All according to whom you ask, Apple’s kinda-sorta decision to pull away from letting app developers access one of their iOS device’s unique device identifiers (UDIDs) does or does not ring the death knell for app marketing or ad tracking generally on mobile. Whatever the case, Apple has been slow to implement restrictions on apps that leverage the UDID. It is clear even to Apple that rattling their own ecosystem is not necessarily the best approach. As the Worldwide Developer’s Conference opens this week, the company appears to be mollifying developers with unconfirmed news (a strategic leak?) in The Wall Street Journal that an alternative to familiar UDID tracking will be rolled out in coming weeks. TheJournal report has no specifics of the plan, except the suggestion that Apple has come up with a way to allow developers to track key usage across apps without compromising privacy. Last year Apple was reacting to reports and Congressional inquiries about the theoretical possibility that user identities could be tied to otherwise anonymous device IDs, and that some very popular apps were scraping users’ contact data on their devices, although the latter issue had little to do with the former. Whatever Apple’s solution to the problem, it almost certainly will try to address privacy first and foremost. More to the point, it may also give Apple more control over the user ID itself (no surprise there) and the ways in which developers can access phone data. While Apple has muddled over the UDID issue, other companies have pursued either pre-existing or new alternative paths toward tracking use. There has been some support for an OpenUDID standard that creates an identifier for a device based on other device parameters, for instance -- and which claims not to allow identification with an individual. While the Journal report does not promise an announcement at the WWDC meeting this week, one imagines that a new tracking solution could be baked into the upcoming iOS 6 update that the company will likely be discussing this week. Our guess is that in addition to some IS mechanism that is resistant to being traced to a personally identifiable user, the new Apple approach will involve user empowerment in some way. An opt-in or opt-out mechanism would not be surprising. In all, it is a good sign that Apple is indicating its willingness to work with developers to ensure that the iOS platform is monetizable. Privacy expert and consultant Alan Chapell of Chapell & Associates says it is difficult to say without details what Apple has in mind for a new tracking tool. But, he tells Mobile Marketing Daily: "If Apple's new UDID isn't attached to the device, it sort of begs the question -- how is the hash derived? And will this solution harmonize with other UDID replacements that are concurrently being discussed in the marketplace?" How Apple implements a solution also raises issues of control and how the company metes out access to user data. "I would encourage Apple to ensure that they are addressing transparency, choice and other privacy issues with whatever they choose to replace the UDID," adds Chapell. Alluding to Microsoft's recent decision to turn its Do Not Track browser option on by default in upcoming versions of Internet Explorer, he says: "I hope they avoid being too paternalistic in terms of attempting to make choices for consumers. I also hope they avoid making this into an anti-competitive initiative that is disguised as privacy." Mobile lead and principal at Mella Media Jordan Greene says that Apple's move demonstrates its power and influence. "The new Apple alternative could be a new way to let the mobile ad networks do their old tricks," he says. "The networks needed Apple to play the savior, as they were unable to develop an effective solution on their own -- or collectively -- to allow them to track user activity for multiple purposes. It really shows just how long the tentacles of Apple reach."
Software developers may chafe at the iron-fisted rule Apple exerts over the apps it purveys in its App Store but they love the fact that Apple maintains strong control over the hardware and software that run its devices because it’s far easier to produce and test an app for the iOS than it is for Android devices. That dichotomy is one compelling reason why Apple still commands the loyalty of developers even though Android hardware outsells Apple by 59% to 23% in the smartphone market, as Nick Wingfield and Brian X. Chen make clear in the New York Times this morning. That advantage is expected to be manifest in some new announcements today as Apple CEO Tim Cook hosts the company’s annual conference for software developers at the Moscone conference center in San Francisco. One thing that’s pretty certain is a new iOS 6, if the banners spied at the venue by the Associated Press on Friday are to be believed. “What’s not known is what new features will come with iOS 6, or when it will be released to consumers,” the story published in the Washington Post observes. “Usually, the new software becomes available for download around the time a new iPhone model appears.” Mashable’s Emily Price is among the bloggers running photographs of signs that tout iOS 6 as the “the most advanced mobile operating system.” (It’s art and parcel of Apple’s “ability to craft buzz,” the Wall Street Journal’s Jessica E. Vascellaro wryly points out, without saying anything –- officially or even off the record.) While acknowledging that it’s anyone's guess what the tight-lipped company actually will be announcing, Price passed along widespread rumors of 3D maps that will compete with Google, deepening Facebook integration and bringing the voice-command app, Siri, to the iPad. The headline on Forbes contributor Anthony Wing Kosner’s post this morning is a bit more breathless: “Apple TV Will Change the Content We Consume on All Our Screens Forever.” The forthcoming iOS 6 will be integrated