By Shaun Gregory, Director – Global Advertising, Telefonica Digital

There are several trends driving the digital and mobile advertising industry at the moment, but three in particular will be prevalent as we move forward.

First of all, the shift towards local. As technology advances and consumers look for things more relevant to them, the importance of local will move up the agenda. We’ve seen this trend through offers and coupons, and for me this is about to go through another phase of change. Service providers need to think carefully about how they become more local in what they’re doing.

The second theme is social. It’s not just about social networks like Facebook, or even platforms like Twitter. The trend that I’m seeing is one of integration across all platforms and technologies, with social operating more laterally and fully integrated.

The third, and without doubt the biggest trend, is that of data. The explosion in this area is akin to the launch of search and AdWords. It’s having a profound impact on the marketing sector – we’re fast approaching a time when two-thirds of global marketing dollars will be  impacted by data in some way.

The days of the CMO guessing what works with their advertising will soon be long gone. Mobile sits at the center of this revolution, and the pace of change will only get faster as more startups re-invent, alongside companies who continue to solve the ‘complexity problem’.

If you’re interested, here’s a video walk-through of our approach to hyper personalised targeting in push messaging ads.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=or62M0oefmk[/youtube]