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Latinos Make Up Huge Piece Of Mobile Marketing Pie (ClickZ)

Posted: 03/31/2011

Mobile phone use is on the upswing among the Latino population, rising 26 percent from 2006 to 2010 compared to 18 percent of the general population. Three key markers indicate that the Hispanic population will continue to drive mobile marketing: they care about social connectivity, they are actively seeking fun experiences and they are open to innovation. The proof is in the pudding: 82 percent of the market has been penetrated; mobile phones are outpacing landlines among this demographic as the primary source of communication; this group is more interested in mobile web browsing than the average population; 24 percent of mobile users have downloaded at least one app; and the group has demonstrated that enhancing their lives through social connectivity is a priority.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Telecommunications
Topic: Content Strategy, Creative & Design, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Consumer

Creating Intelligent Hyperlocal Campaigns (BrandWeek)

Posted: 03/31/2011

You’ve heard it before: to be an effective marketer you have to reach your audience with the right message at the right place at the right time. With this most basic of marketing principles in mind, more and more businesses are turning their attention to hyperlocal advertising and marketing. As technology continues to evolve, it is easier than ever to pinpoint a customer’s exact location. Pair that with the consumer’s growing interest in being tapped for local marketing and you have a powerful combination. The Mobile Marketing Association found that most mobile users are “interested in allowing their phone to automatically share their location in exchange for perks, such as free use of mobile applications and mobile coupons.” The key is to tap into your current customer base and make your move before your competitors to ensure the most success.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Telecommunications
Topic: Business Intelligence, Content Strategy, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Consumer

Retailers Dial-In To Smart Phone Shopping Trend (CRM Daily)

Posted: 01/04/2011

With one-third of mobile phone usage to be “smart” this holiday season (Nielsen), retailers are getting dialed-in to e-commerce. The 21 percent increase over last year indicates that retailers can no longer rely on independent strategy for their retail outfits, whether they are bricks-and-mortar stores, Web sites or mobile shopping channels. Heather J. Brunner, chief operating officer of Austin, Texas-based Bazaarvoice, said a phone is "just a mini-computer, and our challenge now is to transfer the Internet experience to a much smaller screen." For instance, outdoor brand Patagonia recently launched a new application that suggests similar items and price ranges while customers browse. In-store, the app will recommend complementary items based on the tag’s bar code. Companies like Neustar are working on types of “second-generation” bar codes for smart phones that are square rather than rectangular while Pronto, a company owned by New York-based IAC, plans to launch a mobile app for product price alerts.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services, Telecommunications
Topic: Business Intelligence, Content Strategy, E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer

How Big Is Big? The Rise Of The Mobile Advertising Market (Marketing Vox)

Posted: 12/01/2010

eMarketer recently revised its assessment of the mobile ad market, predicting it will grow 79% to over $743 million this year alone – growing to more than $1.1 billion in 2011 and more than $2.5 billion by 2014. Based on these numbers, it’s safe to say mobile has been elevated to mainstream status. The report indicates that SMS is still the largest format, with an estimated tally of $327 million for 2010. Companies like Phizzle and Skycore are further enhancing their service offerings to engage audiences and allow increased functionality to their users, including enabling mobile marketers to run applications such as movie trailers sent with tickets or sports videos sent with tickets. eMarketer predicts that display formats will increase. Apple’s iPhone remains the top choice with 82.7% of marketers, but Android’s 9% increase since last quarter indicates it is quickly gaining traction. Other services new to the market include Opera Software’s Ad Marvel, Sprint’s Sprint ID and Burstly.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services, Telecommunications
Topic: Business Intelligence, Content Strategy, E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer

Filtering The Noise: Discovery Personalizes The Online Experience (Tech News World)

