eMarketer: Predictions for 2016

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The Internet will make great progress in 2016, from mobile instant messaging applications to mobile commerce. eMarketer makes some predictions for the market next year.

Listen to consumers

Smartphones are driving growth in calling, and voice-activated searches are rising steadily. Consumers are communicating with their personal assistants through their smartphones and cars, and these assistants are getting smarter. With the growth of smartwatches and connected home devices, consumers will interact with more devices.

Marketers need to be ready and start optimizing audio-based web content to ensure it is discovered by these personal assistants.

Marketers will participate in conversations on messaging apps

It’s a bit of a stretch to say that 2016 will be the year of the mobile messaging app. However, both WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger have reached 1 billion monthly active users worldwide.

In 2016, Facebook will offer more services and brand marketing opportunities on Messenger and WhatsApp. Facebook will offer more non-traditional marketing and advertising.

Mobile payments will flourish

E-commerce and mobile commerce have been on the rise over the past decade, but there is no room for further growth in the future. However, the gap between e-commerce and mobile commerce will become even wider in 2016, as mobile wallets will become a standard feature of new smartphones and more retailers will support mobile payment systems such as Apple Pay, Android Pay, Samsung Pay, etc.

However, swiping a card or scanning a smartphone is not yet easy enough for most consumers to change decades of payment behavior. More retailers support mobile wallets and offer more coupons, rewards and loyalty programs, which will attract more consumers to use them.

Mobile commerce will move down the consumer funnel

Today, mobile devices are more of a factor in consumer spending, but mobile transactions account for only a small portion of online retailers’ sales: eMarketer estimates that just 1.6% of U.S. retail sales in 2015 will come from smartphones.

That will change in 2016, as online giants like Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Amazon make mobile shopping easier.

Millennials will be more open to sharing data

As more devices become part of the Internet of Things and the connectivity between people and devices increases, more people will release more personal data to marketers and publishers.

Even though they won’t admit it and may not be happy to do it, consumers are attracted by the convenience and value of the connected world and will do it anyway.

Facebook will be everywhere on mobile devices

In the third quarter of 2015, Facebook's global advertising revenue was $4.3 billion, of which 78% came from mobile devices. Now we need to pay attention to another Facebook status: how many users log in through mobile devices.

In the third quarter of 2015, Facebook had 1.55 billion monthly active users, of which 727 million, or 47%, used only mobile devices. In the same period of 2014, this proportion was only 34%.

199IT.com Originally compiled from: eMarketer. Please do not reprint without authorization