Wearables data becoming a marketer’s goldmine.

Wearables are still a niche market for marketers, but in the future the data procured from smartwatches might be much more valuable than what is currently available from laptop and mobile users.

In a survey conducted by Ovum for Criteo, marketers gave their thoughts on what data would be the most valuable in the future.

Daily routine and precision location data were top of the survey at 38 and 37 percent, respectively. Combine that with information from Google searches and marketers could alert stores that you’re passing the shop window to augment, showing products that you’ve searched online for cheaper.

The only problem with that theoretical is getting the consumer to hand over daily routine and precision wearable data to marketers. It would require Google, Apple, or Fitbit to exchange data for services, something we doubt Apple or Fitbit would ever do.

Below daily routine and precision data comes device usage at 30 percent. Learning what a consumer uses a wearable device for and how long they spend looking and interacting with it could be useful, especially for services that want to capture a certain audience.

Fitness, health, movement, and exercise data comes below device usage. We are seeing a growth in health hardware and services, being able to target that audience might become even more valuable as more specific devices — like the Xmetrics swimming tracker — come into the market.

Eye tracking low priority for marketers

Eye tracking is quite low on the list of data priorities for marketers, which is surprising considering how valuable this would be for augmented devices. Perhaps Google Glass getting banned from public places for tracking eyes has turned consumers off giving this information to companies, regardless of intent.

At 17 percent is emotional state and stress data, which is much harder to market than something as simple as where you are and what you’re doing. We suspect that the only apps getting these privileges are health apps that look into mental state and provide you with guidance.

The end goal of a marketer is to sell a product, but wearables open new doors for how to get a customer to purchase an item, download an app or subscribe to a service. The new age marketers that succeed will be the ones that use wearable data efficiently and tactfully.