Google's $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility plays into the company's GoMo mobile strategy. Already a force in the mobile computing biz, the company's largest purchase gives it a treasure trove of about 17,000 patents to defend. Plus, it supports its Android operating system against Apple, Microsoft and others. Yet some in the advertising and marketing industry have concerns. Ad agency executives like Rob Griffin, EVP at Havas Digital, believe Google bought Motorola Mobility for the patents. With Motorola, Google can support emerging markets with lower-cost devices, said Amielle Lake, CMO and founder, Tagga Media, which focuses on mobile advertising. Lake points to an In-Stat report published earlier this year that predicts Android will own 80% of the African, Chinese and Indian mobile market by 2015. Google could succeed in delivering devices for $150 or less and chips for $10 or less. The adoption of smartphones by emerging markets means an easy reach to consumers. Motorola provides a gateway to cheap handsets, but also tablets and cable TV boxes, which increases Google's ad inventory, she said. The acquisition will test Google's ability to keep advertisers -- which could also be rivals -- happy. Google Android continues to grow its share of the U.S. smartphone market, accounting for 51% of subscribers in March 2012, while Apple captured more than 30%, according to comScore. The research firm said Samsung ranked the no. 1 OEM with 26% of U.S. mobile subscribers, followed by LG with 19.3%, Apple with 14% of mobile subscribers, and Motorola with 12.8%. More Android handsets means that Google keeps tighter control of search ads and display. For marketers and advertisers, the closer integration between platform and device should drive scalable and innovative advertising opportunities, said Roger Barnette, IgnitionOne president. Android proliferation across device manufacturers is important for Google. "It gives them a platform for various business interests, but the Motorola deal is a potential threat to that," he said. "Handset manufacturers are rightfully concerned because the maker of their operating system now owns one of their biggest competitors." Barnette said Google will work to overcome these fears and endear hardware makers by working with key manufacturers to develop preferred devices that close the loop between handset and platform. It should help the companies compete more effectively with Apple. Google and Motorola announced the agreement last summer, but approval from Chinese regulators dragged on. Regulators in the U.S. and Europe cleared the deal three months ago. China approved it Sunday on the condition that Google's Android software would remain free for other phone makers for at least five years, which seems out of character for Chinese regulators. Dennis Woodside steps into the role of Motorola CEO from president of Google's Americas region. Sanjay Jha, the departing CEO, will stay on long enough to ensure a smooth transition.
Tech and telecoms brands again lead this year’s BrandZ rankings of the most valuable global brands. The BrandZ rankings, commissioned by WPP and conducted by Millward Brown Optimor, show Apple leading the top 100 list (with $182.9 billion in global brand value) for the second consecutive year, followed by IBM ($115.9 billion), Google ($107.8 billion), McDonald’s ($95.2 billion), Microsoft ($76.7 billion), Coca-Cola ($74.3 billion), Marlboro ($73.6 billion), AT&T ($68.9 billion), Verizon ($49.1 billion, jumping up four places versus 2011) and China Mobile ($47 billion). IBM’s 15% value growth enabled it to surpass Google for the #2 spot this year. Facebook, with a 74% jump in brand value this year alone, showed the fastest rise in the value rankings (it’s now at #19, with a $33.2 billion value, versus #35 last year). Highlights of those in the top 100 in some of the categories: *Apparel: Nike (#44), H&M (#58), Zara (#66) *Cars: BMW (#23), Toyota (#28), Mercedes-Benz (#46), Honda (#65), Nissan (#81), Volkswagen (#96) *Consumbles and personal care: In addition to Coke, these include Gillette (#33), Pampers (baby care, #35), Budweiser (#48), Colgate (#51), L'Oreal (#57), Pepsi (#67) and Red Bull (#80) *Fast food: In addition to McDonald’s, Starbucks (#42), Subway (#52), KFC (#91) *Financial: ICBC (#13), Wells Fargo (#14), Visa (#15), China Construction Bank (#24), MasterCard (#29), American Express (#30), HSBC (#31), Agricultural Bank of China (#38), RBC (#40), TD (#54), Commonwealth Bank (#60), Bank of China (#61), ICICI Bank (#63), US Bank (#72), Standard Chartered (#79), Citibank (#82), Scotiabank (#82), Chase (#92), Santander (#95) *Retail: Walmart (#17) – which knocked Amazon (#18) into the second retail spot -- Tesco (#36), Home Depot (#62), Target (#76), ALDI (#87), IKEA (#89), Carrefour (#98) The analysts highlighted the following trends: * Technology prevails: Seven of the top 10 brands are technology or telecoms brands. However, the power of smart, simple-to-use technology to improve products can also be seen in other categories, including cars, financial services, luxury and retail. Successful brands also are using smart technology to enhance customer experience. For example, Burberry (up 21%, to $4 billion) created a virtual world to enable younger brand followers to view fashion shows. * A mobile future: As one of the few items consumers don't want to give up or cut back on, mobile has been somewhat shielded during the recession. The U.S.’s largest mobile service provider, Verizon, increased its brand value by 15% in the last year. *The rise of Africa: This year's ranking marks the arrival of the first African brand in the top 100: South African mobile company MTN (#88, at $9.2 billion). In addition, African consumers are driving growth for brands around the world, including Guinness (40% of its sales come from Africa), Airtel (with a 16% jump in revenue from the continent in Q3), and Orange, which had rapid growth in Africa in 2011. Wal-Mart’s investment in Africa’s Massmart is no coincidence. *Retail becomes omni-channel: Retailers are focused both on the customer experience and the need to be present everywhere on the path to purchase. *Women in the boardroom contribute major value: 77% of the brands appearing in the top 100 have women in the boardroom. The average value of brands with women on their boards is $27 billion -- double that of companies without female directors. Brands with female board members also show average five-year growth of 66%, compared to average growth of only 6% for other top-100 companies. *Strong brands provide better shareholder value: Average ROI for all companies in the S&P 500 was just 2.3% over the past seven years. In contrast, the BrandZ top 100 yielded a 36.3% ROI.
Tapping into location-based information to serve targeted messages to people on the go has long been touted as one of the unique benefits of mobile advertising. But sending the right ad to the right person at the right place and time has proven challenging. Sense Networks has introduced a pair of new ad services to help marketers and publishers hone in on their mobile audiences through its platform analyzing real-time location data from phones, GPS devices and Wi-Fi. Using machine-learning algorithms, it indexes all that location information -- combined with research on consumer behavior -- to predict mobile users’ activities. AdMatch, one of the new ad tools from Sense Networks, uses the company’s predicted location and behavioral targeting to serve mobile display ads matching consumers with the most relevant offers from local merchants. The other, called AudienceSense, enables publishers to monetize their audiences by creating behavior segments based on their own mobile location data. It includes more than 100 pre-built audience segments, but can be used to develop custom categories to suit a publisher’s specific goals. Based on testing, Sense Networks says AdMatch is delivering twice the performance of campaigns targeting via geo-fencing, where someone receives a marketing message or offer on their phone when they come within proximity to a particular store. The solution does this “by selecting the best ads in real time through evaluation of behavioral attributes, current location context (what’s nearby), click history and ad characteristics,” it says. On the privacy front, Sense Networks points out all user data is anonymous and never matched to outside data sources that would require knowing someone’s name, address, phone number or email. The company says location information is abstracted into consumer segments, with the raw data being discarded after processing. AdMatch and AudienceSense are the first ad products from Sense Networks, which has created apps built on its algorithms that highlight city hot spots, based on mobile location data, or pinpoints the best nearby corner to catch a cab in New York. The company has also undertaken market research for clients involving location data. For one major pharmaceutical client, Sense Networks analyzed motion patterns for consumers in certain U.S. ZIP codes to determine where and when to deploy field resources. The company did not name any businesses or brands using its new ad tools. Sense Networks raised about $9 million in venture funding from investors including Intel Capital.
