Facebook's app and Web site were used by nearly three-quarters of U.S. Android smartphone users in March, making it the most popular social-networking property on the Google platform. New data from NPD Group also finds Facebook has maintained its dominance on Android over the last six months. Separate research released by comScore last week also found that Facebook was the top social property among Android apps and the second-most-visited site and app overall behind Google across Android, iOS and BlackBerry, with an audience of 78 million, giving it reach of 80%. The NPD study also showed Twitter was a distant second to Facebook on Android phones, with 23% and 18% reach, respectively, in the Web and apps on Android phones. Google+ is struggling to gain traction even among Android users, with 16% reach in the Web, and between 10% and 15% reach in apps for the past nine months. How much are Android users on Facebook? They spend 15 minutes a day, and almost 470 minutes a month. That’s about half the time users spend on a mobile game, but NPD says the fluid nature of networking apps translates into frequent dips, with Facebook users opening the app an average of six times a day. At the same time, the Facebook Web site made up 10% of all page views among Android users in March. Facebook has acknowledged in regulatory filings leading up to its IPO that it has made hardly any money from its massive mobile audience of 500 million monthly active users. Only recently has it begun to extend advertising to its mobile presence, in the form of Sponsored Stories ads in users’ news feeds. “Ultimately, Facebook’s mobile success rests on delivering compelling mobile app and Web experiences, and monetizing on these experiences,” said Linda Barrabee, research director, NPD Connected Intelligence. “In order to do this, Facebook needs to ensure that monetization efforts via advertising enhance and do not disrupt the mobile social consumer experience.” NPD’s Connected Intelligence service tracks consumer usage across devices, broadband access and content.
About one in five mobile consumers pursued some type of m-commerce activity, like comparing prices or buying digital content, based on a mobile ad they saw, according to a new study commissioned by the Interactive Advertising Bureau. The research, conducted by On Device Research, involved asking a group of 260 mobile users to keep track of their m-commerce activity for a week (via their handsets) and then complete a follow-up survey about their activities and attitudes toward mobile shopping and advertising. Survey participants owned either a smartphone or a feature phone and were demographically representative of the U.S. population. Each was paid $10 to take part. Mobile advertising was the second-most-common factor prompting m-commerce activity (22%) after citing mobile as “the easiest way” to do things (24%) like find product information or a store location, buying physical or digital goods or checking status on an auction site. Other top reasons for turning to m-commerce were “something I planned to do” (21%), boredom/filling time (21%), finding the best deal (20%) and researching for a future purchase (16%). The follow-up survey showed that mobile shopping is mainly about convenience and trying to get the best deal. Only a small proportion of consumers are actually buying stuff through their phones. Researching product information was the most popular m-commerce task, with 28% doing so, followed by searching for a store location (18%), price comparison (12%), digital purchase (9%), physical purchase (5%), checking status on auction sites (4%), and using mobile coupons (3%). Apps and other digital goods are the most common type of purchase, with about three-quarters (76%) of m-commerce users doing so through iTunes, Google Play or other digital outlets. Clothing, entertainment activities (e.g., restaurants and movies) and consumer electronics were among other top purchase categories. People were more likely to buy physical goods if using a branded retail app and were confident that the transaction was secure and protected. Nearly half (47%) of mobile commerce actions took place at home and within the home, and 61% take place in the living room. More than half (53%) said they had stopped an in-store purchase as a result of using their phone. About one in four (38%) found a better price elsewhere, 30% found a better price online, and 21% found a better item online, among other reasons. Taking a closer look at advertising, the survey showed that 70% view mobile ads as a “personal invitation” from brands, while 30% saw them as a “personal invasion.” That flies in the face of much prior research showing that people view mobile ads as intrusive because of the more personal nature of handheld devices compared to computers. A study earlier this year by Ball State’s Institute for Mobile Media Research, for example, found that 70% of college students find mobile ads annoying, and about 75% were "concerned" or "concerned a little" about getting mobile ads. The On Device survey framed the question on mobile ads as a stark choice between personal “invitation” or “invasion,” which may have contributed to the heavy pro-advertising response. Half (51%) of those who saw ads as an invitation wanted ads they clicked on to allow them to browse the brand or company's broader product offerings. The same was true for 40% of respondents overall. Asked about the ads targeted to them based on anonymous data, such as location and age and gender, 30% said they liked ads that are relevant, and 27% said they are okay -- but only if permission-based. When asked how mobile ads could be more relevant, people said they were wiling to share information about location, favorite brands, and sites they have visited -- but only in the range of 24% to 28%. As far as future m-commerce enhancements, nearly a third (31%) said they would like to receive alerts about products they want. Roughly the same percentage would like to pay for a purchase by phone and pick it up in a store, have a better browsing experience, and participate in a mobile loyalty program that includes paying by phone.
