Unlike many tech developments, the imminent arrival of 5G promises to be a real game changer for marketers, according to Deloitte Digital’s CMO, not least because they will have more useful data to work with.

“The truth is that, as marketers, for a while now we’ve had a lot of data, but all the wrong data,” Alicia Hatch said during a session at last week’s CES in Las Vegas.

5G promises to change all that, she believes, offering far greater speeds, minimal lag times and near-instant responsiveness for smart machines that are communicating with each other.

“It’s a game-changer because, unlike all of the shiny objects that we seem to talk about year after year, it’s an enabler,” she said.

“What I’m most excited about,” she continued, “is the ability to connect to, and capture, emotional datasets for the first time at scale. That, for marketers, is incredibly exciting and powerful.” (For more details, read WARC’s report: Deloitte Digital prepares for 5G, AI, and tapping emotional data.)

“Think of all the data we can’t capture right now that tells us really everything we need to know. As marketers, we’re in the business of influence. And we know through neuroscience over the last 20 years that most decision-making is highly emotional.”

Specifically, Hatch referenced technology that bounces a wireless signal off the human body, and can measure breathing and heart rate to ascertain if someone is angry, excited, happy or sad.

With 5G’s high speed and low latency, there is also the possibility of extremely realistic “haptic feedback” using VR equipment, while wearables can be used to monitor physiological factors (heart rate, pulse, calorie intake) and broader indicators (speech patterns, facial expressions, body gestures, responses to certain stimuli) associated with emotions.

“You can learn a lot more about the effectiveness of your content, [and] the effectiveness of your experience, when you’re optimizing based on emotional data versus just clicks and other [metrics],” Hatch pointed out.

“Creative’s going to get better, the connection with customers is going to get better, the value you can deliver to your consumers will get so much better.”

Read more WARC coverage of CES 2019:  get access here to three reports on the latest, most innovative developments presented by leading brands. Additionally, Dan Calladine, Head of Media Futures at Carat Global, will be talking about what faster connectivity means for content consumption during a WARC Webinar on Monday 28th January. Sign up here for 10 Tech and Media Trends in 2019.

Sourced from WARC