The data on which marketers’ models rest are still largely proxies for the emotional and attitudinal roots of that behavior. Understanding those aspects of consumer behavior is still largely the province of focus groups and small-scale, in-person research studies that are often difficult to project up to a mass market, making predicting and shaping consumer behavior still more art than science.

Brand marketers are facing the following:

• Most of the audience targeting and programmatic sales platforms available to advertisers today were not built with brand marketers in mind. They’re very good at identifying and targeting consumers who might be in the market for a new car or an airline ticket, based on behavioral cues, but brand marketers – unlike direct marketers – aren’t necessarily looking for that sort of immediate sales conversion.
• For brand marketers to gain maximum value from digital platforms, they will increasingly need to be able to automate the sort of qualitative audience insights on which brand campaigns are based in order to develop effective programmatic media-buying plans.
• Companies like Resonate, Choicestream, and Cubeyou offer tools that, to varying degrees, integrate traditional market research techniques with modern social media and digital tracking and profiling to enable marketers and advertisers of all types to go well beyond demographic targeting. Marketers crafting campaigns based on attitudes and lifestyles as well as demographics – especially those interested in buying digital advertising media programmatically – should evaluate these tools for adoption.

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Some of the key trends we’ll be watching develop in 2015 include:

• Video advertising technology saw its share of investment and consolidation, particularly in online video, last year. Now the payoff starts, and we may even see some online techniques like programmatic ad-buying gain traction for traditional, linear TV.
• Over-the-top (OTT) television will become a serious alternative for programmers and advertisers as broadcast and cable networks alike make more of their shows available online. Verizon and AT&T will launch initiatives in 2015, and while those companies claim to be targeting mobile users, the endgame is the big screen. At the same time, there is tremendous tension over traditionally cheaper online ad inventory.
• The net neutrality wars will accelerate, with a serious FCC vote likely in the first half of 2015. Whatever the result — and it looks like full Title II reclassification of broadband access might happen — litigation will follow. At a minimum that means months of legal skirmishing lie ahead before we have any certain outcome or enforceable rules on net neutrality.
• Apple will continue to roil the TV and consumer space. Don’t expect an Apple TV set so much as its own version of TV-Everywhere infrastructure and services. And though Apple Pay will be limited by device availability, it will goad retailers into supporting it, or a secure alternative.

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Among the major developments:

• Amazon acquired live gaming platform Twitch.tv for $1 billion, marking a major move by the retailer into live streaming and setting up a future clash with Google for supremacy in online video advertising.
• Viacom agreed to make 22 of its cable channels available to Sony as part of an over-the-top multichannel streaming service the electronics company is building for its PlayStation platform, marking a major milestone in the effort to create a virtual MVPD that competes with traditional pay-TV providers.
• Traditional broadcasters and cable networks suffered their worst upfront selling season since the financial crisis, pointing to an accelerating shift in video ad spending toward online. Online publishers like AOL and ad-tech providers like Google are trying to capitalize on the trend by creating new tools for programmatic video ad buying.
• The FCC is grappling with three major and overlapping proceedings, from net neutrality to the proposed Comcast-Time Warner Cable and AT&T-DirecTV mergers, that together will set the rules of the road for broadband and online video for the next decade.
• Apple unveiled Apple Pay, a mobile payment service that may finally make paying with a phone (or wearable device) common.

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But now there is more premium video content and ad inventory available online, and brand marketers are starting to experiment with digital techniques to capture the efficiencies and targeting ability offered by programmatic buying, particularly as audiences fragment across screens. Relatively new online video networks as well as big online players like AOL and Google are gearing up to serve that growing demand. And the TV gang isn’t standing pat.

Key trends include the following:

• AOL’s acquisition of Adap.tv and Google’s mDialog aim to provide curated exchanges that will make brand marketers more comfortable with quality content while enabling programmatic buying. Brightroll wants to let online publishers build their own.
• Already, there are hints of a shakeout. Ad networks and exchanges like YuMe and Tremor Video are increasing investments in the face of earnings pressure. Comcast bought digital agency FreeWheel.
• Most brand buyers aren’t used to evaluating ROI or measuring lift in this space, let alone buying internet-style. Delivering evidence of payoff, and translating direct-marketing terminology into brand-speak is critical. If digital players can do this before the traditional TV industry can, TV stalwarts who have been living off inefficient spending and waste will face the same dilemma as print media.

