Cricket Communications, a unit of prepaid service provider Leap Wireless, has introduced what it calls the first music service from a carrier to be offered as part of a new wireless rate plan. Rolling out in January, the Muve Music service will feature a catalog of music from the four major record labels: Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and EMI Music. For $55 a month, in addition to unlimited calling, text and mobile Web access, Muve Music customers will get unlimited full track downloads, ringtones and ringback tones on Cricket's 3G network. The system also uses a new SanDisk technology that allows DRM-free over-the-air downloads, stored and protected on a special flash memory card. The music service will debut on the Samsung Suede feature phone, which will sell for $199 and has a 3-inch touchscreen and Qwerty keyboard. It will also feature a dedicated button to give users one-touch access to Muve Music. Cricket said the new offering was the culmination of working with the record companies over the last two years toward a flat-rate plan to deliver music more conveniently on mobile phones. Ben Bajarin, director of Consumer Technology Practice at Creative Strategies, suggested Muve could herald a new mobile-centric model for digital music. "By tightly integrating the music service into the handset and the billing plan everyone in the value chain benefits and consumers have a complete music service where the phone is the hub not the PC," he said in a statement. Apple has long dominated mobile music through its iTunes download service in tandem with the iPod, iPhone and now, iPad. But Cricket's service is aimed at no-contract customers using handsets other than the iPhone, sold only by AT&T. Whether Muve Music helps drive more customers to Cricket, and has a wider impact on the wireless industry, should become more clear in the first half of 2011. An initial hands-on review by PCMag.com found the service to have a wide range of top hits and decent sound quality, even if not suited "for high-end audio aficionados." It also highlighted features like a "My DJ" function to analyze songs you've been listening to and suggest similar ones, and a "shout" option to send links to songs via SMS. Cricket is the nation's seventh-largest wireless operator, with about 5 million subscribers in 35 states.
MillerCoors' Coors Light is leveraging SnapTag technology to enable customized regional promotions as extensions of a national, sweepstakes-driven Super Bowl XLV campaign. The brand is employing the mobile image recognition technology to achieve multiple, simultaneous objectives, according to Ryan Lindholm, client partner at Razorfish, Coors Light's digital agency. These include consistent point-of-purchase brand image exposure on a national level, scalable yet targeted reach within an interactive, relationship-building context; and the ability to enable distributors and retailers to connect with their customers via region-specific promotions and offers. The SnapTag consists of the Coors Light logo encircled or ringed by a code (a "ring code") that determines whether the participant will be offered an entry in the brand's national "Snap, Send, Score" sweepstakes or messaging relating to one of 11 regional promotions. The campaign is a major component of Coors Light's marketing strategy around its Super Bowl XLV and NFL sponsorships. The national sweeps, which uses the tagline "You Could Score the Unthinkable" -- meaning win "insider access" to the Super Bowl beyond fans' wildest dreams -- features a grand prize of a trip for four (winner plus guests) to the Super Bowl, attendance at the brand's Super Bowl party and other prizes/perks. Two first-prize winners will receive game trips for themselves and one guest, party admission and other prizes/perks. Additional prizes include a champion-autographed football, items used during the game, official NFL and Super Bowl gear, flat-screen TVs and NFLShop.com gift cards. "As the official beer of the NFL and the Super Bowl, we're bringing fans closer to the game than they ever imagined possible by taking insider access to a whole new level," said Rick Gomez, VP of marketing for the Coors family of brands, in the promotion's announcement. Now through game day -- Feb. 6 -- people of legal drinking age can use any mobile phone with a camera to snap photos of the Coors Light