• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, June 8, 2016

Advertisers will have plenty of opportunities to bond with consumers online and offline as global IP traffic from desktops, smartphones and other Internet-connected devices push data connections to 194.4 exabytes per month by 2020, up from 72.5 exabytes per month in 2015, according to Cisco Systems.

To put it in perspective, 2.3 zettabytes is equivalent to 12 hours of streaming music per day of the year per capita or 33 hours of Ultra HD video streaming for each person on earth.

Just as opportunities become plentiful, competition for the ability to reach them will become fierce. Here's why.

While search marketers and advertisers will have access online to more than 4.1 billion Internet users by 2020 -- up from 2 billion in 2015 -- competition will become fierce because artificial intelligence will choose what's best for consumers based on their preferences.

From this growth, WiFi and mobile-connected devices will generate 78% of Internet traffic by 2020, according to Cisco -- supporting PwC’s entertainment and media estimate released Wednesday that mobile advertising revenue will reach 49.4% by 2020, up from $20.7 billion in 2015.

By 2020, 71% of total IP traffic will originate with non-PC devices including tablets, smartphones, and televisions, compared with 47% in 2015.

PwC expects that the 30.3% CAGR increase in mobile video Internet ad revenue, from $3.5 billion in 2015 to $13.3 billion in 2020 will result from the planned rollout of 5G networks. It meshes with Cisco's estimate that by 2020, 71% of total IP traffic will originate with non-PC devices including tablets, smartphones, and televisions, compared with 47% in 2015.

Marketers relying on video to support cross-channel campaigns will find they have plenty of competition to catch the eye of consumers. Cisco estimates the world will reach 3 trillion Internet video minutes per month by 2020 -- which is five million years of video per month, or about one million video minutes every second. High-definition and Ultra HD Internet video will make up 82% of Internet video traffic by 2020, up from 53% in 2015.

Desktop and personal videoconferencing will become the fastest-growing business Internet service, growing from 95 million users in 2015 to 248 million users by 2020.   

Virtual reality traffic quadrupled in the past year and will increase 61-fold by 2020.

M2M will grow from 4.9 billion in 2015 to 12.2 billion by 2020, representing 46% of total connected devices ranging from connected homes to manufacturing and supply chains to cars and health care. In fact, health care will become the fastest-growing sector, with 144 million in 2015 to 729 million by 2020.  

The connected-home segment will have the largest volume of M2M connections with 2.4 billion in 2015, growing to 5.8 billion by 2020, nearly half of all M2M connections.

The frightening news -- within the next five years, Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, because of the increase in connected devices, are projected to rise from 6.6 million to 17 million attacks.  The new DDoS analysis suggests that these breaches can represent up to 10% of a country’s total Internet traffic while they are occurring.