While traditional ‘lean-back’ TV may be strong among U.S. viewers, a growing number of consumers have interest in -- or have already adopted -- multiscreen smaller device habits. A new 2012 survey found that 57% of people are interested in multiscreen video services, up from 48% in 2011. The study comes from Toronto-based QuickPlay Media, a provider of video to IP-connected devices. Another 35% have reported trying a mobile TV and/or video service, with 27% saying they currently use new video services. 43% of current users consume mobile TV and video at least once per week; and 23% have daily usage. Much of this activity is relatively new: 72% have been mobile TV and video users for a year or less, and 81% say they watch more video on multiscreen devices than a year ago. But not all advertising messaging is making an impact. Only 20% recall viewing ads on their device while using a mobile TV and/or video service, and 81% say there is a lack of advertising variety. Good news for social media services: 74% are interested in viewing mobile TV and/or video channels that integrate sites such as Facebook or Twitter. The big preference for specific programming is for TV episodes -- which tallied a 38% score. Sports was next at 28%, followed by news at 19%. Live programming scored well -- preferred by 51% of users -- with a 30% score for sports, 21% for TV episodes, and 34% preferring an on-demand format.
With the release of the new iPad last month, Apple shows no sign of loosening its iron grip on the tablet market for years to come. A new Gartner forecast projects the iPad will continue to dominate the category, with a 61.4% share of the global tablet market this year, based on sales of nearly 73 million units. That figure will more than double to 170 million units by 2016, or 46% of the tablet market. Gartner predicts overall tablet sales in 2012 will nearly double to 118.9 million units in 2012 from 60 million last year. Android-based tablets, including the Samsung Galaxy Tab and Amazon’s Kindle Fire, will more than double sales to 37.9 million from 17.3 million, or almost 32% share of the tablet market. Trailing far behind the iPad and Android will be Microsoft’s forthcoming Windows 8 tablet, expected to end up with just 4.1% of tablet sales by the end of 2012. "Despite PC vendors and phone manufacturers wanting a piece of the pie and launching themselves into the media tablet market, so far, we have seen very limited success outside of Apple with its iPad," stated Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner. She added that the recent launch of the new iPad, boasting a sharper screen and faster processor, suggests that things will not get any easier for competitors this year. Smaller, cheaper rivals like the Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet, which launched during the holiday season, had promising debuts but don’t pose an immediate threat to the iPad’s supremacy. The Windows 8 tablet, expected to roll out later this year, will not upend the market either. But Gartner believes the Microsoft device could get a boost from the corporate market. "IT departments will see Windows 8 as the opportunity to deploy tablets on an OS that is familiar to them and with devices offered by many enterprise-class suppliers," said Milanesi. "This means that we see Windows 8 as a strong IT-supplied offering more so than an OS with a strong consumer appeal." The research firm expects the Windows 8 tablet’s share to reach almost 12% by 2016. Gartner forecasts enterprise sales of media tablets will account for about 35% of total tablet sales sold in 2015. But these sales will not be clearly defined as traditional corporate purchases, with employees being able to get them through buy-your-own-device programs. That means that any manufacturers focused on the enterprise market will have to make sure their tablets appeal to consumers as well. BlackBerry-maker Research in Motion failed to appeal to either market last year with its release of the PlayBook tablet. The QNX platform that powers the PlayBook is only expected to capture about 2% of the tablet market this year. One major hurdle for RIM and other iPad challengers is the relative dearth of apps they offer compared to the Apple device, which has more than 200,000. Android too has been hobbled by the lack of tablet apps. Still, the Google platform is expected to gain ground on the iPad in the next four years, claiming about 37% share by 2016. That would leave it seven percentage points behind the iPad compared to a projected 30 points this year.
Irish firm Betapond is making digital signage in retail environments personally interactive for mobile Facebook users, with an assist from Intel’s Core i7 Platform for digital signage. The Betapond product uses QR codes and SMS to connect a shopper’s smartphone with digital signage in the retail environment. Using the Facebook app, brand marketers and retailers can execute a number of promotions combining the digital signage and mobile social platforms. For example, they can offer shoppers the chance to win a prize for taking a short survey, download coupons, enter a treasure hunt, etc. Customers can also complete e-commerce transactions and post social recommendations from within the store. Afterwards, the brand marketers and retailers can continue to engage with participating consumers -- and eventually their friends -- through Facebook to drive additional traffic and sales. Of course, Betapond isn’t the only company integrating social and DOOH. Prominent practitioners include LocaModa, which has brought DOOH apps for Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, and other social networks (location-based and otherwise) and a number of big DOOH networks nationwide. Last August, Visix, Inc., a digital signage software provider, unveiled a “Twitter Board” and “Twitter Bulletin” among its new DOOH options and creative services. This is just the latest in a series of DOOH adoptions for Intel, whose Audience Impression Metrics Suite has been integrated into a number of digital signage systems over the last couple of months. Late January, InWindow Outdoor announced a pilot program to create fixed “experience stations” in malls and hotel locations nationwide using Intel’s AIM. Around the same time, Provision Interactive Technologies announced that it was integrating AIM into its 3D holographic kiosk displays, and in February DS-IQ tapped AIM for its Retail Media Platform.
