Upping the ante in the tablet wars, Google on Monday introduced its first 10-inch tablet as well as updated versions of its 7-inch Nexus tablet and Nexus smartphone. The two tablets and Nexus 4 smartphone will run an updated version of Jelly Bean -- the latest version of Android -- and go on sale Nov. 13. The new, higher-capacity Nexus 7 tablet is available now. The new releases from Google follows just days after Apple unveiled the iPad mini and iPad 4, and Microsoft made its foray into the tablet market with its Surface tablets. The search giant was set to unveil its new devices today at a media event in New York, but that was canceled because of Hurricane Sandy. The centerpiece is the Nexus 10, developed in partnership with Samsung and geared to compete more directly with the 9.7-inch iPad. With a starting price of $399 (16GB) -- $100 less than the iPad -- the Google device offers a 10-inch 2,560-by-1,600 display with 330 pixels per inch. The company also promises battery life of up to nine hours of video playback. It also packs a dual-core A15 chip, 5-megapixel rear-facing camera and front-facing 1.9 megapixel camera. Google calls the Nexus 10 the first “truly shareable tablet” because Android 4.2 Jelly Bean allows for multiple users, switching right from the lock screen. The Nexus 7 is on sale now in the U.S., U.K., Australia, France Germany, Spain, Canada and Japan. On the smartphone side, Google debuted the Nexus 4, which was made in partnership with LG Electronics and offers a 4.7-inch display and a quad-core processor. Among the new features in Android 4.2 available on the Nexus 4 and new tablets is Gesture Typing, which lets users swipe over the keyboard when writing messages. Beyond the gadgets, Google also announced related new content and service offerings. The company has reached a deal with Time to bring more titles, including InStyle, People and Time, to Google Play. It has also partnered with Warner Music Group to add their full music catalog. Google Play will launch in Europe on Nov. 13. The online storefront will also add a “matching” feature that automatically scans in a user’s music collection and create a cloud-based catalog of the same songs accessible from any device. That service will roll out in Europe first before coming to the U.S.
Vevo, the latest Web publisher to break into real-time bidding, just debuted a private ad exchange. With the new platform, the popular online music video company -- owned by Universal Music Group, Sony Music and Abu Dhabi Media – is hoping to increase its reach among marketers. The new platform is designed to complement Vevo’s existing sales structure, according to Welby Chen, SVP of sales and revenue operations at Vevo. “The exchange complements the work of our sales team,” Chen said Monday. Powered by Adapt.tv, the new platform is being made available to Vevo’s network of some 800 brand partners simultaneously, according to Chen. In the next five years, the RTB market in North America will reach $7 billion, according to recent estimates from Rubicon Project’s third-quarter RTB Report. Domestically, the top five RTB categories are, in order: technology and computing, personal finance, automotive, travel and shopping. According to the latest comScore data, Vevo racked up just over 50 million unique video viewers in September -- bested in that category only by YouTube, Yahoo, and AOL. Within YouTube, Vevo remained the most popular channel in September with some 48.8 million viewers. In sheer dollar terms, Vevo is reportedly on pace to generate $280 million in revenue in 2012 -- up from $150 million last year. The company, however, has yet to confirm these numbers.
On the heels of Apple releasing the iPad mini (and iPad 4) and Microsoft rolling out its Surface tablets, mobile advertising and analytics firm Flurry has released new data looking at how tablets compare to smartphones when it comes to app use. The upshot: tablet users skew older, more female, more affluent and are spend more time with media and entertainment apps. The findings are based on more than 6 billion app sessions across more than 500 million “smart” devices. For age and gender comparisons, Flurry relies on a panel of more than 30 million people that have opted in to share demographic data. The average age is 30 for smartphone users and 34 for tablet owners. Almost three quarters of smartphone users are 34 or younger, while more than two-thirds of tablet user are 25 or older. The study also pointed to separate research by Frank N. Magid and Associates showing household incomes for tablet owners are becoming increasingly affluent, with 59% exceeding $50,000 compared to the U.S. average of 41% of households with incomes over that level. While smartphone use tends to be slightly more male (56% vs. 44%), it splits about evenly (51% vs. 49%) between men and women on tablets. Media companies and marketers have a better shot at reaching a more balanced audience gender-wise on tablets versus smartphones. Apart from demographics, the study sheds light on the two-screen viewing phenomenon. It found that tablet use spikes during TV’s prime-time hours — 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. — while smartphone use is more evenly distributed throughout the day. “This would indicate that tablets are more often used alongside, or instead of television viewing than smartphones,” stated a Flurry blog post today. The types of apps people use on the two devices also reflect tablets are more likely to be used for lean-back media consumption. Games are the largest category on both devices, accounting for 67% of time spent on tablets, and 39% on smartphones. But entertainment apps make up 9% of time spent on tablets compared to only 3% on smartphones. The findings suggest tablets playing a key role in the evolution of connected TV. With Apple and Google expanding into the living room with their own connected TV initiatives, “game consoles made by Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo would experience the greatest competition,” according to Flurry. Research released by Yankee Group in June also showed tablets are now as popular as PCs for watching video and second only to TVs. Overall, 65% of tablet owners watch video frequently on their devices and more than half (57%) of smartphone users do so.
