The holiday scramble to get apps high on their respective marketplace leaderboards in time to attract new device owners occurred in November about as predictably as Black Friday. According to app marketing service Fiksu and its monthly indexes, the cost to acquire a loyal user forapps in the Apple App Store rose 30% to $1.38 for the month. Part of the marketing cost spike came from markedly decreased download activity. In its monitor of the top 200 free apps on the iOS system, Fiksu saw a drop of 15.4% to 4.57 million downloads. The dip in app activity comes largely from the effects of the iPhone 5 launch and iOS 6 release in September and October, which caused a spike in downloads for October. The 5.4 million daily download rate that Fiksu measured in October had represented a seven-month high. Marketing costs routinely rise in advance of the all-important holiday season for the app ecosystem. In this case, however, the sharp 30% spike was a notable turnaround from a long stretch of declines. Fiksu says that increasingly marketers are finding greater efficiencies in their marketing spends and app seekers are finding apps through organic searching. Fiksu CEO Micah Adler states: “We can expect costs and download volumes to climb through December, much like last year, as marketers spend heavily in preparation for the flood of new devices and rush of user activity and app discovery around Christmas.” In fact, Christmas Day proved to be a boon for the tablet ecosystem. App metrics firm Flurry reported more than 17 million tablet activations on Dec. 25, more than doubling last year’s 6.8 million and even outpacing smartphone activations for the day. App download activity for the day was up over 100% as well. Marketers and app developers traditionally race to get their apps updated and well-promoted just before Apple staff leave for the Christmas holiday and stop updating the App Store bestseller lists. The all-important leaderboards are among the most successful routes to compounding app success by surfacing titles for app-seeking device owners.
Aiming to expand its digital distribution, publishing and education company Pearson PLC has agreed to invest $89.5 million in cash for a 5% stake in Nook Media, Barnes & Noble’s digital business arm. Following the close of the transaction announced Friday, Barnes & Noble will own 78.2% of Nook Media. Microsoft, which closed a $300 million investment in the subsidiary in October, will hold a 16.8% share, down from 17.6% before the Pearson deal. The U.K.-based publisher will have the option to purchase up to an additional 5% interest, subject to certain conditions. Pearson, which owns Penguin Books and the Financial Times, is the largest higher education publisher globally, and biggest in the U.S. for K-12 textbooks. The Pearson deal values Nook Media, which also includes Barnes & Noble’s college textbook business, at $1.79 billion, up from $1.7 billion at the time of the Microsoft investment. The companies said the new investment would improve access to digital content by pairing Pearson’s expertise in online learning with Nook Media’s focus on digital distribution and customer service. "We formed Nook Media to be a leader in the exploding market for digital content," stated Barnes & Noble CEO William Lynch. "Pearson is a forward-thinking company similarly focused on reading and learning, with powerful assets and a terrific management team.” Barnes & Noble also announced in a securities filing Friday that it expects holiday sales to miss expectations, and that the Nook business will fall short of a projection for its fiscal 2013. The bookseller will release its final holiday results on Jan. 3. Barnes & Noble’s line of Nook tablets and e-readers face intense competition from Apple’s iPad and iPad mini, Amazon’s Kindle devices, Samsung’s Galaxy Tab, and Google’s Nexus tablets. New data released by the Pew Research Center suggests book reading is shifting away from dedicated e-readers toward multi-use tablets. Despite interest in front-lit e-readers like the Nook Paperwhite, research firm IDC projects sales of e-readers will top out at 19.9 million units this year, down from 27.7 million in 2011. Still, the Pearson investment shows the publishing world sees promise in the Nook business despite its early struggles and high initial costs. News of the Pearson deal appeared to offset disappointment over Barnes & Noble’s holiday sales forecast, with the company’s shares up about 6% in Friday afternoon trading.
