Last week, as I stood on a New York City subway while it was barreling downtown, it occurred to me how each and every person within sight was staring at, listening to or tapping on their mobile device. To those of us centered in marketing, it is no secret that mobile is a major disruption of our traditional web strategies. Because billions of people are now connecting to the Internet and consuming media in different ways, we are shifting our tactics to accommodate the disruption. Mobile apps dominate people’s time more than the entire Internet, while the smartphone business has long dwarfed the desktop computer industry.

Until now, measuring the impact of this change in media consumption has been relegated to watching the growth of things like music streams and YouTube videos – and how they are being consumed by device type. Noting the growth of mobile revenue from social platforms like Facebook is also a gauge.

Mobile now leads the way
There are other major indicators though – and those are how marketers are now building their capabilities to accommodate and respond to the phenomenon. Smartphones and tablets are leading the way as the design and test standard for the user experience. In fact, changes on desktop devices are now being driven by mobile innovations. Some examples include:

• Native advertising (in-feed ad units) is now being delivered as a viable option to the tiny, illegible banner ads which we’ve all mistakenly tapped. Mobile revenue for platforms such as Twitter and Facebook are now off the charts with this new offering. And this week it was announced that one third of Huffington Post’s revenue is derived from native ad units. Certain sites such as BuzzFeed and Quartz are no longer accepting standard IAB units, but rather units which integrate into their own content formats.

• Website architecture and design is changing too. Sites are becoming more and more visual. Large, hi-resolution images are becoming easier and cheaper to create and are replacing text–heavy web pages. We owe this to the mobile camera – where lens technology has greatly improved and the instantaneous movement of rich images is easier. Also, websites are now being designed as responsive. The first generation of mobile was designed for specific devices and screen sizes. Apps were developed for each operating system, and mobile websites were developed for different screen sizes. This is an expensive approach to maintain and requires new coding as devices evolve. The new approach is responsive web design, where the code is developed in a way that so that screens will render in accordance with the device accessing the site. This way, companies can bring enhancements to market quickly – reduce their coding expense, and supporting more devices out of the box.

• Another example of mobile driving digital strategy is push media. Today, push notifications are primarily delivered through apps located on mobile devices (table reservations, healthcare appointments, airport gate information, retail sales opportunities, etc.) but marketers will soon deliver push notifications through web browsers and entertainment and gaming systems. Results indicate web push is clearly superior to email and short messaging systems – with lower costs, higher opt in rates and more sophisticated analytics as key reasons.

• Online mobile friendly surveys are beginning to become part of the social experience. Long form surveys traditionally offered through major research outlets such as Survey Monkey and Neilson are being reconsidered by marketers. Smartphones are viewed more than 150 times a day and users are opting out of long form surveys. Companies such as Wedgies and Polar are helping to turn surveys into engaging content and instantly delivering large sets of data to marketers.

The future of engagement
As more and more millions of people acquire smartphones, digital marketing will become mobile marketing and mobile will continue to drive innovation in ways that will always keep us engaged – even on a NYC subway.