Everyone’s talking about mobile strategy, and they have been for years. But if marketers haven’t moved toward figuring out how to adapt those strategies to the smartphone and mobile platform, they risk being left behind by consumers. According to the June 2012 Mobile Content Study conducted by Frank N. Magid Associates, smartphones have become the dominant platform for American consumers, with 58% of all Americans using them, and more than three-quarters of people under 44. By mid-2013, the smartphone audience is expected to increase 53% from 99 million users to 151 million users. What that means, according to Tom Godfrey, executive director of mobile strategy at the consulting firm, is that even more consumers will be accessing online content through mobile devices, and marketers need to take such behavior into account as they develop Web- and mobile-based marketing programs. “Consumers have clearly made the jump to mobile devices, and publishers and marketers need to be sure their strategy has to be optimized to smartphones and tablets,” Godfrey tells Marketing Daily. “The majority of web traffic is going to be accessed through a mobile device in the next 12 to 18 months, and what publishers and marketers design has to work through those devices.” Despite the increasing use of mobile devices, marketers and publishers need to be careful how they are deploying their tools, Godfrey says. Apps get a lot of attention, but the survey revealed consumers were divided about how they preferred to access content from their smartphones and tablets. According to Godfrey, more consumers said they had no preference for Web- or app-based access than those who said they preferred one over the other. “For all the focus and ink that’s been spilled for apps, for marketers and e-commerce, the mobile Web continues to have a lot of strength,” Godfrey says. “It remains extraordinarily important for marketers and publishers to establish a presence in both the app and Web world.”
In a blow to Microsoft, a judge has refused to dismiss a potential class-action lawsuit alleging that it sent text spam to consumers. U.S. District Court Judge Janis Sammartino in the Southern District of California rejected Microsoft's argument that the case should only proceed if the consumer who sued could show an economic injury. Sammartino ruled that the federal law prohibiting text spam allows people to sue regardless of whether they had to pay extra to receive the messages. The potential class-action dates to last August, when Illinois resident Neil Smith sued Microsoft for allegedly sending text ads promoting the Xbox. He alleged that the campaign violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which prohibits companies from using automated dialing systems to make calls to cell phones unless the recipients have consented. The statute provides for damages of up to $1,500 per violation. Microsoft argued that Smith didn't allege enough facts to show he had "standing" to bring the case. Specifically, Smith didn't allege that his carrier charged him any extra fees for the texts he allegedly received from Microsoft. "He nowhere alleges he personally suffered any actual harm," Microsoft argued in its motion to dismiss the lawsuit. But Sammartino ruled that Smith can proceed with the case regardless of whether the text ads cost him money. "The TCPA, by its unambiguous terms, does not limit protection to instances in which a plaintiff is charged individually, or even incrementally, for each text message," Sammartino wrote. Microsoft isn't the only company to face accusations that it violated the federal law. Three years ago, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that sending SMS messages potentially violates the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act. That ruling spurred a wave of potential class-action lawsuits against companies that ran text ad campaigns.
CPX Interactive has formally launched its new division and network devoted to mobile properties. Dubbed “Moversa,” the network is already pushing out 300 million to 400 million impressions a day, according to CPX CEO Mike Seiman. He tells Mobile Marketing Daily that the mobile spinoff evolved naturally from the rising mobile traffic the company was already seeing to its publishers’ sites. When they started several months ago, virtually all of the ads were being served on sites that had not yet been optimized for mobile. “When we started the idea we took all of those 100 million impressions a day and started going after mobile-optimized inventory and quadrupled it. Now 70% is mobile-optimized Web and applications,” Seiman says. The network is serving over 75 clients, and more than half are from the pool of existing CPX customers. But about 40% of the new sign-ups are new and are coming specifically to Moversa. About 65% of the inventory is coming from existing CPX publishing partners, with 35% from newly acquired sources. The mobile piece already represents 5% of CPX business, the company says. The company is selling campaigns to clients both across desktop, tablet and smartphone platforms and specifically to devices. While traditional cookie-based targeting is not available on most of the devices, Seiman says the company is getting considerable granularity out of existing data. “What we are finding interesting is that we do a lot of IP targeting on display. In looking at IP and being able to use geotargeting, you can get awareness of what that user is like.” Like the Web display business, Seiman finds that mobile advertising started with their lead-generation business but migrated to more agency buys and brand campaigns. “We have a specific strength in lead-gen, but well over 40% of inventory is from brands and agencies,” he says. On the mobile side the shift has been similar but much faster. “We started with lead-gen and in three months we see 25% to 30% agency and brand dollars. That growth is faster than what happened on the Web.” Many traditional Web display players are looking to extend their reach and customer base onto mobile platforms as users themselves migrate to devices. But some endemic mobile ad networks argue that mobile requires special skills and technology. Seimen disagrees, of course. “In my opinion this is a natural extension of what display is on the desktop.” Mobile is another screen, he argues --but he acknowledges the argument against traditional ad networks extending themselves to mobile is common. “I believe that part of it is our fault for not jumping into mobile as quickly. We allowed time to create this distance and for them to say we don’t understand it.”