Welcome to online advertising and marketing in 2013, where opt-in push advertising -- rather than pull -- becomes the norm, as consumers feel more comfortable allowing brands to recognize location, intent and preferences through devices. Sensors will aggregate data from siloed campaigns that feed into one analytics platform, crunching numbers and spitting out data into CRM and online ordering systems. Data and content will customize the Web to determine on the fly the best campaign that speaks to consumers. It all centers on personalized content with each new search query or visit to brand Web sites or social network pages. In 2013, the "E" in SEO transforms from engine to experience on desktop and mobile devices, as brands that purchased branded top level domain names prepare to launch them. Online advertising sits on the brink of a technological revelation. From Adobe to BlueKai to WordStream, executives weigh in to provide insight on how they think online advertising and marketing industry media trends will evolve in 2013. Sid Shah, director of business analytics at Adobe, believes the explosion of content will surface in the "living room on the go" as licensing rights and better monetization capabilities enable seamless content portability for consumers. It will support the spike in mobile traffic and drive digital advertising. By the end of 2013, one in three paid clicks could come from a tablet or smartphone. "Cross-channel and cross-device measurement will become paramount, and the industry can expect continued evolution of cross-channel measurement of products, reporting and analytics," Shah said. Raj De Datta, CEO and co-founder at BloomReach, believes 2013 will bring the death of static Web pages. Intent and browsing habits will influence the content on the page. It will change for each consumer based on intent and navigation. The data collected from that experience will contribute to the "too much data" era. Unmanageable growth of data will force companies to autonomous machines that turn Internet data into revenue, he said. To remain competitive and adjust to changing customer demands, businesses will enlist the help of big data applications to harness the Internet and convert sales. Harnessing the overwhelming volume of big data will soon reach a tipping point, proving too costly to extract value in a timely manner. Companies will face a shortage in skilled workers who are able to interpret and act on data gathered by analytic applications. The U.S. is expected to face a shortfall by as much as 190,000 qualified data analysts by 2018. Automatic action powered by self-learning machines will replace analytics, and people will return to what they do best: creativity, De Datta said. Omar Tawakol, BlueKai CEO, also believes 2013 will bring cross-channel data and campaign integration from search, video, display and mobile. "Dark corners of digital ad practices will be scrubbed," he said, and the industry will eliminate below-the-fold ad-counting practices as acceptable business practices. By the end of the year, Tawakol said forward-thinking brand marketers will take charge of their own data and re-evaluate agencies based on their ability to drive audience insights. This critical junction that helps to determine ROI identifies ways to gain the best use from cross-channel audience and measurement data beyond simple media performance. Mike Baker, CEO of DataXu, said brands began to integrate search with programmatic display advertising in 2012, as marketers capture data from paid-search traffic directly and through resellers for display retargeting. "Perhaps more importantly, we will see more advertisers in 2013 deploying sophisticated 'omnichannel' attribution models that more accurately measure the contribution of search clicks against the broader context of all paid, owned and earned media," he said. Larry Kim, founder and CTO of WordStream, said 2013 will see Google "unleash additional zoo creatures" similar to panda and penguin, two search algorithm changes. It will make SEO more complex, as well as making ads and content from Google+ more prominent in the search engine results pages. The shift, Kim said, will require marketers to find a stronger balance between inbound marketing strategies. The engine will become more aggressive when it comes to enforcing their terms of service, penalizing companies with products that send automated queries, such as scraping Google SERP results to check keyword rankings. Google will delist from their index companies that don't comply. Angela Bandlow, VP of marketing at Extole, believes that in 2013 marketers will settle the social ROI debate because they will finally have the data to prove strategies. With more sophisticated analytics, marketers will know those sharing stories about their brand, as well as analyze impressions, clicks, and conversions to optimize better than in the past. Word of mouth marketing will dominate social discussion. It won't be effective to push branded marketing messages over social channels. More than 80% of purchase cycles involve WOM, so marketers will find compelling ways to engage with their consumers to get them to spread the word. She also said paid, owned and earned media will become the rule, not the exception. Peter Shankman, Geek Factory founder, "hopes" 2013 will become the year marketers stop using the term "social media" when referring to a campaign. Marketers create campaigns expecting miracles from standalone social media campaigns. Those who don't create bigger marketing, advertising, branding and communications plans designed to generate revenue will fail. He hopes marketers will stop trying to force the "next big thing" label on every "start-up with a finished iPhone app and a half-done Android app" because it hurts the industry. "If Facebook's management plays their cards right, they can virtually own mobile advertising" in 2013, he said. Photo: Father Time from Shutterstock
Technology wielded its influence over nearly every sector of marketing, but none was of more interest to Marketing Daily readers than the world of social, which was enabled more than ever by the widespread penetration of smartphones and tablets. Technology has become a central point in people’s lives, illustrated by consumers’ increasing average monthly spending on cable TV, home Internet, mobile phone and digital subscriptions (including streaming video) to $166 a month, equivalent to 17% of their monthly mortgage or rent payment. Additional costs such as downloading songs, apps and other products averaged an $38 more a month. The findings, from the AICPA, suggested that spending would only increase as households added more devices. With the sales of devices such as smartphones and tablets taking off at higher rates, many readers were looking for ways to connect with consumers through their devices, whether through the use of QR codes (which research showed consumers were using, despite concerns about the codes’ value), social media (such as an agency creating an “I care” button for Facebook) or simply optimizing sites for the mobile operating systems these devices use. At the same time, readers were concerned (but pleased to learn) that the “mobile influence factor” of smartphones on in-store retail sales would increase those sales more than threefold over the next four years. The sphere of influence also caught readers’ eyes, from stories suggesting that friend recommendations carried more weight among consumers than traditional marketing messages to a piece pointing out that women’s influence on overall purchasing decisions was growing. But in the end, the one maxim of marketing remained: a good story will help in almost any world. A story summing up the criteria among TED’s latest “Ads worth spreading” offered proof (thanks to consumer research from ACE Metrix about the ads) that compelling stories resonate with consumers.
