At the 2013 Ad Age Dig­i­tal Sum­mit it was impos­si­ble to go more than 5 min­utes with­out hear­ing the words mobile phone, Smart­phone or tablet.  If you are a Busi­ness Devel­op­ment Man­ag­er, Social Media Man­ag­er or Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing Man­ag­er,  Mobile Phones are or will become a major part of your world.

Here are four rea­sons why mobile phones may become the num­ber one mar­ket­ing focus:

Rea­son #1: Mobile Phone Pay­ments to be $1 Tril­lion by 2015

Star­bucks accepts over 3 mil­lion mobile pay­ments each month from their 10 mil­lion mobile phone users accord­ing to Alexan­dra Wheel­er, Star­buck­’s VP Glob­al Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing.   We’ve all heard about pay­ment Wal­lets like Google Wal­let, Square and many oth­ers.  You may have seen the Citibank com­mer­cials where they are send­ing mon­ey from their mobile phones.   Ken Moy, Senior VP-Group Head, US Emerg­ing Pay­ments Lead from Mas­ter­Card expects every con­nect­ed device to become a com­merce device.  Ken’s stats from the Yan­kee Group esti­mate that by 2015 there will be $1Trillion in mobile pay­ments and that 19% of shop­pers in 2015 would pay for their in-store pur­chas­es with their mobile phone.

Rea­son 2:  The Face­book Effect – Share of Mobile Time

In the last 12 months Face­book has “mobi­lized” accord­ing to Rebec­ca Van Dyck, Head of Con­sumer Mar­ket­ing at Face­book.   Face­book has involved all of their devel­op­ers and employ­ees in their mobile ini­tia­tive.  Rebec­ca talks about how every­one at Face­book does mobile.  To that end they have intro­duced their own Mobile Phone and some very key apps that are designed to be your “home” on your phone.   Their “Chat Heads” com­bines SMS with Face­book chat into one appli­ca­tion.  Van Dyck states that Face­book users spend 28% of their Smart­phone time with Face­book.   The com­merce met­rics are evolv­ing.  In retail there is shelf space and now on mobile we have  “share of phone”.  With over 600 mil­lion dai­ly users and 680 mil­lion mobile users month­ly Face­book could very well be dri­ving how we use mobile in the future.

Rea­son 3: Cross Plat­form Shopping

“Mul­ti Screen Ad Cam­paigns per­form 18% bet­ter” accord­ing to Lisa Utzschnei­der, VP Glob­al Adver­tis­ing at Ama­zon.   When cus­tomers are ready to buy will you be ready to sell?  Lisa dis­cussed how Ama­zon has tai­lored its plat­form to con­form to Smart­phones, Mobile Phones, Tablets, Desk­tops or wher­ev­er you want to buy.  “Start with the Cus­tomer and Work Back­wards” is Amazon’s approach to Ecom­merce.  Her lat­est tar­get is CPG goods like deter­gent, baby food and relat­ed prod­ucts,  97.7% of which are cur­rent­ly sold in brick and mor­tar retail, for expec­tant and work­ing moms for whom con­ve­nience and ease of use is crit­i­cal.  Cou­ple that with MasterCard’s  Ken Moy’s not­ing that over 125 mil­lion Smart­Phones and 50 mil­lion tablets have been sold to date and there is lots of oppor­tu­ni­ty to be harvested.

Rea­son 4: How Much are 500 Bil­lion Pic­tures Worth?

When Face­book pur­chased Instra­gram, the online pho­to shar­ing and social net­work­ing ser­vice, for $1 Bil­lion dol­lars some scratched their heads won­der­ing why.  Now Tobias Peg­gs, CEO of Aviary, the pho­to edit­ing appli­ca­tion, explains why pic­tures can be worth a Bil­lion or more.

Accord­ing to Tobias there were 380 bil­lion pho­tos tak­en in 2011 using Smart­phones with that num­ber expect­ed to top 500 bil­lion in 2013.  By 2015 Tobias expects 50% of all pho­tos in the US will be tak­en with mobile phones.  Cur­rent­ly 91% of Smart­phone users take more than 1 pho­to each month.  But what about mon­e­ti­za­tion?  Tobias has that cov­ered also. He is sell­ing Insta­gram like fil­ters to adver­tis­ers to pro­mote their brands to con­sumers.  Cou­ple that with the high engage­ment and social ampli­fi­ca­tion of con­sumers shar­ing their pho­tos with their friends and you have a num­ber too large for your calculator.

image: Rebec­ca Van Dyck, Head of Con­sumer Mar­ket­ing Facebook