Rosetta was named among a group of “strong performers” in a Forrester report on agency mobile practices earlier this year. That put it just behind better-known names like AKQA, Ogilvy and SapientNitro, ranked highest for their mobile capabilities. Acquired by Publicis Groupe last year for $575 million, Rosetta has its roots in consulting, which it believes gives it an edge over other digital shops. Its clients include OfficeMax, Lenovo, Allergan, Helzberg Diamonds, and hhgregg. MediaPost recently caught up with Daniel Blackburn, who leads the firm’s mobile strategy practice. MP: Can you give a brief overview of how Rosetta's mobile practice is organized? DB: Our job is to help institutionalize mobile across our entire agency. We do have a small group of dedicated mobile specialists, but really the practice was built with the intent of distributing much of that expertise across creative and user experience. Some of the particular areas we’re focusing in on are around mobile commerce and integrated marketing in financial services. In addition, we’re doing a lot of work around healthcare, mostly around sales force automation and enablement. MP: How big is the dedicated mobile group? DB: About 10 -- but the virtual group, who wear multiple hats and sit in the different departments, is up to 10. So we have 20 people who have somewhat of a charter of ensuring that mobile best practices are created and standardized and pushed through the organization. MP: Are there any particular trends in mobile you’ve been struck by this year? DB: Mobile is getting more complicated, not less complicated. You might have all your pieces on the board -- your application, mobile Web site, some sort of SMS programs in place, but then the next challenge is really understanding where we need to invest to achieve business impact. This has exceeded mobile -- now it’s requiring more of a consulting view of where opportunities are for growth. MP: What changes are you seeing in terms of mobile budgets? DB: We definitely see that separate mobile line item, and that’s going to things like maintenance of an evergreen property like a mobile site. But what we’re actually seeing trump that from a spend perspective is mobile being baked into larger projects -- everything from a CRM platform to a commerce implementation to a product launch. The overall mobile spend is exponentially larger than what a mobile budget is. That’s the way it should be -- that mobile becomes something you do across owned, earned and paid media. MP: Mobile measurement is often cited as a stumbling block to higher spending in the medium. What’s your take on that? DB: It’s getting better. The tagging and technical aspects are starting to become more standardized. We’re looking at analytics at a level of depth, so we use ClearSaleing as our attribution partner to be able to attribute a sale or a click or some sort of acquisition…on the path to purchase. As consumers are hopping from one device to another, the connections start to loosen up a little, and we have to make some assumptions based on the impact of increased mobile traffic during a given campaign. MP: Are QR codes just a passing fad? DB: We never fully jumped on the QR code bandwagon. We typically have the conversation around does (direct response mechanism) have to be a QR code or does text work just as well. QR codes have been successful in other parts of the world because they’ve been standardized. Based on the fragmentation here, I don’t know if you’re ever going to see a great resurgence for barcodes. What I think is absolutely game-changing is the Apple Passbook…from a loyalty card perspective. For Apple to be able to get that ecosystem together and really drive that new behavior as far as couponing. Apple has a really good track record of changing those consumer behaviors. Having a centralized place for all your coupons and loyalty cards, that's always carried with you and most importantly, is digital -- is a game-changer. MP: Rosetta was cited by Forrester among top mobile practices, but it also said the agency was among those on the pricier side. Fair assessment? DB: We’ve got a long line of satisfied customers that continue to work with us, and increase their budgets with us. The market in general understands that you get what you pay for.
Vevo founder Doug Morris, the CEO of Sony Music Entertainment, has warned Google to sweeten the deal between YouTube and Vevo, or the online music video giant will take its videos elsewhere. Morris issued the warning in a Q&A with the Los Angeles Times’ Alex Pham. “[YouTube is] just extracting too much money for the enterprise to work properly,” Morris said. “The videos are expensive to produce. And there are many mouths to feed on our end. You have to pay the artist, the record companies, the publishers.” Morris does not disclose the ad revenue split, YouTube and Vevo have a very different deal than most YouTube partners, which usually give YouTube up to a 50 percent split for one of their uploaded videos. Whereas YouTube usually sells those ads, Vevo sells its own and pays a fee to be on the YouTube platform. Forbes’ Michael Humphrey says this begs two questions: does Vevo need to be on YouTube if it controls its own audience and sells its own ads? Does YouTube need Vevo when it already has trillions of views each year? Humphrey argues that Vevo needs YouTube because YouTube is synonymous with online video on every device: television, mobile phone, iPad and laptop/personal computer. Vevo also benefits from YouTube’s ease of sharing and searching, he says. Although a lot of Vevo’s sharing already happens on Facebook, the question becomes how well sharing would move off of Facebook if Vevo decided to relocate there. “Living in a giant walled garden is not the same as living in the world, as much as Facebook would like that to not be true,” Humphrey says. Meanwhile, YouTube needs Vevo’s quality content, he claims. Vevo is by far the most-watched channel on YouTube, amassing 618 million views alone in May. This makes it the standout example of quality content for a site that wants to become more like a TV network. If Vevo left YouTube, Humphrey adds that music video piracy would also come back in force, which would be a headache for the labels backing the music video giant.