Most brands invest in search engine optimization and venture capital investors have begun to look at the strategy a little more closely. Conductor, a SEO technology firm, has secured $20 million in Series C financing led by Investor Growth Capital, joining existing investors FirstMark Capital, and Matrix Partners. Content for social media and landing pages continues to increase the importance of optimizing sites. About half the traffic that comes to any Web site is from organic search results via global search engines, which is about four times that of social sites, according to Seth Besmertnik, CEO and co-founder of Conductor. "It also converts two times paid as much as paid-search traffic, and four times as much as social," he said. Besmertnik said that's one reason why venture capitalists have begun to pay more attention to companies supporting SEO services. He touts the funding as the single largest investment in a search engine optimization (SEO) technology company since SEOmoz secured $18 million earlier this year from Foundry Group, and Ignition Partners. Search on "SEO" in LinkedIn to find about 647,279 descriptions with the acronym in profiles, which Besmertnik said rose from 250,000 in the past 12 months. "It means investments are being made in the category," he said. Forrester Research forecasts the U.S. SEO technology market to reach $643 million by 2016, up from $211 million in 2012. The U.S. Interactive Marketing Forecast, 2011 to 2016, updated by the research firm in September, suggests that 40% of survey experts plan to increase investment during the next three years, compared with the 54% that said it will stay the same, and 4% said it would decrease. Searches share will continue as the largest piece of pie in the interactive media, but it will shrink slightly. Interactive online marketing will take more than $33 billion during the next five years, but search will lose share from 55% today to 44% of all interactive spend in 2016. Marketers will refocus their search marketing strategies on what Forrester calls "getting found" through a variety of media, not just engines. "Getting found" means companies will need to take a closer look at site search, such as Amazon, and app search, such as Yahoo's downloadable mobile search browser, Axis. Conductor will use the funding to invest in product development and step-up its international footprint to support clients such as FedEx, BestBuy, Siemens and General Electric.
A senior British government official told attendees at a recent "The Parliament and the Internet" conference to give fake information to protect personal information. The BBC reports Andy Smith, an Internet security chief at the Cabinet Office, said people should only give accurate details to trusted sites, such as those run by the government, and fake details to social networking sites. The comments were backed by Lord Erroll, chairman of the Digital Policy Alliance. Aside from the idea of giving fake information in profiles to foster a safe haven from predators, one concern advertisers have remains the accuracy of information relied on to target ads. Search engines and some retargeting display ad strategies rely on intent data from clicks and searches, but social media ad targeting starts by tapping information in profiles. Depending on the widespread use of fake information in profiles, it should make marketers rethink ways to determine whether all impressions are valid. Fake information in social profiles means that ads will serve up to Facebook users based on their falsified profile data, as ad targeting parameters, like gender and age, come straight from the user profile data, said Larry Kim, Wordstream founder. Adam Schoenfeld, Simply Measured CEO and co-founder, called putting fake information in social profiles "pretty extreme advice" to protect personal information and suggested turning up profile privacy settings as a more practical approach, compared with lying. "If users go that route, it would certainly have an impact on ad targeting," Schoenfeld said. "The extent depends on how broadly users lie about their profile information." Facebook has five dimensions of ad targeting: Location, Age & Birthday, Interests, Education, and Connections. With that, users would have to go to great lengths to lie about every dimension, and they would have to purposefully limit their network connections. It could get to the point where even your friends wouldn't be able to find your profile, Schoenfeld said. Seth Besmertnik, CEO and co-founder of Conductor, said fake information in profiles makes social ad targeting ineffective. "Google surfs the intent wave," he said. "On Facebook you don't really have intent. You have profiles." If the person really doesn't like pottery as the profile suggests, retailers like Pottery Barn just waste money because the Facebook user would not like to share the ad. Eventually, the return on investment will drop. False information in profiles would also affect ad retargeting, which is based off browser cookies, according to Matt Lawson, vice president of marketing at Marin Software. Consumers visiting a Web site using a Facebook Exchange vendor to retarget drops a cookie in the visitor's browser. "When logged in to Facebook, that cookie will identify the user and determine the ad to show them," Lawson said.
