Don’t under­es­ti­mate the impact of dis­rup­tive tech. The pace of change means that no indus­try is safe from poten­tial dis­rup­tion, and mar­keters will need to be ready to respond. Here are five take­aways on dis­rup­tive tech­nolo­gies that are like­ly to impact our dai­ly lives, and equal­ly, on how brands and mar­keters are doing their jobs in the future.

In the words of John Straw, author of iDis­rupt­ed, “we’ve seen more accel­er­a­tion in dis­rup­tive tech in last few years than in the pre­vi­ous 20.”

Tech­nol­o­gy is trans­form­ing the way con­sumers con­duct their dai­ly lives, and every­one from inde­pen­dent retail­ers to blue-chip com­pa­nies are feel­ing the impact of dis­rup­tive forces in their respec­tive indus­tries.

The impact of dis­rup­tive tech and star­tups should not be under­es­ti­mat­ed. A case in point: as of this writ­ing, the mar­ket cap­i­tal­iza­tion of the Ford Motor Co. is $55.4 bil­lion. In con­trast, the mar­ket cap­i­tal­iza­tion of Uber, who have dra­mat­i­cal­ly dis­rupt­ed per­son­al trans­port in recent years, has recent­ly been report­ed to exceed $50 bil­lion.

It’s worth not­ing also that the com­pa­ny are con­tin­u­ing on a phe­nom­e­nal growth tra­jec­to­ry with no sign of of slow­ing. Uber­RUSH, a per­son­al couri­er and deliv­ery ser­vice, announced in Octo­ber, will fur­ther increase the effi­cien­cy of the Uber net­work (and dis­rupt­ing fur­ther estab­lished dig­i­tal­ly ori­en­tat­ed couri­ers such as Deliv­eroo, DineIn, City Pantry, and Grub­Hub). In fact, Uber CEO Travis Kalan­ick has spoke of how one day the typ­i­cal com­muter may become an Uber couri­er, as the net­work expands and adop­tion becomes more wide­spread.

Uber’s move­ment in per­son­al trans­port and couri­er ser­vices is one of the most notable exam­ples of the impact of dis­rup­tive enter­prise. How­ev­er, there are few, if any, indus­tries that are not prone to dis­rup­tion, due to the cur­rent pace of tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ment.

Here are five dis­rup­tive tech­nolo­gies that will prob­a­bly make a large impact on their respec­tive indus­tries, and also the future of mar­ket­ing, in the not so dis­tant future.

1. Artificial Intelligence

Accord­ing to Moore’s Law the pro­cess­ing pow­er of mod­ern com­put­ers dou­bles every two years. In the next few years, this may have some strik­ing con­se­quences in the field of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, for a num­ber of tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies.

Google, for exam­ple, is invest­ing in image recog­ni­tion tech­nol­o­gy, no doubt with a view to enhanc­ing fea­tures on video pub­lish­ing plat­form YouTube. As the video above shows, the results are already quite impres­sive (yes, that is the com­put­er rec­og­niz­ing ‘moun­tain uni­cy­cling’). In this sce­nario, the tech­nol­o­gy could go a long way in help­ing video-shar­ing plat­forms mon­e­tize con­tex­tu­al­ized videos.

It does­n’t take a great leap of the imag­i­na­tion to see how such tech­nol­o­gy could quick­ly become rel­e­vant for mar­keters. The appli­ca­tion quick­ly goes beyond image recog­ni­tion – arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence and machine learn­ing have made head­lines recent­ly for being one of the areas which will trans­form mar­ket­ing in the com­ing years. As quot­ed in The Drum:

“Look at a large adver­tis­er such as Tesco, a brand like this has the poten­tial to inter­act with mil­lions of cur­rent and poten­tial cus­tomers every day. Tesco has an extreme­ly wide brand appeal and can serve prod­ucts to a vast spec­trum of soci­ety. If there are 60 mil­lion peo­ple in the UK and Tesco has 20 poten­tial oppor­tu­ni­ties to inter­act with each indi­vid­ual a week that means there are 1.2 bil­lion pos­si­ble inter­ac­tions at stake.

It is impos­si­ble for a human mar­keter or even a large team to per­fect­ly cal­cu­late and place spe­cif­ic ads that appeal to those indi­vid­u­als’ spe­cif­ic wants based on their pre­vi­ous pur­chas­ing or brows­ing his­to­ry. How­ev­er, AI and machine learn­ing does have the mechan­i­cal capac­i­ty to make this pos­si­ble.”

When you con­sid­er that many major tech­nol­o­gy play­ers, most notably Apple, have been mak­ing some sig­nif­i­cant pur­chas­es in the AI field recent­ly, it’s clear how AI devel­op­ments could sig­nif­i­cant­ly dis­rupt the dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing in the not so dis­tant future.

2. 3D Printing & Material Science

3D print­ing has been tout­ed as a game-chang­er in the tech world for some time, but it’s only recent­ly that we’ve start­ed to see a greater appli­ca­tion of the tech­nol­o­gy. Rafal Tomasi­ak, CEO of 3D print­er com­pa­ny Zor­trax, believes that it is in busi­ness, rather than con­sumer use, where 3D print­ing will real­ly make its mark:

“I think that most small and medi­um-sized com­pa­nies that have not start­ed using 3D print­ing will def­i­nite­ly start to do so,” Tomasi­ak told the BBC. “The future is the med­ical sec­tor, which is using it more and more, and I think that is where 3D print­ers will be most use­ful — sav­ing lives and treat­ing patients.”

