• by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, May 16, 2017

The Internet of Things is still relatively new but we’re already at the stage of a second annual event to further dissect it.

At the MediaPost IoT Marketing Forum being held this Thursday in New York, brands, agencies and marketers will tackle some the major challenges along with opportunities around marketing and advertising within the Internet of Things.

At the forum last year, questions revolved around issues such as creating less intrusive advertising, how brands will deal with consumers in connected homes and the then-growing world of wearables.

The current topics this year revolve around engagement with the always-connected consumer.

James Moore, product director of mobile at JC Penney, will address how to leverage location-based innovations to individually connect with customers and talk about what JC Penney has learned.

A panel of experts from Isobar, SapientRazorfish, Pitch, Blue 449, and MEC will look at how to get the right kind of marketing messages to the consumer based on the platform, location and context.

Smart home devices can be triggered by a word heard over the airways, sometimes intentionally and sometimes not. A presentation by Vejay Lalla, an attorney who specializes  in the legal complexities of digital media, will lay out the legal land of privacy, intellectual property and native advertising in the context of IoT marketing.

The market is a moving target, but two back-to-back presentations by Ronjan Sikdar, vice president media analytics at Nielsen and Janice Caston, vice president of global marketing at Toluna, will present the very latest research on virtual reality and the voice-activated path to purchase.

The Internet of Things also is critical in the retail environment. A panel of experts from Catapult, Hacker Agency, Gimbal, Midnight Oil and ORC International will take a deep dive beyond how to keep customers in stores and malls longer to making their stay more enjoyable.

With virtual reality having expanded well beyond the world of gaming, Anthony Hitt, CEO of Engel & Volkers, a luxury real estate company, will tell the how and why behind the introduction of virtual reality in every one of the company’s North American offices.

Since many innovations lead to commerce, Leslie Leifer, vice president of ecommerce product development at 1-800-Flowers, will show some of the online retailer’s innovations, including how a company can tap into artificial intelligence, such as IBM Watson.

The hottest IoT element of the moment is voice, as in digital voice assistants like market leader Amazon Echo and Google Home. Ben Gaddis, president of T3, will insightfully describe where voice is going and what’s just around the corner.

This will be followed by a detailed discussion of voice assistants by experts from Mindshare, Maxus, Organic, Barker, Rain and MellaMedia.

The IoT market has come a long way in just a year.

At the end of this event on Thursday, many likely have a good idea of where it will be a year from now and, more importantly, what to do between now and then.

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Hope you can join us at the MediaPost IoT Marketing Forum May 18 in New York. Here’s the agenda.