SnapTag on specially marked boxes of Coors Light and Coors Banquet or on promotional materials and ads, and send the images to a designated text code or email address. In line with standard alcoholic beverage marketing requirements, they then receive a message asking them to verify their age and provide state information. Upon verification, those who have snapped tags that are on the Coors packaging or in the media for the national campaign -- which include point-of-purchase (POP) materials, out-of-home ads (bus shelters, for example), ads on NFL.com and a tab on the brand's Facebook page that offers a video along with the SnapTag -- are entered in the national sweeps. (They can also enter the sweeps through a site-based entry form.) People who have snapped tags that are on in-store or other promotional materials/advertising produced for the regional markets receive messaging/promotions specific to that region's program. Those who have interacted with a regional promotion will, after a period of a week or two, also receive messaging offering the opportunity to enter the national sweepstakes. The lag will ensure that national efforts are not intrusive on regional efforts and that the brand does not "over-communicate" with people, says Lindholm. "We want to be sure that consumers are participating as they want to" -- that the consumer's own choices regarding engaging with the brand trigger not only the initial national or regional promotion response from the brand, but any subsequent engagement, Lindholm stresses. If consumers choose, via opt-in, to continuing engaging, "the cycle continues," he says. While Miller Coors could have achieved its dual national/regional objectives by using a texting platform not based on image recognition, image recognition technology offered critical speed-of-execution and cost advantages, explains Lindholm. Coordination activities with regional markets were streamlined and time-compressed, and the printing of region-specific promotional materials could be accomplished through simple on-press plate changes to incorporate their respective regional ring codes, rather than requiring costly and time-intensive, one-off press runs for each market, he points out. "The needs of our consumers and distributors are always changing," so speed-to-market as well as mass-market scalability were essential requirements for the campaign, stresses Lindholm. One key reason for selecting the SnapTag technology rather than a QR code/2D barcode platform or other image recognition platform was its ability to interface with any mobile phone with a camera (no app downloading or smartphone operating system required), reports Lindholm. Since 80% of all cell phones in North America have cameras, the paramount prerequisite of sufficiently scalable consumer reach was met, he explains. "Basically, it made it viable to risk using an emerging technology" for a major national campaign for the brand, he adds. At the same time, using a mobile-phone platform is made to order for reaching Coors Light's core 21-to-29 target audience, given that smartphone owners -- who are growing rapidly, but still represent 22.5% of the U.S. mobile market, according to July 2010 ComScore data -- skew to the 25-to-34 age demographic (as well as to males, although the gender gap is closing). Another MillerCoors brand, craft beer Colorado Native Lager, was the first brand to use SnapTags on packaging (in a spring 2010 campaign), although major brands such as Ford, Unilever and Crayola had used them on displays and ads. The Coors Light campaign represents the largest rollout of SnapTag use for POP materials to date, as well as one of the "most robust" campaigns to date in terms of use of regional targeting capabilities, reports Jane McPherson, CMO at SpyderLynk, creators/owners of the SnapTag technology. Coors Light worked with SpyderLynk and Razorfish to develop the customized SnapTag program for the Super Bowl campaign. In the end, of course, it's all about engaging interactively and building brand relationships with people. This campaign will provide Coors Light with a wealth of data about how people use the snap-and-send capability to interact with the brand initially and how the relationship can be optimized thereafter, says Lindholm. "This is a very important program for [Coors Light]," both for the year ahead and beyond, he says.
