Dive Brief:

• A new survey from Gartner on connected homes found that the space is still very much in the early adopter phase, with only about 10% of households reporting having connected home solutions, per an organization press release. Three-fourths of respondents also noted that they are still "happy" to manually set controls for things like lighting and temperature themselves. 
• Connected home solutions include home digital assistants like Amazon's Alexa-powered Echo devices and Google Home along with smart thermostats like Alphabet's Nest and other internet-ready features like lighting systems. Houses outfitted with connected home solutions are typically referred to as "smart homes."
• The most popular connected home devices are security alarm systems (18%) followed by home monitoring (11%), health and wellness management (11%) and home automation or energy management (9%).

Dive Insight:

Marketers have been excited about the Internet of Things (IoT) and other connected horizons for awhile now, but the Gartner report paints a relatively grounded, small-scale picture for the emerging technologies at the moment.

Connected offerings like digital assistants potentially provide vast new swaths of consumer data, accounting for activities and interactions that can't really be measured through other technologies or forms advertising. However, until these devices move past early adopters, their utility for marketers will likely remain limited.

Many big tech companies have also been cagey about sharing their first-party IoT data, with Amazon only recently releasing some information like the number of unique users for Echo content streams and "utterances" related to Alexa skills. 

And while the idea of a fully internet-ready home sounds cool in a heady, sci-fi concept way, Gartner's research points out that most consumers are still more than comfortable managing most household activities the old-fashioned way.