Your social networks can woo $4.5 bn by 2018

SINGAPORE: Forrester Research predicts that the future of Social is Mobile. US mobile ad spending on social networks will reach $4.5 billion by 2018, according to Forrester Research's latest forecast report, Forrester Research Social Media Forecast, 2013 To 2018 (US), by analyst Jitender Miglani.

Forrester Research expects the spending on mobile ads to grow nearly twice as fast as the spending on desktop ads on social networks.

In another set of predictions, it hints that changing consumer behavior and organizations' own ambitions around emerging market opportunities will drive significant changes for customer intelligence (CI) pros in 2013, according to its research. The report identifies some trends that will impact CI teams this year.

Perpetually connected consumers have new requirements. While data generated from wearables, smartphones, and tablets can be a rich source of insight, CI pros need to finally solve the problem of tying customer profiles together across channels and devices. Moreover, they need to do it in a privacy-compliant way. Also, Smart devices blur the line between product data and customer data. As devices -- from wearables to telematics -- generate increasing volumes of data about how they're used, CI pros will need best practices for the ingestion and management of that data. That means creating processes for management of both front-end (formats and capture) and back-end (value assessment and storage) data challenges.

The value of big data will be redefined. As the three V's -- volume, velocity, and variety -- of data continue to increase, the current tendency to hoard data without assessing its value will shift, and firms will begin to consider the ROI (including risk) of the data they store.

Service and technology vendors will emerge to support customer engagement. Major shifts in the services and technology landscapes will throw the CI buying model in flux again, as marketers try to identify the optimal mix of vendors to support their customer engagement programs.