"Old is the new young." Is this one of those catchy but, ultimately, meaningless advertising slogans? Far from it. The 60-plus age group is going to be the most important consumer growth market over the next 15 years, generating more than one-third of global consumption growth, according to our new report, "Urban World: The Global Consumers to Watch," which is free and available on our website. The largest elderly consumer markets today are in developed economies where their number will grow by a third between 2015 and 2030. These consumers will generate 20% of global consumption growth over this period. …

Luxury retailers have historically been hesitant to adopt programmatic advertising - the automated buying of digital media - believing that programmatic means gaining efficiency at the expense of losing control. For brands that have built practices around putting an ad in a premium content context - a full-page spread in Vanity Fair, for example, where the ad itself is in some ways viewed as content - that exchange can be a difficult one to swallow.

The devices that consumers use to interact with media and brands continue to proliferate, which is leading many marketers to rush into new channels with the potential to reach or better understand their audience. For example, if a fridge is no longer just for keeping groceries cold - it's now a TV, an internet-connected device, and a data repository - what effect does that have on marketing?

Recently, a luxury marketer who tends to focus specifically on the affluent marketplace asked me if I knew how many adults with household incomes under $100,000 bought luxury products and services. I then asked him why and he told me he felt that a fairly large number of consumers with household incomes under $100,000 buy luxuries.