NEW YORK – A panel at ad:tech New York 2016 consisting of five executives representing influential companies in the Internet of Things discussed the state and future of a technology that is marketing’s most nascent development.

The panel constituted five members of the Internet of Things Consortium, which is in place to ignite the growth of the Internet of Things marketplace, which counts among its most popular products recent releases such as Amazon’s Echo and Nest Cam. The panel was host to a lively discussion among experts within the fledgling field on its applications for marketing, and how both consumers and marketers can benefit from the technology.

“It’s not a category, it’s not a technology, it’s not an industry,” said Ohad Zeira, director of consumer IoT at Verizon. “It’s really just a new way of doing things.

“If you think of Internet 1.0, that changed the way we communicate, changed the way we shop, even changed the way we find love. IoT is the exact same way, except bringing the physical realm into that conversation.”

IoT marketing
The panel began with some insight on the role of the Internet of Things in the abstract, provided by Eric Holt, corporate development director with IBM Watson IoT.

“We’re talking about using cognitive and computing technologies to inform and incite thinking,” Mr. Holt said. “We’re interested in not only providing the physical access, but using the Watson AI engine to actually develop insights and infused thinking into hardware.”

The panel then moved on to practical consumer applications of the Internet of Things, many of which are already being championed by marketers such as Todd Manegold, senior director of product marketing at Philips Hue, a smart LED lightbulb:

“We’re asking you to think about lighting in a different way, to invest in an experience,” Mr. Mannegold said. “But that experience needs context.

“One example is when we worked with Live Nation and took emerging artists and took them to peoples homes, and actually had them play one of their tracks with Hue installed in the living room and had the lights interact with the music,” he said. “We actually used and drove both content from the performance about how these guys view lighting and how it can be used in your daily life.

“It’s about creating content and an experience that’s interesting for people to engage with.”

The panel was host to lively discussion, as seen above

Incipient platform
Ali Rayfield, CRO at Kiip, a mobile moments marketing platform, continued with the marketing tack.

“The definition of a marketable moment is always evolving based on how users are using their devices,” Ms. Rayfield said. “A marketable moment could be that if someone blows a high blood alcohol content, an alcohol brand can provide an Uber credit or a Lyft credit, compliments of them, to get home safe.

“That moment didn’t exist before. The marketable opportunities are happening all of the time.”

And Rob Katcher, CEO of Hiku, creator of a grocery-shopping-centric device that creates a digital inventory of the contents of one’s fridge/pantry, concurred.

“What’s new is now that these things are becoming digitized and they’re becoming actionable,” Mr. Katcher said.

The panel closed from an anecdote from John Burbank, president of strategic initiatives at Nielsen. His words, while referencing his past in the mobile industry, could also mirror the trajectory of his newfound one.

“I was working the cell phone business just prior to the iPhone launch, and I was working at AT&T when it launched the iPhone,” Mr. Burbank said. “You could have brought every smart person in the room that was working in the mobile space at that time and ask them (what the future of mobile capability was), and none of us would have known.

“The ability for humans to predict how all these pieces are fitting together in large systems is really very, very low, he said. “I think Bill Gates said something along the lines of that we all overestimate what’s going to happen in the next year, and we underestimate what’s going to happen ten years from now.

“I can’t sit here today with confidence and tell you anything that’s going to happen ten years from now, but I can sit here and tell you with confidence that we’ll be quite surprised by the things that are created because of the compounding nature of human imagination combined with technology.”