Since the introduction of smartphones years ago, we have been hearing that mobile advertising will take over all other tools and trends followed by the advertisement fraternity. Even if it has not completely engulfed the world, the use of mobile devices as vehicles for content, communication and efficiency continues to grow as global smartphone penetration maintains double-digit growth for the near future.

From what people have understood, mobile is not a channel but a way of living. Resulting from this, the data derived, analysed, matched and utilised for overall campaign and audience optimisation is impressive and all from a single device.

With these perspectives in mind, the mobile audience’s modelling and prospecting get more sophisticated this year. The ability to grow a brand’s audience will come from converting prospects rather than targeting existing customers again and again.

Mobile audience models will get more sophisticated and marketers will combine behavioural and geolocation signals to find new audiences on mobile devices. Currently, finding new audience on mobile is limited, using location data as the connection. New models will extend current desktop behavioural machine learning approaches to mobile by finding new brand audiences based on the web, apps and place behaviours of existing audiences.

Advertisers dig into physical and emotional signals from wearables. The growth in wearables has played a huge role in changing the way we manage our health in 2015. This growth in data from oneself — which includes physical and emotional signals — is just starting to be used for brand messaging and targeting.

This data is also extending the ability of neuroscience market research to move beyond panels and studies to quantitative data that is captured in the moment. Marketers will need to keep in mind that we buy wearables because we want to know ourselves and not because we want advertising. We want recommendations for us, reminders for what we need to do, what we may have forgotten or a nudge to ensure we are staying healthy.

Creative agencies turn to data science to optimise campaigns. With the rise of ad blocking, the expected demise of the desktop banner ad and the growth in mobile video, creative — and specifically mobile creative — will be a big theme for 2016. Some say programmatic broke advertising, but programmatic data will allow for the use of current insights to inform creative execution.

The use of data science to measure and optimise creative performance will grow, with current creative agencies looking to add data scientists to their roster, either in-house or through partnerships.

Cross-device marketing becomes even more prevalent. It’s not really about mobile as a silo anymore... it’s about using digital and physical data to reach your audiences wherever they are. Studies in 2015 have already shown that mobile should be not used alone and, instead, when part of the overall media mix, enhances other digital and linear channels.

The distinction between digital and linear channels will begin to blur by the end of this year.

The writer is the CEO of Venturecom at Verse Group.