Smartphones and tablets are taking over the Wi-Fi airwaves. The mobile devices accounted for more than half (52%) of Wi-Fi use in the second quarter -- up from 30% in the year-earlier period, according to the latest data from location-based mobile ad company JiWire. Laptops made up the balance of use. Overall, Wi-Fi usage has more than tripled (up 240%) from a year ago. When it comes to tablets, the company found that ownership is highest among parents: 52% of tablets owners are moms and 44% are dads, compared with 42% and 40%, respectively, of single men and women. Single women are also the least likely to own a smartphone. Where are people using devices? The most common places for smartphone use are restaurants, cafes and shopping malls. Tablets are most likely to be used at shopping malls and hotels, while laptops turn up most often at universities, libraries and hotels. Men and women both use mobile devices in places like restaurants and real estate, doctors' and legal offices and banks. But men are more likely to use mobile apps at auto repair shops, home improvement stores and travel consultants, while women do so at beauty salons, dentists, childcare locations and jewelry stores. Nearly two-thirds (62%) of people location-tag posts they share via Facebook and other social networking sites. Millennials (those 34 and under) are the most likely to tag locations, with three out of four doing so. Parents are also sharing their whereabouts, with 64% location-tagging in social posts on devices. People who use the Instagram photo-sharing app tend to be younger, with twice as many under 24 than other social apps like Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Furthermore, 36% use their phone every time they shop in-store. Two-thirds of Twitter users plan to use their devices more this holiday season than last year. Google+ skews older, with twice as many people 55 and over, and more male (64%) than other social media services. In terms of mobile platforms, Apple's iOS was by far the dominant operating system on JiWire's network in the U.S., driving 81% of ad requests. Android trailed far behind, at 16%, followed by BlackBerry, with 2%, and Windows Phone, at less than 1%. The number of Wi-Fi locations has continued to grow to meet demand, up 12% in the second quarter from a year ago to 776,556 worldwide. That marks the first double-digit increase since the third quarter of 2011. The JiWire findings are based on data from 315,000 public Wi-Fi hotspots, as well as a survey of more than 1,400 randomly selected customers across its nedia network of 30,000 Wi-Fi locations in North America between April and June.
Being a digital-only publication isn’t saving News Corp.’s tablet-inspired newspaper, The Daily, from some of the trends affecting the print newspaper business: the need for deep staff cuts. The 18-month-old digital pub will cut 50 employees from its current workforce of 170, the publication announced Tuesday, or 29% of its workforce. The axe will fall heavily on staffers for the editorial page, which is being cut as a stand-alone section, as well as sports, which will henceforth be produced by content partners like Fox Sports. Layoffs will also affect design and production staff. The staff cuts are part of a broader overhaul that aims to reduce costs and put the publication on a firmer financial footing. Among other changes, The Daily will now appear only in portrait format, eliminating the need to create a landscape format for every piece of content. However, the publication emphasized it remains committed to its core mission of original reporting and compelling photography and video. The news of staff cuts at The Daily comes on the heels of News Corp.’s announcement that it will spin off its newspapers to focus on its entertainment properties. While it has succeeded in attracting over 100,000 subscribers, the staff reductions could be seen as another rebuff for an embattled Rupert Murdoch, who championed the publication as a digital trailblazer. The company’s soon-to-be-independent newspaper division has been cutting costs elsewhere. Last month, Dow Jones shuttered the print version of SmartMoney.