London-based social media agency We Are Social has been appointed by Tiger Beer to work with its in-house team to develop a global social media strategy for the 81-year-old beer brand.The agency said it would conduct an audit of social media conversations surrounding the Tiger brand—marketed in more than 60 countries worldwide. The agency will then work with the Tiger Beer team to jointly create a strategy for an integrated approach to audience engagement across multiple channels, both globally and a local market basis. Spending on the assignment was not available.Edmond Neo, director Group Commercial for the Singapore-based Tiger Beer parent Asia Pacific Breweries, said Tiger Beer has had success with branded social programs, such as its cross-cultural arts festival “Tiger Translate” and an amateur soccer competition “Tiger Street Football.” Now, said Neo, the brand has hired We Are Social, “to further the breadth and depth in which we engage with the new generation of drinkers online.”Tiger Beer is the flagship brand of Asia Pacific Breweries, which generated revenues last year about $2.5 billion and which is controlled by a joint venture between Heineken International and Singapore holding company Fraser & Neave Ltd. Heineken has made a $4.6 billion offer to acquire Asia Pacific. Shareholders have until next month to decide to accept the offer or not.Commenting on the shop’s appointment, Robin Grant, global managing director of We Are Social, stated that the shop looks forward to helping its new client expand its “reputation for innovative marketing.”We Are Social formed a regional hub in Singapore last year. Earlier this year, it established its first U.S. outpost in New York with initial clients Adidas and DeBeers Diamond Jewelry. The shop also has offices in Milan, Munich, Sydney and Sao Paulo.
Mobile ad network InMobi on Tuesday announced the hiring of former Google executive Crid Yu as vice president and managing director for North America. The move reflects InMobi’s efforts to build its business in the region over the last two years after establishing footprints in Asia, Africa and Europe. “North America is one of the fastest-growing regions at InMobi—both in terms of revenue and personnel. Crid’s experience of growing transformational businesses will enable us to accelerate the phenomenal growth we have seen in North America," stated Naveen Tewari, CEO and Founder, InMobi. Yu was most recently SVP, strategic partnerships at Demand Media. Prior to that, he held senior management positions at Google during his eight-year tenure at the search giant, including being responsible for the top 1,000 strategic partners in the company’s U.S. display business, as well as leading operations in China, Hong Kong, and Korea. Prior to his roles with Demand Media and Google, Yu led business development for Philips Semiconductors and was a management consultant at McKinsey. With Yu’s hiring at InMobi, Anne Frisbie, formerly head of North America for the company, has taken on a new post as vice president and general manager of global supply. In that role, she’ll work with Yu and the company’s other regional leaders around the world. Among its latest steps to expand in North America, InMobi in July made a pair of acquisitions: buying Metaflow Solutions, which makes mobile content management software used by developers and publishers, and MMTG Labs, which provides a white label service for creating branded app stores. InMobi, which has its U.S. quarters in San Francisco, now has 120 employees overall in North America. The company says its mobile ad network serves 93.4 million impressions monthly and reaches 578 million people across 165 countries. Its North American audience stands at 119 million. InMobi’s investors include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and SoftBank.