with iCloud, he writes, to bring email, contacts, calendars, documents, music, movies and photos to “the biggest screen in our lives” -- the TV -- “in a way that is fluid and synchronized with all of your other screens.” This development, he predicts, will lead to a change in viewing habits: “The act of looking for content, which is an annoyance as a TV viewer, is a primary activity as a web surfer,” he writes. Such a profound shift would have major implication for big-brand television advertisers, of course -- as if there weren’t enough implications already out there. The developer’s conference is “the most important event of the year,” John Casasanta, owner of software studio Tap Tap Tap tells the New York Times. “I’m having trouble thinking of any conference that comes anywhere near as relevant.” Wingfield and Chen go on to point out that “apps are among the strongest weapons Apple and Google have for marketing their mobile technologies to consumers. The bounty of software available for Android and iOS, as varied as racing games and apps for managing recordings on cable boxes, is a chief reason the mobile phone market has settled into a two-horse race.” Research in Motion’s BlackBerry devices and phones running Microsoft’s Windows Phone have been seriously hampered by developers’ inattention, which in turn has led to investors’ cold shoulders. Wingfield and Chen compare the mobile OS situation to that of PCs a generation ago when developers favored Windows. Google’s Eric Schmidt’s prediction that a similar event would occur in the mobile market has not materialized, they write, even though the gap in sheer number of programs (about 500,000 for Android to 600,000 for Apple) is closing. But “for every 10 apps developers build, roughly seven are for Apple's mobile platform, according to recent data from mobile analytics service Flurry,” Vascellaro reports in the WSJ. Other announcements expected during the conference include a “refresh” of the MacBook laptop line, writes Vincent Chang on CNet. He has seen “leaked specs of a 15-inch Macbook Pro that purports to have a high-resolution Retina-class display -- 2,560 x 1,600 pixels. Other important details include Radeon discrete graphics, a Thunderbolt connector and up to four USB 3.0 ports.” Alrighty then. Computerworld’s Gregg Keizer writes that “although speculation that Apple would wrap up its new Mountain Lion Mac operating system early has flopped,…[it] will likely narrow the launch date to a specific month this summer.” It probably will announce the upgrade price, too, which is expected to be about $30. If you want to follow the developments as they unfold, Engadget is among the outlets that will be live blogging the event. Personally, I’ll be trekking on Breakneck Ridge when the keynote is delivered at 1 p.m. EDT -- with Map My Walk tracking every step and heartbeat on my iPhone, even as I use the device to take photographs and check for calls, messages and emails from my editors and colleagues. It is indeed becoming a very mobile world.
Jack Daniel’s has unveiled a revamped global site (www.jackdaniels.com). One key change: The site now incorporates responsive design. “It’s been several years since our site was redone, and consumer habits have changed,” Carmen D'Ascendis, director of global marketing for Jack Daniels, tells Marketing Daily. “Just 11% of our site viewers were coming from mobile and tablets, and we wanted to address that.” The responsive site design enables the brand to optimize the user experience based on the device being used, whether desktop/laptop, tablet or mobile, notes Matt Howell, global chief digital officer for the brand’s agency, Arnold Worldwide, which proposed the solution. The site is also being streamlined on other fronts. The former site was translated into 22 languages; the new one –- which will be available in 185 countries -- will be translated into about 12 to 15. (The still-in-development revamped site currently offers seven separate English-language versions for various global markets.) Also, the new site’s structure will enable the brand’s regional markets around the world to feature localized campaign/promotional efforts while leveraging the global site’s traffic, rather than building/maintaining offshoot microsites, as some did in the past. (Overall, the global site’s traffic over the past 12 months averaged about 55% international, 45% U.S., and non-U.S. traffic has been growing at a faster pace, according to D'Ascendis.) The site’s content has also been revamped. The home page now features a scrolling, multimedia-enhanced timeline of key moments throughout the brand’s 137-year history. Other content is now organized into five areas: Whiskey (detailed info on all products in its portfolio); Visit Us (info on touring its Lynchburg, Tenn., distillery, where to stay, etc.); Recipes, Experience (info on Jack Daniels’ current events, including its Zac Brown Band tour); and The Store (an e-commerce area offering a plethora of its branded products, including apparel and home/collectibles items). D'Ascendis notes that mobile users are more likely to access recipes and other functional content on the site, whereas the brand history and other more in-depth content tends to be most accessed by desktop/laptop users. The revamped site’s home-page historical timeline also turns out to be a preview of Jack Daniels’ latest creative direction, in that it prominently features the theme of “independence” -- both in direct relationship to the brand’s history and by offering independence-oriented, inspiring stories of entrepreneurs and well-known “champions.” For example, the timeline includes a link to a “Gentleman Jack” microsite offering a video featuring former NBA star-turned-TV NBA analyst Kenny Smith talking about what inspired him to succeed. Independence has always been one of Jack Daniels’ core values, and is a central concept in the brand’s current, “Here’s to