edo is building out an advertising channel where a swipe of a credit or a debit card becomes the signal to serve up ads. The swipe at the point of sale (PoS) activates Geocommerce Offers, a mobile advertising platform that combines purchase and location data to target ads and offers in real-time. The targeted coupons and offers are based on historic purchases, spending behavior and location. Two banks will pilot the product, which should roll out within the next 45 days. One bank recently signed on as a partner, while the other has worked with edo's card link system that connects banks and advertisers. The Geocommerce technology does not rely on geolocation targeting technology. The transaction through the point-of-sale (PoS) terminal becomes the signal. It does, however, tap into audience segments, purchase behavior and purchase history to serve up offers and discounts. And it allows merchants to serve up consumers limited-time or time-constraint offers that might support impulse buys. A customer can walk into a Starbucks and pay for the coffee, for example -- and before he reaches for the door a text message or email provides $5 off a burger at Bistro, a nearby restaurant, when the bill totals $15 or more. Consumers who take advantage of the deal will receive the refund after paying with a debit or a credit card linked to participating financial institutions or banks. Geocommerce links into edo's core platform launched last year. Jeff Fagel, VP of marketing at edo, said the company supports a handful of banks and more than 150 merchants from retail to dinning to service, such as Verizon, Quiznos, and The Body Shop. "By the end of summer, we'll have 15 million active cardholders in the network," he said. "In Q3, the total will reach 25 million; and Q4, more than 30 million. These are cards in the process of being activated and partners being integrated." Fagel believes Geocommerce can do for offline merchants what search did for online. Retailers are trying to solve the instant gratification one-off mentality that Groupon created, and turn it into a longer-term relationship, according to Emery Skolfield, senior director of ecommerce at The Body Shop, which launched a campaign two weeks ago. It's scheduled to run three months. The Body Shop's promotion provides a cash-back offer, targeting consumers who purchased from the retailer or other brands that align with the company's products. "The bank cards make it an easy form of interaction, because consumers usually use their card when they shop," Skolfield said. "And when they do they get cash back." Promotions will vary by retailer. Each week, consumers could receive between three and five offers from their participating bank. edo connects banks with advertisers to target the offers through online banking portal, email, text messages or mobile application. Consumers are bucketed into segments based on spending behavior. The offers might come from nail salons or restaurants. The ad platform works off a pay per performance model. Fagel said a national retail chain ran a program that returned dividends. Banks with active cardmembers have seen a 20% use in cards. One retailer offered a promotion giving consumers $1 off each $7 spent. That retailer lifted its average transaction amount from $8.30 to $11.43. About 2,500 new customers participated in the retailer's offer, and 70% of them returned within the following 60 days. Existing customers increased their buying frequency by 25%.
Add Facebook to the list of big Internet and mobile players with their own app storefront. The social network Wednesday announced plans to launch an “App Center” in the coming weeks that will serve as a central hub for finding apps like Pinterest, Spotify, and Viddy as well as lesser-known titles that qualify for inclusion. Through the App Center, Facebook will also allow developers for the first time to offer paid apps. “This is a simple-to-implement payment feature that lets people pay a flat fee to use an app on Facebook.com,” stated a post Wednesday on the Facebook Developer Blog. Previously, the company only allowed publishers to monetize apps through in-app purchases like virtual goods. Whether an app is listed in the App Center will be determined through criteria including user ratings and engagement, with “well-designed apps people will enjoy” prominently displayed. To that end, Facebook issued a set of guidelines to help ensure app quality such as having an easy-to-use interface and a clear distinction between ads and content. Each app will have its own detail page including common features like screenshots, a cover image, category, and a brief description of how it works. But Facebook noted that creating a detail page does not guarantee it will end up in the App Center. It will review app submissions, and if initially rejected, the company says it will explain why and provide suggestions on what to change before resubmitting. The App Center will be accessible from Facebook.com as well as its companion mobile site and iOS and Android apps. From the mobile version of the App Cener, users can browse apps compatible with their device, and then be directed to Apple’s App Store or Google Play to download the app. Facebook said it would give preference to apps submitted before May 18.
