Information from smart devices in the home could be valuable and it looks like many consumers would be willing to trade some of that information for a fee. And it's not just money that marketers may need to fork over for valuable consumer insights, since coupons and discounts could do the trick as well. The majority (54%) of consumers who live in a smart home would give a company access to their connected home habits if they were paid, based on a new large and detailed study.

As anyone who has one knows, wearable devices have a good side and a bad side. It's not so much that the devices themselves don't work, since they usually do. It's more about the challenge many consumers face in making sense of all the data that's collected from their devices. While the volume of data from wearables is impressive, the value is in its interpretation.

More people are going to be speaking to more things. While the Internet of Things will bring the addition of new screens into the home and present the opportunity for more and varied forms of advertising, the power of voice may become front and center when it comes to consumer interactions. And some of these new forms of interactions may be facilitated by what essentially started out as a music listening mobile app.

Discussions about IoT adoption often take into consideration the expectations of what the next generation will do. This is a challenging concept, since the next generation won't be looking at buying the current generation of IoT products. But there are starting to be some early indicators of some of the thinking of the next generation, at least about the current state of smart or connected objects.

Many consumers already have experienced a security incident and even more are worried about one in the future. More than half (58%) of consumers are very or highly concerned about potential hacking and data theft against their connected devices, according to a new study. And it's not only the future that worries consumers.

Many people are attracted to wearable fitness trackers with the intention of using the device to help measure and track various aspects of their health. But over time, many new features and capabilities got added to the ecosystem around fitness trackers, with more entities clamoring for a piece of the consumer's time and attention. The fitness tracker itself essentially captures and records the basic data, such as exercise time, heart rate, steps taken and the like, and transmits the info to a smartphone over Bluetooth.

Most people have likely seen someone walking around looking like they're talking to themselves. This is even more pronounced at airports, as many business travelers connect with clients or colleagues before jumping on a plane. The communication, of course, is via an unseen smartphone, thanks to Bluetooth headsets or a small mic that's part of a phone cord.

The Internet of Things is about Internet-connected or smart things knowing things before you do. And then the things they know should be conveyed to you so your life is just a bit easier, or at least more efficient. A rudimentary example of this is searching Google for directions to somewhere and then seeing the popular times that people travel to the same place, so you can plan your travel on the best day and time.

Adults are hardly clamoring for self-driving cars and now it turns out that the generation behind them isn't either. The majority of American youths, most of whom are still too young to drive, would rather do the driving themselves, when the time comes. And the closer they get to driving age, the more they want to control the vehicle themselves, based on a new study.

The wide-ranging scope of the capabilities coming with The Internet of Things creates a relatively unlimited number of ways to create new and innovative methods to interact with consumers. These can range from new ways to incorporate robotic devices to leveraging drones for not only product delivery but also as a new advertising mechanism.