After entering into a partnership with Yahoo in April, social-flavored app directory Appolicious is building on the alliance with a new property dedicated to Yahoo apps. And highlighting the rapid rise of Google Android's platform, the startup has also revamped its site for Android apps and introduced its own Android app. The new co-branded yap.appolicious.com and AndroidApps.com sites feature original text and videos, user-curated app lists, personalized recommendations, ratings and reviews. Links to original articles from the sites will be featured in relevant content across key Yahoo properties including news, sports and finance. As with the main site, the words "in association with Yahoo" appear at the top of each page on the new Yahoo and Android app sites. The properties are linked to Appolicious.com via tabs that appear prominently on the home page alongside a third for iPad and iPhone apps. Yahoo users will be able to join the sites automatically using their Yahoo log-in information. Appolicious has also taken steps to upgrade search. The search box is centered at the top of each page and functionality has been broadened to encompass the Yahoo and Android app sites. Besides returning relevant apps, the new results page now features related user app lists and staff articles as well as a list of apps generated by the site's recommendation engine. "Consumers can now, for the first time, use Appolicious' editorial, social, and search tools to help them find Android, iPhone and iPad, and Yahoo Apps," said Appolicious founder and CEO Alan Warms, who left Yahoo in late 2008 to start the company. It has since raised a total of about $2 million in venture funding. Not surprisingly, traffic to Appolicious.com has jumped since it teamed up with Yahoo. Monthly unique visitors to the site shot up from less than 200,000 in May to nearly 1 million as of July, according to Web measurement firm Compete. The expanded content and a recent redesign giving Appolicious.com a less cluttered look and feel could help lift traffic further in the coming months. Terms of Yahoo's deal with Appolicious have not been disclosed, though it involves some type of ad revenue-sharing arrangement.
Nokia gobbled up the mobile analytics company Motally, with plans to integrate the technology into its Ovi applications store. The acquisition, announced Friday, should close before the end of the third quarter. Motally's Tracker application supports iPad, iPhone, BlackBerry and Android. Nokia plans to adapt the company's technology to work with the Symbian platform, as well as Meego, Qt, and Java. With this acquisition, Nokia picks up its own mobile analytics provider in the U.S., which should allow advertisers and marketers to optimize budgets in Nokia apps. Some ad experts have already begun to ponder the data possibilities that come from more targeted, mobile advertising. It all comes down to data when trying to understand consumer behavior, says Noah Elkin, eMarketer mobile senior analyst. "Nokia is a top global brand, but isn't as much of a player in the U.S. because they either sell low-end phones or very high end without carrier subsidies," he says. "Globally, Nokia has approximately half of the smartphone subscriber market and about 40% penetration." While the acquisition ties into global efforts, Elkin says the deal likely represents one piece in a bigger push toward the United States market. The latest numbers, which eMarketer expects to soon revise, put U.S. mobile advertising spend at nearly $1.6 billion in 2013, up from $593 million this year. Globally, nearly 500 million people accessed the Internet through mobile devices in 2009 -- up from only 100 million in 2005, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers. A study released earlier this week projects that number will reach 1.4 billion by 2014, bringing staggering opportunities for advertisers and marketers. Not an easy market for advertisers to ignore. The mobile Internet has already exploded in Japan, which accounted for 53% of global spending on mobile Internet access in 2009. It gets better. Last year, mobile devices generated more than 60% of total Internet access spending in the country. Other markets remain at the bottom of the growth curves. The rise of mobile will become one of three themes to emerge this year in the ad industry, according to a study released by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Analysts for the firm estimate mobile will come of age within the next year due to the penetration of smartphones and other Internet-enabled mobile devices. The ability to analyze content on mobile devices will not stop with ads. In South Korea, more than 20 million people watched television on mobile devices in 2009, according to the PwC reports, estimating that by 2014, the number will exceed 30 million. Nokia executives realize the acquisition should give developers who build apps insight into consumer behavior. Tie consumer behavior into location and time of day, says David Berkowitz, director of emerging media and client strategy, and the data becomes "very powerful" for advertisers as they build out campaigns. It may give advertisers the opportunity to buy better inventory aligning with target demographics, but Tagga Media CEO Amielle Lake believes quantifying mobile conversion metrics still remains a challenge -- not because the data isn't available, but because advertisers still struggle with understanding what a conversion means in a mobile environment. "This is a long-standing problem, where the addition of new data around mobile behavior is extremely important," she says. While Lake views Nokia's purchase of Motally as positive because it brings data to advertisers, that next should become a focus on tools that can improve the way advertisers interpret and use mobile analytics to make better decisions around their entire media plan, not just mobile. Similar to Lake, Bryron Meunier, associate director of search engine optimization at Resolution Media, calls Nokia's Motally acquisition an awakening for mobile advertising because it provides advertisers and marketing executives with accountability for ad budgets and campaigns. "When Google acquired Admob and Apple acquired Quattro Wireless at the beginning of this year, they both acquired world-class mobile analytics providers, though the talk was more on the mobile advertising networks that the analytics supported," he says, adding that marketers and advertisers are more likely to invest in Nokia mobile advertising, given this acquisition.
