2014 was a banner year for the mobile marketing industry, generating $32.71 billion globally. 2015 is looking even brighter, with a diversified set of devices, fresh opportunities and eager consumers ready to capture and explore content on the go. While we’ll see the seeds of each of the following trends in 2015, many won’t bear fruit for the industry for years to come. 

1) Beacons create experiences at retail, but also begin to move on their own.More consumers will notice curated mobile experiences housed within Urban Outfitters, American Eagle and other popular retailers, driving marketers to strategize a cohesive backchannel conversation catered to individual customers on branded and brand-agnostic apps.

But while those messages are sent behind the scenes, other beacons will travel,attached to stickers on bikes, phones, cars, and other objects. Analysts expect that we will have 4.9 billion connected things in 2015, leading us from Big Data to Massive Data.

2) With the massive amount of emerging mobile data, the advertising industry must move toward a universal identification system. Marketers will need a CRM system to track a consumer’s unified identity from device to device, to truly deliver on assistive, not interruptive, mobile messaging.

Presently, attempts at cross-device targeting have created a patchwork of fragmented data, with brands hoping to leave breadcrumbs across multiple channels and devices for the right consumer. More often than not, advertisers are making assumptions about identity versus actual determinations.

Expect industry giants like Facebook and its newly acquired Atlas Solutions to do a fair share of exploring, but ultimately the industry must arrive at a universal ID that captures consumers’ fingerprints in ways that cookies can’t – on any screen, anytime, anywhere.

Development, adoption and privacy backlash will push this out several years, but as my colleague David Brown points out, consumers must learn the trade off is for the better.

3) Proximity targeting advances and begins to prove its ROI. You don’t even have to unlock your iPhone 6 to see the power of proximity targeting. Get close enough to a local restaurant and its app may be advertised directly on your home screen, prompting you to engage. 

But proximity targeting will begin to leap from your phone to independent screens as well, on wearables, digital displays and in next gen automobiles. Keep an eye out for what Google has planned for Android M, activating Google-powered search and ad serving tech inside your vehicle without a phone to tether it.

4) As more content is geotagged, location search becomes more valuable. The explosion of mobile photo, video and other content provides an augmented view of what’s around us. This increases the importance of search engines that find not only what is relevant but also what has been created near you and potentially by people you know.

Expect location search to be driven not only by the ad industry, serving up local offers, but by sites looking to curate news reported by those who were actually there at the time.

5) Developers maximize social context to fuse positive connections within their apps and drop acquisition costs. This year, the cost-per-loyal-app-user increased 21 percent to $2.25 – and that only includes fans opening an app three times. Developers simply can’t afford to create apps that fail to integrate consumers’ personal interest and those of their friends, serving up addictive “a-ha” content and social validation with every use.

6) The wearables market matures for both consumer and B2B contexts. To date, wearables have been dominated by the fitness category, and that’s not going to change in 2015. This year, an increasing number of apps from health providers, fitness startups and major athletic brands will seek to integrate with iOS8’s Health Kit. Analysts predict it may take until 2018 for fitness tracking to be overtaken by smart watches, but the tipping point is in sight.

Expect the Apple Watch and its competitors to make a much-needed fashion statement among consumer wearables, while Google Glass drives home function in the B2B category. Doctors, manufacturers, construction workers and any hands-on technician can find value for Glass as a hands-free device.

7) Mobile users begin to rethink wallets, driven by millennial spenders.Eighteen to 34-year-olds are among “the biggest spenders on mobile,” with 39 percent reporting that they spend at least $51 or more via smartphones each month. They’re used to settling tabs with each other via Venmo and Square Cash. Millennials love the ease of Amazon Prime, Starbucks and other branded apps. The coffee giant proved through sheer ubiquity that it could turn massive profit to the tune of 7 million mobile payments per week, creating a daily habit for many customers.

Now Apple Pay is poised to do the same for many mainstream brands simultaneously (it doesn’t get more mainstream than Disney World). What was once a behavior bubbling in small pockets of adoption will begin coming to everyday moms, dads and grandparents -- quickly.

8) No clear contender succeeds as the catch-all mobile loyalty program. While consumers are happy to move toward brand-agnostic payment systems, many apps are vying to be the center of their loyalty world, from offer-based programs likeShopkick and Swirl to loyalty card aggregators like LevelUp and Cardstar. Target, notably, is making waves with Cartwheel, but few brands are getting loyalty right on their own, failing to create compelling propositions that keep apps open. But as consumers decide to leave their wallets at home, more of these programs will rise to the top.

9) Image recognition becomes a must-have for scanning. Speaking of retail apps, no app will be complete without an image scanner for comparison shopping, wish listing and related recommendations. Delivering in-store contextual experiences allows retailers to eke out bigger baskets, longer visits and repeat customers by serving up more about an item, what goes well with it, and comparing it against other availability online or in that store.

10) Mobile still holds the power to activate our compulsive buying habits. A mobile interruption through push messaging demands attention in ways that emails often can’t. From Gilt-style flash sales to Hotel Tonight reservations, entertainment and sports reminders to stock market trades, mobile delivery invokes a sense of immediacy and scarcity like no other channel. Consumers have a knee jerk need for instant gratification, and mobile campaigns optimized for quick transactions can capitalize on this, at the risk of possible pangs of buyer’s remorse later.

11) The sharing economy continues to grow, both in on-demand services and "neighborgoods." On-demand delivery is the new luxury. Whether Uber is bringing you toilet paper or you’re treating the office to Starbucks’ Green Apron service. on one hand, we’ve diminished the need to go anywhere to get the items we need – they’re easily brought to us by numerous services. on the other, we’ve realized we need to own less, as we can share everything from cars to larger household items like ladders, power washers and even karaoke machines.

Does this mean less emphasis on materialism? Maybe. There’s certainly a push toward subscription services in lieu of ownership. Everything from car sharing tomusic to digital libraries and even fashion.

12) Passwords are no longer synonymous with security. The challenge of vulnerable and regularly exposed passwords (or perhaps the problem with remembering them to begin with) has mandated new forms of encryption across devices. As a growing number of screens gain access to profiles, bank accounts, and health records, the industry will turn to biometrics as a savior for security. Everything from fingerprint to heartbeat authentication can be put into place, increasing our sense of control while lowering barrier to entry, allowing for quicker connections, transactions, and repeat usage.

13) Mobile devices start to replace common tasks that have not iterated in some time. Think about your house keys. Why are we still using an antiquated form of entry when hotels moved beyond metallic entry years ago? Check out Yves Behar’s August Smart Lock for a taste of old habits dying hard.

Connected homes will be the key battleground for this, with many manual processes becoming automated when your smart fridge places a milk order or your Nest syncs up to control and monitor your home while you’re away.

14) Ubiquitous wireless access boosts entertainment consumption and gaming. Forget TV Everywhere. Many content providers like Cartoon Network andHistory Channel are beginning to see mobile as a separate distribution channel from cable television and streaming services, creating content strictly for on-the-go consumption, often targeted at children and young gamers. Down the road, AR services like Oculus Rift will be ripe for development.

15) Even the slowest adopters of mobile are forced to take action. Mobile search is already predicted to surpass desktop search this year, and with news that Google will start to penalize sites that aren’t built for mobile delivery, late adopters will feel the pain of approaching obsolescence. Lack of planning for mobility is no longer an option.