As part of its broader social-marketing push around the Summer Olympic Games in London, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has launched its official Olympic badge and check-in locations on Foursquare. “We wanted to do something fun,” said Alex Huot, head of social media for the International Olympic Committee. The IOC is encouraging people to get active by checking into sports venues around the world on the location-based social network, including past, current and future Olympic stadiums and training centers. When users check-in to at least two affiliated venues and follow the IOC on Foursquare, they unlock the official “Get Fit for Olympic Day” badge, and will be directed to enter a contest to win a trip to the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. The Foursquare integration comes just weeks after the IOC launched the Olympic Athletes’ Hub, a social media platform that aggregates Facebook and Twitter updates of Olympians. And the IOC is hardly the only source of Olympics coverage. All told, the BBC is expected to eclipse NBC's digital Olympics coverage in America by streaming more than 2,500 hours of content via 24 channels. Key to the BBC’s digital coverage is a new browser-based online video player that offers pause and rewind options and clickable alerts that take users to other streaming events when key moments are happening elsewhere. Luckily for Foursquare, the spread of smartphones in the last year has led to a jump in the number of Americans using real-time, location-based data on their handsets. Indeed, a recent study from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project found that almost three-quarters (74%) of smartphone owners used their devices to get directions and other location-related information as of February -- up from 55% last May. That increase coincided with a rise in smartphone ownership to 46% this year, from 35% in 2011. That means that the overall proportion of U.S. adults who get location-based information has almost doubled over that time period-- to 41% in February 2012 from 23% last May. The Pew report also found that smartphone users are more likely to turn to geo-social services like Foursquare to check into certain places and share their location with friends. Some 18% did do so as of February -- up from 12% in 2011, equating to 10% of all U.S. adults. For all its popularity, however, Foursquare is still looking for a viable business model. To that end, the service is reportedly getting into the coupon business and plans to let merchants buy special placement for promotions of personalized local offers via a redesigned version of its app. According to unconfirmed reports, Foursquare users will soon be able to see the specials, although they’ll need to “check in” to specific venues to redeem them. It also recently announced that it would charge $10 to businesses for instant verification of their accounts. The IOC's official Foursquare page features historical facts about the Olympics, along with information about Olympic stadiums and facilities.
A new survey of more than 800 business executives indicates many are increasing mobile marketing budgets this year but face challenges, including a lack of resources to expand mobile efforts. The study by email services provider StrongMail showed 45% of companies have adopted mobile marketing, with more than half (57%) of those doing so for less than a year. More than 70% of managers expect their mobile budgets to increase in the next 12 months, while 55% have already done so in the last year. More than half believe a mobile program could help increase sales and gain new customers, as well as boost brand awareness. Mobile Web sites (70%), mobile applications (55%) and QR codes (49%) rated as the most popular types of mobile marketing, but less than half of marketers are currently employing any of them. Three quarters of businesses not using mobile marketing programs plan to within a year or more. When it comes to email, the survey conducted in April found 43% of companies have some level of integration between email and mobile marketing efforts. But just over a quarter (27%) are running cross-channel advertising campaigns that include mobile messaging. Likewise, only 29% have used mobile response data to optimize offers in email or other platforms. The results also suggested mobile still only claims a small portion of marketing budgets, with more than half (54%) of businesses allocating 5% or less to the third screen. That roughly corresponds to the 5% of total U.S. online ad dollars ($1.6 billion) mobile represented in 2011, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau. Nearly a quarter of companies, however, said they devoted less than 1% to mobile marketing programs. What’s holding back higher spending? When asked to identify the top obstacle to launching a mobile program, 37% of businesses cited lack of strategy, followed by a lack of resources, at 22%. The StrongMail study did not identify companies taking part in the survey.
Everyone wants to get into the video act, and mobile carriers are using the medium to push the speed and convenience of 4G networks. And so Verizon plans to introduce a video aggregation portal to customers on its 4G LTE network dubbed “viewdini” that (magically, we presume) searches across mobile video sources such as Netflix, Hulu Plus, mSpot, Comcast Xfinity, and even its own Verizon FiOS services. The platform will allow users to search with a range of keywords for video assets among movies, TV shows and digital programming. Title, topic, celebrity name, etc. can all pull up how and where the video is available to a mobile phone or tablet user on the 4G network. The search results indicate whether the video is already available to the user via their current cable authorizations (via Xfinity, for instance) or subscriptions like Netflix and Hulu Plus. The portal will also wrap around the listing related offerings and additional content. The viewdini service will be available as a downloadable app from the Google Play app store and is free to Verizon customers. Verizon made the announcement at the Cable Show 2012 and clearly was signaling to the industry its eagerness to cooperate with many video sources, despite the parent company’s own investment in Verizon FiOS. CEO and President of Verizon Wireless Dan Mead says in a statement: “Working with a wide range of providers, we’re giving our customers a simple and intuitive way to find shows, movies and other videos from the sources they have relationships with and discover new sources of video as well.” As Kevin Fitchard at GigaOm points out, it is not clear how these thick video streams will affect the limited data plans that most consumers will need to use on 4G networks. It is possible that Verizon is planning to give “toll free” passage to the video streams from select partners if the provider pays the carriage fee, for instance. Verizon did not discuss what financial arrangements are being made among the partners and whether Verizon will be reaping a revenue share from any video referrals in viewdini.