PepsiCo has gained widespread attention for its social media initiatives, including its Refresh project and Mountain Dew's Dewmocracy campaign to crowd-source new flavors. And the beverage giant's decision not to run a Super Bowl ad this year underscored its broader shift away from traditional to emerging media. More quietly, that transition is also happening at the local level for Pepsi brands. The company this year launched an effort in partnership with its network of 57 local bottlers nationwide to test online advertising after historically relying on established formats like print, radio and TV to promote deals and special offers in their areas. "The initial thought behind this was knowing that digital has become a more important channel for consumers," said Katie Haniffy, a media manager at PepsiCo. "And we wanted to make sure our local bottling system had the ability to customize a relevant message for consumers in their markets as opposed to a national brand-equity message." To that end, PepsiCo worked with Omnicom Group's OMD and ad technology company PointRoll to run local campaigns on behalf of bottlers and retailers across 150 designated market areas (DMAs) with placements on portals such as Google, AOL and Yahoo. An initial flight took place over four weeks in April and May, and another is currently running. Pepsi says full results of the campaigns will not be available until the fourth quarter, but the company is pleased with the progress so far in shifting local ad spend to digital. At the heart of the project is ShopLocal, PointRoll's service that allows retailers to run local online ads and offers using the company's rich media units. The system features a database interface where offers and products can be uploaded and localized, then combined with creative delivered via PointRoll's ad-serving platform. "OMD is a longstanding agency partner of ours and a true believer in engaging users through technology," said Catherine Spurway, vice president, strategy and marketing at PointRoll. The company and OMD worked to train the bottlers themselves in using the system, although much of the actual work on the system was done by their local ad agencies. The Web portals were selected for the campaigns because of their ability to deliver geotargeted ads at the DMA level. In addition to Pepsi, the interactive ads covered a variety of brands under the PepsiCo umbrella including SoBe, Mountain Dew and Sierra Mist. Through the ads, visitors could link directly to sites dedicated to those brands as well as clicking to get more information about a local offer or a store locator. PepsiCo would not disclose the amount of the overall buy, but indicated that it was a relatively small amount compared to spending on traditional media. In its 10-K report filed with the SEC earlier this year, the Pepsi Bottling Group, which comprises the individual bottling companies and counts PepsiCo as a minority stakeholder, reported advertising and marketing costs of $360 million in 2009. PepsiCo and the bottlers shared the cost of the digital ad experiment through an existing cooperative advertising and sales arrangement. "We've expanded that model into getting us out of the traditional media space and more into digital," said Haniffy. After reviewing click-through rates and other results of the online campaigns at the end of the year, she said PepsiCo and the bottlers will determine how to go forward in 2011. She envisions expanding the interactive features within ad units to include things like printable coupons at local retailers that the bottlers sell products to. "That's something we didn't have the bandwidth or capability to do this year," said Haniffy. "We would like to have the ability to include multiple URLs within a given tagged ad." But she expects the shift toward digital formats for local advertising will continue to gain momentum in the coming years. "From a media perspective, we know the space is something we have to test and figure out, so we want to make sure we continue to build and improve on it," she said. "The digital space is a priority for us."