Hispanics are catching up to the rest of the population in mobile device usage, according to Scarborough Research's most recent "Hispanic Multi-Market Study," which found that the proportion of Hispanic adults using cellular phones rose 26% from 2006-2010, compared to 18% growth in the general population. That puts cellular phone penetration at 82% among Hispanic adults -- almost even with 84% for the population at large. In fact, Hispanics over-index in some types of mobile usage. For example, 64% of Hispanic adults who own a cell phone use it to send text messages, versus 56% of U.S. adults with cell phones overall. Twenty-two percent of Hispanic adults who own a cell phone use it to download or listen to music, versus 15% of U.S. adults with cell phones overall. For mobile game usage, the proportions are 19% and 15%, respectively; for mobile social network access, they are 12% and 10%. Smartphone penetration is also growing more rapidly among Hispanics than the general population, per Scarborough. The proportion of Hispanic adults living in a household with smartphone access jumped from 5% in 2005 to 19% at present. The latter figure compares with 23% for the general population. Scarborough also found significant variation in Hispanic mobile usage between regions: 96% of Hispanic adults in Atlanta use cell phones, versus just 68% in Colorado Springs. The Scarborough findings confirm earlier research suggesting that mobile usage among Hispanics, while lower than the general population, is climbing fast. The Pew Hispanic Center's National Survey of Latinos, released earlier this year, found that about 50% of young Latino adults (49% of 16- to-17-year-olds) said they send mobile text messages every day, while 45% talk on a cell phone. The text-message figure compares with 64% for non-Hispanic 16- to-17-year-olds, while 51% of non-Hispanics ages 16-17 said they talk on the cell phone every day. A separate study from eMarketer suggests that Hispanics are more likely to use mobile devices to research and buy products and services. Thirty-two percent of Hispanics who own mobile devices use them to compare prices, versus 23% of non-Hispanic whites. Furthermore, 16% would order an item via mobile and 33% would access information about an item for a potential purpose, versus 11% and 18% of non-Hispanic whites, respectively. Hispanics are also more likely to access news and information via mobile browsers (18.8% versus 9.6% for all subscribers).
Carnival Cruise Lines wants revelers in Times Square on New Year's Eve to think about getting out of the cold. The Miami-based company is the official confetti sponsor of the 2011 celebration, which is expected to attract more than a million celebrants. Carnival will also engage the crowd through billboard advertisements and a text-to-win cruise giveaway. The cruise line is promoting the sponsorship on Twitter, Facebook and Flickr. Carnival bought digital billboard ads in Times Square last year, but has never done anything of this magnitude there. The opportunity was brought to them through their PR agency, Fleishman-Hillard NYC. At the stroke of midnight, a ton of colorful Carnival Confetti, hand-tossed by approximately 100 "confetti dispersal engineers," including a number of Carnival employees, will fill the New York City skyline. Carnival's Senior Cruise Director John Heald will lead the official confetti "air-worthiness test" in Times Square in late December prior to the big night, and will also lead the New Year's Eve celebrants in a practice countdown earlier in the evening on Dec. 31, complete with 500 pounds of Carnival-colored red, white and blue confetti, the first confetti drop of the New Year's Eve 2011 party. Sponsoring the celebration is a way to reinforce the fun Carnival guests experience and to kick off the New Year for the brand, says Jim Berra, senior vice president and chief marketing officer for Carnival Cruise Lines. "Our brand will not only reach tens of thousands of people coming through the Times Square Visitors Center, but we will be in front of the one million revelers in Times Square multiple times throughout the evening on New Year's Eve," Berra tells Marketing Daily . "This sponsorship is a great opportunity to engage a huge number of people with the Carnival brand during what is a once-in-a lifetime celebratory experience for so many people." At the Carnival Confetti New Year's Eve Wishing Wall at the Times Square Visitor's Center, visitors are invited to share their dreams for the coming year on colorful slips of paper that will be added to the ton of confetti. Those unable to visit the Wishing Wall, but who would still like to have their wish included in the Carnival Confetti, can visit Carnival's Facebook page. The sponsorship is "an interesting marketing opportunity" for Carnival, says Henry H. Harteveldt, vice president and principal analyst, airline and travel research, Forrester Research. "First, obviously, it's a huge local market, and there will also be a lot of national coverage," Harteveldt tells Marketing Daily. "So there's visibility through that extension on television and webcams and social media and so on." Although Carnival specializes in warm weather travel, the association with Times Square is a "logical association" and actually makes a lot of sense, he adds. "Carnival does like to be associated with fun," Harteveldt says. "And I can see the message: 'Why should the fun stop tomorrow morning -- continue the fun on a Carnival Cruise.' I can also see the opportunity to say 'it's cold here in New York, it's whatever [temperature] it is in the Caribbean or Mexico.' They can certainly play on that."
