Experian's digital and marketing predictions

Search is so then established as the number one online source of traffic nevertheless as people's Internet browsing habits become more diverse, search is by degree becoming less dominant as a provider of traffic.

2012 is likely to be a year of consolidation to put it more exactly than technology in the mobile industry. In other words not to say mobile marketers won't keeping innovating and we expect to see early plays in research like Nearly-Field Communication.

However, now the hype of the iPhone 4S has settled down the focus will be on establishing standards and best practises. There is now a relatively stable environment in terms of devices and platforms, upon which mobile marketers can get down to the hard graft of making campaigns that work.

Finally, mobile networks are likely to throttle consumer mobile data over their networks. A short term solution to their ageing infrastructure, it will cause a definitive shift in user behaviour to become less reliant on the networks and instead move towards wi-fi wherever possible. Thus, consumers are likely to increase their use of services which leverage wi-fi data transfer, threatening the mobile network core services.Grant Sidwell, Mobile Account Director, Experian CheetahMail

Lack of development in the tools

That is not to say that we will see a lack of development in the tools and research used to plan and deploy online advertising campaigns, nevertheless the real story is around who you're targeting, not how you reach them. Brands will need to ensure that they have a deep understanding of their target audiences and incorporate all information available, creating a single customer view, to be able to effectively plan, deploy and measure the success of their campaignsJon Buss, MD Hitwise and Digital Advertising Services

Despite the continual rumour that email is a dying form of communication due to the rise of social media and smartphones, the evidence tells another story and in 2012 the strength of using email as a marketing tool is set to continue growing. The increasing growth in sales and popularity of smartphones gives clients another device through which they can view their emails at any time of day or night, making email an moreover accessible form of communication.

To compliment this, email is going to become moreover customer centric. As our inboxes reach capacity, and with many of us having more than one email account and consuming emails on a number of different devices, ESPs will have to cut through the noise in order to stay competitive. Combined with the continuing trend of declining open rates due to sophisticated inbox 'junk mail' programming, emails are going to have to be able to deliver relevant content to every customer so that even on an iPhone or a secondary email account the email stands out from the rest.

However the flip-side to this is that click through rates are expected to increase, with emails that reach the consumer becoming more relevant due to improved targeting, more educated send timing, along with stronger calls to action.Helen Taylor, Data Analyst, Experian CheetahMail