As previews in recent weeks have indicated, Amazon has been working on enhancing its app store business models with in-app sales functionality in order to ride one of the most lucrative waves in m-commerce. The company announced formally this week that its “In-App Purchasing” (“IAP”) service is now available as an API in apps for the Kindle Fire and the Amazon Android app store. Essentially, the new content sales features bring Amazon’s devices and app distribution mechanism in line with the Apple App Store. Users now can buy upgrades and items from within an app using Amazon’s integrated and seamless e-commerce engine. This new capability also includes subscriptions so magazines and newspapers can upsell subs from within the app rather than sell or trial a subscription at the point of first download. Amazon has delivered strong revenue per user to developers since the Kindle Fire came out, in part because Amazon maintained a tight control on the apps available and required up-front purchases. The new in-app models free developers to experiment more with freemium approaches. A number of publishers have already incorporated the API, including Disney, ZeptoLab, Glu Mobile, Conde Nast, G5 Entertainment, Dow Jones and the NY Post. In the announcement, partner G5 (“Virtual City Playground” and “MahJongg Artifacts”) said that it is already seeing higher conversions and revenues from the new model. The new lure for developers comes at a time when growth of new apps in Amazon's market may be slowing. According to a new study from Strategy analytics, only 6,000 new apps were added to Amazon's catalog in the last quarter, while 15,000 had been added towards the end of 2011 when the Kindle Fire launched. Keeping developers happy and well-financed is going to be critical as independent app stores and the rival Windows 8 platform emerge. According to the most recent research from Distimo on the top-selling apps in iOS and Android markets, over 60% of revenue from app sales are now being generated from in-app purchases.
Time Out New York has upgraded its digital platforms including a revamped Web site and new iPad and iPhone apps. The new e-commerce-enabled site allows users to buy theater tickets and book restaurant reservations as well as get daily discounts and deals through its “Offers and Experiences” section. The new iPad app is designed to serve as a personalized recommendation engine, using technology from LikeCube, a semantic analysis company that Time Out acquired last year. It will also offer editorial critics’ picks across the arts, entertainment, food and other areas. MasterCard is launch sponsor for the iPad app. The iPhone version provides arts, entertainment and venue information for both locals and visitors, and Time Out New York plans to introduce an Android app in the coming weeks. The steps come in the wake of Oakley Capital Investments Ltd. acquiring majority ownership of the Time Group last May. Since then it has launched a new site for Time Out Paris, made more than 60 digital hire and pursued strategic acquisitions and partnerships to enhance its digital business.
