Mobile has taken a firm hold on the marketing landscape, and the importance of mobile marketing should even further intensify. Statista data shows that the proportion of website traffic generated globally through mobile phones increased from 50.3% in 2017 to 52.2% last year.
Furthermore, according to eMarketer, 86.2% of the world’s 3.75 billion internet users will, this year, use a mobile phone to head online. There, they could easily come across the following technologies that look set to break their way into the mobile marketing space, if they aren’t there already…
Video
Yes, there’s nothing new about marketers incorporating video into their promotional strategies. However, as video content is primarily consumed on smartphones, spending on mobile video ads is tipped to rise – and, indeed, online video channels have been impressively diversifying recently.
We only have to look at live video platforms like Facebook Live and Twitter’s Periscope, while last year saw the launch of Instagram’s IGTV, to which vertical videos barred from main Instagram feeds can be uploaded. If your firm already has an Instagram account, it can be purposed for IGTV.
Augmented reality (AR)
Since its release in 2016, Pokémon GO has cemented itself as one of the world’s highest-grossing games. However, it’s far from the only sign that augmented reality, where digital imagery intelligently overlays views of the real world, is slowly entering the mainstream.
Apple and Google have both launched augmented reality platforms, ARKit and ARCore respectively, for mobile devices. Many exciting possibilities abound for bringing products and services to on-screen life with AR; Lego has already used it to show how Lego sets could appear in people’s homes.
Voice search
With voice-activated home speakers like Google Home, Amazon Echo and the Apple HomePod now all on the market, we can expect the popularity of voice-based searches to keep growing.
This trend will doubtless be encouraged by the low prices of entry-level devices like the Google Home Mini and Amazon Echo Dot, while rumours have even hinted at a potential, cut-price HomePod on the way. You should plan ahead by optimising your website for voice search.
5G
Exciting mobile trends including live streaming video and augmented reality can rely heavily on strong download speeds. It seems convenient, then, that 5G – the new generation of cellular mobile communications – is now just emerging, with warp speeds outpacing 4G at least tenfold.
Juniper Research reports that 5G connections are expected to exceed 370 million by 2023, making now a good time to consider what rich, immersive content you could unleash thanks to 5G.
Artificial intelligence (AI)
These days, you probably have more customer data at your fingertips than ever before, so it’s a relief that AI could immeasurably help you in making sense of it all. Those findings could feed into providing customers with hyper-personalised experiences, such as through the use of chatbots.
However, your website needs strong foundations to effectively support such technology – and, here, we can help by providing an intuitive, future-proof web design for you.