the American Spirit” (or “As American as…”) campaign, says D'Ascendis. But starting in mid-July in markets outside the U.S., and this fall in the U.S., new TV spots and other creative will put an even greater emphasis on independence, he reports. The new ad campaign – along with already-in-progress promotions through the brand’s Facebook presence (in total, its global Facebook pages have about 6 million “likes”, says D'Ascendis ) -- will drive consumers to visit the brand’s site. The campaign’s media elements will vary by country/market. In the U.S., they will include (in addition to TV spots and Facebook promos) banner ads on targeted sites, site takeovers, radio and “giant wallscapes,” according to D'Ascendis. Even before the latest ad campaign has launched, the global site’s revamp is producing lifts in JD’s already-substantial (about 250,000 uniques per month) site traffic, D'Ascendis reports. Jack Daniels’ largest markets are the U.S., U.K., Germany, Australia and France.
Newly public companies like Facebook, LinkedIn and Pandora have underscored the need for social networks and Web publishers to monetize a growing influx of mobile traffic. But online ad networks are facing the same challenge with a rising share of impressions coming from mobile devices. To address that demand, Mojiva’s Mocean Mobile division has rolled out a new mobile ad-serving service geared specifically to ad networks. To date, Mocean’s 30 or so ad network clients have adapted its platform intended for individual publishers to their own uses without the full functionality of a network ad server. But with the launch of the company’s new MAST (Mobile Ad Serving Technology) for Ad Networks offering, it aims to provide a customized technology for networks, including rich media ad-serving and real-time reporting and measurement tools. The idea is to help ad networks monetize mobile impressions that might have otherwise been wasted. “Over the last year-and-a-half, we’ve been approached by an increasing number of online ad networks saying, ‘Hey, I’m getting so many pings from mobile users onto the content I represent. I have no way to monetize this stuff that’s becoming a significant part of my impression count. And I’m losing money,” explained Mojiva CEO Dave Gwozdz. Research released by Kleiner Perkins partner and Internet guru Mary Meeker this month showed that the mobile proportion of global Internet traffic last year doubled to 10%, with that share only expected to grow. LinkedIn, for example, recently said mobile now accounts for 22% of member visits. To handle an increasing volume of mobile ad requests, Gwozdz said traditional ad networks have cobbled together ad-serving from some combination of homegrown and open-source technologies. He noted that some have also gone on to create separate mobile ad networks, even without a proper ad-serving solution. ToneFuse, a music-focused ad platform, was among the first to work with Mocean when it created MobileFuse as a separate mobile ad network. Mocean, which counts Skype, Research in Motion and TV Guide among its clients, just began serving ads on Microsoft’s mobile properties, starting with MSN, after a six-month integration process. Given the billions of mobile impressions involved, that should also benefit Mojiva’s top line.
Giving brands a big screen on which to reach mobile consumers, tablets have officially reached a critical mass in the United States. As comScore reports, one in every four smartphone owners -- i.e., connected, higher-income consumers -- reported using tablets during the three-month average period ending April 2012. “Tablets are one of the most rapidly adopted consumer technologies in history and are poised to fundamentally disrupt the way people engage with the digital world both on-the-go and perhaps most notably, in the home,” said Mark Donovan, comScore SVP, mobile. “It’s not surprising to see that once consumers get their hands on their first tablet, they are using them for any number of media habits, including TV viewing," he adds. The study also found that tablet users were nearly three times more likely to watch video on their devices compared to smartphone users, with one in every 10 tablet users viewing video content almost daily on their device. Remarkably, in just two years since the launch of the iPad -- the first tablet to reach a meaningful market penetration -- tablet adoption has exploded. As Donovan notes, the surge has been supported by the introduction of new devices that appeal to various price and feature preferences. In April, 16.5% of mobile phone subscribers reported using a tablet, representing an increase of 11.8 percentage points in the past year. Growth in market penetration was even more apparent among the smartphone population, with nearly one in four using a tablet device in April -- an increase of 13.9 percentage points in the past year. A lower 10.4% of feature phone owners use a tablet, suggesting that smartphone ownership is highly predictive of tablet adoption in the current market. A demographic analysis of mobile device audiences indicated that tablet and smartphone audiences closely resemble one another in terms of gender composition, with tablet users just slightly more likely to be female than smartphone users. However, the age composition of audiences showed that tablet users skewed noticeably older than smartphone users. For both devices, the heaviest overall audience concentration was between the ages of 25 and 44. Compared to smartphone owners, tablet users were 28% more likely to be in the 65-and-older age segment, and 27% less likely to be age 18-24. Tablet users also skewed toward upper-income households -- likely a function of the high price point of these devices, still considered a luxury good to many consumers. Indeed, nearly three in five tablet users resided in households with incomes of $75,000 or greater, compared to one in every two smartphone users.
