To promote the release of its first mobile app, Denny’s is offering free Grand Slam breakfasts for life to the first individual who checks into Denny’s locations in all 50 U.S. states. The launch of the challenge kicks off Denny's latest “Tour of America” menu, which features regional breakfast, lunch, dinner and dessert specialties from around the country. To participate in the challenge, diners need to check in at Denny's locations across the country using the new mobile app, available via the Google Play Store for Android Apps and the Apple App Store. The challenge will be live on the app for a year. For every check-in during that time, users will unlock a digital “state souvenir” and various badges that deliver rewards, in-store offers and redeemable coupons. Guests are rewarded for visiting as many Denny's as possible, gathering larger “milestone prizes” as they visit more states. If a team (up to three people) is first to check into Denny’s in all 50 states, each will receive free Grand Slam breakfasts for a year. The Denny’s app features the same functions as its site, allowing users to view its full core menu, Tour of America menu and latest specials, as well as to find nearby Denny’s locations and menu items’ nutritional information.
The E3 entertainment expo running this week in Los Angeles typically features dedicated living room and handheld consoles as well as PC-based online and downloadable games. But as it has informed just about everything else in American life and media in the last year, mobility became one of the persistent themes of this year’s show. New research from the Entertainment Software Association reveals that 33% of Americans are now gaming on their smartphones, up from only 20% a year ago. Thirty-eight percent of households are playing games on someone’s smartphone, while 35% of households are playing on a dedicated handheld game console. Mobile gaming has been at the center of the revival of casual genres. When asked which games they played most often on mobile devices, 47% of respondents to the survey said they played puzzle, board game, game show, trivia or card game titles. Action, sports, strategy and role playing -- which tend to dominate the larger consoles -- accounted for only 12% of mobile gaming. One of the largest extensions of traditional video gaming onto mobile platforms may be Sony’s upcoming PlayStation Mobile, which it announced at E3 earlier this week. The company had earlier announced that its “PlayStation Suite” of titles would allow a common line of games across multiple mobile platforms, including smartphones as well as its own PSP and Vita handheld gaming systems. But in renaming the project PlayStation Mobile, Sony is taking specific aim at the Android platform, and plans to release titles in partnership with hardware OEM HTC. “Very soon we will be bringing the PlayStation experience to Android tablets and smartphones in a major way,” the company said in its presentation. Sony plans to have “PS Certified” phones designed to play these titles. The company appears to be acknowledging the market migration away from dedicated handheld gaming devices and toward tablets and smartphones running other company’s operating systems. Sony released its high-priced and technologically sophisticated PlayStation Vita handheld earlier this year, but the company recently said it has sold only 1.8 million units worldwide. Microsoft also announced this week that it would be leveraging smartphones and tablets across all the major operating systems to work in tandem with its Xbox gaming system. Echoing the functionality of Apple’s AirPlay oniOS, the new SmartGlass system will allow users to play media from smartphones and tablets on their TV via the Xbox. It will also allow second-screen functionality for some games. The app, which will work on Windows 8 devices as well as iOS and Android, can show complementary information about the main screen programming or offer some interactivity off of the TV screen. Apple did not have a pronounced presence at E3, but its operating system was obviously among the most popular sites for development. In recent weeks, CEO Tim Cook has diffused rumors that Apple wants to get into the game console business itself. Nevertheless, the impact of touchscreens, second screens, casual and mobile gaming that the iOS operating system helped ignite seems to be informing all game platforms. The gaming industry could use the boost. The industry’s computer and video game sales for 2011 totaled $16.6 billion -- down from $16.9 billion in 2010, according to NPD Group sales tracking figures. While traditional physical video console games saw a sharp sales decline to $8.8 billion from $9.4 billion the previous year, games delivered via digital means -- including mobile apps -- saw growth to $7.3 billion from $6.8 billion.