Verizon has agreed to pay $1.25 million to settle allegations that it wrongly prevented wireless users from accessing apps that allowed them to transform their smartphones into modems, the FCC announced on Tuesday.Last year, Verizon told customers they would have to pay an extra fee if they wished to tether their smartphones to tablets, laptops or other devices. Tethering enables people to access the Web from tablets or laptops via their phones' mobile broadband capabilities. As part of the move to charge for tethering, Verizon convinced Google to remove free tethering apps from the Android store.The move spurred advocacy group Free Press to file a complaint with the FCC. The group said Verizon was violating the terms of its license to operate on the C-Block -- a portion of the spectrum that the telecom uses for its 4G LTE service. When Verizon acquired that spectrum, the company promised to allow consumers to access the network from whatever devices they chose.To settle the FCC investigation, Verizon also agreed that it won't object in the future to app stores offering tethering apps. The company recently modified its pricing structure to allow people on usage-based billing to tether without incurring additional fees. But the telecom still charges subscribers who retained unlimited plans an extra tethering fee.Free Press Policy Director Matt Wood said that the FCC action "makes it clear that Verizon was flaunting its obligations as a spectrum-license holder and engaging in anti-competitive behavior that harmed consumers and innovation."
It’s understandable that a consumer might use in-store mobile barcode scanning to save money on a big-ticket item. The customer can scan an item, quickly see the price of the same product from surrounding stores, and give the retailer the chance to price-match or purchase the item elsewhere or online. The potential savings on large purchases can make the effort worthwhile. But will consumers also put in the scanning effort for much smaller and less expensive items, such as groceries? Ahold USA, parent company of Stop & Shop and other supermarkets, has been working on just that issue since about 2001. After various iterations, Ahold installed handheld scanners in several hundred of its 750 stores throughout the U.S. A shopper entering a Stop & Shop could pick up a scanner at the store entrance, scan products as they shop and return the scanner on the way out. The benefit was the offering of coupons based on items scanned, integration of coupons with the shopping, real-time tracking of the total cost of what was scanned and a running tally of the total savings based on the coupons redeemed. These were pre-smartphone days. At the time, I had serious reservations about the success of such a system -- where consumers would have to learn to use a foreign device only while they were in the store -- and whether they might feel somewhat strange walking around a supermarket scanning every item they wanted to buy. However, many shoppers did use the devices, which turned out to be a success over time. Stop & Shop is now moving that capability to smartphones, transforming and simplifying the process. To see how this works, I went grocery shopping with an executive of Catalina Mobile, the company that has been working on in-store scanning with Ahold and Stop & Shop for the past decade and the one that developed the mobile app. I was still a bit skeptical of how and whether this would even work, until I visited the store. We entered a Stop & Shop in Danvers, MA, and charted our course around the store. Before even starting our mobile shopping, I watched a woman with two small children in her shopping cart (one with a car and steering wheel in front) pick up and scan items, put them in a bag in her cart and move on to the next aisle. She did this throughout the store, looking as if she had been doing it all her life. No big deal. At checkout, the shopper uses the scanner to quickly check out and pay, with the groceries not having to be removed from the bags (there are various security profiling measures built into the system). The iPhone and Android apps were launched in more than 250 stores earlier this year, and we used the iPhone version for our shopping. Products of various categories were read relatively easily with the app and as we scanned certain items, we received instant coupon offers. “We bring big data down to the aisle,” said John Caron, vice president, marketing, at Catalina Mobile and my shopping companion. When we scanned items in the dairy section, we received coupon offers for items in the same section. The selection was based not only on location, but on past purchase patterns and other criteria, said Caron, which was true of all products scanned. In the produce department, there are scales where shoppers typically weigh produce, except these now have instant printers that spit out a barcode to be read by the app, thereby automatically entering the item into the shopping cart. The obvious long-term solution is to cut down on the number of registers and check out using in-the-aisle checkout by the shopper. “Within three years, all grocers will have some integrated mobile savings, coupon and mobile commerce capability,” said Caron. “If you look at the top 25 (grocers), they’ll all have it in the next three years. The best ones will have it within the next 12 months. What you’ll see over the next 12 to 24 months is the majority of them embracing mobile as an engagement tool for their shoppers. I mean, can you think of anything more personal?” We’ll see how well in-store scanning will evolve over time. But as shoppers with full shopping carts waited in line for their turn at the Stop & Shop checkout registers, the woman with the two small children was on her way to her car, groceries scanned, packed and paid.