Mobile customers appear to be increasingly favoring browser-based shopping over apps. Research on this topic has been building to that conclusion for several years, yet most large Internet retailers are not refocusing their marketing strategies to reflect this change. Gomez Research in 2010 pointed to the likely reason for shoppers’ mobile Web preference: "When you’re doing business on the Web, every second counts." Their study demonstrated that 58% of people expect a mobile Web site to perform like a desktop Web site -- if a page load takes more than 2 seconds, 40% of shoppers are likely to abandon that site; and finally “the average impact of a 1-second delay meant a 7% reduction in conversions. For the $100,000/day ecommerce site, a one-second delay means $2.5 million in lost revenues in a year. The unique problem for mobile Web shopping is that the steps to purchasing simply take too long -- far longer than on the familiar Web. And that’s because of how mobile devices work. Just clicking a button to “add,” “delete,” or “change quantity” on the mobile Web requires sending transaction data from the shopper’s mobile device to the vendor’s server (average 3-5 seconds) via cell towers, not high-speed cables. These interim steps, long before checking out, are the challenge -- it's all about time. As Rimma Kats concluded in April, 2011: ”Mobile users expect to make sacrifices -- in content depth and its presentation -- in exchange for anyplace, anytime convenience, but the one thing they will not sacrifice is speed. So apart from finding a way to increase the speed of light, the best technical solution for this problem is eliminating the number of times a mobile customer has to wait for a server call when buying something. While apps looked like a great solution at first, it turns out that they aren’t -- at least not for mobile commerce. The reason is simply that as more people have begun to use smartphones, and more vendors have put up mobile Web sites, the practical, economic, and physical limitations have emerged -- and they are significant. A brief look at history demonstrates how speed drove innovation on the Web to such an extent that patents for speed-enhancing software (like Amazon's “1-Click” payment method) were prosecuted to the tune of multiple millions of dollars, even to be lost. A recent Wall Street Journal article declared that sales at Amazon increase by 1% for every 100 milliseconds they shave off download times! The challenge for mobile commerce is to build speedy solutions. If history supports predictions, the principle of Occam's Razor will prevail: the simplest solution will win. That points to the mobile Web -- not to an infinite number of apps. Now imagine that you could use an online cart technology that reduces the time it takes to “add,” “delete,” or “change quantity” by virtually 100% because it eliminates the need for a server call for each of those commands. This "instant-add" cart solution allows “buy” buttons to be placed virtually anywhere that a product is displayed, with no added overhead built in -- allowing for the quickest possible sale to be completed with one click and then checking out. This technology requires only familiar html and javascript, and is an incremental change that can be inserted into virtually any new or existing cart. What it means is that a customer arriving at your site on the mobile Web can see a product and click “add to cart” with no forced page change, reload or waiting time. That single click produces an immediate confirmation -- with no server call -- that the item is “in cart.” This solution forms an ideal bridge between desktop and mobile Web, as it works identically on both via the browser. This technology already exists -- and you may want to ask your favorite retailer why they have not implemented it on their mobile site.
We’re in a state of mobile transition. Pouring over some of the various pieces of mobile research this week -- of which there is a lot these days -- it struck me that mobile is moving into its next phase, which we plead not to be called Mobile 2.0. Smartphone penetration in the U.S. has finally reached 50 percent -- although higher in the 25- to-34-year-old demographic, says Nielsen -- and comScore pegs Android at half of that entire share. Latin America is on its way to more than 50 percent smartphones in a few years and in the last quarter, 24 million smartphones were shipped in China -- more than in the U.S., for the first time. More smartphones than full-featured phones are now sold in the U.S. But the number of smartphones is not just about small, high-speed processing hardware. It points to new empowerment being placed into the hands of what will be billions of consumers as new capabilities are incorporated into mobile phones. The number of NFC (near-field communications) handsets shipped is expected to grow from about 44 million last year to more than 630 million within three years, according to UK-based research firm Informa Telecoms and Media. By that time, three-quarters of the NFC handsets are projected to be smartphones -- the largest number being Androids, estimates SmartCard Trends. The swipe and tap-enabled buying capabilities built into these NFC phones will allow an easier modification in how consumers buy, or at least pay. And with smarpthones comes the need for speed -- which is growing along with the growth of mobile devices, and not just via 4G mobile networks. For example, 61 percent of American households now have Wi-Fi, according to new data from Strategy Analytics, and the U.S. does not even lead the global markets. In South Korea, 80 percent of homes have Wi-Fi, 73 percent in the U.K., 71 percent in Germany and France, 68 percent in Japan and Canada, and 61 percent in Italy. This growth of mobile capability will change behavior as more consumers expect to do more on their own time frame in their own location at any given moment. The challenge and opportunity for marketers in this evolution is to attempt to stay a step or two ahead of the consumer -- who tends to be a leap ahead of companies in their wireless behaviors while many businesses in various parts of the world work toward solutions. For example, on recent trips to South America and China, leaders of large companies and businesses of various categories told me they intend to embrace mobile in a big way moving forward and planning mobile investments for short and long-term growth. Many businesses in the U.S. have a similar viewpoint and approach, but still can manage to be somewhat surprised by mobile consumer behavior. After all, how many retailers and brands accurately anticipated the amount of shopping and transactions conducted via tablets over the holidays? (Based on a recent MediaPost mobile conference, not many). The bottom line is that money is not only moving to mobile -- it will be moving through mobile. Lots of money. The value of mobile commerce transactions is projected to grow 97 percent a year for the next three years, according to a recent study by KPMG. That’s almost 100 percent annual growth in one category. Comparing this percentage increase to the mobile marketing budget percentage growth of any business that you know might help explain why mobile consumers are leading the way. Mobile spending around the world is expected to reach $945 billion in three years. Spending by SMS is forecast to drop from 75 percent of transactions to 52 percent, says IE Market Research, driven in part by the adoptions of NFC technology. Another indicator of the growth of mobile also is the slowed growth of PCs, now estimated by IDC to be 9 percent this year, as more consumers spend more time on wireless devices. In South America for example, 27 percent of IT professionals have completely replaced their laptops with an iPad, according to IDC. The next stage in mobile is not about one new thing, such as NFC, ubiquitous Wi-Fi, mobile wallets, the size of transactions or more sophisticated mobile users. It’s about all of these things -- and more -- combined.
