CNet has launched a new consumer electronics shopping application for Android-powered phones. The tech publisher's free Scan & Shop app offers editor and user reviews, product details and comparison pricing data among local and online retailers. While shopping, consumers can search for products by name or scan product barcodes directly from a phone's built-in camera to access key information before making a purchase. Shop Savvy supplies the app's barcode-scanning technology. The mobile shopping tool also allows users to create wish lists of coveted gadgets and sign up for alerts notifying them when a product's price drops to a certain level, as well as product scans with friends via email or postings to Twitter and Facebook. Despite the tough economy, consumers on average plan to spend up to 41% of their total holiday purchases on consumer electronic gifts such as digital cameras, smartphones and laptops, according to CNET's annual holiday shopping survey. Separate tracking data from price comparison site Sortprice.com released this week found that electronics, especially video games, are among the most sought-after items this year. Aggressive discounting has also helped to bolster consumer technology sales this holiday season. Computer volume sales, for instance, increased 63% on Black Friday compared to a year ago, in part because of heavy cost-cutting. The average price of a notebook computer has dropped $160 to $500, and flat-panel TVs are down 20% to $535. Additional versions of the CNet shopping app, developed with sister CBS unit CBS Mobile, are expected to roll out for the iPhone and other mobile platforms. Google's Android Market -- where the CNet app is offered -- now has about 20,000 apps, but still only about a fifth as many as Apple's App Store.
Google wants to simplify the process of buying and selling display advertising across the Web in 2010, and has set up a strategy to achieve the goal. In a Webcast Tuesday, Googlers laid out the plan to simplify the buying and selling process, increase performance, and maintain an open platform to serve ads across PCs and mobile phones. Display advertising is on track to become one of Google's next big businesses, according to Susan Wojcicki, vice president of product management, who defines the ads as videos, images, banners, Flash and other interactive ads. Wojcicki explained during a Webcast Tuesday how the amount of time people spend on the Web is disproportionate to the percentage spent for online media. People spend about 12 hours per week online, but online advertising only makes up about 13.6% of advertising dollars spent in the United States. The biggest problem has been that while the online audience continues to grow, it's fragmented across hundreds -- if not thousands -- of sites, Wojcicki says. Google believes this gap exists because of the complications involved in buying and selling display ads. Simplifying the process will attract more marketers to online display advertising -- a medium that has become easily measurable in clicks, impressions and conversions. Google believes running display ads on the Google content network of more than one million Web sites helps marketers optimize campaigns and measure results. J.P. Morgan analyst Imran Khan points in a research note to the fact that the Google Content Network reaches 85% of global users and can host CPM or CPC ads. Opening the display marketplace to more companies means Google has the ability to support a variety of companies that want to advertise. Today, Google products range from DoubleClick Ad Exchange, which creates an open marketplace for display ad space, to Display Ad Builder, a self-serve tool within AdWords for small advertisers. Google also introduced real-time bidding for display ads. The real-time feature supported by the exchange results in the most effective placement across Google's content network. Then there are two ad-serving products: DART for Publishers (DFP), a tool to manage the complex products of how ads appear on Web sites, and DART for Advertisers (DFA), which helps plan, schedule and optimize display ad campaigns. In November, Google announced the acquisition of Teracent, a display advertising startup that developed machine learning algorithms designed to deliver optimized Web ads in real-time. Ari Paparo, director of product management at Google, says the company plans to incorporate Teracent's technology into DoubleClick products. Google director of product management Brad Bender describes some of the technology investments made during the past year that should help Google see success in display advertising in 2010. Refusing to call it behavioral targeting, he says the company introduced "interest-based adverting" in March. The interest-based tool, in beta, lets marketers match ads with people based on their interests and activity online, and serve up ads across Google's content network. More than 600 interest-based categories are based on the sites the computer's browser visits. Ads preference manager lets people opt-out or opt-in. Google also has begun making changes to ad formats served up on search pages, such as ads with embedded maps, or entertainment companies with videos in line with search results. Finally, Google sees mobile display advertising as an "exciting" opportunity as more consumers adopt smartphones. Some of the features that Google will focus on in 2010 include location-based targeting, and click-to-call. The AdMob acquisition focused on display ads that will "enhance" efforts.