Google will release earnings July 19. A big concern: how the Motorola Mobility acquisition will contribute to overall revenue and profits.Citigroup Analyst Mark Mahaney told Bloomberg television he expects Google to have the "messiest quarter" out of several companies releasing earnings this week. He points to the integration of Motorola halfway through the period.Mahaney is looking for Google to report $12.4 billion in gross revenue, according to a July 10 report. He estimates Motorola Mobile will bring in $2.5 billion in revenue and a loss of $28 million in non-GAAP operating income on a full proforma basis. The Motorola Home segment, about $916 million in revenue and $99 million non-GAAP operating income.Mobile search continues to impact costs per click (CPC). A recent call between Mahaney and execs from Performics, IgnitionOne, Kenshoo, Marin Software, and DidIt reveal mobile is becoming a part of most campaigns.Kenshoo noted 20% of clicks come from mobile. Performics said 14% of spend last year was on mobile, and this year, mobile accounts for 28% of bugets. Performics pointed to a 20% discount for tablet cost per clicks and a 55% discount for smartphones CPCs. Marin said CPCs are 36% less expensive on smartphones, but the click through rate (CTR) is 70% to 80% higher than via desktop search. Tablet CPCs came in 24% lower than desktop CPCs for Q2, but the CTR is 30% greater vs. the desktop, Mahaney wrote in a research note. "Conversion rates on smartphones are much lower than on desktop or tablets, simply because many Web sites are still not optimized for mobile, and queries on mobile might be less monetizable."Overall, marketers continue to increase search budgets. Driving the uptick, Kenshoo and Marin saw CPC "modestly" increase in the quarter, and IgnitionOne said they fell about 4% year-on-year in Q1 and 3% in Q2. DidIt said CPC came in flat, and Performics saw retail CPCs fall 20% year-on-year, with clicks up 40% and CTRs up 44% across all verticals. Combined, these companies manage about $7 billion in online ad spend.
Increasingly, it looks like the television and online video industries are on a collision course, as broadcasters continue to battle with pay TV providers over carriage fees and online TV startups like Aereo make it easier for consumers to cut the cord and still get their content. The momentum may finally be moving in online video’s favor. On Wednesday, a federal judge rejected a request by broadcasters to halt the operations of Aereo, which uses antennas to pick up broadcasters’ signals in New York and then streams their channels online for a subscription fee. The broadcasters -- which include Fox, PBS, Tribune, Gannett and WNET -- accused the Barry Diller-backed company of “misappropriating copyrighted material” by essentially stealing broadcast signals without paying for them. The group says it will appeal the decision. Separately, Viacom on Wednesday decided to curtail U.S. access to some of its television content online in a move that many see as a direct reaction to its dispute with DirecTV over the carriage fee it receives in exchange for distributing its content via the pay-TV service. As of late Tuesday, Viacom channels like MTV, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central were blacked out for about 20 million DirecTV subscribers. By Wednesday afternoon, the media giant responded by cutting off access to some of its content, including “The Daily Show,” to all U.S. Web users. “Once again it’s viewers who suffer when media companies stall in their negotiations. But the scale of Viacom’s overreaction is unprecedented,” John Bergmayer, a senior staff attorney for public interest group Public Knowledge, told The Washington Post. “Viacom has decided to take a service away from all Internet users in its attempt to punish DirecTV,” Bergmayer said. “It is apparent that Viacom puts little stock in the Internet and the online future of video if it is willing to use all Internet users as a pawn in its negotiations.” Viacom’s dispute with DirecTV is not the only wrangle over carriage fees. Big media companies keep demanding higher fees from pay-TV operators, which in turn, feel they are being held hostage by the content owners. As a result, consumers end up paying higher monthly subscription fees for their pay-TV service. Many consumers are irate with this arrangement, because they only watch a handful of the hundreds of channels they are paying for. Meanwhile, Web-based services like Aereo are trying to benefit from this disconnect by offering fewer channels and cheaper monthly subscription fees.
