Marketers and advertisers have been working to achieve some level of personalization for the better part of two decades to support specific business objectives. While there has been a strong desire to deliver more relevant experiences to target audiences, only in the past few years has technology caught up to help lower the barriers to achieving personalization. Big data is playing an important role in helping companies enable more effective applications, especially when it comes to delivering more relevant and valuable customer experiences.

The convergence of these market forces and others are driving growing investment in and the use of personalization. As more companies are empowered with personalization, they need to consider consumers' attitudes toward it, especially regarding the collection and use of data that enables increasingly-sophisticated applications. While consumers benefit from these applications, they desire more control. Marketers, advertisers, technology providers, agencies, and other services firms should take these attitudes into consideration when developing the next generation of these applications.

Welcome to the inaugural Road Map for InfoTrends' Digital Marketing & Media Trends (DMM) Consulting Service. Consumers and businesses are conducting more of their daily activities in the digital realm than ever before. They are communicating, learning, transacting, and being entertained online and through mobile devices more than ever before. This shift in habits is pushing key constituencies in the marketing and media industries - marketers, advertisers, publishers, technology & services firms - to go through their own digital transformations, and they are adopting a host of new strategies, tactics, and tools to succeed.

In response to these rapidly-evolving market dynamics, InfoTrends has launched the DMM service to help companies understand how to harness the power of interconnected media effectively to meet their business objectives. Research areas for this service in 2013 include topics of critical importance to marketing and media professionals like understanding the vast technology landscape, delivering more personalized and engaging customer experiences across all channels, and monetizing digital content more effectively. The DMM service will also constantly explore areas where marketing and media overlap, including advertising, eCommerce, analytics, optimization, integration, and privacy.

In the direct marketing world, the use of large and varied sets of data to segment, target, and personalize communications is nothing particularly new. Despite this reality, the growing use of measureable digital marketing channels - and the deluge of data associated with them - are shining a brighter spotlight on data-driven marketing practices. More marketers and advertisers have a desire to become data-fluent, especially when it comes to dealing with "big data" issues; at the same time, more consumers, privacy advocates, and regulators want to know how their personal information and other digital data are being used for marketing purposes.

At the 2012 Direct Marketing Association (DMA) conference and exhibition, held from October 13-18 at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada, topics like big data, security, privacy, and choice were prominent themes from the start, with the association launching a new effort to educate consumers and Congress about data-driven marketing. In parallel, many marketers are simply trying to figure out how to come to grips with their data-driven challenges.

When Apple unveiled the iPad in March of 2010, many questioned whether or not it would take off. There should be no question today: research firms are predicting over 100 million tablet computers will be sold in 2012, and almost 70 million of them will be iPads. The success of the iPad and the introduction of other tablets creates new opportunities for magazine publishers to effectively disseminate and monetize their digital content, but it has also created more complexity and new challenges related to production and distribution. Determining the best media package to go to market with is a major challenge, given the growing range of device choices. The workflows required to create, distribute, measure, and monetize these interactive formats - while still supporting traditional publishing channels - add another layer of complexity that media companies are actively trying to solve.

In May of 2012, InfoTrends, in partnership with the North American Publishing Company (NAPCO), surveyed 261 publishers (including 116 magazine publishers) inquiring about digital media adoption and their approach to digital production and distribution. The results from this survey provide insight for magazine publishers, technology firms, and service providers about how to strategically and tactically approach the rapidly-evolving digital media landscape.

Tablets, ereaders, and other smart mobile devices are revolutionizing the way people consume and interact with media - especially books. Although the printed book is not expected to disappear anytime soon, the ebook opportunity continues to grow as many consumers readily shift their reading time in favor of digital formats. Book publishers are responding to this shift by ramping up their production and distribution of ebooks, using a variety of tools and technologies to build a new digital supply chain that marries authors with audiences.

In May of 2012, InfoTrends, in partnership with the North American Publishing Company (NAPCO), surveyed 261 publishers in the U.S. (including 145 book publishers) about their adoption of digital media as well as their approach to digital production and distribution. The results from this survey provide insights for book publishers, technology firms, and service providers on the pace of digital media evolution within book publishing and how publishers are effectively producing, distributing, and monetizing their ebooks.