Fur­ther enhanc­ing the 3D print­ing cause, Ama­zon have also unveiled a 3D print­ing store that brings the virtues of Ama­zon mar­ket­place to inde­pen­dent 3D print­ers and 3D print­ing design­ers around the world. For a num­ber of prod­ucts such as phone cov­ers, to jew­ellery, to toys or mem­o­ra­bil­ia, and many oth­ers, there is poten­tial here to sig­nif­i­cant­ly dis­rupt the mar­ket.

Where 3D print­ing will make the largest impact is in reduc­ing the delay is which a part of prod­uct that being designed takes before it can be built into a work­ing pro­to­type. By bridg­ing the gap between design and prod­uct, it enhances the abil­i­ty for prod­uct devel­op­ers to incor­po­rate user feed­back into their designs, iter­ate, and refine their prod­uct to a greater extent than pre­vi­ous­ly.

As for real-time impli­ca­tions of 3D print­ing in var­i­ous indus­tries, how about 3D print­ed choco­late, or 3D print­ed sports shoes? You can eas­i­ly envis­age how the tech­nol­o­gy could trans­form cer­tain indus­tries.

3. Advanced Robotics

Advanced robot­ics is an excit­ing new field which will see increas­ing­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed robot­ics across a num­ber of indus­tries. Here’s an exam­ple of how far the tech­nol­o­gy has come:

If a robot can make a paper snowflake, think what oth­er pos­si­bil­i­ties are just beyond the hori­zon.

Accord­ing to IEEE Spec­trum, there are a num­ber of areas where advanced robot­ics may cre­ate dis­rup­tion with­in con­sumer tech, from con­sumer drones to cloud robot­ics.

Along­side 3D print­ing, there is huge poten­tial for new designs and prod­ucts (med­ical implants based on a sea­horse’s tail for a start), and there is every chance we will see robot­ic tech­nol­o­gy mak­ing an impact on the con­sumer tech and gad­gets mar­kets.

4. Virtual Reality

Judg­ing by the increas­ing buzz around VR tech at tech­nol­o­gy con­ven­tions such as CES in recent years, vir­tu­al, or aug­ment­ed real­i­ty prod­ucts are fast becom­ing a real­i­ty (no pun intend­ed).

Holotech for exam­ple, is all but ready for mar­ket, and much of the spec­u­la­tion at the moment is about the prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tion of the tech­nol­o­gy. Cer­tain­ly, there is an increas­ing about of invest­ment in com­pa­nies devel­op­ing the tech­nol­o­gy.

Mag­ic Leap, a U.S.-based start­up, have just raised $827 mil­lion in a recent fund­ing round. Here’s a video demon­strat­ing the poten­tial of their tech in action:

Microsoft Hololens and Ocu­lus Rift (acquired by Face­book for $2 bil­lion in 2014) show that the tech­nol­o­gy has not escaped the atten­tion of Sil­i­con Val­ley tech firms.

The tech­nol­o­gy could have a sig­nif­i­cant impact on next gen­er­a­tion expe­ri­en­tial mar­ket­ing. In the trav­el sec­tor, for exam­ple, com­pa­nies could cre­ate immer­sive VR expe­ri­ences to give peo­ple a sense of the places or hol­i­days they are inter­est­ing in buy­ing.

If VR tech con­tin­ues on its cur­rent tra­jec­to­ry, then it may not be long before we see brands using the tech­nol­o­gy to cre­ate immer­sive expe­ri­ences as part of their mar­ket­ing mix.

5. Internet Of Things

Last but cer­tain­ly not least, the so-called Inter­net of Things has opened a realm of pos­si­bil­i­ty around con­nect­ed devices. The most notable exam­ple, Nest, offers home automa­tion, such as WiFi enabled ther­mostats and smoke detec­tors. Nest was acquired by Google in late 2014 for $3.2 bil­lion and the com­pa­ny have been steadi­ly grow­ing the oper­a­tion ever since, with the first Nest store open­ing in Decem­ber.

Ama­zon has also made a move in the space, launch­ing AWS IoT in Octo­ber this year. AWS IoT will pro­vide a man­aged cloud plat­form that allows devices to secure­ly inter­act with one anoth­er.

For mar­keters, the Inter­net of Things could mean a greater inte­gra­tion of offline expe­ri­ences with the world of dig­i­tal. With big data, mar­keters are build­ing increas­ing­ly detailed per­sonas of con­sumers’ online behav­iors, and the inter­net of Things could see pre­vi­ous­ly “uncon­nect­ed” parts of our lives – fill­ing up the fridge, or going to the gym for exam­ple – inte­grat­ing with our online lives.

An app that warns us when we’re run­ning out of milk? Or warn­ing when we’re over-indulging on snacks per­haps? The pos­si­bil­i­ties of these new moments are frankly lim­it­less.

Capitalizing On New Marketing Opportunities

All of the above tech­nolo­gies have the poten­tial to offer new oppor­tu­ni­ties for mar­keters. With recent devel­op­ments such as ad block­ing on iOS9 (a recent study revealed that a mas­sive 63 per­cent of U.S. mil­len­ni­als, and 15 per­cent of the over­all British pop­u­la­tion are using ad block­ers) there is a gen­uine need for mar­keters to diver­si­fy the chan­nels, plat­forms, and tech­nolo­gies they are uti­liz­ing.

Ulti­mate­ly, dis­rup­tion is noth­ing to be afraid of, but mar­keters should ensure they are ready to cap­i­tal­ize on any oppor­tu­ni­ties that come their way.

What tech­nolo­gies do you think will dis­rupt the future of mar­ket­ing?