Recent research from mobile ad network Millennial Media showed that ad impressions from tablets and other connected devices increased to 20% in the first quarter, up from 15% a year ago. Mobile rich media ad provider Medialets released separate research today that also indicates wider diffusion of mobile ads. The company said 40% of rich media campaigns it delivered in the first quarter ran across different platforms -- handsets, tablets, apps, the mobile Web, and Android and iOS operating systems --compared to 20% in the year-earlier period. Both sets of figures underscore the rising adoption of tablets -- which have 15% to 20% adoption in the U.S. so far -- as well as smartphones, which have increased to almost 50% share among mobile users, up from 36% a year ago. More smartphones and tablets also mean more people using apps, mainly on Android and iOS devices, which helps explain the expansion of mobile advertising across more platforms. Among other findings, Medialets found that rich media ads on tablets were 30% more likely to include video -- which makes sense because they have larger screens than smartphones. Ads that feature video, in turn, had an average of 35% higher engagement. And ads that include video, a brand-related game or product catalog can push time spent with an ad to over one minute. Among rich media ad formats, expandable banners are by far the most common, making up 64% of the total on phones and 60% on tablets. Regular banners and interstitial ads account for the balance of ads, with the former more prevalent on tablets. In terms of performance, expandable banners had an engagement rate of 15% and a click-through rate of 1.2%, while interstitial ads had comparable figures of 8% and 3%. Looking just at tablets, expandable banners had an average engagement rate (including the tap to expand the ad) of 17% versus 10% for interstitials, which typically appear when an app launches or between rounds of a game. The Medialets first-quarter research also analyzed rich media ad response rates across three key industry categories: automotive, entertainment and finance. Entertainment ads had had the highest click-through rate, at 2.8% compared to .9% for finance and .5% for automotive. (The company noted that auto ads often include landing page features in ads, eliminating the need for a click-through.) Finance ads had the highest overall engagement rate (including click-throughs) at 15%, followed by entertainment (12.5%), and auto (11.5%). Finance also high the highest ad expand rate -- at 1.8%, slightly ahead of auto (1.5%), and entertainment (1.2%).
Digital marketing company Blue Calypso has named former Motorola Mobility Chief Marketing Officer Bill Ogle as its new chairman and CEO. He starts in the new post June 11. Ogle succeeds Blue Calypso founder Andrew Levi, who will become the company’s chief technology officer. Dallas-based Blue Calypso provides a loyalty and rewards platform that marketers can use to generate word of mouth about products or services. Through the platform, advertisers run display campaigns on Calyp.com or Calyp mobile apps for the iPhone and Android devices that customers use to endorse brands and distribute their campaigns through text messages or social media posts. In return, consumers earn rewards including cash, gifts, discounts and VIP perks. Motorola Mobility tapped Blue Calypso in December to help promote its then-new smartphones Photon and Bionic as well as the Xoom tablet. Ogle, who joins the company on the heels of Google closing its acquisition of Motorola in May, said he was impressed with Blue Calypso’s technology and ready to switch gears to lead a startup. “I’ve always worked at these huge multinationals,” said Ogle, whose background also includes stints as CMO at Samsung Telecommunications America, and earlier, at Pizza Hut. “But I’ve always wanted to be an entrepreneur and try something like this. This is the perfect opportunity, because it’s something I know very well, which is social media.” During his three years at Motorola, Ogle helped lead the launch of the successful Droid line of Android-based smartphones that in turn helped revive the company’s fortunes in the market for sophisticated handsets. However, Motorola’s Xoom tablet, launched in early 2011, has failed to make a dent in the iPad’s dominance. In his new job, Ogle said one of his initial tasks is simply to make Blue Calypso’s offering better known. “The most important thing is to get the idea out there,” he said. "One of my goals is to help get it over the deadline and really start to spread it.” Blue Calypso, formerly JJ&R Ventures, gained a somewhat higher profile when it went public last September through a reverse merger and now trades on the over-the-counter bulletin board as BCYP. In a June 4 filing with the SEC, the company reported four board members -- Paul Jarvie, James Rose, Richard Fennessy and Andrew Kerner -- had resigned as of May 31. Two new directors -- Ian Wolfman and Charles Thomas -- were appointed as of the same date.
Univision is launching a new digital video network on Microsoft’s Xbox 360 Live, UVideos, which will be available to Xbox 360 Live Gold subscribers, the company announced today at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles. UVideos, which offers video content in Spanish and English, will go live in the fourth quarter of 2012. UVideos will give authenticated users on-demand access to thousands of hours of entertainment, sports, movies and music, in both short- and long-form. The service incorporates a social discovery feature, allowing users to see what friends are watching and follow Univision personalities on social media sites. It will be optimized for Xbox 360 with voice and motion control via Kinect. According to figures cited by Univision, Hispanics are eager users of media technology, including gaming consoles: 36% of U.S. Hispanics own or play Xbox compared to 28% of non-Hispanics. Within the population of Xbox owners, 45% of Hispanics play Xbox Live on the Internet, compared to 35% of non-Hispanic Xbox owners. UVideos is the latest in a series of new platforms and products launched by Univision. Last week, Univision announced plans to launch a national, Spanish-language AM radio network featuring local, national and international news. The new network, Univision America, will include AM stations in nine major Univision markets: Miami, Chicago, Houston, Dallas, McAllen, TX, El Paso, San Antonio, Las Vegas and Los Angeles. In May, Univision and ABC News unveiled a plan to launch a new English-language TV news channel targeting bilingual Hispanic-Americans, which is scheduled to launch sometime next year. In fall 2011, Univision made its content available to Clear Channel’s iHeartRadio, including music, sports, and talk formats, as well as leading AM and FM Spanish-language radio personalities. In October, iHeartRadio itself became available on Xbox Live.
