Digital Britain: are marketers ready to benefit?

So, according to the governments report every home in Britain will have 2mbps broadband by 2012.  That, coupled wth significant plans for improved 3G is set to open the way for much more interactive marketing.

At the moment 1/3 of homes in the UK won't get broadband due to commercial efforts, but a 50p tax levied on all fixed line phone users will provide a fund to remedy that.

With all household in Britain able to get an Internet connection fast enough to provide streaming video the options for creating interactive communications and targeted advertising will increase significantly.

Increasingly video content is being watched on the Internet and ITV player forces viewing commercials within programmes, but at the moment many of these are not targeted at the individual viewer - this could be set to change. 

A whole new generation are growing up with the laptop, Facebook, YouTube and the Internet as their primary entertainment - a wider spread of broadband will perpetuate this trend, leading brands into new areas in order to get their value across.

Faster mobile broadband is also a theme of the report and will offer brands new possibilities for delivering engaging, and individually targeted content to users on the move.  Mobile also offers the possibility of location based services.

Already one US organisation I've been working with is intending to target users mobile devices with offers when it predicts that they will be receptive and near an outlet.  We're going to see more and more of this clever and generally beneficial marketing over the next few years.

Digital marketing mavens are the new "Mad Men"

Digital marketing is hitting the mainstream with journals like the NY Times running stories on the new ways of identifying and targeting communications.

Trying out offers with immediate response helps brands like Vespa to pick the ideal offers and put them in front of the audience at the right time.  It's a far cry from Mad Men.

The NYT recently ran a story on Varick Media Management who use data as the primary driver of message and offer management for their clients.

With WPP, Havas and the like all citing data as a critical requirement for campaigns there's a new race to provide scientific marketing. 

Forrester see the emergence of a new class of "Customer Engagement Agency" that combines the traditional strategic and creative skills with the left brain data skills necessary to build highly targeted individual communications.