Tribune Media Services on Thursday announced the acquisition of video search company CastTV. The acquisition is expected to improve TMS' entertainment metadata, which clients can use to create entertainment-discovery guides that direct consumers to programs available on linear, on-demand and online video platforms. "Most consumers have a hard time finding all the online content they would enjoy -- and have no way to see all their viewing options in one place," said Jay Fehnel, chief operating officer for TMS Entertainment Products. "By adding CastTV's expertise, TMS will be able to help our clients deliver one guide to all the video a consumer can view." Founded in 2006, San Francisco-based CastTV has developed search technology that aggregates, indexes and presents data on millions of TV shows, movies, music videos, news and sports clips, and viral videos from more than 1,000 Web-video sources. Combined with TMS, "we can offer media and technology customers comprehensive, 'one stop watching' solutions for today's connected consumers," said CastTV President Alex Vikati. The CastTV technology automatically matches online video to professionally edited, structured databases such as TMS' TV, movie and celebrity data, allowing for with existing TMS products. The CastTV system also allows for "device-aware" content-discovery products that can be limited or expanded to include only access to videos that address a customer's device limitations or the business needs of a video provider. The acquisition includes all of CastTV's technology, products, intellectual property and staff, including CEO Edwin Ong and Vikati. Per the deal, TMS will link the CastTV index of online programs to TMS metadata to enable customers to easily direct consumers to programs regardless of where they are offered. CastTV also operates a consumer Web site, CastTV.com, which provides over four million consumers with a resource to find what video they want to watch online. TMS will operate the CastTV.com site as part of its Zap2it.com entertainment network, which currently reaches eight million Web visitors and four million mobile app users monthly. TMS plans to offer advertising packages that combine the audiences of both sites.
With their smartphones able to do more, consumers are expecting information beyond the typical listings and locations from their mobile phones. According to a study commissioned by Ask.com (and conducted by Harris Interactive), two-thirds of consumers said they are more likely to ask timely questions when not in front of their computer. At the same time, about a third (30%) of smartphone users employ their phones to access the Web more than their personal computers. "Increasingly, people are expecting more and more of their smartphones that goes above and beyond what they expect from their laptops," Valerie Combs, vice president of communications for Ask.com, tells Marketing Daily. "The computing power in your hand is something you expect [more about ]what you're looking for." The increased use of mobile devices is leading consumers to seek more time-sensitive information. For instance, 55% of consumers were interested in finding local reviews on their mobile phones; 68%, meanwhile, said they would like to know whether a restaurant is busy at a given moment. "In the mobile context, search takes on a different look and feel," Combs says. "There's still a huge opportunity to define what mobile search actually means." In addition, 40% of consumers looking for information on local businesses said they are influenced by opinions given within 24 hours than those provided a month or so ago. That number increases significantly in the 18- to-24-year-old demographic, with 67% saying the recent opinions are the most important. "This again illustrates the opportunity for service providers and app providers," Combs says. "People are hungry for the information and they want to know real-time."
Cox Communications, the country's third-largest cable provider, has a deal with Rovi to use the company's technology to power an interactive program guide on its online and mobile platforms. Cox has used the Silicon Valley company's IPG for its TV service for some time, made available via a set-top-box. The deal is a multi-year agreement, although the companies offered no other details. It is a sign that operators are moving beyond their core business. And as programming is available elsewhere, navigation tools will be key. "As consumers look to access entertainment content across various devices and platforms, cable MSO service providers are delivering content through broadband and mobile expanding beyond the cable set-top-box platform," stated Rovi executive Samir Armaly. The Rovi IPG offers multiple opportunities for advertising to be attached to the listings. Separately, Rovi helps providers serve interactive ads. Rovi allows providers the option of using an Enhanced Television/Enhanced Binary Interchange Format link to power iTV. Previously known as Macrovision, Rovi completed its acquisition of Gemstar-TV Guide in 2008, which owned the TV Guide-branded IPG. In October, it joined a coalition that also included MovieLabs, CableLabs and Comcast to launch the Entertainment Identifier Registry, a nonprofit global operation aimed at more easily cataloging movies, TV shows and other video and audio offerings. Universal Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment and Walt Disney Pictures are backers. In the third quarter, the NASDAQ-traded Rovi posted a 21% gain in revenue to $138 million. Net income swung from a $12 million loss to a $36 million profit.