Posted: 11/11/2010

The internet abounds with buzzwords. Now, there’s new buzz about “discovery,” the real-time aggregation and personalization of content as it is applied to an online experience. Take Amazon for example, an online retailer that makes purchasing recommendations based on your past buying behavior and others that match your browsing and purchasing habits. True discovery, however, elevates this concept to the next level: It will tie together what you have liked, purchased, viewed, discussed, and browsed, into a real-time aggregator that provides recommendations on any category of your choosing. For discovery to be completely revolutionary, it must have both an online and mobile interface. From websites like Yelp to smartphone applications like mobile GPS, several discovery platforms are in the works, including Ping, a music discovery engine launched by Steve Jobs in September.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services, Telecommunications
Topic: Content Strategy, E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

Motricity Delivers User-Preferred Content On-the-Go (CIO Magazine)

Posted: 10/27/2010

Motricity recently launched mCore MobileCast, a service that allows wireless carriers and large companies to define content based on their smartphone users’ preferences. Requiring "zero touch" by the users, the cloud-based service takes a user’s location and prior usage into account before delivering audio, video, text and HTML5 content streamlined to the user’s preferences. For instance, a mobile user purchases tickets to a rock concert via a mobile device. Enter mCore MobileCast: The service ingests the concert data in combination with GPS data to disseminate auxillary information to the user, such as the concert's opening act, parking locations and even places to eat nearby. "All that information is in separate places today, but we aggregate it all up," said Jim Ryan, Motricity’s chief strategy and marketing officer. The company provides mobile infrastructure services to "hundreds of enterprises" and 10 major wireless carries, including the top four in the U.S., Ryan said.

InterContinental Hotels Group Offers Hospitality With A Technical Twist (InformationWeek)

Posted: 10/14/2010

It’s easy to chalk IHG's, InterContinental Hotels Group, ubiquitous success up to one thing: customer loyalty. Tom Conophy, IHG's CIO, said the company’s core focus is on making customers "the center of our universe," and customer loyalty is vital to growth in the hospitality industry. The ever-growing hotel group, which owns seven hotel chains, including Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn, and InterContinental Hotels, keeps its guest doors swinging by making business intelligence one of their core competencies. 200 million guest profiles currently occupy the company’s 25 TB database, with detailed information on 43 million loyalty plan members. The company currently receives 30 million availability requests per day, supported by its own proprietary search technology, the Bottom-Up Optimum Search Strategy(BOSS). "Search is the killer app for us," Conophy says, and with IHG’s iPhone app as the industry’s most downloaded, adding mobility is another success factor with a concept the group has named “Virtually Me.”

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services, Telecommunications
Topic: Business Intelligence, Content Strategy, Creative & Design, E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Consumer

Stay Out Front With Smart Mobile Marketing Tactics (Marketing Vox)

Posted: 05/13/2010

You know the mobile marketing drill: Offer local coupons. Allow customers to pay for purchases directly from their phones. Inject with a little vavavavoom and you’ve got a competitive mobile marketing package. In light of the ever-changing mobile technology landscape –which means competitors are always on the hunt for bigger, better, more creative tactics – it makes good sense to consider adding these four tips to your mobile marketing toolbox: 1. Matt Silk, SVP of Waterfall Mobile recommends including a store locator in your mobile plan; 2. When used like direct mail or email, mobile subscriptions lists can help you to target your subscribers on-the-go; 3. Build applications and then market them strategically. Paul Reddick, CEO of Handmark at MoCoNews, recommends brands to "distribute them from their own Web sites or other traditional media outlets;” and 4. Forget about the apps altogether and concentrate your efforts on building a mobile Web site, which may be the smartest tactic of all, according to Practical E-Commerce.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Telecommunications
Topic: Content Strategy, Creative & Design, E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business

Developers Build Native Mobile Web Applications With Titanium 1.0 (Info World)

Posted: 04/29/2010

Appcelerator recently released Titanium 1.0, a cross-platform development system for mobile and desktop applications. The open source system is compatible with JavaScript, PHP, and Ruby, which eliminates the need for mobile application builders to learn the Objective-C language for iPhone or Google's Java language for Android systems. A translator enables building mobile and desktop applications that will run natively on different systems. The system supports development for PCs, Macintosh, and Linux while mobile platforms include Apple iPhone and Google Android. Plans include Research In Motion Blackberry support within the year. Scott Schwarzhoff, vice president of marketing for Appcelerator attributes Titanium’s competitive advantage over other cross-platform development frameworks to its ability to “offer native performance as well as native UI (user interface) and access to device capabilities.” Eliminating the barrier of learning Objective-C makes Titanium highly attractive to developers. Appcelerator will also develop a version of Titanium for Apple's new iPad.