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Among the key developments:

• The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that Aereo was infringing broadcasters’ public performance right by retransmitting their programming without a license. In the court’s view, if a service looks like a cable-TV system and quacks like a cable-TV system it should pay up for content like a cable-TV system.
• The 2014 FIFA World Cup tournament in Brazil shattered all previous records for concurrent live streaming, demonstrating in the process that the emerging over-the-top live-streaming business is developing along the same big-ticket sporting events that drive the traditional pay-TV business today.
• Apple made its biggest acquisition to date in Beats Electronics and Beats Music, a $3.2 billion acqui-hire of Beats founders Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre as Apple tries to figure out the music streaming space.
• With consolidation now the name of the game in the pay-TV and broadband industries, AT&T made its bid to counter Comcast’s deal to acquire Time Warner Cable by agreeing to buy DirecTV for $49 billion.
• FCC chairman Tom Wheeler proposed new net neutrality regulations that managed to please no one and set off a loud public debate by voices that do not even agree on what they’re arguing about.

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Among the developments highlighted in this report:

• Rapid growth in the use of mobile devices for watching video, especially live sports,  promises significant upside for broadcasters and rights owners who can figure out how to stream their content to those devices;
• New technical standards such as MPEG-DASH for streaming, H.265 for compression and LTE Mulitcast for broadcasting over wireless networks offering an opportunity to overcome many of the constraints on live streaming;
• Middle-mile streaming service providers are harnessing the new standards, along with their proprietary technology stacks, to create end-to-end steaming platforms optimized for live events;
• Dynamic ad insertion and new techniques for inserting ad cues in live streams are creating new monetization options for internet broadcasting just as broadcasters are facing new pressure from rising content costs to monetize all available platforms;
• Expanding capacity for live streaming is creating opportunities for new types of live-event programming to find an audience, such as competitive video gaming, while older forms, such as professional wrestling and live music, are finding ways to expand their reach.

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Among the key developments:

• Comcast announced plans to acquire Time Warner Cable for $45 billion, combining the two largest cable MSOs in the country and touching off fierce debate over media ownership, net neutrality, broadband access and antitrust issues just as the MVPD business is poised for further consolidation.
• FCC chairman Tom Wheeler announced plans to re-impose net neutrality rules after a federal appeals court rejected the agencies previous rules but
• A keenly watched court showdown between Pandora and ASCAP ended inconclusively, which is likely to pitch the ongoing debate over music performance rights back to Congress.
• Broadcasters will have their own courtroom showdown over performance licensing with Aereo, but even a win there won’t fully resolve the issue.
• Netflix’s transit and interconnection deal with Comcast thrust internet peering into the policy spotlight in the first quarter but for now the FCC is keeping its powder dry on the issue.

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The increased use of mobile devices in conjunction with the TV, however, along with the development of communications protocols for connecting and syncing mobile devices with the TV, particularly the ability to “fling” content from mobile devices to the TV, is gradually pulling TV viewing and TV content deeper into mobile ecosystems. The shift from fixed to mobile platforms has the potential to disrupt the TV advertising economy by enabling new ways to aggregate, measure and engage with audiences beyond the exclusive control of TV programmers.

Key highlights in this report include:

• The use of mobile devices to source TV content embeds that process in a much richer and more personalized data environment than traditional means of sourcing content can provide, giving marketers for the first time the ability to marry TV advertising with behavioral targeting.
• Unlike distribution rights, the TV networks do not control access to the data trail produced by mobile devices. As a result, mobile platform providers will be able to offer marketers value around their TV ad budgets that programmers and networks cannot provide.
• Ad budgets will eventually follow the data, disrupting one of the TV industry’s two critical revenue streams.

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Among the year’s highlights:

• Sony and Microsoft rolled out expensive new gaming hardware amid a rapidly changing market. Each pursued a distinct strategy to try to mitigate the risks.
• Google and Apple jumped into the streaming music game despite the economic challenges of the business. YouTube and Beats Music are gearing up to launch their own streaming services early in 2014.
• Online retailers including eBay, Amazon, and Google experimented with same-day delivery while brick-and-mortar chains including Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and Home Depot all ramped up their ecommerce operations.
• Google won a major legal victory in the eight-year Google Books case when a judge declared that scanning and indexing millions of books does not infringe authors’ copyrights. The ruling is likely to prove a landmark in fair use jurisprudence.
• Google joined Apple and Microsoft in rolling out technologies to link mobile devices with the TV, setting the stage for what could be a highly disruptive shift in how TV viewers access programming.

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As the year winds to a close, the Gigaom Research curators set their sights on 2014, and share thoughts on what to expect, what not to. Will the NSA revelations have any long-term effect on U.S. cloud computing or have we simply moved on? Are wearables really worth their hype? And when it comes to social business, how fast is too fast in terms of when it comes to changing the nature of the way we work?

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