Aegis Group continues to beef up its digital agency portfolio, announcing an agreement this morning to acquire Roundarch for $125 million-plus. Aegis did not describe the terms of the deal, but said that price was an “initial consideration” and that based on future profit-based incentives, the total value could rise to as much as $360 million. Roundarch, a digital shop specializing in design and development of “enterprise-class” digital media, has a roster of clients including Avis, HBO, Bloomberg Sports, Motorola and the U.S. Air Force. Aegis said the acquisition is part of its long-term strategy to target acquisitions with “a specific focus on digital businesses, North America and faster-growing regions.” With offices in Chicago, Denver, Boston and New York, Roundarch employs a staff of 250 and its service offerings include strategy, design, development and outsourcing across all digital channels, including Web, mobile and social media. The agency has an audited profit before tax of $11 million and a gross asset value of $14 million in 2010. Upon completion of the acquisition, Roundarch will be combined with Aegis’ Isobar network in the U.S. to form a new entity known as RoundarchIsobar.
As retailers increasingly embrace mobile to boost foot traffic and drive m-commerce, mobile advertising is expanding as well. To capitalize on that trend, mobile ad network Jumptap has partnered with hyperlocal data provider PlaceIQ and appointed a director of retail to oversee ad efforts in the category. Through the alliance with PlaceIQ, Jumptap says it will allow advertisers to reach the precise areas most likely to contain members of their target audience, whether luxury shoppers, tourists, students or travelers. PlaceIQ claims its ad-targeting technology creates a “hyperlocal digital index of the physical world,” by understanding not only what is there, but who is in a place, when, and what they’re doing. While some of this is static data about a location (down to a city block), much of it is gleaned from user actions, like searches people perform or ads they click on in a given spot at a certain time via mobile devices. The start-up claims its technology is "privacy-friendly," since it profiles locations rather than people, without gathering or storing personally identifiable information (PII). In December, PlaceIQ landed $4.2 million in first-round venture funding. Jumptap works with third-party data providers including Acxiom, TargusInfo, Datalogix and Polk to provide information about consumer demographics from purchase history to income level to what cars people own. That anonymized data helped double click-through rates for retail campaigns in the fourth quarter. In addition to teaming with Place IQ, Jumptap announced its hiring of Matthew Mulderink as its first director of retail to lead strategy for retail publishers and advertisers. Prior to joining Jumptap, Mulderink was director of strategic accounts at ad optimization firm at Dotomi, acquired last August by ValueClick. He was previously in a similar role at Yahoo, working with retailers including Best Buy, Target and Sears. “Matt is the first executive to be brought on for a specific category,” noted Jumptap CMO Paran Johar, saying Mulderink's experience will help "new retail clients to leverage mobile.” Retail is one of the three largest ad verticals on Jumtap’s network and growing fast, he added. As an example of its recent work with retail clients, Jumptap highlighted results from a mobile campaign on behalf of Vibram’s FiveFingers running shoe. Working with the Amp Agency and the Nail Agency, it created a rich media unit encouraging users to “run” with their fingers in the virtual shoes on different surfaces. It also provided a link to a store locator. The ads drove roughly three out of every five viewers who engaged with the ad to the Vibram online store, according to Jumptap. They also had a 1.3% click-through rate on the iPad, the highest rate across devices. The Jumptap network overall reaches 95 million U.S. mobile users each month, and 142 million worldwide.