Industry: Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services, Telecommunications
Topic: Creative & Design, Experience & Interaction, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer

Market Intelligence the Smartphone Way (CRM Daily)

Posted: 02/04/2010

Context-aware software tries to connect the real world with the vast stores of information about places in a virtual world: the Internet. The technology channels the knowledge amassed to provide useful tools to the smartphone user. Consumers gain more control over their buying experiences and save time when they purchase from vendors who have critical insight into their shopping habits. The software’s diverse industry applications include retail, business management, hospitality, and food and beverage. Research firm Gartner projects the market for this technology will grow to $12 billion by 2012, with Google standing in prime position to address and profit from the new wave of demand. Other companies that stand to benefit are Nokia, Cisco Systems, Avaya, large telcos like China Telecom or potentially even social networks such as Facebook, Gartner says.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services, Telecommunications
Topic: Business Intelligence, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

Apple and Facebook Key Influencers in New Tech Cycle (eWeek)

Posted: 02/04/2010

Apple and Facebook have literally changed the face of mobile internet. With mobile internet users projected to double by 2013, it’s easy to see a "mobile Internet cycle" emerging, a new cycle detailed in Morgan Stanley's "The Mobile Internet Report." Cited as the fifth computing cycle in five decades, the report claims this one is faster and bigger with a wider global net than previous cycles. While Apple, Google and Amazon.com lead the pack, the report suggests that the key influencers from previous cycles won’t necessarily be given the keys to this new kingdom. The analyst team, headed by Mary Meeker, attributes the high level of anticipation for mobile users to five of the most promising IP-based products and services: social networking, 3G network adoption, video, Voice over IP and "impressive mobile devices."

Industry: Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services, Telecommunications
Topic: E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Technology Implementation
Region: Global, North America, Asia Pacific
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

U.S. Hispanics Prime Target for Internet and Mobile Advertisers (Marketing Vox)

Posted: 01/06/2010

The Hispanic online demographic is growing more than twice as fast as the overall national online population. Add to the equation that 88% of Hispanics consume content from their mobile phones, and the environment grows even riper for advertisers to target a population just shy of 50 million. Mobile initiatives from Yahoo include mobile search, US and global news in Spanish, and email and social networking connections, among others while those via internet from Orange Advertising Network include site-specific placements, customized branded entertainment, and direct-response campaigns. Mobile advertisers including HBO, Harley-Davidson, Rite Aid, Arby's and Cheetos have sent opt-in offers and ads to Hispanic users through HipCricket's Hispanic Mobile Marketing Network, which projects that Hispanic buying power will exceed $1 trillion in the next year.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Telecommunications
Topic: Content Strategy, Creative & Design, E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications
Region: North America, South-Central America
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer

Giving Voice to Smartphones’ Other Applications (Marketing Vox)

Posted: 01/06/2010

The advent of smartphones has virtually made it obsolete to use mobile phones solely as phones. Current consumer uses of smartphones are exploding for non-voice communications like connecting to the internet, emailing and text messaging. Mobile Market View recently revealed a growing class of "heavy users" of non-voice communications. One example MarketingCharts wrote about was the percentage of users making more than 10 mobile internet accesses per week. The percentage continues to rise and currently represents more than one-fifth of all mobile users. This rise blows the door open for mobile advertising based on the exponential increase of commerical searches, particularly for local products. "Between waves one and three of Mobile Market View, consumers have basically doubled their use of the mobile platform for non-voice communications," said Rick Ducey, chief strategy officer, BIA/Kelsey.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Telecommunications
Topic: Business Intelligence, E-Commerce, Marketing Communications
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business