A coalition of law professors and other attorneys are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to consider whether people who share music over peer-to-peer networks can be considered "innocent infringers." If the Supreme Court ultimately agrees with that argument, file-sharers could still be liable for copyright infringement, but with damages of only $200 per infringement rather than the current minimum of $750. "Not all music is copyrighted and, from the viewpoint of the music downloader on the internet, copyright restricted files often appear to be no different from noncopyrighted files," Harvard law professor Charles Nesson writes in a friend-of-the-court brief. Joining Nesson in the brief were nine other copyright lawyers and law professors. Nesson and the other attorneys are urging the court to consider an appeal by Whitney Harper, who downloaded 37 tracks on Kazaa when she was a high school student. U.S. District Court Judge Xavier Rodriguez in San Antonio, Texas ruled earlier that Harper was an "innocent infringer" and only need pay damages of $200 per track -- the minimum for so-called innocent infringers. But earlier this year, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision. The appeals court ruled that Harper couldn't be an innocent infringer because the copyright law says that status is only available to defendants who have no access to published phonorecords -- in this case compact discs -- that contain copyright notices. Harper has asked the Supreme Court to consider her appeal of that ruling. Nesson's friend-of-the-court brief argues that the 5th Circuit's conclusion is "absurd" because the copies downloaded by Harper didn't contain a copyright notice. "When a downloader makes a subjectively earnest and objectively reasonable mistake of fact about copyright status, genuinely lacking the intent to infringe a copyright, innocent infringement ought to be available to mitigate damages," Nesson argues. "This case has broader implications than just an unfair result against one young woman," he adds. "The total elimination of innocent infringement as a viable issue in infringement actions against individual, noncommercial infringers is the last step toward imposing strict liability on file sharers." "Strict liability" means that defendants are liable regardless of their intent to violate the law. But Harper could have an uphill battle at this point. In a separate case, another appellate court, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, also ruled that peer-to-peer file-sharers were not entitled to the innocent infringer defense. Given that two different appeals courts have reached the same conclusion, the Supreme Court is not likely to get involved, says Santa Clara University law professor Eric Goldman. Nonetheless, Goldman says he supports the "normative implications" of Nesson's brief. "The fact that copyright law is a strict liability tort leads to a variety of undesirable consequences," he says. "A robust innocent infringement defense would alleviate some of those consequences." Nesson led the team that represented file-sharer Joel Tenenbaum, who was sued by the Recording Industry Association of America. A jury found Tenenbaum liable and ordered him to pay $675,000 for sharing 30 tracks, but U.S. District Court Judge Nancy Gertner in Boston later slashed the damages to $67,500, ruling that the jury's award was unconstitutional. Both the RIAA and Tenenbaum are appealing that ruling. Tenenbaum argues that damages are still unconstitutionally high, while the RIAA argues that the jury verdict should stand.
Media company Total Beauty Media on Friday announced the acquisition of female lifestyle and celebrity news site LimeLife.com. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. LimeLife, which offers its services across multiple platforms, including the Web and mobile, puts out celebrity news, fashion tips, and lifestyle information. Per the deal, "We will now be able to connect our sizable audience with the brand advertisers who want to reach these women wherever they are," said Emrah Kovacoglu, founder and CEO of Total Beauty Media. "We intend to build upon this foundation to provide women and brands with unique mobile content and advertising opportunities." Founded in 2007, California-based Total Beauty Media has expanded to include a number of digital properties, including TotalBeauty.com, BeautyRiot.com, KateLuxe.com, and ModernMan.com, along with the Total Beauty Media Network. With the addition of LimeLife's audience, Total Beauty now claims to reach more than 3 million unique visitors a month. Via mobile devices, it claims to reach over 2 million monthly visitors. With LimeLife, Total Beauty is also getting a social shopping service named MySnaps. With MySnaps, users can create, share, and shop from personal shopping wish-lists via the Web and mobile. "By combining LimeLife with our other digital media properties, we continue to create a powerful and scalable digital media company," Kovacoglu added. To date, Total Beauty has raised $16 million in funding led by USVP and Wallington Investments. In the face of stiff competition from rival beauty-based blog networks, Total Beauty Media has pursued a strategy of growth through acquisitions. In mid-2009, for example, it acquired rival site BeautyRiot.com for an undisclosed sum. Along with larger players like NBCU's iVillage, the Meredith Women's Network, and Glam Media, Total Beauty competes against a long list of smaller players, including SheKnows, BlogHer, and Sugar Inc.
Amid the current debate about the death of the Web lay a perhaps more pertinent matter: the rise of the app. The Web may or may not be dead, but "the App" is very much alive. Whether these apps reside in phones, tablets, laptops or desktops, they are ushering in a new age. Of that there is little doubt. And this is why MediaPost has launched its first-ever Appy Awards, to celebrate and recognize the creativity and diversity of apps across a multitude of categories. The awards ceremony will be held on Wednesday evening, October 27, 2010 in Los Angeles, Calif., following OMMA Mobile LA.
iMonitor Publication-Related Apps by Media Type Type of Publications 8/13 Print Magazines 279 Digital Magazines 33 Total Magazines 312 National Newspapers 24 Other News Apps 7 Companion Apps 14 Total Apps Tracked 358 Source: McPheters & Company's iMonitor