Android-based operating system glasses with a 3G or 4G data connection might be on the list of must-haves for techies by some time midyear. Reports put Google behind the project, but it's unclear whether Motorola Mobility patents contribute to the hardware device or the exploratory focus. For a cost of between $250 and $600, consumers could have an option to purchase the small-screen glasses with motion and GPS sensors designed by Google. The Los Angeles Times cites anonymous Google employees familiar with the project. Will these devices give online advertising another screen or expand the ability to collect data? Seth Weintraub at 9 to 5 Google first noted the lab and wearable technology in December. As more wearable devices come online, companies will need to become more sensitive to data collection. During the OMMA Data & Behavioral conference in New York on Wednesday, Marc Groman, executive director and general counsel at the Network Advertising Initiative, commented on privacy and data collection. He used a data-train metaphor to convince attendees to self-regulate their data collection practices or risk derailing the train and halting innovation for all. Google isn't the only company experimenting with wearable computing technology. Patents filed by Apple and Microsoft allude to wearable computing or display projects. Similarly, a patent updated in February 2012 by Digimarc describes next-generation wearable devices -- from cameras to displays on eyewear. The Digimarc patent calls out the practice of advertising vs. data collection: "As with Google, collection of raw data from the system may prove more valuable in the long term than presenting advertisements to users." Google's glasses would further the trend that electronic companies like Infineon Technologies tried to ignite in early 2000. In its 2004/2005 winter collection, sportswear manufacturer O'Neill Europe unveiled in Munich a wearable electronics product. Jointly designed with Infineon the snowboard jacket, dubbed The Hub, was made to withstand freezing and harsh environments. Woven into The Hub snowboard jacket were electronically conductive fabric tracks that connect the chip module to a fabric keyboard and built-in speakers in the helmet. The module contained a MP3 player with Bluetooth capabilities that the snowboard could use to control music and a mobile phone. It was part of a movement by the electronics and clothing industry to develop smart-fabrics and interactive textiles. At the time, other companies were working to include this type of technology in the walls of buildings and in carpets. During the next five years, it is estimated the market for wearable wireless devices in sports and health care will grow to 169.5 million devices in 2017 -- up from 20.77 million in 2011, a CAGR of 41%, according to ABI Research.
Manny Anekal, former head of global brand advertising for Zynga, has joined mobile rewards network Kiip as its chief operating officer. In his new role, Anekal will be charged with scaling operations as the company takes on more developers and advertisers and expands internationally. Kiip’s mobile ad network delivers free samples and discounts to mobile gamers when they reach individual "achievement levels," such as moving on to a higher level of play or completing a difficult puzzle. Advertisers to date include 1-800-Flowers.com, Dr Pepper, GNC, Sephora and vitaminwater. Since launching the network last April, Kiip founder and CEO Brian Wong said it now has more than 30 brand marketers running promotions in about 100 games, including "Island Wars," "Tap Studio 3," and "Trivia Burst." The gaming audience in that time has grown from 12 million to 50 million, with about half in the U.S. and the balance abroad. “We have scaled it to the level where we are now, where we had no choice but to bring on someone like Manny,” said Wong, citing Anekal’s 10 years’ experience with in-game advertising. At Zynga, which went public in December in a $1 billion IPO, Anekal led the brand integration and advertising efforts with major brands for the company’s best-known social games, like "FarmVille" and "CityVille." Prior to Zynga, he led global ad operations at Electronic Arts, as well as at Massive, an in-game advertising start-up acquired by Microsoft. Helping to accelerate the expansion of Kiip’s inventory will be one of the new COO’s immediate tasks as the company seeks to keep up with advertiser demand. In that vein, Kiip is launching an automatic on-boarding feature for developers to integrate games more easily with its network. Wong also hinted that the company plans to bring sponsored offers to other types of mobile content beyond games. Anekal said the jump from Zynga to Kiip was motivated by the desire to return to the start-up environment. “Kiip is in a great position now, where it’s at an inflection point,” he said. “I like building things, building companies.” More broadly, he believes mobile is where gaming is headed. “Having seen the movement from PC to console to casual to social, mobile is really the next big thing. As smartphone penetration increases, connected TVs, tablets, mobile gaming really is the future,” said Anekal. Could a relationship between Zynga and Kiip be far off? Anekal isn’t making any promises, but said it would be a “fantastic opportunity” to bring together Kiip’s ad platform with Zynga’s growing roster of mobile games. Kiip still has a long way to go to catch Zynga in raising capital, but it’s begun with $4.3 million in venture backing from prominent investors, including Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, True Ventures, and Verizon Ventures. In addition to its San Francisco headquarters, Kiip has also opened offices in New York and London.
