We are the IPG Media Lab, the creative technology arm of Mediabrands.

Every year, we round up the ideas that animate us: the market forces, new technologies, and consumer shifts that are changing the ways we evaluate, buy, and create media.

There are now more than 2 billion people walking around with smartphones in their pockets. Where a person is, what they're doing and even who they are is wrapped up in these devices.

This smartphone saturation is paving the way for a series of intensely personal, mass-market computing and media experiences,leveraging our homes, our cars and our bodies.

We're at the early days of a new era, one we call the age of Intimate Computing: one in which people's lives and their mobile devices are now completely intertwined. In this report, we’ll be examining four related micro-trends that will change the game for marketers in 2015.

You may not realize it, but you and your phone are emotionally connected. Just glancing at your phone can cause your heart to beat faster, your pupils to dilate and your sweat-glands to activate.

Now that our homes, cars and even our wrists (thanks to wearables) are "coming online," expect new levels of emotional connection with technology and media.

The
Internet
of
Thrills

Peak
Distraction

The average human attention span is now 8 seconds. That's one second shorter than the attention span of your average goldfish.

As more of our time is taken up by smaller screens, we are reaching an inflection point – one in which we're losing the cognitive ability to attend to everything else. And it's going to be a very real problem for marketers.

"In a world of infinite content... it's meaningful when someone is actually spending time."

-Ev Williams, Medium

Measurable
Intimacy

We live in highly measurable times. And our ability to go deeper is about to improve dramatically. A confluence of technology trends – from new, more intimate media interfaces to better curation filters to location-based technologies – is letting marketers get up close and personal with their customers.

Next
Level
Awk-
ward-
ness

We're entering a world in which marketers can engage people in more personal ways in more personal spaces. What could possibly go wrong?