PREDICTIONS 2014: MOBILE TRENDS FOR MARKETERS

Posted by Thomas Husson on January 13, 2014

My colleague Julie Ask and I revisited our predictions for 2013's mobile trends and found that all of them are still evolving and relevant in 2014.

During 2014, we’ll pass a key milestone: an installed base of 2 billion smartphones globally. Mobile is becoming not only the new digital hub but also the bridge to the physical world. That’s why mobile will affect more than just your digital operations — it will transform your entire business. 2014 will be the year that companies increase investments to transform their businesses, with mobile as a focal point.

Let’s highlight a few of the mobile trends that we predict for 2014:

• Competitive advantage in mobile will shift from experience design to big data and analytics. Mobile is transformative but only if you can engage your consumers in their exact moment of need with the right services, content, or information. Not only do you need to understand their context in that moment but you also need insights gleaned from data over time to know how to best serve them in that moment.
• Mobile contextual data will offer deep customer insights — beyond mobile. Mobile is a key driver of big data. Most advanced marketers will get that mobile’s value as a marketing tool will be measured by more than just the effectiveness of marketing to people on mobile websites or apps. They will start evaluating mobile’s impact on other channels.
• Mobile advertising will start maturing. In 2014, we expect new mobile-centric ad formats to emerge, more effective mobile video inventory to grow, and more mobile ad network inventory to shift to the exchanges. Improvements in user identification will be a primary driver for these changes, but don’t get too excited yet: No industry-accepted, non-cookie standard for user ID will be developed this year, so no one solution will offer massive reach.

Also, from a regional perspective, it will be extremely interesting to learn from Asia how to combine scale and innovation. Indeed, during 2014, Forrester expects China to pass the 500M smartphones mark — almost as many smartphones as the US and Western Europe combined! It will drive huge social mobile audiences on the likes of WeChat and Line. Like most Southeast Asian and emerging countries, China doesn’t have the established infrastructure within the enterprise that chains too many companies to their legacy policies, processes, or platforms. The combined newness of the Internet and mobile makes everyone an entrepreneur.