Buoyed by the spread of the Android operating system, smartphone impressions now make up more than half (56%) of the U.S. ad inventory of mobile ad network inMobi. New data released by inMobi Thursday showed Android alone accounts for 19.2% of impressions, second only to Apple's iOS, which generates 24.6% as of October. Apple had lost almost three percentage points in share in the prior 90 days, while Android picked up 8.7 points. Trailing well behind them in third place was BlackBerry with 7.5% share, followed by Symbian with 4.5%, and Windows Mobile at 1.1%. Smartphone ad inventory overall shot up 57% in the three months ending in October, with inMobi serving 600 million monthly impressions. inMobi's total U.S. ad market grew 25% in the third quarter, rising from 2.4 billion impressions in July to almost 3 billion in October. When it comes to individual smartphones, the iPhone is still dominant, with 21.9% share. The Motorola Droid is a distant second, with 4.5%. However, the iPhone slipped 2.2 percentage points during the three-month period, while the four devices tracked by inMobi that gained the most share (+6 points) were all Android phones. That doesn't include the Droid, which dropped from an 8.8% share in July. Looking at share by manufacturer, Apple was tops with 24.6% share, followed by 20.9% for Samsung, Motorola at 13.7%, Research in Motion at 8.5%, and Nokia at 7.4%. But once again, Apple's grip on the top slot is slipping, as it lost 2.9 share points while Samsung picked up 2 points on its main rival. The trend suggests that Samsung could overtake Apple as the top manufacturer, driven by its line of Android phones including the new Nexus S it just launched with Google. inMobi expanded to the U.S. earlier this year, formally kicking off operations here in June following a soft launch at the start of 2010. The company had already built up a large presence in Asia, Africa and Europe before entering the U.S., and today says it generates 24 billion monthly mobile impressions globally. It has raised about $15.5 million to date from investors including Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers and Sherpalo Ventures.
The transformation that Facebook has triggered this year in social networking dynamics will pale in comparison to the e-commerce revolution it will inspire in 2011. Recommendations from Facebook's 600 million-plus members combined with GroupOn-styled discounts, Google-inspired targeted advertising and Apple's rampant connectivity will yield Amazon-sized buying across all mobile devices. While cross-platform pollination is underway, these players are creating a global template for integrated social, hyper-local, mobile commerce. Increased integration will collectively change the way consumers research and buy products and services, and how companies market and sell them. It won't be long before these and other companies' personalized, real-time mobile buying services generate more revenues than the billions online alone has mustered. Their success is driven by two factors: consumer relevance and location. While the recession knocked the wind out of consumers' sails, mobile interactive technology primed them for a new orientation--especially in communications and commerce. During the painfully slow recovery, there are mounting telltale signs of this imminent wave of creative disruption. Here are a few: *In 2011, four out of five U.S. businesses with more than 100 employees will use social media marketing -- double the number from 2008. Even without the concrete means to measure ROI, marketers are embracing social media online and in mobile instead of or in addition to traditional television and print. "Social media is no longer an add-on for marketers; it's been integrated into everything they do," observes eMarketer analyst Debra Aho Williamson. Blue -chip marketers are allocating increased budgets to social media based on "gut instinct" or the desire to be cutting edge. Social media has grown from 5.9% of