We at Adsider collected the most relatable ones - relevant to our niche, general state of the world, and our region. Here's the what and why's of 2019 words of the year:

Personalization — the process of making something suitable for the needs of a particular person

The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) for the marketing community in the United States held a vote to define a word of the year in late November. The winner was personalization, with equality, inclusion, data, and in-house as other contenders.

Customers crave the personalized experience. Nowadays in order to win the customer over a brand needs to speak to them directly, making personalization the Holy Grail of digital marketing. Customers don't have time for ads that are not 100% relevant to them.

Digitalization — combining and application of a mix of inventions, existing processes, and technologies in a new way that achieves a desirable change in cost, quality, financial flows and/or service.

Closer to home, in Ukraine, word of the year is digitalization, or digital transformation, as determined by Myslovo, modern Ukrainian language and slang dictionary.

The term is especially relevant for the country because of creation of the Ministry of Digital Transformation after the 2019 parliamentary elections. Ukraine plans to add to its famous e-procurement system ProZorro, introducing digital technologies to all the spheres of public life previously unaffected by the reforms.

That's a welcome change for digital marketers in Ukraine and the ones abroad interested to enter the market. The more digital Ukraine becomes, the more transparent and protected the market is.

Shitposting — The constant posting of mildly amusing but usually unfunny memes, videos or other pictures that are completely random or unrelated to any discussions.

Another top word, shitpostinhg, named by Financial Times, was alarmingly relevant this year. To the digital marketing, too, with the spending on over-the top advertising threatening to reach $5 billion by 2020.

Shitposting, as Financial Times puts it, means «posting ostentatiously inane and contextless content to an online forum or social network with the effect of derailing discussion».

In the world where social media gradually replace traditional ones, quantity takes over the quality, and even completely absurd claims can influence minds - provided they are loud enough. And that's a trick for digital marketers to be aware of and perhaps even use, if ironically.

As BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg explained, the algorithm of this phenomena is quite simple: "So (…) campaign groups make an advert that looks really rubbish and people share it online saying "Oh I can't believe how shit it is, then it gets shared and shared and shared, and they go "Ha ha ha, job done."