There is good reason why Zappos ads can be found staring at you from within the airport security bins or why Geico displayed ads in airport bathrooms last year. Everything from in-flight videos to tray tables have been plastered with ads because brands are willing to go to great lengths to reach travelers, a lucrative demographic for advertisers. While in-airport and in-flight ads in creative places are one way to reach travelers, the eyes of airport dwellers are actually pointed down. Step foot in any airport around the world, and you’ll see thousands of travelers feverishly using their mobile devices to kill time -- which is great news for brands. Mobile devices are an extension of the consumer, and with one out of every ten online dollars spent on a mobile device, travelers are the perfect target for mobile advertising. Strategic brands capitalize on this consumer behavior because they know mobile ads are an effective way to get the message across. Here are three insights about the travel demographic that every brand should keep in mind when developing a strategic, mobile advertising plan: Travelers Are Mobile Savvy A newly released study commissioned by Expedia Media Solutions and conducted by comScore reveals that travelers are confident mobile shoppers, frequently turning to mobile devices for travel planning -- whether looking for inspiration, planning an existing trip or booking a last-minute getaway. According to the study, 44% of travelers use a tablet or smartphone to plan their trip, while 48% use a mobile device to dream of or conduct research for their next trip. It also showed that of those who have booked travel on a mobile device, 80% of smartphone users and 90% of tablet users would do so again. What does this mean for marketers? Travelers Are Planning, Purchasing On The Go Travelers are spending more time actively engaged on mobile devices in public places, i.e. the airport, and are increasingly more comfortable making purchases on a mobile device. With an increase in mobile buying, advertisers should deliver geo-targeted and relevant mobile ads to the on-the-go traveler. Per comScore, a full one-third of travel planning that occurs on mobile devices happens while travelers are on the go -- nearly 30% of travelers used a mobile device to check flight schedules or prices, while close to 25% of travelers used a mobile device to read hotel reviews, compare hotel prices or check hotel availability. That creates a perfect opportunity for brands. Travelers Need More Than Just Luggage and Flight Schedules Instead of broadly advertising in airport security bins, bathroom stalls or terminal seating areas, brands should be more strategic in their approach. A retail chain can get the message out about a cold-weather sale to a traveler in Wisconsin in January, or for travelers checking the status of their flight in the security line, why not advertise the restaurants in the terminal? For travelers booking a hotel room or making online dinner reservations, advertising local attractions makes sense. With the right targeting capabilities, there are endless opportunities in the digital airport. The airport is not just an ad-saturated building any more. It’s a digital hotspot where one of the most lucrative and mobile savvy demographics spends hours connected to and focused on their mobile devices. Smart brands are implementing targeted and strategic mobile campaigns and effectively reaching these on the go consumers.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted Google a patent Dec. 25, for a method for combining generic and specific search results. A quality score supports each search result. The patent, Blending mobile search results, won't help Google make as much money from Android as other operating systems such as Apple and Microsoft do, but it will allow the company to generate revenue from Google search results or when they buy apps from the Play Store. The gold coins generated from revenue on mobile will come from data. It supports DataXu CEO Mike Baker's view on programmatic media buying, which he said will become as familiar to C-suite executives as cloud computing in 2013 -- supporting mobile and video campaigns, not just display ads. In mid-December 2012, eMarketer raised its 2012 U.S. mobile ad forecast from about $2.6 billion to more than $4 billion, up to $7.19 billion in 2013. The importance of Google's patent titled Blending mobile search results follows: 1) The patent claims if a generic search result has a higher position in the ranked search results than the specific mobile search result, the technology moves the specific mobile search result to the position in the ranked search results that the specific generic search result occupied. 2) The patent can identify when a search query came from a mobile search result. 3) The patent points to technology identifying when a search query came from the mobile device. It uses a classifier to classify the mobile search query. 4) The technology removes duplicate queries, identifies a specific generic search result in the plurality of generic search results, detects when a second resource is different from the first, and removes the specific generic search result from the ranked search results. 5) When a generic search result serves up in a higher position in the ranked search results than the specific mobile search result, it moves it to the position in the ranked search results that the specific generic search result occupied.