• Starbucks To Extend Mobile Push With Order Delivery
    Starbucks plans to introduce a food and beverage delivery service in select markets in the second half of 2015, CEO Howard Schultz announced during the company's earnings conference call Thursday. It's the latest step Starbucks is taking to build on its much-publicized success with mobile payments and broader effort to keep up with the consumers who are increasingly shopping and browsing online through their devices. The company is rolling out mobile ordering in December in Portland before expanding it nationwide next year.
  • 16 Handles Serves Up Conversation in Kik Messaging App
    Getting into the conversation within messaging apps is a daunting challenge for brands that need scale but want to maintain authenticity. Kik has been testing brand user accounts that allow marketers to use broadcast messaging and auto-replies to engage in chat-like exchanges.
  • Walgreens Uses Apple Pay To Jab CVS, Rite Aid
    Walgreens knows an opportunity when it sees one. With drug chain rivals CVS and Rite Aid pulling support for Apple Pay, the company has taken to Twitter to promote its rollout of the mobile payments platform. Both CVS and Rite Aid are part of the Walmart-led Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX), which plans to introduce a competing mobile payments system called CurrentC next year, seeking to bypass credit card network fees.
  • Apple Pay Activates 1 Million Cards, But How Many Users?
    Since Apple launched its mobile payments service Apple Pay last week, various reports have come in about the customer experience based on early testing. But last night, Apple CEO Tim Cook attached a number to the rollout, revealing that more than one million credit cards were activated on Apple Pay in the first 72 hours. That suggests adoption of Apple Pay is off to a solid start -- especially considering the service so far is available only to iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus owners.
  • M-Payment Hardball Begins As Some Retailers Shut Down Apple Pay
    It's bad enough that mobile payments have not shown they can solve a problem worth solving. Now we have the comic spectacle of retailers blocking a payment option no one asked for, just so the retailer can be the only one not to solve a problem.
  • Wary Of Rivals, Pandora To Boost Marketing
    Pandora wants to stay atop the charts for online music streaming. To that end, the company late last month kicked off a new brand campaign tied to its thumbs up/thumbs down feature for rating songs. Eight listeners who had just given "thumbs up" to popular YouTube artist Lindsey Stirling received a message from her inviting them to a live chat session and special performance from the violinist via a Los Angeles studio.
  • iPad Air 2 Aims Toward The Transparent Gadget Experience
    Greater transparency is really the theme of the iPad Air 2. The idea is to get the tech out of the way. Critics are wringing their hands the wrong way, however. Apple's failure is in not reimagining the media experience itself.
  • Video Ads Over-index On iOS Devices
    Opera Mediaworks over the summer acquired mobile video ad network AdColony to capitalize on the growing audience for watching video on devices, especially in the U.S. In its latest mobile ad report released today, the company said one in 10 of the ads delivered through its platform in the U.S. is now video. As a result of the acquisition, Opera Mediaworks spotlighted some of the trends it's seeing in mobile video advertising.
  • Wearables Won't Be Something Marketers Can Just Throw On
    A new PricewaterhouseCoopers study released today on the emerging wearable device market highlights a familiar theme: that tech-savvy Millennials in particular will lead wider adoption of new gadgets as an extension of their always-on connected lifestyles. "The Wearable Future" report also pointed to some of the challenges for marketers seeking to capitalize on the category's growth.
  • Generation Tap: Tiny Fingers Drive The Tablet's Best Use Case
    Tablets peaking? Well maybe. but they have already established themselves in most households as an essential part of media consumption. Your kids will tell you just how liberating these things are.
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