Trends to watch in 2015: Amazon media, InMobi, Carrot Creative, and other NY Ad Club members discuss

While answered varied, many respondents agreed that mobile is here to stay, and it’s only going to increase in both popularity and ability.

Ethan Hays, head of digital products, gyro New York (@ethanhays)

More than 1.2 billion people access the Internet via mobile devices. Almost half of mobile users expect a page to load in two seconds or less, and 40 percent will abandon a page that takes longer than three seconds to load. However, the average full-site page takes 11 seconds to load on an iPhone 5s.

We know that mobile plays a critical role in the ability to communicate effectively with our end users. But right now, “mobile first” is more of a design philosophy than a systems-thinking approach to how we create, build, and maintain our digital ecosystems.

The mobile performance of a website is a major factor in delivering a good experience to your end users. In 2015, organizations that get mobile performance right will see a disproportionate share of success, as visitors abandon slow websites in favor of fast.

Alice Le, Ansible Mobile

As smart devices become more engrained in our everyday lives, the lines between ‘analog’ and ‘digital’ become blurred.

The trend I’m watching closely in 2015: Smart and ‘Internet-enabled’ objects continuing to evolve and proliferate, and these interconnected devices making one another smarter.

This means our digital imprints become more revealing, and this intelligence will allow Marketers to be more informed, more effective and more creative. This creates opportunities for brands to enter and connect to the hyper-personal worlds of their audiences like never before.

Marketers need to take an approach to tap into this rich data set to generate opportunities and produce interesting and contextually aware advertising, while creating value for consumers.

Marketers will also need to have a strategy to address consumer privacy, as audiences become more educated. Brands that do this will lead and ultimately win with consumers.

Asif Khan, head of strategy, Carrot Creative (@aok5557)

Given the tremendous success of mobile app Snapchat, we’ll see an even greater proliferation of short form ‘snackable’ mobile content and even disappearing content that demands a user’s full, undivided attention. The notion of ‘Pay attention or you can’t see our branded content’ seems contrary to marketing 101 – since we’re typically happy with accruing impressions – but the silver lining here is that this will hopefully force marketers to create better, higher quality content for on-the-go mobile consumption.

Along those lines, as mobile/wifi data speeds become faster and improve across the board, we’re likely to see even richer, more immersive content in the form of videos, gifs and cinemagraphs. The highly scientific premise behind this is “stuff that moves tends to catch people’s attention more than stuff that doesn’t.” Now that technology has finally caught up with this premise, we can (hopefully) expect to see more and more creative uses of moving images and full motion storytelling in the mobile space.

Bob Coon, national sales manager, Mobile Devices, Amazon Media Group

Nearly 60 per cent of Amazon.com customers shopped using a mobile device during the 2014 holiday season. On Cyber Monday, Amazon customers worldwide ordered more than 18 toys per second from a mobile device. Mobile shopping accelerated as customers got later into the shopping season. Total holiday sales from the Amazon app for smartphones doubled in 2014 in the US. Customers expect great and seamless shopping experiences regardless of how they access Amazon – and we hold advertising to that same bar.

For example, our eCommerce Ads have familiar Amazon shopping features – such as Customer Ratings and Reviews, “Add to Cart” buttons, and coupons– integrated right into display advertising units, making it simple for customers to take an immediate shopping action. And the interaction persists across devices. So it you click the coupon in a mobile ad in our shopping app, and complete the transaction later on your computer, the coupon is automatically applied.

Dan Hays, Principal, Entertainment, Media, & Communications Advisory Practice, PwC (@DanielHays)

Without purchases, marketing and advertising would all be for naught. That's why, with Mobile World Congress 2015 upon us, the eyes of the marketing world should be focused squarely on the rapidly-developing mobile payments space. With acquisitions of two major mobile players announced just days before the conference and a battle for control of the space emerging between mobile device and operating system vendors, payments will surely be one of the hottest topics in Barcelona.

The business proposition for Mobile payments is much more than simply eliminating card swipes at the point of purchase. They promise to assemble a virtual marketer's nirvana, combining identity and demographics with factors such as location, affinity, and purchasing history. The first steps, however, are availability and adoption, and it seems that all eyes will be on the mobile industry's next moves which will be discussed and debated in Spain and in the months to come.

Rick Jones, head of marketing North America, InMobi (@rickjonestweets)

We will undoubtedly see amazing new mobile capabilities introduced in 2015, but the bigger trends may be how mobile viewing behavior and using mobile devices as a portal for just about everything continue to change how consumers engage with the world. As advertisers, we will find that mobile native advertising – where the ad fits in naturally with the form and function of the surrounding user experience – becomes more standard and measurably increases engagement with our campaigns.

And as native mobile becomes increasingly available for both direct as well as programmatic buys, marketers are likely to consider experimenting more broadly with this evolving ad format thus helping it to develop even faster.

Davis & Gilbert LLP attorney: Joseph J. Lewczak, partner in the Advertising, Marketing & Promotions Practice Group

The most important mobile technology trends for marketers to watch in 2015 include privacy and data security as well as protection of children. As mobile technology permeates consumers lives, including what they wear (such as smart watches), more and more data about users will be collected and stored.

Regulators will become increasingly more interested in how and what types of data will be collected, what it is used for, and how long it is kept. App developers and device manufactures must take “privacy by design” into account when developing their products and services.

With respect to children, regulators will likely continue to go after companies that do not have mechanisms in place to stop children from incurring unauthorized charges on mobile devices. All apps, especially those geared towards children, should obtain express informed consent from consumers before charging them for in-app purchases.