With Comic-Con taking place this week in its own backyard, JWT’s San Diego-based Digitaria unit came up with a way to tap into the comic book zeitgeist and promote itself in the process, giving away limited edition t-shirts featuring popular comic book memes. The agency will distribute 2,000 shirts –- 500 each day of the four-day conference featuring one of four different designs based on characters from Rage Comics (“Forever Alone” and “Me Gusta”), the “Philosoraptor” and “X All the Y” (see below). "Meme comics are the ultimate conference of technology and nerdery, like inside jokes for the entire Internet community,” states Jim McArthur, the agency’s director of global business development and senior vice president of Digitaria Games. Locations for the giveaways will be tweeted each day under the hashtag #MemeCon from @digithoughts, and the agency will also be publishing observations about the convention via the Digitaria blog (www.digitaria.com/blog), tweets (@digithoughts or #DigiAtSDCC), on Pinterest (pinterest.com/digitaria) and Facebook (www.facebook.com/Digithoughts).
Digg, an early pioneer in both online community news aggregation and social bookmarking, has been sold to Betaworks, which reportedly paid only $500,000 for its assets. In a post on Digg’s blog, CEO Matt Williams said Digg will be combined with Betaworks’ News.me platform, which enables people to use iPads, iPhones and email to deliver stories shared by friends on Facebook and Twitter, a seemingly ignoble end for Digg, which preceded those social networks. “Believe it or not, it's been seven years since Digg launched. To date, we've had over 350 million Diggs, 28 million story submissions and 40 million comments. We're extremely proud to have helped pioneer social voting on the Web,” Williams wrote, adding that he was leaving to join VC Andreessen Horowitz as Entrepreneur in Residence. He is being replaced by Betaworks Founder John Borthwick. “Man that's pretty sad, but Digg has fallen. Lots of spammers on here now, unfortunately,” a Digg user, screen-named Badwetter, commented on the blog. The comment generated 31 diggs.
Most "mocial" (mobile/social/local) email conversations have been about the impact of social media and networks. Participants range from the misguided, who suggest that social media would kill email, to folks like yours truly, who believe that the two channels actually can support each other and make each other more relevant. Social networks and media have had little serious impact on email marketing. The mobile aspect of the mocial trifecta, however, looks like it will have a monumental impact on our beloved channel. First, let's look at the trends driving mobile's impact on email marketing: 1. Smartphone adoption: According to Nielsen research, 49.6% of the U.S. adult population now own smartphones, up from 36% a year earlier. This explosive growth is the driving force behind mobile's impact on email. 2. PC/laptop sales: Forrester says sales of tablets (23%) will actually outpace desktop PCs (18%) and netbook/mini laptops (17%) by 2015 but trail laptops/notebooks (43%). Further, smartphones outsold PCs for the first time in Q4 2010, according to IDC. 3. Tablet sales: Gartner predicted in April 2012 that 119 million tablets would be sold in 2012, and 369 million by 2016. 4. Tablet content activities: A July 2011 study by IDG Global Solutions pegs reading emails (84%) as the second-highest activity on tablets after Web browsing (93%). 5. Platform email access: According to a June 2012 report from Litmus, mobile email opens (36%) passed desktop (33%) and Webmail opens(31%) in April. The number of mobile opens marked an 80% increase over the previous six months. A recent Return Path report shows lower but similar numbers: Email readership on mobile devices accounted for 30% of all opens, up from 10% a few years ago. Return Path estimated that mobile opens would reach about 35% by June, eclipsing Webmail services like Yahoo Mail, Hotmail and Gmail and roughly equaling email opens on desktop clients like Outlook. 6. Day of week usage: The Return Path study revealed a big dip in desktop email client usage over the weekend, with a corresponding rise in mobile and webmail use. 7. Specific email client opens: The Litmus study shows email opens doubled or more in the last year on iOS (10% to 20%), Android (2% to 7%) and iPad (3% to 8%), but plummeted 51% on Outlook (from 37% to 18%). 8. Touchscreens: An August 2011 report from ABI Research suggests that 97% of all smartphones will feature touchscreens by 2016, compared to 7% of touchscreen-equipped smartphones in 2006. 9. Multiple device opens: Of all this data, perhaps the most surprising comes from Litmus. It found that just 3.3% of users have viewed a single email on both a mobile device and either a desktop OR a webmail email client. Not surprisingly, though, someone who opened email on a mobile device at least once in the past will do so again about 45% of the time. Put Statistics into Action Some of the statistics above might vary widely from your specific subscriber base. You might even question their validity. The important thing to focus on is simply the general and rapid adoption of mobile usage. Okay, let's net out all the above statistics:
“Second-screening,” or the use of tablets and smartphones while watching TV, is on the rise. But have you ever wondered how that behavior breaks down by programming genre? To kick off “The Whole Story,” a new weekly series dimensionalizing how consumers use media during key moments in their lives, the Media Behavior Institute examines the role “second screens” are playing by TV programming type. While consumers’ use of second-screen devices may or may not be explicitly related to program content, the potential to engage the audience with an effective call-to-action that supplements the primary screen experience exists to varying degrees by genre.