Too many marketing leaders still lump tablets and smartphones into the same mobile bucket. That’s a mistake. Why? Because tablets are not primarily mobile devices. Instead, they are mostly used within the home. Marketing leaders must create a differentiated tablet experience or risk dissatisfying their best customers and missing opportunities to engage when customers discover and explore their products.

Here are the key takeaways from new research I conducted in the past few months:

• Tablet marketing matters. Tablet marketing enables marketers to engage with influential customers who spend less time on PCs and print media. People use tablets differently from smartphones, requiring marketers to adapt their approach.
• Marketers should use tablets to enhance discovery and depth in the digital home. Marketers will see the benefits of designing immersive tablet experiences for people discovering and researching their brands and products. They should use search marketing to drive better conversion rates and tablet commerce. And they should maximize TV ads by creating tablet extensions for multitaskers as well as creating new marketing experiences in the digital home.
• Shift to contextual marketing. Most of us have only had mobile phones for, at most, 12 years. I have already explained here why we’re all mobile teens, figuring out our relationships with others and with brands. Unsurprisingly, marketers face challenges integrating mobile and tablet in the mix. It’s time to stop thinking about devices and instead shift to thinking about contextual marketing.

Folks, this one is going to be short because it's the easiest case I've ever made. Microsoft wins the next-gen game console launch wars by launching something that the company doesn't even call a console. Where Nintendo offered us a tablet to accompany the millions we had already bought and Sony then offered us a box that we couldn't even see, Microsoft has trumped them both by delivering the Xbox One. Let's tally up the points:

• The name. Wii U means something, I'm sure, to someone. PS4 means "we like the past and want to extend it." Xbox One takes a bolder and more important stand by saying, "It's time to reboot the whole category." This is beautifully illustrated in the way that the Xbox presenters never referred to Xbox One as a game console. It is an All In One Home Entertainment System.
• The reveal. PS4 famously flopped its launch by hiding the console entirely. That would have been fine last generation, maybe. But this generation comes in the post-Steve Jobs era where the device and its price are shown. Microsoft debuted the box, the new Kinect, and the new controller in the first 60 seconds of the event.
• The scope. Wii U and PS4 both promise to provide access to video and other interesting media experiences. Xbox One actually delivers those things in the most satisfying and complete way anyone other than TiVo has done so far, letting you switch from gaming to TV to movies to web browsing with simple voice commands and practically no waiting.

Marketing professionals are more and more accountable for proving value, and making investment recommendations and decisions, based on business and marketing performance. Marketing mix modeling is quickly being adopted across different industries as the preferred way to measure, forecast, optimize, and plan marketing budgets. 

Today, I am pleased to announce the publication of The Forrester Wave™: Marketing Mix Modeling, Q2 2013. This evaluation is a result of countless hours of vendor reviews and assessments, in-person briefing reviews, customer calls, fact-checking, and intensive research work. This Forrester Wave will help firms create a shortlist of providers, based on their unique business needs.

After long days and nights, I am glad to share with you the key takeaways that emerged from the Forrester Marketing Mix Modeling Wave:

• Wide arrays of firms are adapting marketing mix modeling. Marketing mix modeling is the traditional approach to uncover value and build a marketing plan for consumer packaged goods companies. However, other industries, including financial services and retail, are quickly taking an interest in adopting this approach because they need a more scientific, holistic way to understand marketing and business performance. As a result, we see an upsurge in adoption across different industries.

Last month, together with the ITSMA and VisionEdge Marketing (VEM), Forrester launched a research study to understand whether business-to-business (B2B) marketers have become more proficient in using marketing metrics and analytics to inform marketing decisions, predict buyer behavior, improve marketing performance, and help their firms better analyze markets and forecast trends.

This is the 12th year that VEM has undertaken this research, and we were pleased to be a part of such a rich legacy. The 2013 MPM Survey captured input from more than 400 respondents, helping us uncover valuable insights on the performance measurement and management challenges marketers face today.

Depending on which side you stand on the executive debate about how to assess the value of marketing to your organization, the findings of this year's study may (or may not) surprise you.