Ever been too far from your computer and had the immediate urge to look something up? Your mobile phone is there for you. It’s like having the entire world at your fingertips eliminating the need to have a computer with you at all times. Brands understand the amount of access they have to mobile users as people are increasingly glued to their devices. In a Pew Research report, 46% of respondents said they could not live without their smartphone. Smartphones are the new norm , and have become a top necessity in the western world.

Advertisers are spending mega dollars to market their products and services through social media platforms. One question arises when thinking of the amount of time people are spending on their mobile devices. Is the advertising spend on mobiles relative to the time spent on media on those mobiles? In the picture below, the percent of total media consumption time is 25% on mobile. In comparison, the advertising spend is only at 12%. That’s a $22B opportunity in the USA!

Mobile devices are used for various purposes and every user has their own unique needs and wants. For example, ask yourself : How do you define your mobile device? Is it a phone or a camera? Is it for surfing the web or viewing videos?

Logging into online services through Facebook gives them access to all of your interests, locations, jobs etc., that can help them tailor a marketing plan for you. While that might sound complicated and hard for a person to do, it can all be automated through algorithms.

Going beyond location and facebook interests, the future of marketing might be in Mood Marketing. This would be such a heightened state of data sharing to companies that they effectively could calculate what your mood was and cross reference that with research on buying behaviour with each mood. Imagine finishing work and having to walk home in the rain. Your phone will have known you got off work and didn’t use your metro pass and that it was raining. A local clothing store selling rain jackets would be able to put all of this data together to predict that you’d be miserable and wishing you had a rain jacket. It would then send you a personalized ad and promo code to buy one.

Take all this in. If you don’t have a mobile strategy and aren’t prioritizing mobile marketing initiatives, you’re doing it wrong. Keep tabs on new developments in the mobile space, and jump on them sooner rather than later. The amount of data collected from smartphones is staggering, and smartphone users are more open to sharing information about themselves in order to use certain services. Instead of following a template/cookie cutter method for every client (a sure way to fall behind on industry developments), tailor a new approach for every client. This will keep you searching for the next best way to market and raise brand awareness. Recognizing the importance of mobile will help you deliver better results for your clients.