their marketing budgets in August 2010 to 9.9% of their marketing budgets. *Madison Avenue is being spurred by Facebook's mad dash to monetize its exploding worldwide base, spotlighted in Time's Person of the Year tribute to founding CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook's estimated $56 billion private market value can more than triple by 2015 on its planned move into transactional target marketing, experts say. *Consumer eagerness to act on the recommendations and actions of their Facebook friends is evident in the estimated $5.4 billion value of Facebook-connected game player Zynga and the robust sales of virtual goods 54 million member-linked FarmVille. Like Facebook, they are all going global. *Any doubt about the intertwined future of hyper-local couponing, social networks and commerce was swiftly dispelled by Amazon's recent $175 million investment in LivingSocial, a GroupOn wannabe reportedly booking more than $1 million daily revenue and on track to reach 500 million subscribers by 2011. Google's rejected $6 billion bid for GroupOn says loads about the exploding importance of mobile location. *Amazon knows a good thing when it sees it. The e-reader phenomenon it launched with the Kindle a few years ago has created a vibrant category that is outpacing smart, big screen TVs this holiday season. Although Best Buy's online sales growth has collapsed, Amazon continues to post double-digit revenue gains based on the strength of its engaged social, recommendation, free shipping and superb customer service. *Even Google is beating Best Buy to the punch this month. Google's YouTube video platform is leveraging its online community to give away 100 television sets fortified with the new Google TV operating system that makes viewing truly interactive. *Shoppers using their smartphones and other mobile devices as shopping aids want apps that provide discount coupons, personalized notifications of in-store specials and price comparisons outside and inside stores, according to a new Accenture survey. Less privacy-crazed consumers are increasingly comfortable using a shortcut to the checkout, such as PayPal or Google Checkout. Overall, transaction volume is up about 35% from a year ago, spurred by free shipping and consumer's increased comfort with shopping online. *A new Pew Research report indicates that rating and buying products and services are among the key Internet activities popular across all age groups. More than 60% of all online adults regularly use social networks. Social media has moved ahead of search as a marketing tactic, according to Chief Marketer. *The global Internet advertising pot was $54 billion last year--a number that will multiple once marketers learn to more aggressively tap Facebook's undermonetized user base, not only with interactive advertising, but results-oriented transactions, says Internet guru Mary Meeker. Some ad gurus forecast addressable advertising could push TV ad spending to $100 billion annually from about $60 billion now, based on higher ad rates, better ROI measurement, potential share grab from other media and enhanced targeting ability. But not if mobile social commerce gets there first. *Half of all mobile users have social profiles; that number is expected to rise to 79% by 2015. One-third of all users are aware of the difference in location-based mobile social services--triple from what it was just a year ago. Such trends explain the meteoric adoption of social commerce-related services, from GroupOn to Facebook's nascent advertising. *Apps will become the universal means for connecting interested parties, just based on nearly 1 million apps on the Apple and Facebook platforms. Consumers under 35 are increasingly ditching their browsers for mobile apps because they afford convenience and instant access, according to Parks Associates. Comparative pricing apps like RedLaser on iPhone and The Find on Google's Android have been all the rage among brick-and-mortar holiday shoppers.