The alternative weekly chain Village Voice Media has sued the review site Yelp for infringing trademark by using the words "best of" in its listings.The newsweekly chain says that it owns trademarks to phrases starting wtih "best of" and ending with 10 particular locales -- Broward Palm Beach, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Miami, Phoenix, Saint Louis, San Francisco, Seattle and the Twin Cities. Village Voice argues that its trademark allows it to prevent any other publisher from characterizing particular restaurants, or other local businesses, as being among the "best of" businesses in those areas. The alternative chain says that Yelp infringes trademark by using the "best of" language online in conjunction with local businesses, and by selling ads on pages with the "best of" wording. Village Voice, which filed suit last week in federal court in Arizona, is asking a court to award it Yelp's profits from those ads and other damages.This isn't the first time that Village Voice Media has attempted to stop another publisher from using the phrase "best of." Last year, the company sued Time Out New York for allegedly infringing trademark by publishing an issue with the coverline "Best of NYC."Time Out counterclaimed in court papers that Village Voice should never have been awarded a trademark for the phrase "best of." Time Out argued that the phrase "Best of NYC" is the "common descriptive or generic name for a variety of print and online publications' lists of New York's best restaurants, movies, plays, things to do or places to go."The lawsuit and counterclaim were voluntarily withdrawn in April. It's not clear from the court papers whether there was a financial settlement.Yelp hasn't yet addressed Village Voice's allegations, but likely will argue that the company's trademark should be invalidated on the ground that a phrase that uses a common adjective like "best of" was never eligible for trademark protection. If so, Yelp has a good chance of prevailing, predicts Santa Clara University law professor Eric Goldman."These kinds of laudatory trademarks should not be protectible in trademark law, period," he says. "I can't see how Village Voice has a prayer of winning."
Highlighting the continuing role of newspapers as public services, The New York Times and The The Wall Street Journal have both lifted their online paywalls for coverage of Hurricane Sandy, giving readers free access to vital information about the impending emergency. In addition to frequently updated reporting on the gigantic storm, visitors to the Web sites can find tips for preparing for weather emergencies, lists of school closings (now universal in the New York metro area), maps showing evacuation zones and the location of shelters, and updates from local, state and federal authorities. The NYT lifted the paywall for hurricane coverage on Sunday evening, with a prominent note on the NYT Web site informing visitors that “the Times is providing free unlimited access to storm coverage on nytimes.com and its mobile apps.” Previously, the NYT provided free access during Hurricane Irene, which threatened New York City in August 2011. Meanwhile, the WSJ Web site informed readers that “The Wall Street Journal Web site is free to all visitors today,” extending free access to non-hurricane-related content on Monday. Thus, readers can also get free access to general news and financial reporting, at least for one day. Although Sandy is not expected to make landfall in New Jersey until Monday afternoon or evening, storm surges and heavy rain were already reported along the East Coast on Monday morning. A barrage of announcements from local, state and federal authorities made clear that the storm is a serious public safety issue. NJ Governor Chris Christie and NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg have ordered the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of residents from low-lying areas; all public transportation has been suspended for the duration of the storm. Utility providers have warned that power outages could last up to 10 days in some places. President Obama and Mitt Romney have canceled campaign events, and President Obama has returned to Washington, D.C. to oversee the emergency response.
Timing is everything. It really is.The concept of being in the right place at the right time is probably a combination of inextricable luck (the odds) and substantial skills (preparation). That's why you may have heard the phrase “luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”What about bad luck then? Being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Is that the exact same thing as before, but in reverse? Dumb luck, I suppose? Could it be equally valid to say that bad luck is the product of inexperience, bad planning or poor skills? Perhaps. Timing is an integral part of every facet of our lives. From cooking to investing in the stock market; from swinging a bat to diagnosing an illness. So why is it we suck so royally at it when it comes to business? On the customer service side, we do a lousy job of being able to spot potential P.R. minefields early and prevent them from escalating into full-blown crisis communication nightmares.On the hiring side, our timing is all out of whack. We scramble to hire like rabid dogs during good times and then can’t issue pink slips fast enough when the tide turns.On the planning side, we’ve set ourselves up to fail miserably as we adopt elongated processes designed to predict a stable future in a completely unpredictable, unstable present.On the measurement side, we are slaves to exceptionally short-term metrics and benchmarks designed to deliver quick fixes and instant gratification.Whatever happened to Vince Lombardi’s “in my entire life, I never lost a single game; I just ran out of time” when it comes to patience prevailing and staying the course?Even business moguls like Rupert Murdoch are guilty of bad calls, with infamous quotes like, “I was just hoping that Internet thing would pass.”I visit with some of the biggest companies and brands on this planet and almost without exception, I witness the same common threads across most (and sometimes all) corporations. The most troubling as it relates to timing is an acute lack of “endurance” — the will to persevere and prevail. Actually, strike that. The most troubling is a blatant conflict of interest; executives are treading water in the hopes of making it through their tenure without having to commit to any form of change, innovation or calculated risk. After all, these days no one every got fired for putting Facebook on the plan. (They once said that about TV!)My advice to executives struggling to cope with technology-based change and specifically how to plan, execute, measure and optimize from a timing standpoint is to keep the following two statements in mind, especially when requesting funding and managing expectations in terms of interim and final success:Just because it worked yesterday, doesn’t mean it’ll work tomorrow.Just because it didn’t work yesterday, doesn’t mean it won’t work tomorrow.The first statement is straight forward enough and pays off both the reliance on the “tried and tested," as well as the volatility of how constant change can create continuous flux. The second statement, however, is a little more tricky and esoteric. It challenges and encourages us to believe in ourselves; to honor the importance of Test. Learn. Evolve. To try and try again, if at first you don’t succeed, and to recognize that sometimes, we’re ahead of our time. Ultimately, we need to commit ourselves to innovation and stay the course.As my countryman Gary Player once said, “The more I practice; the luckier I get." And that’s the kind of timing that is as much art (the swagger) as it is science (the swing).