Global Spending on Mobile Advertising to Rise Exponentially by 2013 (Marketing Vox)

Posted: 11/08/2009

New data from Gartner predicts that global spending on mobile ads will rise 74%, reaching $913.5M this year, escalating to more than $13B by 2013. The report claims that location-based targeting and bigger gains in GPS technology, along with wide adoption of smartphones, 3G network data plans and downloadable applications will incite the growth as early as 2010. Parks Associates reports that advertising revenues in the US and Canada will grow from $208M in 2009 to $1.5B by 2013, with smartphone sales accounting for 45.5% of all mobile phone sales that year. JiWire reports a 79% increase in the use of mobile devices at public Wi-Fi hotspots in North America in the first half of 2009, and while research from MRI shows early consumer disapproval with mobile ads, 20% of that same audience would like to watch live TV via their cellphones.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services, Telecommunications
Topic: E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global, North America, Asia Pacific, Europe
Audience: Business to Consumer

Getting Social with Adobe Flash Platform Services (InformationWeek)

Posted: 10/22/2009

Adobe partnered with Gigya, a social media management platform, to launch Flash Platform Services, to add more sociability and measurability to developers creating Flash applications. The service’s three core principles: Distribution, Collaboration, and Social, aim to take Flash viral and social in the online distribution of Flash applications over platforms like Web, desktops and mobile devices. Available later this year, users will be able to “Flash” forward with the service that enables them to share, collaborate and facilitate real-time application distribution, tracking, and monetization to get one solid application that can ultimately deploy over 70 social networks and services. 98% of PCs with Internet connections are equipped with Adobe's Flash software, but applications are not always installed.

Industry: Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services, Telecommunications
Topic: Business Intelligence, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

Maximize your Web Site’s Mobilization with CSS (Practical eCommerce)

Posted: 09/11/2009

With mobile internet use and mobile-friendly browsing on the rise, expert Armando Roggio is encouraging businesses to consider his “Web Design Tips” before redesigning their e-commerce sites to address their mobilization. Simple techniques such as adding a second style sheet or slightly revising a page’s HTML can enhance mobile shopping experiences without wasting time to register new mobile domains or create mobile-specific styles. The best solution? According to Roggio, it’s more efficient to redesign your current site to render well across multiple platforms including mobile, desktop, RSS, and more, using CSS. To illustrate his advice, Roggio creates a home page for an e-commerce comic book store with an instructional video demonstrating how to create mobile-friendly background images.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services, Telecommunications
Topic: Creative & Design, E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer

Growing the List: Hot New Tactics for 2009 (Marketing Vox)

Posted: 07/31/2009

Research conducted by ExactTarget, Ball State University, and the Email Marketers Club, provides an insider’s view into successful list growth. Best practices include on-site registration and capturing information through inbound call centers. Collecting customers’ email addresses during times of active participation-at point of sale, during online shopping and in store via text messaging- is an actionable strategy with a 60% higher success rate than offline activities like list rental and display advertising. The fastest-growing tactics for 2009 include email subscriptions via text messaging and enabling consumers to share email content with their social networks, with growth projected at 500% and 348%, respectively. The study also reports that B2B marketers entice more new subscribers with ‘incentivized’ registrations while ‘non-incentivized’ subscriptions are more effective for B2C marketers.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Telecommunications
Topic: Business Intelligence, Content Strategy, E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer

Alcatel-Lucent Takes the Plunge Into Mobile Advertising (Information Week)

Posted: 07/18/2009

Redefining the drive-by, Alcatel-Lucent recently announced plans to launch a product allowing cellular carriers to reach millions of mobile customers with location-relevant advertisements. Partnering with mobile ad company 1020 Placecast, the technology will help mobile operators determine the location of the customer with accuracy within a few meters. The new advertising vehicle, dubbed proximity marketing, is poised to reach sales of $10 billion by 2013. So don’t be too surprised if soon it’s more than your taste buds beckoning you into the nearest Starbucks for a cup of joe and coffee cake.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Telecommunications
Topic: Business Intelligence, Content Strategy, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer

