• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, February 9, 2017

Video will have the highest growth rate of any mobile application, representing 78% of all mobile traffic, while live video will represent 5% of total mobile video traffic by 2021, according to Cisco data released this week.

The findings in Cisco's 11th annual Visual Networking Index (VNI) Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast (2016 to 2021) suggests that by 2021, more members of the global population will use mobile phones -- 5.5 billion -- than have bank accounts at 5.4 billion, running water at 5.3 billion or landlines at 2.9 billion.

In fact, mobile will represent 20% of the total IP traffic globally, up from 8% in 2016.

Sensors and triggers will support ad targeting with machine-to-machine (M2M) connections and the growth of Internet-connected devices representing 29% or 3.3 billion of total mobile connections, up from 5% or 780 million in 2016.

Live streams and mobile video makes the connection with other media such as television more compelling. Since mobile is location-sensitive, advertisers are learning that combining the small screen with larger screens to target specific messages provides a higher return on ad spend.

"We’re currently seeing lots of cross-platform campaigns where TV delivers the branding part of the campaign, with follow-up on mobile, driving a call to action," according to the recently published report.

Mobile could become the catalyst to increase linear TV ad spend based on behavior. Videology has seen a 273% increase in spending on linear TV advertising campaigns and an 840% increase in the number of linear TV impressions available to be bought and sold programmatically.

In December 2016, Videology reported survey results where agency advertisers cited behavioral-based targeting such as lifestyles and preferences as one of the most popular methods of targeting -- used by 67% --to reach consumers when running digital video campaigns.

While the advertising market for live streaming remains nascent, Landin King, communications lead at Videology, explains in an email that marketers can apply first-party data to running ads in mobile video. "For instance, if someone was watching a CNN clip on their mobile phone and an ad came up— data about the viewer would be used to inform what kind of ad was shown," he wrote.

The data also tie mobile video ads to TV ads and vice versa, which is done through an integration with Nielsen, he explains.