5G Technology: Giving Super Powers to Mobile and Media

The 2018 Consumer Electronic Show (CES) in Las Vegas in early January brought new and exciting information about the future of technology. I’m sure you saw countless Facebook posts from your techy friends about self-driving cars, virtual reality, connected homes and the internet of things. One of the main technologies behind all of these impressive, must-have innovations is 5G.

5G is fifth-generation wireless technology. It allows for ridiculously fast download speeds (so fast you can ‘bufferlessly’ stream in 4K anywhere that is covered by 5G), consistent speeds even indoors or in congested areas, and basically not existent latency. 5G is so fast, the lag time between when you click on a video (for example) and when it loads is only 1 millisecond. In other words, that is 0.001 seconds. What does this mean in our world of digital advertisements? Mobile video advertisements’ usage and popularity will increase drastically with the fast download speeds. (Recode.net)

In addition to the fast load times, 5G will provide additional bandwidth. This means that more and more devices will be connected. From phones, lights, and appliances, to cars and buildings – they will all be connected. This is considered the trendy topic: the internet of things. How can media turn this into an opportunity? (Global Editors Network) More data and eDevices will be available than ever before which will open a whole new realm of possibilities of targeting filters, advertising methods, and mediums. For example, imagine instead an advertisement trying to show the atmosphere of the SAP stadium to sell San Jose Sharks tickets, virtual reality actually puts you in the stadium when Joe Thornton scores a hat trick. Or imagine while driving by a GNC, your car’s dash system notifies you that you are in the market for protein (surprise, surprise) based off data from your other devices. It offers you a 20% off coupon on your phone that last 30 minutes. (Adage) More devices leading to more opportunities for effective ads.

5G is already available in some test locations in the United States and will be slowly rolling out over the next few years. 5G will not be widely available until 2020. (BGR) No sources know for sure what the costs of 5G will be. Analyst Joe Madden explains, 5G will lead to a lower cost-per-gigabyte for the wireless companies, which should (in theory!) mean cheaper cell plans, or truly unlimited mobile data. Personalization is going to become even more precise. (BGR) Marketing as a whole is going to be super powered by more data than ever before. Companies win. Consumers win. Data nerds win. We will have to wait until 2020 to see 5G’s impact on a more national scale.