Increased use of smart phones and social messaging is fueling a shift in how money is earned on the Internet, according to a recent social media and digital trends study.

Hootsuite’s and We Are Social’s Digital in 2017 report found that mobile social media use has increased by 30% year-over-year to surpass 2.5 billion users globally with 91% of social media users accessing social from their cell phones.

As a result, brands can now begin to adopt new social media strategies that integrate more innovative ways to engage and interact with their customers.

“Social media not only enables organizations to amplify their brand but also build trust, credibility and human relationships at scale,” said Penny Wilson, chief marketing officer with Hootsuite, a social media management platform.

While social media sites, such as Twitter, Facebook and Snapchat, battle for the top spot among brands, monetization is quietly trending in the most unlikely areas.

Below are four trends to watch in 2017:

1. Paying for Privacy

Privacy is free except for those who’ve sold their soul to Facebook and Twitter in the form of revealing every detail of their lives from sun up to sun down. As a result, a monetization track is emerging around hyper personalization.

“It’s a reflection of the fact that the privacy era is over because there's so much that is known about us due to our extroverted behavior on social media,” said Glenn Platt, professor of marketing and interactive media at Miami University.

“Platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram know our zip codes, our credit scores, what cars we drive, the size of our homes, what we like, what we talk about and who we talk about.”

Although the lack of privacy on social media assists e-tailers in customizing their products down to the person, it also creates an opportunity to leverage privacy because consumers will increasingly demand the opportunity to buy it back in 2017 and beyond.

“We’ll see more millennials who, as they age, will want to clean up what they posted when they were younger, and that will come with a price,” said Zac Carman, CEO of ConsumerAffairs.

Like paid email systems that don't sell your data, the cost of privacy on social media will depend on how much a consumer is willing to pay to buy back their anonymity.

“Social media consumers are slowly becoming owners of their own privacy like being chief marketing officers of self,” Platt told Newsmax Finance. “They can then start to sell their own willingness to receive advertisements like slicing pieces anonymity based on how much a person is willing to trade off their privacy.”

2. Jumping on the Snapchat Spectacle Bandwagon

Snapchat’s Spectacle facial filters have birthed a new era in photoshopping that will increase across all social media platforms.

“With Instagram copying what Snapchat is doing, it's a matter of time before artificial intelligence (AI) lenses will be rolled out on both Instagram and Facebook,” said Jazmine Valencia, a social media executive with more than ten years of experience.

With AI lenses, social media users can overlay video and graphics such as sunglasses, contact lenses, hats and glitter to create posted content that’s more interactive and engaging to followers. “Getting in on the ground floor is crucial,” Carman told Newsmax Finance. “The youth is driving this trend because they're 24/7 on their phones. They want to have fun with their friends while creating content that is just not a photo.”

Instead of paying for internet banner ads, Valencia advises monetizing AI lenses before they take off. “Providing teens a way to photoshop your logo into their images that are being shared among a million other teens is the new way to advertise,” Valencia told Newsmax Finance. “Adding a Starbucks cup to a selfie is free promotion for the coffee brand.”

Such associations offer free promotion on social media accounts the world over.

“Snapchat is the only social media network where marketers aren’t seeing a decline in reach,” said Thomas Cilius, founder and CEO of Snaplytics. As a result, it’s essential for marketers to be creative and build followers quickly.

“Our research shows that recommendations and calls-to-action made through Snapchat are much stronger than what is accomplished with Facebook or Instagram,” Cilius said.

To monetize ahead of the curve, Carman advises chief marketing officers to pay the advertising fee that Snapchat entertainment and brand executives demand.

“These AI lenses are the new smiley face stickers that teens used to paste on their school books in junior high,” Carman said. “Now they’re posting logos, graphics and other facial accessories on their social media pages with Spectacles. Put this type of sponsored advertisement into your marketing budget now, before it’s saturated.”

3. Americans Will Pay For Trusted Newsfeeds on Facebook

As fake news continues to pose a challenge from an ethical standpoint, consumers are expected to increasingly pay to subscribe to the news feeds of trusted media outlets on social media platforms.

“We may see a turn where Facebook implements a level of engagement ranking so that social media users cannot share a news story unless they have read the article or viewed the video,” said Anastasia Lopez, vice president of social media with PadillaCRT. “That will be very interesting.”

According to a Pew Research Center study, only 39% of Americans feel very confident that they can recognize news that is fabricated and 45% feel somewhat confident.

“When news agencies like Forbes or CNN start to charge for their authentic news stories, people will subscribe,” said Carman.

4. CRM and API Integration Will Enable More Transactions

CRM software services like Salesforce gather a higher amount of leads that are qualified and end in sales while API services like IFTT transfer data between social networks.

“The combination on social media platforms increases monetization because they expand a brand’s affiliate relationships and because more consumers are aware of your products and services,” Carman said.

These affiliations typically require selling a small percentage of the sale to the CRM and API service.

“If your website is API friendly, it allows this foreign e-commerce system to come in and build a connection between you and a CRM,” said Platt. “Then your company becomes more valuable and enabled for more sales transactions because of the expanded exposure.”

The challenge is building relationships with these API and CRM companies to allow sales to occur through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and all other social media platforms as well as e-tailers such as Amazon.com.

“You need your product development division to build a pipeline,” Platt said. “A closed system won’t work. The obstacle for many companies is actually physically changing from a software perspective what you do so that it can be connected and more CEOs will be doing this in 2017.”

Juliette Fairley is an author, lecturer and TV host based in New York.