Twitter has joined the growing roster of Web companies that have promised to honor users' browser-based do-not-track requests. The micro-blogging service said on Thursday that it will refrain from collecting data about users who have activated do-not-track when they visit outside sites with "tweet" buttons. Twitter informed users about its support for do-not-track in a blog post about a new feature that will recommend followers to users based on people's activity throughout the Web. "We receive visit information when sites have integrated Twitter buttons or widgets, similar to what many other Web companies -- including LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube -- do when they’re integrated into Web sites," Twitter says in a post explaining its recommendation engine. "By recognizing which accounts are frequently followed by people who visit popular sites, we can recommend those accounts to others who have visited those sites within the last 10 days." Twitter says that users can opt out of the new feature by activating a do-not-track header or through their Twitter account settings. "If you have DNT enabled in your browser settings, we will not collect the information that enables this feature, so you won’t see any tailored suggestions," the company wrote. "We hope that our support of DNT highlights its importance as a privacy tool for consumers and creates even more interest and wider adoption across the Web." Twitter's decision to honor browser-based do-not-track requests was announced at an Internet Week New York event on Thursday by Ed Felten, the chief technologist at the Federal Trade Commission. Since December 2010, the FTC has been urging the ad industry to offer users an easy way to opt out of online tracking by third-parties that have presences on sites users visit. News that Twitter won't collect data from people who have activated do-not-track was generally well-received by privacy advocates, as well as some lawmakers. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) said the announcement "proves that exercising respect for people’s choices on how, when and where to have their information collected is something that responsible, competitive companies can do." Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) tweeted his support for the company, calling it an "industry leader" and urging other companies to "give consumers right 2 say NO 2 info collection." For at least 10 years, ad networks have offered opt-out links that users can click on to communicate that they don't want to receive behaviorally targeted ads. But those opt-outs are cookie-based, which means they get deleted when users erase their cookies. By contrast, a browser-based header would remain active until consumers affirmatively turn it off. The ad industry doesn't require companies to stop collecting data about users who opted out of behavioral advertising, only to cease sending them targeted ads. The self-regulatory group Digital Advertising Alliance said in February that it will require members to honor the do-not-track headers, but there's not yet a consensus between the FTC, Web companies and privacy advocates about what types of data can be collected from users who don't wish to be tracked. FTC officials have said that an effective do-not-track system requires companies to cease collecting most -- though not all -- types of data from consumers who don't want to be tracked. FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz recently told lawmakers that he envisions exceptions for purposes of fraud detection or frequency capping, but is wary that an exception for market research might prove too broad. Browser manufacturers only recently began offering users do-not-track headers that can be activated. The header communicates users' preferences to Web companies, but it's up to Web companies to decide whether to honor the headers. In March, Yahoo said it intends to follow do-not-track headers. Currently, around 12% of desktop users of Firefox in the U.S. have activated a do-not-track header on a PC, Mozilla's privacy head Alex Fowler said on Thursday. Mobile adoption is even higher; more than 30% of U.S. Firefox mobile users have activated the setting, Fowler said.
