Future-telling: 7 predictions for Digital Marketers

Here are her 7 predictions from Adobe Digital Dialogue for digital marketers:

Digital

• Optimising engagement on the smartphone is one tough hill for marketers to climb and it’s not getting any less steep despite the flattening out of tablet usage at around 6-7%. There is some good news for tablets, with browsing up 4% YoY. We’re also seeing styluses and keyboards attached to tablets being used more as productivity tools. So, what does this tell us about the future? We can expect that both tablets and smartphones will merge with flexi-touch screens.

• The intrusive nature of some advertising, particularly mobile advertising, is causing significant backlash. In the attention economy of the future,brands will have to captivate users, save their time, or else be prepared for them to disengage.

• We’re seeing more and more mobile users turning to voice including for making purchases – conversational commerce is here. Soon enough, it will rule the world.

• Biometric authenticationis set to overtake passwords. In the not too distant future, all brands need to be thinking of authenticating customers with selfies, fingerprints and more than just passwords!

• Videois booming, and will only get bigger. The acceleration towards digital video is in full swing.

• Internet of Things will make everything mission critical. IOT will impact the quality of our lives in fundamental ways, which means we are going to be relying on it to deliver for us, every time. Brands need to think of 100% uptime – as customer expectations are on the rise.

• Virtual Reality is steadily becoming relevant and will open new business opportunities sooner than brands can imagine.