According to the latest MAG research, 50% of respondents expressed interest in using their mobile phone to research buying or leasing a vehicle. When in the market to buy or lease a new vehicle, nearly half (47%) of consumers said that they would find mobile advertisements containing deals or offers most valuable to them. Information Most Valuable in Mobile Auto Ads (According to US Auto Owners/Shoppers; % of Respondents) Info in Ad% of Respondents Ability to sign up for deals/offers/future communications 21% Features and benefits of vehicle/video 21 Deals and offers 47 Ability to book a test drive with local dealer 12 Source: Mojiva Mobile Audience Guide/Insight Express, May 2012 The report shows that there is opportunity to target vehicle shoppers on their mobile devices to research information about buying or leasing a vehicle. Additional findings include:
“Congratulation on beating level 3 of ‘Hop Scotch With Friends,’ Here is a reward from your new friends at Acme brand roadrunner insurance.” Or something like that. But this is the basic model for in-app advertising from appssavvy, a company that pivoted from an earlier model of brokering and packaging deals between sponsors and app developers. While that model worked in the early stages of Facebook and mobile app development to bring advertisers into the app universe in a more integrated way than networked banners, the company was looking for a technology that could scale across apps and in more standardized formats. As co-founder and CEO Chris Cunningham told me recently, the move towards the May 2011 launch of the adtivity platform was aimed at establishing an infrastructure and technology to “unlock new inventory based on what people are doing.” The approach works within social media and mobile apps to capture people’s attention as they are engaging activities they already like. “We are solving the problem of reaching the consumer on the Web, Facebook and mobile that triggers an ad based on natural and organic activities rather than a profile or a cookie,” he says. To wit: in a virtual town building app on Facebook, the user initiates an activity in the simulation, which brings up an activity interaction window that includes an invitation to interact with Coca-Cola and like the brand on Facebook. A character from the game itself is the pictured “host” of the ad 600x300 ad unit. “Activity is the trigger,” Cunningham argues. Also important is integration with the app flow. “With Coca-Cola, we got their creative built in a way that is conducive to users as a level-up. So the activity in social games is making an avatar and sending a gift when you complete missions.” Cunningham says that unlike other attempts at social marketing, this isn’t necessarily pretending not to be advertising. “We are looking for a different kind of inventory. If people are uploading photos or polling, why not monetize that? You can create an ad unit based on natural and organic activities.” Appssavvy’s adtivity network is running mostly on Facebook (about 55%) but another 25% is on the Web, with the remaining share on the growing market in mobile apps. On Web inventory the method of using richer media to target activities is rendering about 1.5% click or interaction rates, but on mobile the company is seeing between 5% and 15%. The overall reach is 60 million users. Ultimately, even an activity-based targeting approach is interruptive, so my guess is its effectiveness relies considerably on the level of integration with the activity at hand. After all, if you are playing a game that you love, how eager would you be to stop that experience to “Like” a brand? Perhaps you would if there was a demonstrable pay-off. As more of the advertising economy looks to social and mobile apps as sites for engaging consumers, an old rule of thumb in games advertising is best remembered. Long ago, the savviest marketers in video game experiences learned that impeding an activity people enjoy is not the best way to their hearts and mind. Letting users do more of what they came to the app to do in the first place is the best route. Apps give marketers another shot at getting digital right. A century of passively consumed mass media was based on interruptive advertising. Interactive media of all kinds (not just games) imply that users are leaning in and themselves engaged in a process. They are more deeply invested and focused on goals of some kind. Interactivity is not conducive to interruption. It invites (probably rewards) advertising that facilitates and makes more enjoyable the media that users are now driving rather than consuming.