Internet radio listening is surging, according to new data unveiled this week by TargetSpot, which operates a digital audio ad network, and Pandora, the leading online audio platform. The TargetSpot data is drawn from the Digital Audio Benchmark and Trend Study, based on a survey of adult U.S. broadband households conducted from January 7-17 of this year by Park Associates. The survey showed that Internet radio has penetrated to 42% of adult U.S. broadband households, up 8% from 33% in 2011. Within this cohort, 42% are households with children, 64% own their own homes, and 22% have a household income of $100,000 per year or more -- up 29% from 2011. Digital audio listeners also display significant engagement with the medium, with 80% listening from one to three hours per day. Increased listening is facilitated in part by the proliferation of mobile devices with Internet connectivity: among Internet radio listeners, tablet ownership increased 87% from 2011-2012 and 48% are spending more time listening on their tablets, while smartphone ownership increased 22% and 38% are spending more time listening on their phones. In-car listening is also increasing, with 14% of digital audio listeners using an Internet radio player in their automobiles. The TargetSpot-Park study also showed substantial recall and response rates for online audio advertising. Here, 58% of digital audio listeners said they recalled having seen or heard an Internet radio ad in the last month, up from 52% in 2011. Among listeners who recalled ads, 44% said they responded to an Internet radio ad, up from 40% in 2011. Ad support is clearly important to Internet radio’s viability, as 86% of listeners say they do not pay for digital audio content. Meanwhile, Pandora released data showing that its online audio service now constitutes 6% of all radio listening, with 1.06 billion listener hours in April 2012, up 87% from 566 million hours in April 2011. Active listeners numbered 51.9 million at the end of April 2012, up 52% from 34 million in April 2011. Separate data released by Arbitron in March of this year shows that broadcast radio reaches 241 million listeners per week, representing 93% of the total U.S. population, while Arbitron data from January suggests average total listening of about 14.6 billion hours per month.
Cadillac is radically changing how the automobile instrument panel looks and functions, making it less like an instrument cluster and more like the touch-sensitive screen of an iPad. A new information/entertainment platform called CUE (Cadillac User Experience) that will be standard in forthcoming XTS and ATS cars includes a redesign of both the screen on the control pillar to the right of the driver and the usual gauges behind the steering wheel. Among other things, the CUE system allows drivers to change the layout of those gauges because they will be entirely virtual, and even are designed to tumble out of a virtual abyss onto the console surface when the ignition key is depressed. The entertainment and GPS screen on the center console is also customizable, and was designed to function like, say, an iPhone or Droid. The automaker says the CUE center screen and control panel represent the first automotive use of capacitive touch that brings in familiar multi-touch gestures. The system pairs with up to 10 mobile devices. Cadillac is giving buyers of the forthcoming XTS sedan a new iPad -- a physical one -- to help them learn the system, and will launch an app to tout CUE. These are two elements of an array of technology and services the General Motors luxury division is offering to support the rollout of CUE. The iPad that comes with the XTS will also have the MyCadillac App and OnStar RemoteLink. There is also a microsite with videos showing how the system works. The automaker sent out 25 or so "Connected Customer Experts" to dealerships around the country to train sales staff on how to talk about CUE to prospects. Caddie is doing likewise at its customer assistance services center in Austin, Texas. Jim Vurpillat, Cadillac global marketing director, explains to Marketing Daily that rather like an iPad, the platform is meant to be plug and play. "We have this term we like to use," he says. "It's as simple and easy to use as you need it to be and as technically sophisticated as you want it to be." Vurpillat says that like a smartphone, the center entertainment and info screen uses capacitive touch, active feedback (which creates a Droid-like tactile pulse when the user selects a virtual button or icon), and proximity sensing (which allows the screen to reflect one function at a time when in use because it brings buttons and choices back into view automatically when the user's finger draws near.) He says the effect of the enhancements -- including the way that the 12.3-inch reconfigurable instrument cluster behind the steering wheel launches from a black screen -- "is very dramatic; there's a little bit of theatre to it." Some of the advertising for the XTS will focus on that light show aspect of the instrument cluster as well as on its tablet-like functionality. "It's definitely one of the the highlight features. We will run TV spots that talk about the ease of use -- the simplicity of it," he says. One spot will start by making a comparison between the button-laden console of a competitive vehicle, and then transition to a "Now count the number of buttons on your tablet," message. Says Vurpillat, "It focuses right on CUE and comes back to the correlation that CUE is like a tablet for your car." He adds that another forthcoming spot will talk about how a user can change screens, controls and perspectives with finger gestures and swipes.