National CineMedia, which operates the country’s largest cinema advertising network, is launching three new cinema advertising and entertainment products for the big screen, as well as mobile and online. The first new NCM ad offering comes courtesy of a deal with Funny Or Die, the comedy Web site founded by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay. The partnership offers advertisers the opportunity to integrate their brands into customized comedy content that will appear as part of NCM’s “FirstLook” pre-show package of entertainment and advertising. It can also be extended online to NCM’s Web site and mobile platform. NCM also announced that it will begin distributing sponsored programming from Vevo, which maintains a library of music video and entertainment content, connecting brands with movie audiences through music content in the theater and online. Finally, NCM also introduced “A Taste of the Movies,” a new pre-show advertising feature in which celebrity chefs recreate dishes from well-known movies, offering further opportunities for brand integration. In November of last year, NCM launched a new vertical mobile ad network targeting movie patrons in partnership with Mobile Theory. “The Mobile Movies Network,” operated by NCM Media Networks, includes both mobile sites and apps targeting key audience segments at the local city and DMA level, with additional segmentation available based on handset and device, carrier and daypart targeting. It includes a new mobile ad product called Tap2 -- a mobile banner that expands when the user taps it to reveal response mechanisms, including a video player, a map to nearby retail locations, or coupons and promotional codes. NCM’s “Movie Night Out” mobile app, also launched in 2011, has been downloaded over 1 million times, according to the company -- offering moviegoers reviews, trailers, show times, theater locations, ticketing by Fandango and social integration with Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare, among others. The company recently expanded its mobile marketing capabilities with the introduction of CinemaSync, which uses image and audio recognition technology to sync with other cinema advertising elements -- including digital lobby displays, posters, and concession materials -- to deliver a variety of content, coupons and other deals and offers to theater patrons on their mobile phones.
While advertisers have been slow to invest in a tablet platform that seems to have even fewer creative and distribution standards than the mobile market itself, both Amazon and the news aggregator Pulse are preparing to offer advertising products for their respective venues, according to separate reports. AdAge.com reports that Amazon is pitching agencies on placing ads at the Kindle Fire welcome screen for an entry price of $600,000. That hefty price tag would cover two months of exposure as well as placement on Amazon’s ad-subsidized “Special Offers” devices. Amazon would not comment on the report, but the pitch may well involve an unannounced Kindle Fire that follows the model Amazon set forth in its “Special Offers” Kindle units, which sold at a lower price in exchange for running ad messages in the Kindle’s screensaver mode. In another tablet-related ad initiative, the popular news aggregator Pulse for iOS and Android is advertising for a sales executive, according to TechCrunch. Based in New York, the account exec will be charged with selling innovative modes of promotion for clients. “We are building innovative and disruptive ways of empowering brands to share their content and tell their story in a way that’s natural and native to Pulse,” reads the job post. “We’re not selling standard units, we’re reinventing what marketing can be and should be on mobile devices.” Much like Flipbook, Pulse has been cultivating more direct relationships with major media providers in order to present their feeds of content in more appealing ways. It features content from The Atlantic, Discover, The New Yorker, Huffington Post, TIME and Wall Street Journal, among others. Flipbook leveraged these content relationships into advertising partnerships where full-screen ads were placed between the pages of a specific media company’s reformatted feed. When TechCrunch inquired about the post, Pulse CEO Akshay Kothari only said that the ads in the Pulse model will resemble the content quality in the app itself. Pulse presents its content in a series of tiered thumbnails from specific brands. It remains among the most popular apps across most of the mobile and tablet platforms on which it appears. Pulse was among the earliest of the aggregator apps on mobile platforms. Originally a paid app, it moved to a free model in 2010 in order to grow scale, but it has not revealed its ultimate business model until now.