Paris Hilton is using her line of hair and beauty products to reach out and touch someone. While the campaign aims to create long-term bonds between consumers and the notoriously commitment-phobic heiress, it also creates the means to generate leads for future promotions. Texting the letters "PH" to a short code, 72747, featured on the packaging of the products, returns back a link to the mobile Web site. There, fans can sign up to receive tips and information on products and services, along with coupons and upcoming special offers. Velti, a mobile marketing and advertising firm, supports the campaign, along with HairTech International, an Irvine, Calif.-based company specializing in hair care and personal products launched by Hollywood stars. The campaign targets young urbanites, a demographic that spends many hours daily on their mobile phone texting, talking and playing games. Brian Cowley, general manager of Velti in North America, says it's unusual to find consumer package goods (CPG) companies putting short codes on products. Darryl Cohen, HairTech president, says the campaign also includes television and other online media. "We think marketing should begin with mobile and everything else should follow," he says. "Although we only have the text code in the U.S. today, we have the option to duplicate the campaign around the world. It makes sense to have promotions without other Paris Hilton licensees to cross promote products." The short codes let Velti measure the effectiveness of the campaign, tie the mobile number to specific products, and generate a lead for future promotions. A full set of reporting and measurement tools are built into the platform. It gives marketers the means to connect the campaign with the return on investment (ROI). "Paris will have the background information on who responds to her products," Cowley says. "This, to some degree, is seen as a pilot before she considers adding the code to some of her other products." Cowley called short codes the new direct-response vehicle. He says there is an opportunity to expand Paris' campaign into her fragrance, jewelry, and clothing lines. That direct response is something Google tapped through QR codes. Google recently sent out more than 100,000 two-dimensional (2D) barcode stickers to popular local businesses across the country that setup a Place Page, Google's local directory, on Google Maps. The barcode is also known as a QR code or a quick reference code. The businesses Google chose are considered Favorite Places, selected on the number of searches made for that business on Google Maps. People who see the code in the store window can take out their mobile phone with a special barcode reader to get more data about the business, promotional information, or coupons. The reader can be downloaded from companies such as beeTagg, neoreader, QuickMark and Barcode Scanner.
Text answer company kgb542542 has positioned itself as the company that can sleuth out the answers to the most difficult questions. So it only makes sense that the company would partner with the world's most famous fictional sleuth. The company has entered into a cross-marketing deal with the upcoming Warner Brothers release, "Sherlock Holmes." The multiplatform program will include television advertising, an online contest, national radio advertising and a mobile text promotion. "We get lots of stuff around movies and actresses and actresses and film times. It's a natural opportunity to reach people about a subject their asking," Bruce Stewart, CEO of kgb Mobile and Digital, tells Marketing Daily. "Our partnership is a highly contextual fit between the greatest detective in history and kgb -- the smartest text answer service in the world. We are a personal 'answer detective' for millions of users who send us tough questions every day." A new television ad promoting the text service features footage of the 18th century detective (played by Robert Downey Jr.) as he supposedly asks a question of the kgb "Special Agents" (who find the answers to the questions users send in). "He needs to know what this poison is," says one agent. "Elementary, my dear," starts another before being cut off and informed that Sherlock Holmes actually never uttered that phrase. They answer the question, and a clip from the movie shows Holmes expressing relief on "having someone on whom I can thoroughly rely." "We sort of had a lot of fun with that TV ad," Stewart says. "We worked on it with Warner Bros. to make sure the tone and temperament of the ad fit the movie." To deepen the partnership, tickets to advance screenings of the film will be printed with "Sherlock Holmes" trivia and messaging driving people to text kgb542542 to find out the answer. Kgb will also offer tickets to screenings and other merchandise via sweepstakes on its Web site, and will sponsor prizes for radio call-in promotions. In addition, users who text "Sherlock" to kgb's service will receive access to behind-the-scenes facts and trivia about the film. As the first film partnership for the company, "Sherlock Holmes" was a perfect fit not only because of content, but also through demographics, Stewart says. "Our audience is all over movies this time of year. They're communicating and having conversations and making plans."
The major U.S. wireless companies may have raised text messaging fees at around the same time, but that doesn't mean they conspired to fix prices, a judge has ruled. Allegations of price increases "do not give rise to more than the 'mere possibility' of an agreement, which is insufficient to state a claim for conspiracy," U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Kennelly in Illinois ruled last week as he dismissed an antitrust class-action lawsuit against the carriers. The case encompassed several consumer class-action lawsuits filed against Sprint/Nextel, Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile last year, shortly after prices climbed to 20 cents per message. The consumers alleged that the companies began aligning their texting fees in 2005, when Sprint/Nextel, AT&T and Verizon started charging 10 cents per message; T-Mobile started charging 10 cents in 2006. The companies subsequently raised prices to 15 cents in the first half of 2007. Sprint/Nextel boosted the price again to 20 cents toward the end of that year, and the other three followed throughout 2008, according to the lawsuit. "Not one defendant attempted to attract additional customers by charging even a penny less per text message," the lawsuit alleges. But Kennelly found that allegations of fee increases don't in themselves prove a conspiracy. The consumers "make no allegations about particular meetings at which they contend any of the defendants reached an agreement," he wrote. "They offer no statements by any of the defendants suggesting the presence of an agreement. ... Nor do they give any indication of the terms of the alleged agreement." Lawyers for the consumers are considering whether to appeal, according to a spokesperson. In addition to the litigation, the carriers also faced political fallout from the price increases. Last year, Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) sent inquiries to the carriers about text message fees. More recently, Kohl asked the Federal Communications Commission and Department of Justice to investigate competition in the wireless industry.