There are some things that are a better fit with certain screens. For example, movies look better on a movie theater screen, a television series may be more pleasant on a large-screen TV, and spreadsheets are easier to work with on a PC screen. It’s intuitive to consider that filling out lengthy applications also would be better suited for PC screens -- or even tablets, for that matter -- rather than the smaller screen (and keyboard) of mobile phones. After all, how much data would a consumer be willing to enter through their smartphone? It turns out that many people will enter a lot as they fill out lengthy loan applications on mobile phones, as one company found, although they had not initially anticipated it. In 2000, CUNA Mutual Group, a financial services provider that produces retirement and investment products, launched a loan application Web site called Loanliner.com, marketed to credit unions. Credit unions throughout the U.S. then marketed the loans to their members, using the Loanliner platform. But 10 years after launching the site, CUNA Mutual was surprised to find that thousands of loan applications were coming from mobile devices. Like many others in the world of mobile, they faced the choice of whether to create an app or a mobile site. Since CUNA Mutual is a compliance company and credit union loan applications are highly regulated, the company took the mobile Web route, launching in July 2011. This allowed always-updated disclosures (much tougher than it sounds) to be displayed to loan applicants of the 552 credit unions that have access to what is known as Loanliner with Smartphone Loans. As the loan applicant moves through the mobile loan process, a series of screens -- each with different disclosures of information -- appear based on their previous and current input. In addition to finding more people using the mobile method since the start, CUNA Mutual found that the mobile loans were effective. “The average loan has a 42 percent completion rate, while mobile had a 49 percent completion rate,” said John Putman, director of lending business systems at CUNA Mutual. This means that more people applying for loans through their smartphones than desktop or laptop finished the loan process, ultimately producing more revenue for the loan originator or credit union. Perhaps more interesting are some of the other findings from the mobile loan process: The average age of the loan applicant from the desktop was 39 years old; smartphone, 32. The average loan amount via PC was $17,000; smartphone, $10,000. (Putman speculates that the lower age demographic may be borrowing less since they have less income than their senior counterparts -- so may opt for a less expensive car to borrow for, as one example) There were initially 50 loans a day via smartphones at launch in July 2011. That number is now near 100 a day. More than 15,000 loan applications have been submitted from the Smartphone Loans version since launch. Roughly the same number of loan applications comes from the two major mobile operating systems, with 51 percent from iOS and 49 percent from Android. Of the loan requests coming through Apple devices, 68 percent come from iPhone, 26 percent from iPads and six percent from iPods. Depending on the credit union, some of the information within the loan application self-populates or is automatically filled in as the loan process moves along -- all with the obvious security in place. Next up for the mobile loan process of CUNA Mutual later this year is development of an iPhone and Android app that ties into the mobile Web. “The mobile Web does not give access to the camera or GPS,” says Putman. He sees the potential when a credit union member drives into a car lot and spends a certain amount of time there, pushing a message saying they’re pre-approved for a loan -- information that could be readily available through the system. The idea is to more tightly link the purchase and loan process so that at least conceptually, while a person is shopping, they can borrow on the spot during the actual buying activity. That the masses of consumers will fill out lengthy forms or apply for loans via smartphones may not be intuitive or even on the drawing boards for some. But if there is a way for something to be moved to mobile, so that the consumer can do it while on the go and on his or her time frame, the chances are high that the mobile consumer will move it. Smart businesses will follow them. Chuck Martin is author of "The Third Screen; Marketing to Your Customers in a World Gone Mobile," CEO of Mobile Future Institute and Director of the Center for Media Research at MediaPost Communications.