Everyone’s in love with RTB — even the branding folks. But while RTB is great for many sites like portals, it’s questionable whether premium buys can benefit from biddable sales. Can a premium publisher realistically be an audience buy? I doubt it; their sites aren’t designed for direct response. But by the same token, audience buys may not be appropriate for brand marketers.Premium publishers are well-suited to brand marketers, underscoring the fact that branding and direct response have such dramatically different needs in placement, pricing, creative, measurement and more. As a result of these vastly different types of marketers, we now have a bifurcated market. The positive result of this bifurcated market is innovation: In a medium that evolved to nurture direct marketing, branding must find a way to thrive. Direct response won’t build a brand, so brand marketers are forced to find creative ways to tell their stories in an online world that was built for text ads 150x300 banners. But a branding medium is equally inhospitable to direct response, and isn’t built for quick-hit calls to action. Innovation will find a middle ground and address the overlap.What makes branding special and different from a lot of direct response is the exclusivity, the beautiful narrative content and context. These elements are not easily secured in the bid/auction environment. When was the last time you saw a Cezanne for sale on eBay? Yes, there are some exclusive auctions for pre-qualified bidders, but this doesn’t serve all sites or all marketers. Innovation applies to both worlds. Events are defined differently in direct response and branding — and leveraged differently, too. In the physical world, scheduled public events appeal more to brands. For example, take the Super Bowl, in which every big brand under the sun spends millions launching new campaigns featuring mischievous squirrels, Clydesdales and talking babies. Similar activities occur online and off during Fashion Week, Advertising Week, close the Oscars and other pivotal points on the calendar. These are branding events – not focused on a particular sale or offer, but deliberately placed in juxtaposition to a highly anticipated, appropriate event. In direct response, events aren’t calendar-based. They’re real-time, instant and opportunistic. For example, if a consumer buys a phone online, they’re immediately offered a new case or headset before or just after checkout. If the event is a shoe purchase, they’re offered socks. So, could a premium publisher like Hearst or Condé Nast offer sites that go after an audience? Yes, but it’s probably not the best use of their site. And offering both premium branding and RTB might devalue their audience and make their site overall less appealing to premium buyers. Think about it: Can you image Vogue selling a full-page direct-response ad? That brings up another key point here, which is paramount to any discussion of 100% automation: When advertisers are publishers, aren’t publishers also brands? If The New York Times had a direct response ad for a second-rate dating site on its homepage, wouldn’t it be jarring? Perhaps several pages back or on the bottom of a page, it would feel more natural. Traditionalists like me embrace innovation, but we won’t let it tarnish the brand. If 90% of all ads were purchased via RTB, and 10% were physically sold, a lot would be lost for the industry. Context, content and relevance can’t be curated by machines. Content integration creates one-of-a-kind experiences, the holy grail for brand advertisers.Innovation will bring us to a place where both the brand and direct marketer can thrive online. Publishers like USA Today and The Atlantic are rolling the ball in that direction. But that innovation won’t rely solely on automation. There will always be a place for human intelligence and creativity in online advertising. Without it, the industry would crumble like a rusted robot.