“TMI” or not, certain brands will be delighted to learn that one in five moms (born between 1977 and 1994) admit to consuming media in the bathroom. Even more startling, 12% of American moms report using their smartphones during sex, according to new research from Meredith’s Parents Network. Whether they’re checking Facebook, streaming TV or reading magazines, it’s clear that moms are developing entirely new relationships with media -- and increasingly relying on their smartphones to do it. “Today’s moms are media omnivores,” according to Carey Witmer, EVP and president of Meredith’s Parents Network, which encompasses Parents, American Baby, FamilyFun and Ser Padres. “Controlling their voracious diet is so important to them that they are constantly creating new rules about how and when media intermingles with their busy lives via their various devices, screens and networks.” Meanwhile, while more than 8 in 10 women are on Facebook, Meredith found that many are conflicted about the social network. In fact, 57% of millennial moms feel that Facebook is a waste of their time, although 89% describe the time they spend on the site as “me time.” What’s more, 38% of moms admitted that the overly personal information others share in their status updates is annoying, while 22% are turned off by Facebook “friends” who use the platform as a political soapbox. Overall, 81% of moms said shopping took up more of their smartphone time. While much has changed, however, moms still spend an average of 16 hours a week watching television. What are they watching? Well, 41% report viewing live TV events -- which is actually down from 55% in 2010. Streaming, however, is on the rise, as 23% of moms report streaming television -- up from 16% in 2010. Back to their mobile habits: moms report keeping an average of 13 apps on their phones, while two-thirds say that less than half of their apps are for their kids.
In a move that further signals its intentions to challenge Apple and Google in the cross-platform content market, Samsung has acquired longtime mobile streaming company mSpot. Calling the company a “leading mobile cloud-based content service provider," Samsung is buying into one of the earliest providers of mobile movie and music content on cell phones, dating back to its inception in 2004. According to Samsung, the mSpot services will be integrated into forthcoming Samsung devices. mSpot was among the first media services to provide full-length movies on mobile platforms, even in the pre-smartphone feature phone era. Currently the company offers mSpot Music, a cloud-based player that enables users to upload their own libraries for access on phone and tablet devices. mSpot Movies is a film rental service that allows cross-platform access to content from major studios. Samsung has been making moves in recent months toward developing content services that challenge Apple iTunes and Google Play. Late last year, the company hired former AOL and Google executive David Eun to lead global media strategy. Earlier this year, Samsung partnered with OpenX to create an ad network. Samsung and Apple are two perennial contenders for the lead in mobile handset market share. Samsung has been developing the Galaxy brand of Android-powered tablets, but its TVs have a living room presence that Apple does not.
According to a new piece in its Mobile Intel series of reports, Millennial Media says that the finance category grew exponentially throughout last year to end up being the top vertical worldwide in 2011 on its ad network. With a growth of 300% in spending throughout the year, the category raced past perennial leaders like retail and restaurants and entertainment. Insurance was responsible for 42% of the mix, followed by 28% to banking, 16% to financial services and 20% to credit cards and services. Millennial’s research comes from its own ad network as well as data from research partner comScore. In my mind, this is just the starting gun. The accelerated use of m-banking, m-commerce and eventually m-payments in the next year will make mobile an indispensable channel for marketers. Mobile enthusiasts persistently whine about the spending gap on this platform -- how consumers use so outpaces ad spend. Lord’s sake. Were these folks not around five or ten years ago when the same complaints were made about ad spend online? Sure, ad money follows eyeballs, to a degree. That is what TV is about. But on interactive platforms, where direct marketing still overwhelms brand plays, money really follows where consumers actually spend. When consumer spending begins to occur on devices in the same way it did online within the last decade, advertisers ignore it at their peril. The most striking aspect of the finance vertical is its laser focus on lead generation. While some bank ads are moving people to their own banking apps and toward increased foot traffic to branches, credit cards are as usual favoring broad brand awareness. Millennial finds that 70% of the campaigns it is running in this vertical cite lead-gen as the goal. Only 16% claim they are after sustained market presence, 7% foot traffic and only 4% brand awareness. To be sure, the fact that insurance services are the leading advertisers in this category in some way determines the heavy lead-gen focus. Millennial says there is some difference between most world markets and the Euro market, where greater emphasis was placed on sustained presence. But overall, the finance category is aiming at the lead. According to Millennial finance, advertisers most often used content (34%) as their targeting approach, followed by tactical (27%) targeting mainly of devices and local (24%). On the back end, it is not surprising, given the lead-gen focus that the post-click tactics are aimed at conversion. While only 31% of mobile ads on the Millennial network move users to placing a call, 51% of finance ads do. But most often -- 54% of the time -- these units are aiming for enrollment of some kind, versus 36&% of all mobile campaigns. As one would expect, Millennial is issuing this report as a way to argue that financial advertisers should be spending more on mobile advertising and to diversify their campaigns into higher-funnel opportunities. As mobile banking becomes one of the more popular uses of smartphones, the entire banking sector will need to push ever more people to account management apps and to maintain a presence on the platform to remind people to use them. Millennial says it has seen users gravitate toward the known and trusted brand when making their insurance and financial services choices, suggesting that there is much more to be done on the branding side to grab people as they assemble a consideration set. Obviously, with this report Millennial is both detecting and trying to get in front of a significant shift in mobile media spend that will come as a result of the m-commerce and m-payment juggernaut. Years ago, I recall a number of analysts insisting that the real money will start coming to mobile marketing when you start seeing people manage their finances and spend money from their phones on e-commerce. When consumer dollars start flowing through these devices, the stakes go way up and the business case for putting advertising in that path become too obvious to ignore. That is pretty much what is starting to happen now. Millennial’s report is a good bellwether of what we will see in coming years, especially as m-payments kick in. Will the brand money move here in the way that ad networks and publishers would like? Well, maybe. M-payments and mobile wallets especially will be a good incentive for the partnered credit card companies and banks to maintain presence. We are twenty years into Web advertising, and the lament over the lack of branding dollars seems as loud now as I remember it in 1999. But whatever the campaign goals and the tactics, if the last decade has taught us anything, it is that money follows money.