Hooked on Location: Skyhook Plug-In Delivers with Pin-Point Accuracy (Information Week)

Posted: 07/03/2009

Building on the recent wave of location-centric applications, three leading Web applications–MapQuest, Flickr, and WeatherBug–are using Skyhook Wireless’s Loki plug-in to determine the precise location of any Wi-Fi enabled device that permits it. With a database featuring more than 100 million Wi-Fi access points, Skyhook triangulates signals from GPS and cell phone towers to deliver precise locations. The app can be seamlessly added to any Web site with a few simple lines of JavaScript. Companies utilizing the technology include Glympse, T-Mobile and Apple’s iPhone App Store. For example, T-Mobile G1 phone users can now download free software from Glympse that enables them to establish local links with other phones to track users' changing locations with pin-point accuracy.

Industry: Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services, Telecommunications
Topic: Business Intelligence, Content Strategy, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer

Study Finds That Mobile Ads Deliver the Goods to One in Three Smartphone Owners (Promo Magazine)

Posted: 06/19/2009

Now that nearly one of every seven minutes of digital media consumption takes place over a mobile device, it’s no small wonder that more smartphone users are actively embracing the ‘smart’ technology to enhance their lives. A recent study by Interpublic Group division Universal McCann and sponsored by Platform-A, AOL’s digital ad service, discovered that more than half of all smartphone users have responded to ads, requesting more information from their Web-enabled devices. The study also found that thirty-five percent actively requested to receive a mobile coupon, while 245 made purchases from their high-end handsets. UM director of consumer insights Graeme Hutton said in a statement. “Now mobile is less about ‘wireless online’ and more about being a highly personal, customized medium. Smartphone users are reaching for their devices to help answer unmet needs. Services that don’t have dedicated mobile formats are going to miss out on this huge and continual media consumption shift.”

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Retail & Products, Telecommunications
Topic: Business Intelligence, Creative & Design, E-Commerce, Experience & Interaction, Marketing Communications
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer

Finding Common Ground: Insights on Engineering and Design (BusinessWeek)

Posted: 06/05/2009

Microsoft Research Principal Scientist Bill Buxton is calling for engineers and user-experience designers to find some common ground. Faced with ongoing questions from well-intentioned engineers regarding design, Buxton acknowledges the answers are more complicated than becoming a designer themselves or simply learning to “do” design as many engineers suggest. First, Buxton counsels that professional competence equal to the task must be added to your team. While the UX and engineering tasks certainly go hand-in-hand, expert proficiency is difficult to come by for each discipline, making it often impossible to jump seamlessly between the two. Buxton advises a four-layered approach: Design awareness, Design literacy, Design thinking, and Design practice to achieve results and solutions worthy of your customers.

Industry: Marketing, Design, & Interactive Communications, Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services, Telecommunications
Topic: Creative & Design, Experience & Interaction, Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Business to Consumer, Peer Groups & Communities

Strength in Numbers: Unveiling the Benefits of Eclipse (Forbes)

Posted: 05/24/2009

Faced with the increasing squeeze of a down economy, many companies are forgoing the expense of programming their own software without losing their competitive edge. The experimental Eclipse software consortium offers companies within sectors like technology, finance and insurance the opportunity to collaborate, build and share computer code. “People these days are interested in doing more with less,” says Michael Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation. With a budget of $5 million this year, the company is seeking to expand its 185 member base even further into the automotive and telecom industries. Nonmembers can take advantage of the foundation's free software library, while companies who pay dues of up to $125,000 a year get to hand-select upcoming programming projects.

Industry: Technology, Consulting, & Professional Services, Telecommunications
Topic: Technology Implementation
Region: Global
Audience: Business to Business, Peer Groups & Communities

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