It has been a huge year for commerce and digital marketing. Snapchat has continued to increase in popularity while Facebook has launched a buy button for Shopify merchants.

It’s a good idea to keep these new trends in mind when planning your marketing budget for the coming year or maneuvering new projects and events. You can play it safe and assume things will stay the same, or be responsive enough to lean into big waves like virtual reality or Snapchat. Having the bravery to venture into the unknown will assure your business sustained success, as it changes with the times instead of after it.

The rise of Oculus Rift: The In-Your-Face Marketing Experience

As Oculus Rift gears up to ship out in Q1 of 2016, it’s not farfetched to believe that there will be a whole lot of marketing abilities available to the platform right away. As the product scales and we see greater rates of user acceptance, Oculus will certainly have a huge impact on the way that companies engage consumers.

One of the main keys to marketing to Millennials is personalization.

With the ability to tell 360-degree stories, businesses will be able to leverage the Oculus’ key demographic like it never has before. (At the start of this year, Adweek stated that Elle Magazine was preparing to live stream a fashion show by using Oculus Rift.)

We are talking about going into environments that the consumer has never had access to before. This same concept could take a user to a tiki hut by the gentle waters of Polynesia or sit them courtside at a boxing match.

What does Oculus Rift mean for the way users buy?

As the public comes to expect full immersion out of the digital marketing campaigns that they participate with, businesses who don’t offer a virtual experience for prospective consumers, such as retail or travel, could see a large drop in sales. We’ll see where VR takes us in 2016. Adoption could be swift or slow, but we’ll see some shift in digital marketing ideology.

IoT User Adoption and Information

According to an article by Adobe, wearable tech will see a large user adoption rate of 28 percent by 2016. There’s going to be a whole lot more information, facts, and stats for marketers and companies to mine.

Businesses and marketers already rely on the intuitiveness and efficiency of Facebook and Google ads, which can target users by their location, age and actions on the Internet.

What if digital ads could soon have the ability target users by their day-to-day habits?

With the Internet of Things coming, it’s moving faster than most folks realize. It’s only a matter of time before big data sources get considerably bigger.

Will we see the first advertisements native to wearable technology in 2016?

And if so, how will it affect the way that regular customers make their way through a normal buying cycle? One thing you can bet on is; from now on, we’ll see “the internet of things” become a bigger digital marketing tool that businesses can use to engage with customers.