Unlike consumers like Mr. Butch in Tokyo, who stood in line for days to get their hands on a new iPhone 6 when it went on sale, brands and advertisers have taken a “wait-and-see” approach when it comes to fully embracing the possibilites with mobile.

Echoing the conversation from the 30+ speakers and 300+ attendees at our recent [a]list summit on Mobile Marketing on Dec 3., the time to wait and see is over. 2014 was the year the mobile web usage surpassed the wired web and 2015 will be the year that marketers jump in for real.

All user data supports it and the infrastructure is now in place with effective ad formats and monetization tools as well as much more precise targeting and reporting than ever before.

With the summit still fresh in my mind, I wanted to share a few of my personal notes on what this means for publishers and marketers alike:

  1. Social is the new starting point, not search. This is good news for brands, since social is way more effective than search, both terms of getting your branded content discovered and shared. Buzzfeed’s social traffic is now 7x its search traffic!
  2. If it’s not mobile, it’s not social. 60 percent of all traffic to social media is now mobile according to eMarketer and share rates are twice that of desktop share rates.
  3. Native ads and sponsored content work. If done right, sponsored content will be embraced and shared, even more so than non-sponsored content. Tumblr has shown that this is indeed possible and their format works great on mobile. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is now implementing the Tumblr model to other Yahoo! Properties with native ads as the preferred ad unit.
  4. Programmatic is clearly the way of the future. In 2015, programmatic buying of mobile ads is projected to account for the majority of inventory sold. From now on, you are buying an audience across the mobile web as opposed to particular media properties or apps.
  5. Mobile-first video platforms like Vine and Instagram are on the rise. As Vine super-stars Jack and Jack said on a panel to the delight of the audience: “I used YouTube back in fifth and sixth grade.”
  6. Mobile-first image platforms like Pinterest also huge traffic drivers. Moreover, simple tweaks like allowing mobile users to pin an image using one click can increase clicks by up to 10x.
  7. Mobile content does not need to be “snackable.” Buzzfeed shared numbers showing that many mobile users spend longer time on a page as compared to desktop because their content is optimized for mobile consumption.

If you missed our summit last week, you can catch editorial coverage of the event on [a]listdaily here and see video interviews with many of the speakers on our YouTube channel to see for yourself what the experts said.

Do you disagree with the prediction that 2015 will truly be the year mobile becomes the first screen in terms of media consumption and brand impact Please post your comments in the thread below.