Rather than type, speak the query. Searchers won't click -- they will swipe, touch or gesture. These expressions of intent on search engines or in applications will become the means by which people find and access information on Google, Bing and Yahoo, as well as Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. BloomReach Co-founder Raj De Datta "noodles" ideas on how voice, touch and gesture will influence search engine marketing with the emergence of Apple Siri, Xbox Kinect and other voice-activated search tools. Ten years ago, if we used the same architectural structure, the Web would have been a lot smaller, he says. Search marketers would have referred mostly to textual content. And the front door most used would have been Yahoo. Fast-forward 10 to 12 years later. The Web continues to grow much bigger -- now packed with text, photos, video, and rich media. Google, Bing, Facebook and others joined Yahoo to become front doors, similar to the way voice, gesture and touch will join the act of typing into a search box. And similar to the way someone might post a status update on Facebook, they will access a voice-based media to express themselves. Search engine marketing companies will need to determine how to adapt to this change. "Web sites will have to be natively structured for the discovery of content through voice and gesture," says De Datta, who views this as a "new product opportunity." De Datta predicts companies will spend much more time in the future optimizing Web sites for a variety of alternative search tools. For example, someone driving might voice a command over Bluetooth to a computer in the car to find a local business. The command might include the menu or the directions to the Italian restaurant, which will need to structure its Web site's content to make it more discoverable through voice commands. Companies have work to do. Speaking and typing a query will require search engines to deliver the same results because serving up very different results for voice, compared with typing the query, would only frustrate searchers. The industry will also need to develop new metrics. How will comScore and other data companies determine search query market share and volume? Good news for De Datta. His company BloomReach developed tools that try to solve Web site structural problem based on search algorithms, so searchers can more easily find information. Aside from Apple Siri, Google Voice, Microsoft Kinect, YP, and Ask.com, there are other mobile applications that focus on connecting through voice. VoiceForTwitter by Angel allows mobile users to call a phone number and post an audio message that is then shared as a link to an audio file on their Twitter feed. Users also can set up a dedicated twitter page with a unique phone number, so anyone can call and post a voice message to that page. Another mobile application, QWiPS allows users to create a 30-second audio message and tag it to any static image or text, Facebook or Twitter post.
That seems to be what the “Treading Water” panelists at OMMA Behavioral and Data conference this morning suggested. Asked by conference chair Steve Smith, “what about mobile,” the panelists responded not by talking about the distinct platform, but how it relates to all user behavior and data -- you know, “omni-channel” media. “Omni-channel? I like that. I’m going to use that,” moderator Joanna O’Connell said. Since she is senior analyst and author of the Wave reports at Forrester Research, chances are, we’ll all be using it soon too. In fact, I have a feeling there’s already a Omni-Channel Wave Report in the works, even as the OMMA panelists speak.
Raj Aggarwal, CEO of mobile app analytics firm Localytics, wraps up OMMA Metrics with insights into mobile app trends and metrics. Android and iOS have obviously outstripped other app platforms in growth, with the latter still the dominant player. Android tablets are converging around 7-inch screen size regardless of manufacturer, a positive development for developers. Aggarwal says Android fragmentation is overstated—if developers focus on most pervasive Android devices, their apps will reach the vast majority of users. When it comes to HTML5, he says pure HTML5 apps are still far off, though hybrid apps are growing. You need to use app-like tools to build apps with the Web-based format. Regardless of platform, holding onto app users is hard—about 30% use an app once and move on. That’s why it’s so important to get it right in development, to keep people from ditching an app after one or two sessions. App engagement varies by category--news titles to have the longest sessions while games have shorter bursts of use between different activities. Looking at app measurement, Aggarwal points out that apps can’t be reduced to a series of page views, like a Web site. They have unique IDs instead of cookies—that has challenges because they change over time and can be more difficult to track. So Web methods can’t be applied to app measurement.
Social networks have the potential to disrupt any number of established industries, and indeed are already doing so, with big negative impacts already being felt by mobile network operators, according to research outfit Ovum. Specifically, free social media message services that compete with short message services (SMS) cost mobile network operators some $13.9 billion in lost SMS revenue in 2011 alone, Ovum estimates. The list of rivals includes Facebook chat, Blackberry Messenger, and Whatsapp. And the continuing proliferation of smartphones means that this threat to SMS revenues will only become more pervasive. Of course, mobile operators stand to make a certain amount of revenue from mobile data costs associated with social media apps; however Ovum didn’t offer an estimate for revenue gains from mobile data fees associated with social media usage. In any event the global mobile network business is probably big enough to sustain some revenue losses. In 2011 the total mobile data market probably grew 22.5% to $314.7 billion, according to a separate estimate from Gartner released in August 2011; and in October of last year Machina Research predicted total mobile data revenues could grow to $660 billion by 2020. Meanwhile Portio Research estimates that the global text messaging business generated $179.2 billion in revenue for cellular service providers in 2010, including $114.6 billion from SMS alone, with the latter category predicted to increase to $159 billion by 2015. Whether these forecasts stand up in the face of the mobile social messaging trend remains to be seen.