Mobile ad spending is finally taking off. The Forrester Research Mobile Advertising Forecast, 2013 To 2018 (US) predicts that mobile ad spend (smartphones plus tablets) will represent more than 29% of the total online ad spend in the US by 2018. The forecast looks at mobile device ownership in the US, trends in device usage, and mobile advertising supply-side data to fix the current and future market size for display, search, and social spending.

The drivers behind this take-off of mobile ad spending are:

• Increased device ownership, particularly of tablets. Smartphone installed base growth in 2012 was more than 35%, while tablet installed base growth exceeded 120%. By 2016, tablet sales will overtake the sales of desktop and laptop PCs.
• The intensity of online tablet use. Despite tablets representing less than 30% of the mobile device market in the US, they represent more than 40% of total mobile page views. In addition, the majority of tablet users watch video on their tablet, compared with about a third of smartphone users.

Google sets amazing new standards when it comes to web, mobile, and cloud technologies. That's why we are here at Google I/O 2013 in San Fransciso to find out what new technologies and tools developers can expect on all technology fronts. See this special edition of Forrester TechnoPolitics to experience the energy of Google I/O.

About Forrester TechnoPolitics

At Forrester we spend a lot of time analyzing the impact of digital disruption on business, technology and marketing. We even wrote a book on the subject. But don't just take our word for it. At Forrester's Forum For Marketing Leaders EMEA, Micke Paqvalén, Founder, Chairman and Entrepreneur at Kiosked - a platform that turns any online content, images, videos and applications into interactive and viral storefronts - will present his view on what it takes to think, and act, like a (digital) disruptor. The below Q&A gives a summary of my conversation with Micke as a preview to his session on day two of our Forum, which takes place in London on May 21 - 22.

Q: You've founded and sold several successful start-ups. How do you tell the difference between real innovation opportunities and over-hyped ideas?

A: When I hear about new business ideas I always ask one question: How does it benefit everyone involved or which existing problem does it solve? That’s it. It’s a simple test, but if it fails the business will fail. If a business idea is not beneficial it is an over-hyped idea, which sadly happens too often as well. Hype is an important factor of business but I would rather create long-lasting impact.

Q: In your view, what is the future of content?

I recently had the distinct pleasure of moderating a panel discussion on innovation at Forrester’s Forum For CIOs, where I was able to share the stage with Lawrence Lee, Sr. Director of Strategy, PARC, a Xerox company, and Jim Stikeleather,  Chief Innovation Officer, Dell Services. We had the opportunity to discuss the business imperatives for innovation, how to look at inventions and translate them into business value, and how to build the narrative that tells a compelling story around these innovations.

While the discussion gave me fodder for a suite of future blog posts, I just want to highlight a few things that came out of our talk to get you thinking a bit more about how to make your innovation program more effective.

• Innovation is about turning invention into business value. The innovation process takes these inventions (whether internally or externally generated) and answers the questions to decide whether there is a business opportunity hiding within or to decide quickly (and cheaply) not to pursue that opportunity because of some learned facts.
• Innovation requires both discrete funding and discrete staff. To think out of the box, we need to have both the funding and people whose metrics and goals are around innovation. As we generally want our best and brightest involved in our innovation programs, we also need to protect them from being called back to deal with the crisis du jour.

Mobile services must be contextual. Screens are small. Interfaces are limited. Consumers are task-oriented. “I want to pay a bill” or “I need to make this shopping list before my son is finished with soccer practice." Total context – the sum of everything you know about a consumer, including what he/she is experiencing now – must be used to create the relevancy in the delivery of content and services.

Context can help shorten the number of steps on a phone to complete a task. We already see this with companies like Apple – the application switches to “store mode.” Starwood Hotels switches its app to 'travel mode' when a guest is within 48 hours of a stay. Services we only envisioned two years ago are real today.

Why don’t more companies use mobile context? Our research tells us it's lack of bandwidth; executing on the basics keeps us busy enough. It’s also hard to do – and most enterprises don’t have the right analytics or metrics in place to measure the impact.

Google rolled out a number of tools/features for developers today to make using context easier. It’s exactly what we need.

Here’s the list:

1)  Geofencing within apps: This allows developers to set up 100 geofenced areas. It will be excellent for local services and smaller brands (plus media companies). Too few for large national brands with hundreds or thousands of locations.

2)  Google Activity: It abstracts the context of walking, running, cycling, making it easier for developers to use motion context.