With all the shenanigans over in London right now surrounding the Olympic games, it’s inevitable that the lives of Londoners and those in towns and cities impacted by the Games are turned upside down in a whirlwind of activity and more than a little sporting patriotism.For those of us farther afield, our media consumption is similarly disrupted. From changes in the broadcast schedule of an array of TV channels, through online streaming of live events, downloads of videos from YouTube, an uplift in social media activity (both around the opening ceremony and beyond), as well as a shift in the emphasis of the content we’re accessing, many of us are manifesting very different patterns of media consumption than in a non-Olympic summer.Whether using more media or watching different content, to varying degrees the Games represent one of the most disruptive media events in the worldwide media calendar.But while we can readily see evidence of increased sports media consumption, what is sacrificed or deferred? And what gets the honor of being consumed in real-time? What proportion of people use the DVR for their normal program choices and how many choose to record the Olympics? (After all, we aren’t devotees of every sport on display.)When it comes to time-shifting, what’s the option of choice? Is it the DVR or will it be online alternatives? For example, I wasn’t able to watch the opening ceremony live but my first stop for time-shifted viewing turned out to YouTube for the James Bond / Queen Elizabeth skitAnd then there’s social media. Quite apart from the fact that the volume of local Twitter traffic was apparently responsible for jamming the networks informing commentators of event timings, there’s an awful lot of news being broken informally on people’s news feeds via the Share button. Whether linking to news stories, videos or pictures uploaded by individuals in London right now, Facebook and Twitter have come alive with Olympic content.We’ve already heard that this year is the year of the Streaming Olympics, the Tablet Olympics and the Second Screen Olympics. Probably all of these will turn out to be true. (The one thing that wasn’t predicted widely was the parachuting monarch, but that’s another story.)The reality is that while disruption to our normal pattern of media consumption will be pretty much universal for anyone closely following the event, the precise nature of that disruption will be particular to each of us. It may involve more daytime viewing of video, more social viewing in public spaces, more streaming, more use of a wider range of video sources or more family-centric appointment viewing.What do you think will be the dominant media consumption trends when the last medal has been awarded, the cheers have faded and Mr. Bean has left the stadium?
I commute to, and work in, New York City. It’s not the densest city in the world, but more than eight million people sure make it feel like that way. And when that many pedestrians navigate crowded streets, train stations, subways, sidewalks, retail stores, restaurants, elevators, parks and paths, it’s important that they pay attention. Paying attention is foremost a safety concern. A distracted pedestrian is a risk in the presence of aggressive, raging and sleep-deprived drivers and motorcycling messengers -- and they are on every block. Distracted pedestrians also are a risk in the presence of construction-site scaffolding, open sidewalk basement doors, water fountains and train platform edges. I’m not sure there are any nationwide or global studies on the dangers of texting while walking, but regional and anecdotal evidence is mounting. The volume of news reports and legal posturing is growing as well, as reflected, for example, in a trend story this week by the AP’s transportation reporter, Joan Lowy. I’m highly against overbearing and frivolous legislation. But if the safety of innocent victims is at stake, and it involves countering distracting and addictive behaviors like texting, I’m in support of legal intervention. I’ve seen little kids get hit by texting walkers, and babies in strollers get pushed into unsafe intersections by texting moms and babysitters. It’s a real problem. Yet texting while walking is more than just a safety concern. It can be highly annoying for fellow pedestrians. These days, it seems like half the pedestrians on any sidewalk have their heads down on their screens instead of watching where they’re going. If you’re not focused on texting, you have to allocate your focus to monitoring those who are. Some busy passageways -- like Grand Central Station at 7:30 a.m .on a weekday -- require you to walk with your arms extended, both to warn texting walkers and to physically deflect them. The worst are cigarette smokers who text while walking. Finally, when extraterrestrial life forms observe us from outer space, you’ve got to wonder what they think about our species. Is it normal for half of us to walk with our heads angled down, gazing into ittle glowing screens? Is that evolution? With smartphone adoption continuing to ubiquity, you can’t help but question texting’s impact to pedestrian safety and quality of life. The problem is getting worse, not better. So until behavior changes or smartphone technologies solve the challenge for us, I’m in support of legislation to ban texting while walking. Mayor Bloomberg: After you win your war on supersized sugary drinks, would you please shift your focus to texting while walking?
On Monday, San Francisco-based mobile advertising company Tapjoy announced a transaction that included the addition of the core team of social game and app distribution company Viximo. “Social integration plays a pivotal role in app development and engagement,” stated Mihir Shah, Tapjoy CEO. Tapjoy is sticking to their plan of expanding their product offerings, and they are hoping that this move will “enhance its ability to bring social tools to Tapjoy’s app discovery platform.” “Becoming part of the Tapjoy team presents us with an incredible opportunity to accelerate our evolution from social into mobile,” stated Sean Lindsay, former CTO and co-founder of Viximo and current VP, engineering for Tapjoy. The Viximo team joins Tapjoy’s Boston studio, which Tapjoy hopes will become a focal point for developing relations and advertising sales in the Northeast.