2012, The year of.....

It’s that time of year when digital pundits are busy making their picks for the year ahead.

A variety of terms have been bandied around across the last decade: The year of mobile (over and over again), the year of social, the year of gaming, the year of online video etc

So what does 2012 hold in store from a digital perspective?

Mashable recently published their predictions for 2012. They expect to see growth for Smart TV’s and TV apps, big moves in motion gaming, Google + to break 100m users and mobile to become a key media channel and payment tool.

You can view the full article here: http://mashable.com/2012/01/05/mashables-digital-predictions-for-2012

Forbes.com interviewed 15 US based CMO’s of top consumer brands to get their digital predictions for 2012. They expect to see mobile become a much more important part of the overall media mix, social media to become a cornerstone of brands’ marketing strategies, and ‘good content’ to become much more important to digital campaigns:

The full article is published at the following address: http://www.forbes.com/sites/marketshare/2012/01/05/cmo-predictions-for-2012-part-1-dominos-motorola-progressive-radioshack-say-its-mobile-mobile-mobile/

Millward Brown also expect mobile to become increasingly important and predict that the mobile wallet and mobile ‘location based marketing’ will become a reality in 2012. They also expect to see strong growth in social TV (effectively social tools, technologies and platforms that allow people to interact with TV programmes, and other viewers of those programmes) and changing attitudes to online privacy.

A link to the article is as follows: http://www.litmanlive.co.uk/blog/2012/01/top-12-digital-predictions-for-2012-by-millward-brown/

As you can see mobile is again a common theme for 2012. This is understandably so given the growth in smartphone/tablet penetration, the fact that mobile data is becoming more affordable and media owners are getting better at adapting their content to mobile devices.

If NZ media owners and adserving providers can continue to invest in their mobile offering it could become a key part of the overall media mix.

Who knows, the year of mobile may not be so far away after all.