Members of the Millennial generation, ages 18 to 30, remain more likely to access the Internet wirelessly with a laptop or mobile phone, but it appears the market geared toward younger teens still needs to mature, according to a recent study from the Pew Internet & American Life Project (and a recent experience of mine). Older Internet users are still more likely than younger generations to search for certain types of information online, which is a little surprising to me. In fact, 87% of U.S. adults using the Internet also rely on search engines. About 59% of American adults go online wirelessly, either through their smartphones or through a wireless card in their laptop. Adults age 45 and younger are the most likely to connect to the Internet with a laptop, cell phone, or other internet-connected mobile device, as 82% of Millennials and 71% of Gen X connect that way. Only 9% of the G.I. Generation go online wirelessly. I observed the smartphone and wireless phenomenon last night while at dinner with a friend, his kids and their friends. When I asked the kids at the table, ages 14 and 15, to search on their smartphone for the price of the Logitech Google TV set-top box their parents had either blocked Internet access (a trust factor) or had no interest in searching online on their mobile phone. They mostly use their smartphones to take photos, make calls of text. A Pew report published earlier this year suggests teen girls, ages 14 to17, send the most text messaging, averaging 100 messages a day, compared with the youngest teen boys who average 20 messages per day. Performics CEO Daina Middleton, who took time to speak with MediaPost from her home in Idaho, says similar to Japan, retailers will wake up when mobile in the U.S. becomes 10% of revenue. The use of phones running Android and consumers using the iPhones has begun to increase searches, impressions and clicks on mobile devices. Performics, which supports search engine marketing (SEM), began "getting serious" about tracking mobile activity across clients several months ago. A peak in August of 8.3% led to a slight dip for the remainder of the year, but acceleration in overall volume continues. The company predicts 10% of overall clicks will come from mobile within three months, and about 16% should come from mobile devices throughout 2011, according to James Beveridge, Performics senior analyst. While 2010 wasn't quite the year for mobile search, mobile impressions and clicks did surge in the fourth quarter, indicating 2011 could become mobile search's break-out year, Beveridge wrote in a blog post. I agree with Beveridge when he tells me the use of search has become a research portal when shopping for products and services, especially during the holidays. The ability to use mobile search as a tool will continue to accelerate through 2011 and beyond. What does your mobile search strategy look like, and how much of your advertising budget will you allocate toward mobile in 2011?
If there is a pet peeve of the year in the mobile media and marketing realm, it involves our growing impatience with brands making the consumer jump through hoops for no significant pay-off. The simple act of downloading a branded app that has no apparent function or raison d'etre other than the greater glory of the brand is, in fact, an imposition on the mobile user. Making me key in an SMS code and click through ensuing links just to get the same movie trailer I can see five times an hour on cable? That is a "value add"? Are you kidding me? You want to meet the mobile consumer? Take a look at this sample from a set of videos ARC Worldwide recruited from mobile shoppers. Our iPhoner may not be the sharpest Flip cameraman out there, but his frustration with accessing sites and shopping tools on his phone is palpable. Why, oh why, must he register before using something he may not even need, he asks? Why aren't the brands he navigates to streamlining the process for him? Best line: "I just want to live in my hovel online and have things delivered to me by UPS." OK, this cave-dweller may not be fully representative of consumers, but he is one of many who captured their frustration about mobile media for Arc's novel study. The subtext of this consumer's rant is really the message that comes out of 2010 mobile media loud and clear: We really don't love your brands as much as you imagine we do. The app stores are cluttered with branded media that have no particular appeal to end users -- or force the user through so many clicks, scans and forms that the user starts to feel like a lab rat, a subject in some Pavlovian test. Sure, the mobile agency could check off the mobile box and show the client that now they "have their app," but on the other end, there are consumers wondering "What was up with that?" The importance of immediacy on mobile is as obvious as it is undervalued in executions. In a new Harris Interactive survey done for Ask.com, 81% of 1,500 respondents said that when they look for information on their phones, they expect it immediately. That may seem like a no-brainer, but it really underscores how much the mobile use case is about either urgent need-to-know or impulsive want-to-have data. How many app interfaces really are designed around that understanding? The survey also showed that 66% of respondents will tend to ask urgent questions of the Web when away from their desktop. Ask.com of course