OMGPOP and Instagram have clearly set the stage for the rebirth of the bubble, but what does that mean for the rest of the digital media and Internet industry? More importantly, what happens if the bubble pops? The bubble in 2000 was based on inflated valuations from companies that amassed eyeballs and had yet to recognize a viable revenue stream. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? OMGPOP and Instagram have been able to establish a strong base for eyeballs, which they have not yet monetized on a mass level -- but the Internet is now in a much more valuable position than it was in 2000. The Web has been woven into the very fabric of daily life -- unlike 2000, when it was still an early-adopter medium. Mobile has driven much of that adoption, along with the additional advent of the tablet (led by the iPad). This bubble may feel bigger, but it’s a stronger bubble, and it won’t be nearly as easy to pop. And the sluggish recovery of the economy is being led, in many ways, by technology. The Internet is driving that bus! Jobs are being created, and revenue is being discovered by the ecosystem of these companies, mostly driven by advertising. That realization leads me to my point. There’s only so much quality inventory available on the Web, and what these platforms are doing is creating premium inventory that needs to be monetized -- whether it will be monetized by what we currently know as ads, or not. The existing model of banners and sponsorships will not be the end game in online advertising, but they will get us over the hump of people thinking this is a bubble. The fact is that the current model of ads on websites is viable because they drive engagement. The recurring theme I‘ve been addressing around viewable ads is rooted in the idea that there is finite premium inventory. That inventory is what we consider to be the most valuable, and that is what we can charge the most for, regardless of the model. The opportunity to deliver a marketing message to a highly engaged consumer is a valuable one, and both OMGPOP and Instagram have figured out how to create that opportunity. Whether they have the final solution or not (hint: I don’t think they do yet), they are clearly on the path. You can argue that the valuation for these companies might have been high, but there is value there, and it’s up to the buyers to establish the value in their own terms. It’s not for the outside world to decide. In buying OMGPOP, Zynga acquired the team that develops games, able to solve the problems facing any game developer looking to generate reach and engagements. This team had figured out how to make a competitive game more of a partnership, which drives higher engagement. Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram makes slightly less sense to me, because these were users that, for the most part, Facebook already had. If anything, Facebook just wanted to own the service as another entry point into its landscape for the average consumer. The less you have to let users leave your service, the better it is for you. In both situations, the buyers now have the opportunity to “own” the experience of the consumer, meaning they have the consumer from beginning to end. The Draw Something game is a self-contained environment; photo-sharing alongside the social platform is a self-contained environment, as well. If you own the entire experience, you can own the session, and you can effectively surround the user with a more immersive marketing experience too. The New York Times pioneered this model many years ago, and others have extended it. Even basic retargeting with banners speaks to that effect. This surround model -- along with the ability to own the consumer’s online experience -- is the future of online marketing and advertising, That’s why, in my opinion, there may be a bubble at play, but it’s a tough bubble. This is Hubba Bubba, this ain’t no wimpy Big League Chew being used to blow it up. This is true growth in an environment where it is needed. So let the funding flow into these companies, let’s continue trying to push the envelope with them, and see where it leads!
In the history of this newsletter, we’ve covered everything from renewable tech marketing to corporate sustainability efforts as part of a consumer marketing plan. We know how to get consumers to want to participate in green efforts, the advantages and disadvantages of e-commerce, and how to get consumers to donate to a green cause. But one question that remains: how can agencies themselves help to make the marketing process greener? Going green means eliminating timelines, decks, portfolios, and presentations; cutting back on electricity and equipment while increasing recycling programs and employee awareness; and, best of all, increasing interactivity and digital content within and outside of the agency itself. The below is by no means a comprehensive list. But, one hopes, it will provide some insight as to how we as marketers can work together to make marketing greener for us, and then for our clients. After all, change starts from the ground up.