A few weeks ago, Adweek brightened my morning with a banner headline: “Do Mobile Ads Still Suck?” As one of the world’s few ECDs focused exclusively on mobile, I took it personally. I spit out my coffee and shook my fist in rage…and ultimately conceded that yes, many mobile ads do still suck. Why is that? First, most ads suck, period. Any ad, in any medium. You don’t believe me? Turn on your TV. This doesn’t excuse mobile, but it does provide context. Second, most mobile ads that you see were not lovingly designed for mobile devices. The typical mobile ad creation process goes something like this: someone takes a Web banner, and scales it down by half. Boom. Done! Unfortunately, the layout that made so much sense in the larger format -- the type treatment, the image choice, and the call to action -- s now a bunch of crunched, little pixels fighting for attention. Plenty of mobile creative best practices have been published -- discussing everything from font size and logo placement to spacing the buttons to accommodate wide-fingered Americans. If you work in mobile, I recommend that you review them. However, even these so-called guidelines miss the real point. Most mobile ads weren’t conceived to deliver value via the mobile channel. Mobile is a platform for delivering appropriate messages, content, and offers, and engaging the audience in a meaningful dialogue. It isn’t just another place to stick an ad. (That’s what fresh fruit is for, silly.) Because of its inherent nature, mobile has the potential to be more relevant and impactful than any other medium -- more than all of the others combined, actually. For example, mobile can take advantage of location (only if the user agrees -- we’re not Big Brother here). When a customer visiting the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue views a Web site on a mobile device, we can serve that user an offer for, say, a competitive Dell notebook. We can target airport Wi-Fi networks on Valentine’s Day with ads reminding business travelers to visit www.1800flowers.com before they get on the plane. We can help beer marketers reach mobile users at home -- yes, you are not the only one who uses your mobile phone at home -- with ads synchronized to the football game they are watching on TV. What these examples have in common is relevance. As we all know, the difference between well-received and poorly received advertising is whether you perceive the ad is speaking to you. In advertising school, they teach aspiring creatives that when writing copy they should imagine they are talking to a specific person. Mobile essentially allows that to happen. It’s the difference between shouting at a crowd and whispering into an individual’s ear -- an individual about whose need-state we have some inferential knowledge. If you were to design a medium from scratch, you would be hard-pressed to come up with one that is more perfect for reaching and winning over an audience than mobile. Mobile makes it easier than ever to say something relevant, but you just need to take the time to think about what to say. Great mobile ads begin with a great mobile strategy. Beyond their relevance, mobile ads can be as interactive and transactional as we want them to be. Users can search, sort, compare, and buy. They can sign up for info and alerts (just keep the forms brief). They can do all of this from wherever they are, spontaneously, with just a few taps of their fingers (or in the near future, by voice command). So if you have seen some mobile ads that suck -- or, ahem, done some -- don’t worry. History has proven that it takes a while for an advertising medium to find its way. (Think back to those static brochureware Web sites you built in the ‘90s.) If you think about your audience and the unique ways that mobile can address their needs -- and develop creative that makes each consumer feel as if you’re talking to him or her -- then one day you too will be able to hold up your mobile ad and proudly proclaim, “Hey, this doesn’t suck!” Mark Silber is the executive creative director of Joule, a global mobile marketing agency in the WPP group.
Speaking at the OMMA Video conference, Viacom Media Networks’ EVP/CRO Colleen Rush identified three categories that draw people in to social TV: the ability to communicate, check comments, and consume content. The “Three C’s,” as Rush puts it, are the driving force behind social TV. Watching a TV show opens up new channels for communication – both online and with friends in person. Others enjoy checking comments because it adds depth to the content of a TV show. Social TV also allows users to discover new shows easier. If they see their friends talking about a show, they are more likely to watch. With all of the social TV possibilities, Rush said, “consumers are still navigating a lot of these opportunities.” Social TV is still young, but it’s clear that it has struck a chord with TV watchers. Companies looking to take advantage of social TV were reminded that simplicity is key. In the end, the users want to “consume content.” If a social TV device is too cluttered, the user won’t even bother to use it because most social TV interaction occurs during the live broadcast of a show.