Mobile open rates are rising faster than expected. If this trend continues, these rates will overtake opens on webmail and desktop email clients by the end of the year, or even as soon as this summer. Here’s what I see as the three big implications of the boom in mobile email: The explosion of devices presents senders with a design quandary. Exactly what creative should be sent to a given recipient? Should you send creative optimized for a mobile device? A careful review of which devices individuals are viewing your messages on will make the decision easier. For most email programs, there are two kinds of subscribers: a large group that views your emails only on one environment and a small group that views on multiple device types over a period of time. For the “single device” recipients, send creative optimized for the chosen environment. Marketers must rethink conventional wisdom about the perfect time to send an email. This has always been a topic of debate around the marketing water cooler. Having said that, the most common tactic is timing an email to get to the inbox just as subscribers were getting to work so the email would be sitting right on or near the top, ready to capture their full attention. That may not be the best strategy today. Armed with our mobile phones, we’re performing email triage anywhere, anytime. We clear out our inbox the moment we wake up, and reply to emails while using the restroom or lounging on the couch. However, how many people are actually shopping the minute they wake up? The answer to “when to send” may depend on way more variables than every before. Marketers need to do more analysis of their opens, clicks and conversion rates to optimize send times. Some of the most sophisticated marketers are varying send times based on individual subscriber behavior. Mobile also presents an opportunity for marketers to acquire new subscribers and send more targeted messaging. Marketers have been experimenting with mobile by placing SMS and QR code signups in various actual locations, with mixed results. An alternative approach is to offer an in-store incentive to subscribe to offers with directions to a mobile-optimized site (ideally one with a short URL). We may also see dynamic emails on mobile devices that custom-tailor an offer based on a subscriber’s exact location (initially based on IP geo-location). It’s exciting to see how smartphones are shaping how we engage with email today. I believe it will have profound effects on the way we think about and implement email marketing in the near and long term. Now I just need to figure out how to get my emails to render well in my Google Glasses.
My daughter, the world traveler, pulled out her Apple iPhone and FaceTimed me from a restaurant in Tel Aviv this morning; my time 5:30 a.m. in California, and her time about 10 hours later. She's visiting, for the second time, acting as tour guide for my mother. Our first FaceTime experience spanning continents began when I sat down at my computer to read email this morning. The top one from her read: "I tried to FaceTime you, but it didn't work. Are you awake?" So I turned on the Wi-Fi access for my iPhone, wrote back, and asked her to try again. It worked. She held up the iPhone and panned the area so I could see the surroundings. Before arriving at the Tel Aviv restaurant, part of an old converted train station with shops, my daughter took a walk on the beach. Some of the beaches had areas for swimming, but regulated by gender with alternate days for men and women. After marveling at the fact that I had just connected with my daughter face-to-face from half a world away through FaceTime, I thought about the lack of Wi-Fi access at public locations in the United States -- and how an increase would spur search, display and other types of ad sales. Never mind smartphones -- tablet use would increase in the United States if more restaurants and businesses could provide public Wi-Fi access and prompt the rise of search and display ad targeting. My daughter told me it's common for consumer businesses in Israel to provide public Wi-Fi access. In the United States, consistent connectivity to Wi-Fi would increase the number of tablets used in stores. JiWire's Q1 Insights Report released earlier this week discovered that consumers In the U.S. use public Wi-Fi from mobile devices like smartphones, 31%, and tablets, 14%, but laptop connections fell to 55% from 70% last year. JiWire, which serves ads to more than 30,000 Wi-Fi locations in North America, says that nine out of 10 consumers believe the advantages of choosing public Wi-Fi rather than 3G/4G on smartphones include better connection speed, at 55%. About 37% of respondents said they use public Wi-Fi to avoid data plan charges, 17% use it for streaming content, and 7% use it to avoid laptop tethering. And only 10% of mobile users indicate that they do not use public Wi-Fi, opting instead to connect with 3G/4G and/or exclusively use broadband cards. Technology -- what a wonderful tool.