The search engine wars continue to heat up between Microsoft and Google. And now Microsoft has entered the mobile market with an iPhone application late Tuesday aimed at those searching for a little more Bing, and a little less Google. Similar to Google's mobile application, consumers with an iPhone can download the Bing mobile search engine application for free at Apple's App Store. The mobile Bing browser acts as a gateway to Microsoft's Web search and other services, such as images, movies, maps, businesses, news, and turn-by-turn directions, complete with traffic information. Similar to Bing's search engine on the PC, the home screen shows the Bing image of the day, complete with clickable hot spots to discover related trivia. Bing's iPhone app also allows people to search the Web by voice, but some folks trying out the service have noticed the voice feature crashes the browser. Theoretically, by eliminating the need to type, spoken commands give people an easy way to input search terms. Google recently released a few mobile applications based on voice commands, too. Apparently, Google's push will support applications on the Google phone, dubbed Nexus One. Reportedly, it will be sold direct to consumers sometime in the first half of 2010. For those keeping score of the number of searches across engines, comScore released November numbers late Tuesday. Google still dominates, but Microsoft continues to gain share. Microsoft sites' domestic core search market share increased to 10.3% in November, up from October's 9.9% share, according to comScore. Microsoft sites increased search volume by 46% in November, compared with the prior year; October's volume was up by 30.8%. For Google, domestic core search market increased slightly in November, from 65.4% in October to 65.6% in November. Core search volume also increased in November, 21.8% over the previous year; October's volume was up by 17.4%. Looking past the iPhone application to find news that could influence Microsoft's future, I heard the company recently reached a deal with European antitrust regulators to give computer users in that part of the world a choice. The "choice screen" tied to each IE browser would let consumers select Microsoft's browser as the default, or one from rivals Mozilla, Google, Apple or Opera. The deal takes effect in 2010.
Enough of the holiday cheeriness. Last week I called out some of my favorite things about mobile, from the renewal of the gaming sector on handsets to the emergence of real localized utility. Bah! Humbug! This is what I get from watching too many holiday specials. I find myself sidetracked from my usual grumpiness. Look at the calendar. Only two weeks left in December for gratuitous editorial list-making. So much to whine about -- so little time. To wit: my wish list for things that still need fixing in mobile. Clear up the markets: We love to complain about the sorry state of the BlackBerry and Android application markets, but to tell you the truth, Apple's is a bit of a mess as well. We need Amazon-style recommendation engines that work in order to surface new and noteworthy content that is relevant to us. But we also need third-party media companies to leverage more of their own marketing. For years, major media companies told me they couldn't wait for the closed garden walls to come down on mobile content so they could let loose their own marketing machines. Content providers complained about what terrible merchandisers the carriers were. Yeah, where are the publishers and their marketing acumen now? I see very little evidence of content providers leveraging their other assets and reach effectively in pushing the mobile product. Make mobile search mobile search: Perhaps I am alone in this campaign, because I rarely hear others complain that the search results on mobile queries need to highlight mobile-friendly sites. Unpredictable results is one of the biggest problems vexing the mobile experience overall right now. When you click on an ad, on a search result, on just about anything, you never know what to expect. This is true on the Web as well, but a bad click-through is remedied easily by closing a window. On the mobile Web, every click hijacks your screen, and hitting the back button means another page load. When a search result leads you to a full Web page and a tortuous site download, how willing will you be to search again? We need to add seamlessness to mobile search. Stop kicking me out of the app: I will keep whining about this perennial peeve until it gets fixed for good. Speaking of seamlessness, there is no excuse for mobile apps not having an embedded browser that will let you click through on an ad without leaving the app. This may be the greatest source of frustration I have with free apps. The problem is twofold. First, it damages the publishing brand and the advertiser. Users are less likely to click through on an ad, and they mistrust the experience the publisher is creating for them. There is a difference between advertising that is interruptive and ads that are disruptive. When I am kicked out of an app to go to an ad's landing page, I have to reload the app. That is unacceptable. And the apps themselves are not smart enough generally to pick up where I left off. Hoop-jumping exercises: Some of the most popular columns I wrote all year involved ridiculously intricate mobile marketing schemes that forced users to scan, text, enter, and repeat. These multi-part marketing extravaganzas presumed that mobile users were eager to go through five minute hoop-jumping routines in order to get a pathetic payoff. I won't put the relevant agencies through the pain again, but I will point you back to the ridiculous Nestle candy wrapper episode. And the weird encounter with a Speed Stik scan code.And another disappointing scan code adventure involving the