For as long as I can recall, marketers have been talking about organizing around the customer. During the heyday of the early Net, IBM organized into Industry Solution Units (ISUs in IBM-speak), each of which focused on a particular industry such as banking, retail or entertainment. For a big company selling big hardware and storage to big companies, it made a lot of sense. It was practical at the time to at least organize around markets -- the thinking being that expertise in any given market could be aggregated for a company to provide greater and more relevant solutions for each set of customers in that market. In many ways, that was the ultimate B2B play. But for B2C, the existence of mobile creates the time and opportunity to come closer to organizing around individuals, as many agencies and leading brands have preached for years. The market has the words -- such as micro-targeting, location-based and hyperlocal -- although they are more easily said than done. Organizing around and serving customers has great potential with mobile, although it likely will not be technology hurdles that get in the way of ultimate success. Often, it will be internal company structure or even culture. While a technology solution may be introduced at one end of a company, the customer may be at the other end, which becomes even more pronounced with mobile. When the rewards-rich Shopkick app was introduced some time ago, the idea was that a shopper would walk into a store such as Macy’s or Best Buy, a signal would be silently sent to the person’s phone as they entered the store and they would receive rewards (called kicks) for being there with bonus points for scanning the codes of particular products. In the beginning, the process was rocky. But it was not so much about the technology as about the trickle-down knowledge at the employee level. In the early days, we were looking for certain products to scan, as specified by the app. I’d ask the nearest Best Buy employee about where the products for Shopkick scanning were and would get such responses as “what’s Shopkick?” But over time, these types of comments from Best Buy employees evolved. They went from “Let me get you the person who knows Shopkick” to “yes, I’m familiar with Shopkick -- what are you trying to do?” The next phase was the checkout process. Best Buy has its own rewards program and Shopkick has its own kicks rewards programs. Again, an evolution at checkout. At my first attempt to use Shopkick to receive points at checkout, it took two employees and the manager on duty to figure out how to find it in Best Buy’s POS system. In the next phase, an employee and one manager found it. Most recently, the checkout cashier found it on her own, as well as the Best Buy rewards program, applying credit to both. The lesson here is that the Shopkick technology worked -- it was all the people-involved processes along the way that needed to be modified. And therein lies one of the key challenges in moving to organizing around the customer, especially the mobile power user we wrote about last week. The best mobile technology may be at one end of the organization and the totally willing customer is at the other end. The problem is everything in between. These issues can range from effectively introducing new ways of doing things with mobile customers, such as in the case of Shopkick, to convincing specific profit centers or franchisees that they should adopt and deploy what corporate is introducing. So which retailers win in this evolution of everything in the middle? “The most scared will succeed and those who are not will fail,” says Jeff Sellinger, co-founder and chief product officer of Shopkick. In the case of Shopkick, mobile consumers also were pushing back into the Best Buys, forcing them to learn about the features of the app. Another typical roadblock to customer centricity within an organization is the silo effect, with division or group A focused on its mission and success metrics working next to group B, with its own set of the same. If group A and B are aligned, then there for sure is a group C or D. These also add to the obstacle course between the mobile innovators and the customers, both of whom get it. At least watching the evolution of the retail process around products like Shopkick shows that with time and effort, the gap can be tightened.
Wednesday Lotame will launch the Unifying Data Management Platform for publishers and brands. The Unifying DMP changes Lotame's flagship product, Crowd Control, into a series of tools to collect and organize multiple data sources to trigger events. The new product gives publishers a view into customer data to create audience targeting segments, personalize content based on user interest, as well as understand loyalty and engagement of consumers across a variety of platforms. Aside from managing mobile Web data, the platform integrates discrete audience-based data from a variety of first- and third-party sources, such as mobile apps, behavioral and demographic data, Web analytic tools, CRM data, point-of-sale data and other offline data sources. Publishers can now target ads across platforms. Kalyan Lanka, director of product development at Lotame, describes the process as having the ability to collect social influence data or interests of consumers both on desktop and mobile to target across platforms. Conde Nast and another publisher have been testing the platform. The biggest problem for mobile has been the lack of cookies. Apple and BlackBerry devices do not allow advertisers to drop cookies in their browsers, so targeting users become challenging. Companies have begun to look for proxies -- identifiers -- instead. "Personalizing information for users means knowing as much as you can without violating privacy rules," said Lanka. "You can only accomplish loyalty when the brand or publisher knows a lot about the user." How do publishers or brands know their customers without encroaching on privacy? Today opting-out is specific to a device or browser, but in the future Lotame plans to change that. A few months ago Lotame began testing a universal tag to collect and manage user behaviors, demographics, interests and actions from desktop computers, tablets, and mobile phones. Modified versions of the tag can also pull in data from CRM systems, analytics tools, set-top boxes and other offline databases.