Five Digital Trends To Watch This Year
January 15th, 2016 | Veronica Holmes, Partner, 361 degrees

Over the holidays, as family and friends opened gizmos and gadgets, I reflected on the outcome of the last decade of our digital transformation. Guests arrive for a New Year’s weekend and the first question after they say hello is “What’s your wifi password?” This is the new norm – a connected consumer who expects every new gadget to connect and to have constant access to their digital content and their social networks, no matter where they are.
If 2015 saw the popularization and scrutiny of the sharing economy, via Uber and Airbnb, as well as the emergence of mobile payments with the launch of Apple Pay, you may wonder what more could possibly shake things up in 2016. In fact, I believe that this year will be the turning point when we no longer differentiate between offline or on – rather, we expect a seamless and tech-friendly approach from brands, retailers and service providers.
I’ve selected five trends that I’ll be watching closely – as both a consumer and a digital executive.
Trend | Importance |
---|---|
Smartphone is the personal hub | Always connected, personal; the primary location for contacts, content and commerce, especially for Millennials |
Digital Health gets more serious | Activity monitors go beyond exercise. Look for adoption of devices that monitor everything from fertility to major diseases |
Video gets immersive through 360 and VR | Facebook and YouTube now natively handle 360 video. While the cost of VR for games might limit consumer adoption in 2016, 360 is a great first step for content producers and brands |
Subscription vs. ownership | As consumers adopt services like Netflix, Spotify and Texture, they no longer have the need for physical copies. Look for a shift from ownership to borrowing. |
Online ads get smarter | Fraud and viewability exit stage left to make way for the attribution discussion. With online and off-price as the Holiday 2015 retail story, retailers will look to better understand how their marketing drives online sales. |
Smartphones
The 2015 Communications Monitoring Report, released by the CRTC in October 2015, says that 67% of Canadians owned a smartphone. It also reported that 70% of smartphone owners have a data plan of 1GB or higher.
Millennials are choosing their phones as the primary device for video and music. Adobe found that 92% of millennials in the U.S. consider the smartphone to be their primary device for watching TV when on-the-go.
Consumers already use apps (for example, Uber, Hurrier and Starbucks) to order and pay for products and services. They rely on their smartphones for maps/directions, photos and music. Over 30% of online shopping purchases happen on a mobile phone. Smartphones in our house control the security system, the cable set-top box and turn on the lights. Meanwhile, computer ownership is on the decline.
Bottom line: This is the device that Canadian consumers are turning to first. They’re putting aside bigger and shared devices in favour of their phones. Ensure your mobile experience is excellent, takes advantage of the unique features of a smartphone (eg. click-to-call, location aware, voice activation, calendar and contacts) and is sensitive to the form factor (eg. bigger buttons, require less typing, provide contextual keyboards, vertical video).
Digital Health
If last year saw the activity monitor go mainstream, this year I expect to see wearables go to the next level. Take, for instance, the Sleep Number “It” bed. Biometric sensors are built into the bed to track “your whole body hundreds of times per second,” according to the company’s site. “Your heart rate. Breathing. Movement. SleepIQ® technology gives you the personal insights and knowledge to adjust for the best sleep of your life.”
Then there’s Lumo, with motion sensors that fit in the waistband of your shorts, measuring your posture, activity, and analyzing your running style – even giving real-time audio feedback in your headphones. Women may prefer the OMbra, with similar workout enhancing features. If you have a pet, you can now track their activity too.
But wearables aren’t only for monitoring fitness. Quell Relief launched last year but has seen rapid uptake in patients with chronic pain. This device activates the body’s natural pain relief system at the click of a button. Yono labs has an earpiece that measures body temperature, connecting to an app that helps to track fertility. The Empatica wristband measures activity but also is claiming to be able to identify the start of an epileptic seizure and alert caregivers to check in.
Bottom line: The quantified self is here to stay. Some wearables will give brands an opportunity to participate, such as Apple Watch. In the future, biometrics may even enable new ways of logging in to services and maybe even preventing access for consumers who don’t want to overeat, overspend or overindulge.
360 Video & VR
The Oculus Rift was available for pre-order Jan. 6 and, despite the price of US $599, sold out within an hour. The headset offers users with high-end, powerful gaming computers the opportunity to immerse themselves fully in virtual environments.
For those of us curious to see what the fuss is about, there are some lower-priced options and some fantastic and fun content out there. Google cardboard and Samsung Gear, for instance, use the smartphone as the screen, using special “goggles” to give the video a 3D, immersive feel. If you have the goggles, check out the amazing content developed by Jaunt VR or watch a documentary movie or dive with sharks at Discovery VR.
If you don’t have goggles, you can still get a sense of what’s so exciting with a 360-degree point-of-view by looking at these examples on your phone or web browser.
Bottom line: Brands will want to understand how a more immersive and engaging experience can improve metrics. Check out these ads for Gatorade, Walt Disney World and Fido.
Take a look at this 360 video released by Disney. It features Goofy as a resort tour guide.
Other video examples:
Digital Subscriptions
According to Music Business Worldwide, Apple Music has grown to more than 10M paying subscribers. Spotify last confirmed their subscription numbers in June 2015, saying they had surpassed 75M total active users and 20M paying customers. It took Spotify six years to reach 10M paying subscribers vs. Apple’s seven months.
In Canada, Netflix is used by 39% of Canadians, with 82% saying they use the service every week, according to MTM. And expect more adoption as, over and above the highly acclaimed Netflix series, such as Narcos and House of Cards, Canadian Netflix users will be among the first small-screen viewers to see the new Star Wars movie, expected to launch on the service in late summer 2016.
Texture, the Rogers co-owned magazine app, has over 100,000 subscribers. Its recent re-launch added the ability to search across publications and create collections of favourite articles. Newspapers are also transforming the way their readers access content with the launch of tablet-based apps to replace physical distribution.
Bottom line: Be prepared for consumers to start divesting themselves of their personal libraries of CDs, movies, books and magazines. People that are comfortable with having access to their content vs. physical ownership will more naturally gravitate towards the sharing economy.
Online Ads & Attribution Modeling
Fraud and viewability were the issues of 2015. Ad blocking also took centre stage in the Fall after the launch of iOS 9 included ad-blocking apps. Publishers have responded to all three issues, ramping up the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) around the world, agreeing to transact on 100% viewability and even blocking ad blockers. Now that we’ve got those issues out of the way, and as the shift to digital continues, I believe marketers will start asking questions about efficacy. For that we need a better understanding of attribution.
We know the consumer journey is not linear. As traditional media move into digital delivery, and as consumers tend to use more than one platform at the same time, there is an increase in the visibility of moments when marketers can impact purchase decisions.
Marketers must also look at how their owned channels impact the path to purchase. McKinsey reports “70 percent of shoppers have stopped buying goods or services from at least one company due to poor customer service.”
In 2015, there were more than 200 mergers and acquisitions in the marketing and advertising technology industries, according to Results International (see page 40 of the slide). In 2016, I believe mar-tech and ad-tech will start to converge from the marketer’s point of view.
Bottom line: As marketers take control of their data, new points of integration will be surfaced. There will be a need for more advanced data-management platforms that connect through to both CRM and ad-targeting platforms. The ability to meaningfully overlay consumer data (such as location, purchase history, participation in loyalty programs) in real-time will transform marketers’ ability to be persuasive and increase sales. The key will be ensuring that the creative messaging can keep pace with and adapt.
For more digital insights, sign up for Veronica Holmes’ course Marketing in a Digital World on February 11, 2016.