Some homes will be getting smart and others won’t.

The latest forecast of North American broadband households shows that half of them will be smart homes within four years.

Of course, this means that the other half will remain not so smart.

Most (84%) of U.S. households will have broadband this year, so this pretty well translates to most homes, according to the new data from Parks Associates.

Just a day ago, the same researchers identified that many consumers want to be able to connect the smart objects in their homes to their cars, as I wrote about here (Consumers Want Their Home And Car Connected To Each Other). But again, some, not all.

Connected home systems ultimately can incorporate devices such as wearables, smart thermostats, home security, apps and various mobile devices.

But the key is the broadband connection, through which many of the devices communicate to each other and to consumers.

Ownership of smart home products increased from 16% to 19% of U.S. broadband households in the last year and 44% of households that do not have a smart home device plan to purchase one this year.

This growth will continue and 50% of North American households with broadband will be smart homes by 2020, according to the study.

Major companies, including Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook, are active in connected homes, since they all have a vested interest in creating smart products that might appeal to consumers.

For example, Amazon’s Echo, with its Alexa natural language processing, has been teaming with many other companies that want to be enabled through Amazon’s technology, creating more of a bond with consumers.

The marketing challenge will be to keep up with messaging methods to smart homes and homes that aren’t.

And then there’s the issue of which devices will be more marketing adaptable, since some will have screens through which video communications can be sent while others will be more audio oriented, requiring a different form of messaging.

It appears there will be a divide between the number of consumers who gravitate to smart devices and those who don’t.

Kind of reminds me of the early days of smartphones.

From a marketing perspective, the Internet of Things is really about engagement.
New connections among billions of objects will provide new methods and opportunities to connect with consumers.
It’s not so much about the technology involved, or what I view as the IoT plumbing, as much as it is about what can happen when so many connections are in place.
And now a new report is out suggesting that brands should look beyond the technology and understand that the intersection of mobile and IoT will drive the next wave of brand engagement.
We heard bits and pieces of this idea at the MediaPost OMMA Boston conference this week.
Forrester Research has taken a deep dive into the subject in a new study, ‘The Internet of Things Redefines Brand Engagement,’ which is based on a survey of 4,600 U.S. adults, weighted to reflect the general population.
The IoT brings several capabilities for marketers, including being able to listen to customers to analyze real behaviors, create more frequent  and intimate consumer interactions, differentiate customer experiences and build new offerings and business models, according to Forrester.
There still are short-term challenges, including the lack of mass reach due to niche consumer adoption and single-purpose applications being too limited, with abandonment but a click away.
For example, Forrester found that only 14% of U.S. consumers control or monitor home appliances or utilities using a phone or tablet, still the main control devices for connected or smart objects.
However, a third (33%) of U.S. online adults will use some form of IoT across home, wearables or car this year, with the main usage centering around wearables and smartwatches.
Brands are expected to leverage various aspects of the IoT. Here’s how various categories of brands are expected to tap into the IoT opportunity in the next couple of years, according to Forrester:
Sport, fitness, health brands – Consumer brands in this space are poised to benefit from consumers’ interest in capturing and storing personal data on wearables. Marketers are likely to develop specific engagement tactics, such as gamification to drive behaviors toward more wellness.
Automotive brands – In advance of driverless cars, which may be 10 years or so out, about 10% of U.S. online consumers this year will use smartphone-enabled, auto app accessories, that retrofit connected car features to older cars. These can provide a new gateway to consumers in cars.
Insurance companies – Home insurance companies this year will begin to broadly promote smart home discounts.
Retail – Emerging digital technologies, such as virtual reality, digital mirrors, RFID tags and beacons, are transforming retail experiences both in stores and at home. Embedding tech such as NFC tags, QR codes, image recognition and augmented reality into product packaging is an opportunity to engage at the point of sale and later. Forrester says marketers should experiment with these technologies early to learn how to extend product opportunities and experiences directly into homes of consumers.
Each brand category ultimately will be involved with consumer engagement within the Internet of Things.
The only question is which brands and agencies will be early and which will be late, both of which have obvious consequences.

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/273997/internet-of-things-driving-the-next-wave-of-bra.html

While many consumers haven’t yet bought into the idea of smart home devices or wearable technology like smartwatches or fitness trackers, those who have are selecting a very wide range of devices.
While Fitbits lead for what consumers wear and Google’s popular Nest thermostats top the list of smart home objects, that doesn’t provide the scope of how widespread the range of products is.
A new piece of research goes deep into the range of both wearables and smart home devices and provides a view of how wide the market is, as consumers select their own products for what could be any number of personal reasons.
The study comprised a survey of 500 U.S. adults from a panel representative of U.S. Census data and was conducted by Rocket Fuel.
For home connected devices, devices from Google’s Nest comprise three of the top five products, though no one product seems to dominate the market. Here’s the list of connected home devices consumers currently own:
28% — Nest learning thermostat
25%– Netatmo Weather Station
25% — Nest Cam
22% — Philips Hue connected bulb
21% — Nest Protect
21% — Other home security device
18% — Belkin WeMo Switch+ Motion
14% — August Smart Lock
14% — Other connected home appliance
11% — Canary (home security)
8% — GE/Quirky Aros smart window air conditioner
For wearable devices, the number of different devices is just as broad, ranging from those from Fitbit to Garmin. Here’s the current breakdown by wearable device currently owned:
55% — Fitbit
23% — Apple Watch
17% — Samsung Gear Fit
16% — Nike+ Fuelband
10% — Omron blood pressure monitor
9% — Microsoft Band
8% — Jawbone Up
8% — Other fitness health tracker
6% — Basis Peak
6% — Garmin Vivofit Fitness Band
5% — Pebble Smartwatch
4% — Other smartwatch
The challenge for advertisers is that many of the connected devices, whether worn or found in the home, have either a small or no screen.
But the advantage is that the devices can be a data source that informs smarter cross-device profiles to determine potential purchase influence points.
And many consumers are fine with sharing data gleaned from their connected devices. Here’s a breakdown of devices that consumers are comfortable or very comfortable in sharing their data and which sources of the data they would be willing to share:
31% — Console gaming data
30% — Media consumption data
29% — Health/fitness data
29% — Retail data
29% — Handheld gaming data
28% — Home management data
28% — Sports training data
26% — Smartwatch data
25% — Driving data
23% — Personal finance data
22% — Home security data
20% — Wireless audio data
While advertising may not come directly through the connected devices, the data from those smart objects can help determine the best messaging to be transmitted through many other avenue

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/273325/connected-consumers-55-own-fitbit-28-nest-the.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=headline&utm_campaign=92010

We’re still super early in the evolution of the Internet of Things. I’m not cautioning consumers against buying into new technology – the only way these devices get better, smarter and more adroit is with mass adoption – but buyers do need to recognize that the world of connected devices is different than unconnected devices.

This stuff isn’t going to last forever and we don’t know what upgrade and support cycles will look like. That’s markedly different than the way we used to buy gadgets. Sure, there was always the risk that a company would drop support for a product 49 days after release, but the risk of a product just not working anymore was significantly less.

In this new era, it’s important to think about the potential that your entire home could just stop working – and planning for those scenarios.

It’s also time for companies behind those products to recognize that the expectations buyers have for their products and the expectations they have for supporting said products aren’t always going to be in alignment.

http://mashable.com/2016/04/04/revolv-smart-home-shutdown/?utm_cid=mash-com-fb-main-link#psiaSD5W1Pq8