Internet of 'Sharing' Things should be new focus in 2015

The often-referenced Internet of Things (IoT) movement is expected to make big strides in 2015. For those of us in the marketing world, it is now being referred to as The Internet of “Sharing” Things. That’s an important distinction, as this initiative begins taking its first real steps in the weeks and months directly ahead of us.

We’ve looked at the potential impact the IoT will have on consumers with regard to how the notion of more and more connected devices will enhance their lives, but the real value for marketers comes in how the IoT will change the way consumers share what is happening within their IoT lives. With an infrastructure of 75 billion connected devices by 2020, if you think folks are sharing a lot of info now, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

“As a marketer you’ll soon have a more complete understanding of the consumers’ ‘buying journey’ and how they feel about a product or brand after purchase,” began Seth Greene, a former consumer tech industry marketer and current blogger on all things IoT. “With so many more connected devices, marketers will have access to a more constant stream of consumer data and the sharing rate of data between consumers will rise exponentially as they spend more hours per week interacting with connected gadgets.”

Think back to the initial emergence of Facebook and how marketers were at first reluctant to target consumers using social media. When you look at the sharing that is typically happening on social media now, it’s still mostly about smartphone uploads of pictures and videos from a “day in the life” of the user. In the coming IoT world, where posts and shares will be regularly generated by the devices themselves, marketers will be preparing for new ways to communicate with entirely new online communities that will develop, centered solely around the users of these particular devices.

“IoT devices in the social media framework will become marketer’s gold,” Greene added. “Countless new and emerging trends will become trackable and the ability to reach customers and social communities that had been previously unreachable will become an entirely new source of their marketing energies.”

If a recent Gartner prediction that the impact of connected smart devices has already added some $1.9 trillion to the global economy in 2014 is accurate, the fast emerging Internet of “Sharing” Things space will surely have the marketing world scrambling in 2015.

Imagine some 75 billion connected devices by 2020 — it’s a difficult number to comprehend, but the one thing that should be easy to understand is the time to start “sharing” your marketing story within the Io(s)T world should start now.

This article is part of Allvoices’ series on ad:tech, the largest, longest-running digital marketing and technology event.

Internet of "Sharing" Things should be new focus in 2015