Mary Meeker, Internet guru and managing partner at Kleiner Perkins, is a master at focusing attention on the most significant trends by pulling together enough of the right data points in an annual sweeping slide show. This time, Meeker's effort at the recent D10 conference could not be more timely or insightful, underscoring the frantic scramble to monetize rampant mobile adoption and social applications -- even as Facebook and other players seek to build their public value on on-the-go interactivity. The $24 billion in value Facebook has lost in the commotion over going public demonstrates the destructive power of uncertainty on innovation's slippery slope. With just the right selections of charts and graphs, Meeker drives home the point that while we are racing into a mobile world, we are far from cracking the code for making money from mobile social connections. It raises the sobering question: As mobile adoption reaches global mass penetration, will the biggest and brightest players be ready to leverage what they do to create new revenue streams by learning to think and play by changed rules? Meeker's state-of-the-state assessment offers no assurances. Her monetization review is rife with tradeoffs. Global mobile traffic is rapidly growing to 10% of all Internet traffic, and mobile is helping to accelerate digital sales at 8% of all domestic ecommerce. But the way mobile devices and platforms are monetized leans more toward the use of APPS (at 71%) as a shortcut to where consumers want to be and what they want to do, rather than advertising -- only about 29% of all mobile monetization. Meeker forecasts material upside for mobile ad spending, and a $20 billion-plus opportunity to close the gap domestically between $30 billion in Internet advertising and $1.6 billion in mobile advertising spend. But what new forms of interactive advertising, marketing and commerce will that require? A new Reuters online poll suggests one-third of Facebook users are using the social network less than they did six months ago, partly an adverse response to advertising. While mobile growth helps to boost clicks on Google, it reduces the cost per click and constrains revenue growth. On Facebook, mobile growth helps to drive users but contains the average revenue growth per user, limiting overall revenue growth. Although Facebook's open graphic has attracted 17 million new users in a single week, and the Apple APP store can drive 46 million downloads per day, there are no clear paths to generating meaningful revenues from mobile social commerce. Meeker argues that mobile monetization is already ahead of where desktop Internet adoption and ad spending were at the same stage of development. Some ultra-useful APPs have become lucrative "essential utilities." Although 56% of all APPs are paid, the average is only $3.77. Highly engaged consumers and advertisers using social and curation tools on smart phones and tablets are pushing into the next frontier of consumer Internet "white spaces" in vehicles and on televisions. While we are on the way to "reimagining nearly everything," we are desperate to define and develop the new interactive economy. Meeker takes heart in a visual inventory of profound change in behavior, expectation and values powered by new devices and connectivity. Her 112-slide presentation highlights 125 years of landline domination ended by mobile phones in 2002; the Encyclopedia Britannica capitulating to the free collaborative Wikipedia; Internet advertising surpassing newspaper ad revenues in 2010; and cloud-driven tablets and smart phones poised to surpass desktop and even notebook computer usage this decade. Physical photo albums replaced by personalized Facebook picture collages, commercial news reports replaced by citizen reporting in Twitter feeds, pen and notepads replaced by Evernote. Yellow Pages are being replaced by Yelp; cash registers by credit card swipe-touch sign-email receipt tablets, and hardbound books and magazines are morphing to Kindle and Nook. New business models are all around. The distribution and monetization of "talent" is epitomized by Glen Beck being booted off Fox News only to show up on GBTV online with lower production costs and 300,000 initial subscribers. Work collaboration is now virtual, supported by cloud-based services such as Skype, Voxer, Salesforce.com and Yammer. Entire industries are being transformed, from education and communications to retail. But the revenues and profits generated by these new digital applications and pursuits remain sparse and elusive. The best minds at the largest, most enterprising companies do not appear to know how to mine emerging social mobile commerce dynamics, even though Meeker estimates the addressable market for "re-imagination" is an aggregate $36 trillion-plus market cap of global public companies, from Apple, Google, IBM and Microsoft to Pfizer, General Electric, Mobile and Siemens. Ironside Capital analyst Eric Jackson says within five years, Facebook will be more like Yahoo: a mere shadow of itself due to its inability to evolve and adapt to rapid change. Amazon ultimately will best other interactive darlings of the moment --from GroupOn to Glam -- at their own game. That could be because the future Meeker envisions requires a radical shift not only in mind-set but in our complete existence and orientation. And that's something individual consumers appear to be better at than companies.