Guest post by Beth Kotz.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is omnipresent and always-on communication, carrying out functions that both impact and reflect our physical world. For marketers, the way in which Internet connectivity has spread to include formerly-analog everyday objects presents an exciting array of new opportunities.

Now that almost anything—from your watch or your pacemaker to your toaster oven or automobile—can go online, the tectonic plates are beginning to shift beneath the feet of marketers. As the IoT is essentially a wide area network of devices shooting a stream of data up at the cloud, marketing professionals have started to capitalize on the immense scope of potential within this ever-expanding entity.

After all, marketers are no strangers to gathering as much information about their customers as possible in order to analyze, predict, and respond to their changing needs. However, unlike traditional market segmentation, the Internet of Things helps create and enable much richer and complex sets of data.
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