Beacons are easy and cheap to deploy. Yet in order for beacons to deliver on their promise, brands need to consider carefully how they are used to drive mobile user engagement as part of an overall marketing strategy. Here are three best practices to bring your usage of beacon technology beyond the buzz.

Augmented Reality is still more of a fun gimmick than a routinized part of the consumer and marketer repertoire. Still, it has the capacity to supply those fleeting moments of small joys that marketers can target to just the right audiences in the right context.

As facial mapping technologies become more sophisticated and accurate, they underscore just how powerfully these devices can be tied to our notions of self, identity, and how we present ourselves to the world. for media and marketers the opportunity comes in developing tools that help the user play with their "selves."

It's an exciting evolution of technology that our devices can truly help us to improve our health and wellness. The technology is there (or just about there) -- but a connection to consumers is missing. Brands and marketers need to take a look at what consumers really want in a device, what they are willing to wear and how best to reach them so they can develop and market devices to meet consumer needs.

As I feared, many of the bad practices of desktop media are migrating to mobile. Will publishers please take greater responsibility for the quality of the user experience before we turn apps and sites into NASCAR racers?

Mobile is huge, tech pundits say -- but most of them miss the fact that mobile advertising isn't growing at anywhere near the pace of mobile adoption. As Mary Meeker's 2014 Internet Trends Report shows, mobile ads still represent just a fraction of the global Internet advertising spend. Why? Here are some key factors -- and changes that must happen before mobile can become truly huge.

Although the games are already underway, there is still some time left before the July 13 final, so it's not too late to take advantage of the global event in your mobile marketing campaigns -- or to begin thinking ahead to strategies for the Women's World Cup next year, or the 2018 games. So whether you're looking to execute a campaign immediately or are thinking ahead, here are a few strategies to implement for your World Cup-themed (or World Cup-adjacent) mobile marketing campaigns.

Today's "personalized" customer experiences are based on surface [shallow] level data, Yet the biggest driver of what makes something personal and relevant has been neglected -- a person's immediate context. The growth of sensors in our phones and other connected devices has since opened the door for brands to get a true glimpse into a person's life. As a result, brands now have the power to engage with their customers in contextually relevant ways, tailoring interaction to their immediate situation.

Mobility will almost certainly change the fundamentals of media content, voice, formats, and functionality. The wild popularity of health and fitness apps may offer a clue to the direction in which all content makers should be headed.