is leveraging that data around a new mobile-leaning overall strategy that relies more on real-time answers to specific questions. The new Ask.com app for iPhone was not intended as a search engine, the company tells me, but as a Q&A device. Ask.com is actually leading the next of its many transformations online with this mobile app. According to Jason Rupp, director of product management for Ask, the first version was pushed out a few weeks ago to see how people used it, and 250,000 downloaded it in short order. The top categories people are asking about are computers and networking, health and beauty, business and finance and travel and places. The app has many answers to direct questions like "What is the cheapest gas in my area?" baked into the engine, and allows users to answer other queries. The Ask.com crew interprets the immediacy imperative to mean that people want the freshest information in a localized way. In a future iteration, they plan to engage that community to offer fresher information about specific places. If someone uses an LBS app to find user reviews of a local eatery, don't they also really want to know if there is a wait for tables right now? The Harris data showed that 40% of users felt they would be more influenced by user opinions about a location that had been made in the last 24 hours. As the Ask.com community gains scale both on the Web and on mobile, the company is hoping to have this kind of near-real-time, foursquare-style, info as part of a Q&A-oriented search. One of the things Ask is finding is that mobile is itself one of the best sources for its engine. The Q&A version of Ask is being rolled out in beta to select groups for now, but it is the main interface of the iPhone app. The company is already finding that mobile users are producing two to three times the amount of community content as Web users. In other words the immediacy imperative of mobile is a two-way street. Done well, a mobile app or site might get a lot more back from the user in real time than it would from a Web site. Whether Ask.com's answer to user impatience is on target remains to be seen. The company's data may underscore the obvious, but the immediacy imperative is not so obvious that enough brands recognize it in their designs. By the way, the video clip linked to above is part of a much larger study that Leo Burnett and ARC worldwide have done of mobile shoppers, their behaviors and frustrations that will be presented at the upcoming Mobile Insider Summit at the Ritz-Carlton in Key Biscayne, Fla.
Some ad executives say that if we have to keep asking ourselves if 2010 represents the year of mobile then we're clearly not there yet. Maybe, but Google released stats this week that suggest we're closer than many think. Also consider this as the year comes to a close. On Wednesday, Microsoft launched a slew of applications for search on mobile devices, and EBay acquired mobile application developer Critical Path Software to boost ecommerce. By 2014, IDC predicts the global market for mobile applications will exceed $35 billion. The research firm estimates mobile app downloads will increase from 10.9 billion in 2010 to nearly 76.9 billion in 2014, as developers create applications for personal and business use. Google this week released search trends from mobile phones on Black Friday for general merchandise and consumer electronics. The findings confirm what many in the industry have been waiting for. Consumers began searching earlier this year for Black Friday deals, and Google experienced big increased in deal-seeking terms compared with last year. Terms such as coupons helped spur an increase in searches on mobile phones by 250%--all related to Black Friday deals. Out of the top 100 mobile searches black Friday terms accounted for 10% during the week prior and after Black Friday. Those include Black Friday, Walmart Black Friday, Black Friday Deals, Best buy Black Friday, and Black Friday Ads. The top shopping categories searched on mobile devices during the same time frame include Apparel, Consumer Electronics, Footwear, and Jewelry. The top products searched on mobile were shoes, tech products, lingerie, jewelry, and flowers. During the Thanksgiving week and Black Friday, Google saw 205% growth in price comparison searches on mobile devices during the week of Nov. 22, 2010, compared with the same week in the prior year. The search engine also saw 255% growth in 'Store Locator' searches on mobile devices. These were top searches in category with words 'find,' 'where,' and 'buy' (excluding 'best buy' for the retail store). For those thinking about tweaking paid search ads running on mobile, the most popular tech gadget searches last week include ipod/ipod touch, otterbox, amazon kindle, mytouch 4g, slingbox, roku, pdanet, vizio, tivo, and at&t phones. Google also recently conducted a survey on the AdMob network. Of those who responded, 45% said they spent at least $10 on a purchase via their mobile device, and 34% spent more than $20. Fifty nine percent of respondents expect to use their mobile device more in their holiday shopping this season, 45% use their mobile device in addition to their desktop for holiday shopping, and 67% use their mobile device to find a business and later make a purchase at that business in-person. Was 2010 the year of mobile? If not, what's required to get there and how long must the industry wait?