animated movie 9. Will someone at the mobile agencies please assign an intern to test these tortured attempts at mobile coolness before they fly? Just do a gut check on their actual usability? Where is the value exchange? So I sign up for SMS alerts from a major film studio and all I get in return are regularly scheduled ads when a key DVD is about to drop in stores. Or, an SMS prompt in a print ad gets me a link to a movie trailer I have seen already on TV ten times. I got 3G for this? From landing pages that offer no entertainment or informational value to SMS "clubs" that are one-way relationships that only serve the brand's interest, mobile marketing generally fails to give consumers a fair-value exchange for their attention and for letting the advertiser onto their phone. Brands have got to get over themselves. We really are not waiting to hear from them. Every time I click on an ad or follow an SMS link I am lending a brand the platform I also use to make sure my daughter is safe, my partner is picking up the hummus on her way home, my editor got the article in time to make deadline. Respect the personal nature of the mobile phone -- almost all other activities on the device involve an important exchange of value with people we trust. Again, you can interrupt, but don't disrupt.Privacy is going to bite geo-location on the ass: This year I spoke to way too many youthful mobile start-up CEOs in the local directory and mobile dating space who elide the entire privacy problem. They eagerly anticipate a day when you will be able to see hot dating prospects in your four-block vicinity. They expect to leverage dense behavioral profiles based on your physical activities as well as your mobile browsing activity. A number of these fellows seem to think that younger users are less concerned with the issue or that government would never intrude on their fun. From data security, to data sharing to geo-location, mobile is going to be a flash point for privacy discussions. Whatever kerfuffle you are seeing now over privacy on the Web is only going to be multiplied when it comes to phones Where's my damned MMS? And finally, whatever happened to a mobile platform that has been almost-there since I started covering the space five or six years ago? There is so much potential here for publishers and marketers to deliver on the missing value exchange in mobile marketing. If all of the pieces in the MMS chain finally came together, then a simple SMS prompt on marketing assets could deliver back to the user an amazing range of multimedia experiences. This is a platform waiting to happen. But don't let me enjoy being my Grinchy self all alone. Feel free to add your own list of mobile "naughties" below.
This post in 140 characters or less: 2010 will be the year mobile marketing finally realizes its potential according to @joemarchese http://bit.ly/4fL8V Almost three years ago (wow, that sounds like ages ago) I wrote a column titled "2007 Mobile Advertisers Ask: Can You See Me Now?" It was fun to go back and read the 2007 piece again, and I am proud to say, I believe I was right on target predicting that despite all the promise, mobile marketing would continue to fall short of the hype. I felt pretty good about all of the reasons I listed in the 2007 column -- that, like every year before, and every year after, mobile would continue to give marketers fits. But this year, I am ready to call it. This is it. 2010 will be the year mobile marketing begins to realize the promise marketers have imagined for so long. What's different in 2010? The phones are smarter, the networks are faster, an open development ecosystem is leading to faster innovation, and specialty mobile agencies have built up a solid knowledge base of what works. Other than that, I guess everything is the same. The phones are not just faster with bigger screens -- which would help all by itself -- they are more and more commonly location-aware. Even more important, phones users are aware that their phones are aware of their location. Location awareness and faster network speeds are a huge part of why mobile is moving forward, but both would be meaningless without the third ingredient: the opening up of mobile platforms. It's hard not to sound like just another Apple fanboy, but the iTunes App Store has already had a massive impact on the way consumers use their mobile devices. Creating an open platform for development allowed developers to create mobile experiences that add significant value to people's lives, changing the way they use their mobile devices. This opens the door to marketers to offer a value exchange, one that didn't exist for people before. This was the issue I had in 2007: sure, marketers would love to get on people's phones, but what did people get out of the deal? There might not be a better example of the saying that any significant leap in technology is indistinguishable from magic. Yelp, Pandora, Foursquare and Google Maps apps on my phone all qualify as magic to me. For a great summary of this innovation, see "Future Of Geo-targeted Marketing, Now" by Razorfish's Garrick Schmitt. Now, let me hedge just a little. 2010 will be the year mobile begins to realize its potential for marketers. Mobile as a platform is in the middle hyper-evolution. The ability to utilize mobile for marketing now exists, but it is evolving so fast it's hard to create best practices that are repeatable. That's what 2010 will be all about. There will be some huge success in mobile that will point everyone in the right direction. As an aside, I am currently on the BlackBerry Storm and have been considering switching to the Droid. Any Droid users out there with thoughts? What apps are magic to you? Find me on Twitter @joemarchese (www.twitter.com/joemarchese), where I'll keep up from my mobile, and/or leave a comment on the Spin board.
