Like all good years, we look back and review all that has transpired. We see what went well and what we need to work on. We gauge where we’ve been and what is yet to come. And for 2014, we’ll see the digital world taking marketing by storm, and advertisers making leaps and bounds to be that much further ahead.

What will we need to do to keep up with industry predictions of the New Year? Gather ‘round for this telling tale…

1. Apparitions of a Mobile Takeover

Like the burning embers of firelight, the need for communication never dies down. People today work with multiple screens open at once – start an email on your desktop, surf on your smartphone and watch a movie on your tablet. It’s a fast-paced digital world, and it’s a race to keep it stoked and burning. Marketers today need to reach across multiple platforms on a variety of devices throughout any given day. That means that media buyers will need to look well into the future to predict trends that will affect their client placements and strategize accordingly.

2. An Even Bigger Show Than Before

With consumers using their mobile phones to get around the Web, they are now doing it more than ever while they appear in stores. Looking at mobile lists, redeeming text and emailed coupons and a little comparison shopping while sales representatives take stock in the back room. This means that retailers now more than ever need to create a bigger and better showroom experience. Which for agencies means a gravitation toward in-house videos. Use of this powerful medium will help keep the consumers’ attention in the here and now.

3. Video Content, Lead On!

And with the dawn of the New Year comes more targeted real-time advertising using video as its medium as well. As content creation remains a viable option for marketers, sharing web-based videos will take a powerful lead in a social media sweep. This means marketers will need to have a digital arsenal of videographers ready to point and shoot at a moment’s notice. The customer of 2014 will be a sophisticated one and your content will need to be informative and dressed up all in one web-cloaked package. Prepare for media moving at mach speed.

4. Take it All in Targeting

This past year marked a time when people became one with their apps. So much so, in 2014 it will remain a requirement for businesses, especially retailers, to have top-notch mobile applications and sites. With this in mind, mobile media buying tactics will aim to hover above using hyperlocal targeting which uses GPS capabilities to expose the coordinates of each ad impression. Marketers will no longer be in need of cookies as a crutch. Agencies can stand on their own two feet to create campaigns targeted on specific neighborhoods based on demographic profiles.

5. A New Year, A New Way

Another new way of reaching audiences of the future will be programmatic ad buying or real-time bidding (RTB) platforms, which will be any type of online advertising booked and optimized through a software or interface, reducing the potential of human error. But with the focus on mobile-first buying, Facebook will continue to be an increasingly powerful place to convert viewers into consumers with the ever-open ended and intimate view into their life and habits.

Thus with the changing times, ad placement of the future may foreshadow certain ends, but as for 2014, indeed we’ll see mobile manifestation take the lead on any near or distant wandering spirits of media’s past.