At the end of 2017, we were not merely discussing what the future of marketing will be like. No longer are artificial intelligence, VR, voice activation and other tech next-generation concepts reserved for big budget brands to play around with. Nor are marketers trapped by the traditional tame, safe, and well-defined brand-consumer relationship. CMOs and marketing leaders across the board are using the future in today's marketing strategies, turning what was once viewed as'radical' into the riveting, ever-changing new version of'conventional.' It's much easier to get a clear view of what's ahead from the top of the mountain. This article is a round-up of the predictions by the industry's most visionary marketing directors, CEOs and chief content strategists.

The further development of intelligent assistants such as Amazon's Alexa has been a hot topic for a while now and, as our infographic illustrates, there is one very clear motivation for Jeff Bezos and his team to improve and expand on this tech - more sales. Based on research by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, the average Amazon user in the U.S. spends $1,000 per year at the site. Moving up the scale, Prime members seem to be justifying their extra monthly subscription costs by splashing out $1,300. But it's once someone becomes so tied into the world of Amazon that they buy and install an Echo in their home that they really start spending. With an average outlay of $1,700 per year, Amazon will really be looking to get Alexa in more homes as soon as they can.

When the engineers had at last finished their work, Eugenia Kuyda opened a console on her laptop and began to type. "This is your digital monument." It had been three months since Roman Mazurenko, Kuyda's closest friend, had died. Kuyda had spent that time gathering up his old text messages, setting aside the ones that felt too personal, and feeding the rest into a neural network built by developers at her artificial intelligence startup. She had struggled with whether she was doing the right thing by bringing him back this way. At times it had even given her nightmares. But ever since Mazurenko's death, Kuyda had wanted one more chance to speak with him. A message blinked onto the screen. "You have one of the most interesting puzzles in the world in your hands," it said. Kuyda promised herself that she would. Born in Belarus in 1981, Roman Mazurenko was the only child of Sergei, an engineer, and Victoria, a landscape architect. They remember him as an unusually serious child; when he was 8 he wrote a letter to his descendents declaring his most cherished values: wisdom and justice. In family photos, Mazurenko roller-skates, sails a boat, and climbs trees.

When Black Mirror first hit the air in 2011, it drew invariable comparisons to The Twilight Zone. Understandably so: Both shows dealt with elements of science fiction and psychological horror, and both functioned as anthology shows, with episodes so distinct from one another that an uninitiated viewer could plunge in at random and be as familiar with a given episode's premise as a seasoned fan. It was a selling point; it made the show easy to recommend to people who might be wary of committing to a complex, serialized narrative. But since its purchase by Netflix in 2015, Black Mirror has begun to chip away at its episodic edges. Technologies introduced in one installation reappear in another; news tickers on characters' TV screens chronicle events from previous episodes; musical cues repeat again and again.

But for many households, smart speaker adoption hasn't been planned. It's also followed a different trajectory than other gadgets like a new tablet or smartwatch, which you may hear about, read a few reviews on, and then decide to purchase yourself. In a survey conducted by Scripps Networks Interactive, many people said they ended up using smart home technology--in particular smart speakers--because they received them as gifts. While Scripps Networks' survey didn't detail the exact percentage of those who were gifted a smart speaker, the item was a hot topic in gift guides and buying guides this holiday season. One publication even called it "the best last minute gift you should buy."

More than 3,900 companies are on hand to show off their latest technologies at CES this week, but there's one giant name that stands out from the pack: Google. This is the first time in several years that the Mountain View, Calif. CES is changing from a show where you show up with the flashiest gadget. Now there's a greater focus on creating partnerships between small and large companies to make each product work within constellation of others to help people get through the day more efficiently, said Gary Shapiro, chief executive of the Consumer Technology Association, which hosts CES. Tech giants want their assistants to be the glue of that life operating system -- the voice that helps you turn on your lights, power your car's dashboard and control everything from your shower head to your bed.

Year to year, CES has a certain sameness about it: Intel's booth at the front, Sony's in the back and thousands of ginormous TVs in between. The topics and trends feel like the same things we've been talking about forever: Internet of things, smart home, autonomous vehicles, wireless everything. Is this really any different from last year? But turn the clock back just three years -- if not more -- and you quickly realize that the tech landscape of the past feels like a different planet. To that end, as we prepare to embark to Las Vegas, we've come up with 12 questions that we're hoping the world's largest technology trade show will answer -- or at least give us a clue as to where the world of technology will be headed in the next 12 months.

After a surprisingly robust 2017, our collective attentions now turn to the new year, and many questions arise as to what will happen in 2018. Some developments will likely be obvious extensions to themes or ideas that started to take hold over the past 12 months, but there are always a few surprises as well. Exactly what those unexpected developments prove to be is virtually impossible to foretell, but here's a reasoned look at some key themes I expect to drive important advances in the tech industry in 2018. As powerful and advanced as the tech products we use everyday may be, it's still a stretch to call them "intelligent." Sure, they can perform impressive tasks, but in many ways, they still can't do the simplest of things, particularly in helping us do what we "meant to do" or thought to do, as opposed to exactly what we told them to do.

With 2017 coming to an end, we can get a glimpse of what's yet to come in the next 12 months through the number of investments and product testing. It's no surprise that financial institutions were the first players to experiment with blockchain technology since 2014 and became active investors in the space that totalled $4.5 billion of funding in 2017. In the past few years, financial institutions were testing blockchain technology and working on proof of concepts. By 2017, this largely moved into production stages. In 2017, a group of 11 international banks developed a trade finance application using R3 technology.

Artificial intelligence and smart home assistants are expected to dominate the agenda at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), when it begins on Tuesday. One of the word's largest gatherings for the technology industry, the Las Vegas-based convention will see more than 170,000 people attend, looking to see the latest innovations from the likes of Intel, Samsung and Sony. But smart home speakers and the AI assistants that power them have been predicted to be the most widely discussed technology at the event, according to analysts, with Amazon and Google set to lead the way. Amazon has already announced new tools that will enable cooking appliances to connect to and be controlled by its virtual assistant Alexa, while dozens of start-ups and other firms are expected to showcase speakers and other devices compatible with Google Assistant, the internet giant's own AI helper. Industry expert Ben Wood, of analyst firm CCS Insight, said he expected a show awash with smart gadgets.