"I'm going to write my next column on Cat Paint," I told my wife. She asked, "Is it about how you've become a twelve-year-old girl?" Perhaps. But in a season of social media breakthroughs and brouhahas -- Facebook Connect surpassing 60 million active users, Google and Yahoo rolling out real-time search, Facebook's privacy overhaul, Twitter's Citysearch partnership -- I think we're all going to look back at this time and realize what mattered most was Cat Paint. You might have missed the big news of Cat Paint releasing and then upgrading its iPhone app. After all, Compete says Catpaint.info attracted fewer than 1,500 unique visitors in November. To offer full disclosure, I have no personal connection to Cat Paint, they have never even recognized my existence (outside of posting one of my submissions in their gallery), and I'm more of a dog person. Yet, when they updated their iPhone app, they offered catnip for those who want to understand what the future of mobile social media looks like. I first became aware of this breakthrough the old-fashioned way, via word of mouth, during an emerging media breakfast at my agency. Yes, Katty told Jeff, and Jeff told the group, and now I won't shut up about it. The app is deceptively simple: you take any photo on your iPhone and put cats on it. Note that mankind's best inventions -- the wheel, paper clips, red velvet cupcakes -- are all easy to grasp. All impacted the world. So will Cat Paint. I got so hooked on the app that I created a Flickr gallery with some of my creations. Here are a few reasons everyone can learn from it: 1) It's easy. What does Cat Paint do? The most obvious answer is that you use it to paint cats. But the second most obvious answer is that you paint a picture with cats -- the cats are really the paint. You don't get a quicker elevator pitch than that. The value proposition is clear. 2) It has a revenue model. I'm not sure if this is the best 99 cents I ever spent, but it's up there. Facebook can afford not to charge for its app or run ads on it, but mobile social media will increasingly cost consumers. Many kinds of content providers will benefit from the one-two punch of consumers getting used to micropayments for mobile applications and extra features in Web-based applications. When movie tickets cost over $10 and Wii games cost $50, spending a few dollars for a few hours of portable fun seems perfectly frugal and recession-friendly. 3) There are clear calls to action. When you're done making a Cat Paint picture, you can save it (presumably to show others later), email it to share it right away, submit it to the Cat Paint gallery, or visit the gallery to view others' creations. Almost all of those actions are social, and really, who's going to use this just to keep it all to oneself? 4) It takes advantage of the mobile handset. With any mobile social app, publishers and marketers need to determine what really makes it mobile. Does it take advantage of GPS? Does it connect to other nearby devices? Does it use the accelerometer? Does it use the phone? Cat Paint uses the camera, allowing users to take instant pictures that can be played with and shared. It's not just some app that can run anywhere; it belongs on a mobile device. 5) It involves cats. That's just not fair to every other app out there that isn't cat-related. The app could improve even more, though. Here are a few potential enhancements for future editions: 1) Adding in Facebook Connect. I wish I could instantly share these pictures on Facebook, though I can post them if I first save them to my phone. I made one Cat Paint creation my Facebook profile picture, and Connect could make all of this far simpler. 2) Crowd-source cats. Why not have users submit pictures of their own cats to include in future editions? 3) Branded cat placements. Perhaps marketers will want to "adopt" or sponsor certain cats. Who'd bite? Maybe Friskies, or Tony the Tiger, or "The Lion King" on Broadway. Or a brand that just likes sponsoring cats. Sponsoring this kind of sharable content has a huge upside for marketers that find the right fit in terms of the app and consumers. 4) Add cats for a fee. If someone would pay 99 cents to send cat photos, would they pay another buck for a totally new round of cats? I probably would, as it'd be one more excuse to talk about this app and share it with even more people. I can't guarantee you'll find Cat Paint as amazing as I did. My wife has spent the past week rolling her eyes at me, and my almost-uncle (long story) spent half the family holiday party begging me to put away my iPhone. Regardless of your taste, give Cat Paint a look. Instead of the concept launching as a blog on TypePad or Tumblr as it might have in years past, it works perfectly as a mobile social media app. And if it appears in one of Apple's TV spots, it might even sell a few more iPhones.