Tinder, which does something simila...