PALM DESERT, CA – At eTail West 2016 this week, retailers and vendors are focused on how to make the most of mobile this year, with video, checkout and clienteling a few of the areas where investments are going.

Savvy retailers are investing in mobile to deliver the seamless, omnichannel shopping experiences that consumers increasingly demand. With mobile traffic continuing to grow – reaching parity with desktop for some – offerings must be built for mobile from the ground up and not be just a repurposed desktop site.

With this in mind, retailers are looking to invest in gaining a better understanding of their customers across platforms.

Mobile Commerce Daily asked attendees where their clients are investing their mobile budgets this year. In no particular order, here are their responses.

Sam Stromberg, enterprise account executive at Appboy
I think that 2016 will be the year that mobile marketers – or marketing teams in general – really start to take an omnichannel approach to engaging with their users, not just in the context of mobile, but in looking at how their customers/user interact with their brand across their entire digital ecosystem. Being able to understand the complex web of interactions and communicate effectively to their users wherever they are is going to be a major focus this year.

Rob Berzinskas, vice president of sales at Rubicon Project
Mobile dollars are growing and getting smarter. Dollars are moving to cross-device attribution, video, and interstitials and native continue to grow as well.

Haresh Kumar, vice president of marketing at Moovweb
Checkout is one of the top priorities this year for retailers and there is an increased focus on improving conversion rates on mobile.

Greg Schmitzer, president at Mad Mobile
Retailers are investing in mobile applications for sales associates to improve customer engagement and drive higher conversions in-store. Clienteling and mobile POS are especially hot in 2016.

Ned Samuelson, manager of U.S. advertiser sales at Criteo
Mobile is always a hot topic in the works of digital marketing. Specifically, this year we are seeing a huge boom in in-app display marketing. In fact, in-app budgets have doubled over the last six to nine months.

Tedd Rodman, director of field marketing, public relations at Yottaa
Personalization, speed and Yottaa.

Peter McLachlan,  co-founder and chief product officer at Mobify  
Moving to mobile-first Web and away from legacy “mdot” sites and mobile proxy solutions. Investing in transactional apps. Investing in single customer view to understand cross-channel customer behavior – mobile, desktop, in store.

Additional reporting provided by Jodie Solomon