What Marketers Need to Know About 5G as It Exists Right Now

With more than three-quarters of Americans now aware of the concept of 5G and compatible devices, and some form of coverage technically available throughout much of the country, it's safe to say the next generation of wireless networks has penetrated mainstream public consciousness. But while the broad idea of 5G is now familiar, the particulars of what this new connection actually means for consumers and advertisers right now are anything but. The network as it exists now is far from reaching the near-instantaneous speeds that experts have long promised, which could allow for such futuristic breakthroughs as high-definition movie downloads in the span of a few seconds or fast-twitch coordination between self-driving cars. According to analysts and experts, many of the consumer use cases often associated with the transformative nature of 5G—cloud gaming and virtual reality streaming—are still a couple years off at the earliest. The lack of utility and content has kept the current value proposition for consumers low, which has thus made it less attractive for companies that might develop such applications, according to Forrester research analyst Dan Bieler. "The chicken and egg situation is a real challenge for the 5G scenario right now," Bieler said. Now is the time to be thinking about what the possibilities are and experimenting on a controlled basis.Dan Hays, principal, PwC That nascent state has naturally led to some confusion over what exactly 5G is and what its uses are as it exists now, especially among marketers and other business executives tasked with keeping one step ahead of changes to their industries. "I don't think that there are too many [advertisers] taking advantage of [5G] just yet, given the relatively modest penetration that 5G has," PwC principal Dan Hays told Adweek. "But now is the time to be thinking about what the possibilities are and experimenting on a controlled basis." What is 5G, exactly? Progress in wireless technology is divided into broad generations that have dawned roughly every decade since the advent of cell towers in the 1980s. Each new generation is defined by a set of technical standards handed down by international trade bodies, and each has yielded certain consumer tech breakthroughs, like text and image messaging (2G), video calling (3G) and faster video streaming (4G). What Marketers Can Expect From 5G in 2021 The upgrade to 5G is slightly more complicated because it involves a new, super high frequency cell signal that had been thought to be too fragile for commercial cell towers until now. These millimeter waves are much shorter in wavelength and can carry more data at faster speeds—but they can only travel short distances with no physical obstacles. Because the "small cells" that big carriers have spent the past few years building to transmit these waves only work in dense urban areas, they are supplementing them with lower bands of spectrum, which currently offer speeds only marginally faster than what's available through 4G LTE. That situation will improve as carriers deploy more equipment, but millimeter-wave 5G will likely never have the capacity to reach the entire country. "They might tell you that they cover the entire United States population, but very few people get the full super-crazy-fast broadband," Bieler said. "That is unlikely to come to everyone in the country—ever—because it would be prohibitively expensive and there is simply no business case to justify it." T-Mobile has aptly depicted its mix of bandwidths as a layer cake, in an offbeat partnership with Betty Crocker. Look to stadiums and live events Given that millimeter waves are still not viable in most of the country, carriers have focused much of their energy on some of the few places reliably dense enough to host such connections: sports stadiums and other live entertainment venues. As vaccinations allow for gatherings like these to gradually return, live events will become a testing ground for applications of super-fast 5G. Most of the major sports leagues in the United States and various individual teams have inked partnerships with at least one of the big carriers to explore how 5G can transform the stadium experience with amenities like streaming from multiple camera angles or AR stat displays. Many of these stadiums have been outfitted with this equipment in the time since the pandemic shut down the world last spring, and their capabilities are only just beginning to be tested. "Once all these events come back, this will be interesting stuff for advertisers to look at," Bieler said. "As always, it will take some time until you find the right cocktail of content that works on particular audiences. That's why they should start looking at it now." Real-time retail Along those same lines, brick-and-mortar stores can also serve as venues for experimentation with 5G as it currently exists through real-time marketing tactics that tie in with a growing trend of retailers launching their own media networks. Chains like Walmart are already starting to experiment with how 5G can supplement in-store mobile marketing, customer service and frictionless payment systems. AT&T CMO Kellyn Smith Kenny named retail as one of the sectors in which 5G is poised to have the biggest impact through applications like AR-powered virtual try-on features or personalized location-based marketing. "Being able to have a virtual experience where you're trying on makeup or trying on clothes or imagining how a sofa is going to look in your house—all of that is possible in real time with 5G," Smith Kenny told Adweek. With 5G infrastructure construction still very much in progress, however, much of its full potential remains out of reach outside of live events and other crowded areas—which are currently at the whims of a surging outbreak of delta-variant coronavirus. GE and Verizon Team Up to Test New Industrial Uses for 5G

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What Marketers Need to Know About 5G as It Exists Right Now

Next-gen network is still far from reaching its potential, but use cases are beginning to emerge

Patrick Kulp

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Patrick Kulp