Back in 2010, Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt forewarned of an impending data explosion. “Between the birth of the world and 2003, there were five exabytes of information created. We [now] create five exabytes every two days,” he said.

Last year, about 2.5 exabytes of data were being created daily, an amount that is expected to double roughly every three years. If you are unclear as to how large an exabtye is, it looks like this: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000. According to the Harvard Business Review, that is the equivalent of about 20 million filing cabinets’ worth of text.

Humans have always been hardwired for the rush of a challenge and pride in beating opponents.  Now marketers are discovering the "power of play" to boost customer interaction.

Why does engagement matter? Because it drives customer satisfaction, utility and value.

And, according to Walgreens senior director of mobile commerce Tim McCauley, the best way to foster engagement with customers is through a multichannel marketing approach with mobile at its core.

This was a sentiment echoed by, well, nearly everyone who spoke last week at the Mcommerce Summit: State of Mobile Commerce 2013, organized by Mobile Commerce Daily.

Locaid CEO, Rip Gerber, recently sat down with Derek Johnson, founder & CEO of Tatango  to talk about the explosion of mobile marketing over the last couple of years. Tatango is an interesting company in the SMS marketing space. I’ve been speaking with  Derek and his company for a few months now and have been impressed with their early market traction with location-based SMS campaigns.