Tap-to-pay ads top list of 2015 trends for digital marketing

From emerging trends in business and technology to evolving consumer behaviors, there is a lot to consider in order for today’s brands to have a firm handle on what’s next in digital in 2015.

In the coming year, advertisers are set to spend nearly $600 billion worldwide, according to eMarketer. Brands will need to understand how trends impacting digital marketing in 2015 can be incorporated into their digital mix and affect their spend. As the industry continues to be grounded in technology, it will be vital that brands stay in front of the technology curve to ensure success in the coming year.

Here are 10 trends that will impact companies’ technology agendas in the coming year:

1. Tap-To-Pay (TTP) ads will become the rising star ad unit of 2015. These ad units will allow digital users to make purchases from within an ad unit, providing advertisers with a simplified way to attribute purchases to marketing spend.

2. Mobile will continue to move away from being the 3rd screen, and become the 1st, dominant screen for advertisers.

3. Mobile-first data platforms will emerge and succeed in bringing true mobile audience buying to the market via online-first data platforms.

4. Facebook privacy controls allowing users to manage in-feed advertising content will force brands to diversify their marketing strategies.

5. Location-based advertising will mature from being hyper-local/latitude-longitude based performance advertising to a location-based audience advertising. This will allow brands to utilize location more effectively for their awareness campaigns.

6. WebGL proliferation will result in significantly richer ads, like 3D digital ads, that leverage device capabilities and bring truly native advertising to mobile.

7. IoT (Internet of Things) will emerge as a new media for advertising, but with limited adoption.

8. ACR (automatic content recognition) ads will emerge to accurately connect a user across TV, mobile and digital screens.

9. Email marketing will get a “refresh” with an increasing focus on mobile and real-time location inputs.

10. Mobile will re-define native ads with the ability to bring in true context and real-time data.

Rujul Patel is GM/SVP of the Global Publisher Business at Amobee