In 1908, Hamptons Magazine made a bold prediction: “When the expectations of wireless experts are realized, everyone will have his own pocket telephone and may be called wherever he happens to be … When that invention is perfected, we shall have a new series of daily miracles.”
Wow. Predicting the advent of mobile a century in advance — that’s setting the prognostications bar pretty high. Don’t know if I can match that, but I’ll do my best to foretell what 2017 will bring in marketing technologies.
1. A scandal involving digital marketing will result in a major lawsuit
This is the one rock-solid guarantee that I can offer for the coming year. In fact, the only real question is which scandal will lead to court first.
Certainly, any industry in which up to 40 percent of inventory/supply is fraudulent is ripe for litigation. And when the CMO of a public company knows a significant chunk of the budget is absorbed by fraud, that introduces the possibility of a class-action shareholder suit for misuse of corporate assets.
But I’d say the odds-on favorite for a scandal sensational enough to splash down in the mainstream will be an egregious violation of user privacy, perhaps involving retargeting of consumers through ambient listening technology in their devices.
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