App Wars Spike In December With Record User Acquisition Costs by Steve Smith

The holiday smartphone giving season is famous for driving record downloads as lucky gift-getters unwrap and test their shiny new things on the latest app. It is also a period of fierce competition among the app developers for visibility, which drives up marketing costs. ...Read the whole story

  • SapientNitro, AKQA, Ogilvy Lead Agencies In Mobile Expertise by Mark Walsh

    With mobile advertising and marketing budgets growing, agencies are scrambling to bolster in-house expertise to match client demand. In that respect, SapientNitro, AKQA, Ogilvy, TribalDDB and Razorfish lead the pack, according to the first Wave report from Forrester that ranks digital agencies by mobile capability. ...Read the whole story

  • Yandex Taps Nokia's Navteq For Maps, Mobile by Laurie Sullivan

    Russia's search engine Yandex said Monday it has purchased map licenses from Nokia subsidiary Navteq to develop detailed world maps for its Yandex.Maps service. Using the service, Web site owners can embed maps of various countries, noting city buildings and urban traffic networks, on their sites. ...Read the whole story

  • Markey Floats Mobile Privacy Bill by Wendy Davis

    Mobile companies will have to obtain users' express consent before installing monitoring software, if a bill floated Monday by Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass) becomes law. The draft bill, named the Mobile Device Privacy Act, is aimed at addressing "the threat to consumers' privacy posed by electronic monitoring software on mobile phones." ...Read the whole story

  • electronics Voice Calling Still Top Cell Phone Use by Aaron Baar

    Yes -- consumers used their cell- and smartphones to help them make decisions when it came to holiday purchases, but good, old-fashioned phone communications was the most prevalent use. ...Read the whole story

  • Digital Magazines Popular, Men Hold Edge by Erik Sass

    While more than half of both male and female tablet owners are interested in reading digital magazines, the proportion is especially high among males, with 77% of male tablet owners saying they want to read digital magazines on their device, compared to 68% of female tablet owners. ...Read the whole story

  • Bathroom Reading: Study Finds Droid Users Most Likely To Be On-The-Go While Going by Joe Mandese

    In what may be the first study of its kind, Alexandria, Va. agency 11mark polled 1,000 Americans to find out how they're using their smartphones while going to the bathroom. Incredibly, three-fourths of those with a mobile phone say they actively use them while going to the bathroom. ...Read the whole story

  • inMarket Shopper Network Promises In-Store Pay-Per-Scan by Steve Smith

    The maker of the popular CheckPoints shopper rewards app has renamed its company as it also plans to launch a network of its own and partnered apps that target messaging at the point of product scanning. The inMarket Shopper Network says it will reach more than 20 million mobile-empowered shoppers while they are in the store and actively scanning items for product information, rewards points or discounts. ...Read the whole story

  • shopkick App Claims to Fight 'Showrooming' And Drive $110M In Sales by Steve Smith

    Shopping rewards and promotion company shopkick announced today that its app was responsible for driving $110 million of in-store revenue for over a dozen partners in retail and entertainment in the last year. The shopkick app can be used both in- and out-of-store to locate deals and collect reward points for scanning select items on partners' shelves. ...Read the whole story

Around The Net

advice 5 Tips For Mobile Advertising Success by Lara Mehanna

According to the GSMA,the global mobile industry trade group, the number of mobile-connected devices will double from 6 billion in 2011 to 12 billion by 2020. Are you ready to take full advantage of this digital juggernaut? ...More

  • Local Mobile Marketers Use Real Money -- Their Own by Steve Smith

    At last week's Mobile Insider Summit in Key Largo, Fla., Yelp, Google Maps, and all the other usual suspects I consult for nearby resources were not going to be of much help here. We were in another world. The remote, painfully exclusive Ocean Reef Club wasn't the kind of place where you will find quick takeout, a 7-Eleven or a chain of any sort. No, if we wanted to hear directly from local merchants using mobile marketing, we were going to have to airlift them in. Which we did. For a superb panel on how real local businesses are using ...More