Ad agencies initially focusing on smartphones are transitioning mobile content to desktop computers. Consumers moving to the Microsoft Windows 8 operating system and touchscreens will prompt the change. "We see a trend where some of the business models that grew up through smartphones and tablets are trickling back to desktops through Windows 8," said John SanGiovanni, co-founder and VP of product design at Zumobi, which Microsoft spun out in 2006. "We are working on some cool approaches that think about advertising in this highly adaptive way." Insights learned from mobile publishing, distribution, monetization and advertising will become essential when thinking about how content gets consumed on desktops and televisions, SanGiovanni said. Results from a Chevrolet Technology Series campaign, content advertising that ran across Motor Trend's print magazine, Web site, iOS and Android apps demonstrate the possibilities of touch technology. Consumers spent about 6.4 minutes interacting with the six-part Zumobi Brand Integration (ZBi) mobile campaign that drove click-through rates as high as 11.2%. About 6.8% of users saved the Chevy integrated content to their home screen via the ZBi Footprint feature, creating an app on their mobile device. That same experience will have an option to move to desktops in the future, especially as smartphones and Surface tablets become what SanGiovanni calls the "personal computing core," plugging into large monitors to power desktop experiences. Every couple of weeks, the app released new content. Commonwealth, the agency venture between IPG and Omnicom's Goodby Silverstein & Partners in Detroit, worked with Zumobi's internal team to design the branded campaign to resemble an app.
Facebook on Wednesday announced it will begin allowing marketers to work with third-party data providers to better target ads through its Custom Audiences tool. It retargets existing customers on the site by uploading their email address or phone numbers. The social network will allow marketers to partner with Datalogix, Epsilon, Acxiom and BlueKai to run Custom Audiences ads. Businesses that already work with any of these companies can now use the same information they’ve used elsewhere to create Facebook campaigns. Facebook will also work with the data companies to create pre-defined categories, such as “soda drinkers” or “auto-intenders.” Regarding privacy, the four new data partners would use the same matching process that Custom Audiences already employs to protect personal information exchanged between Facebook, marketers or third parties. Facebook hashes the user information, meaning that it encrypts the data in a secure way that can’t be decrypted to maintain user privacy. Since the launch of Custom Audiences in September, Facebook and its ad partners have reported promising results. During the company’s fourth-quarter conference call, for example, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg noted that online shopping site JackThreads had a 30% lower customer acquisition cost using Custom Audiences than other platforms and saw six times return on ad spend. "We believe the extension of custom audiences to include select third parties will further improve marketers' ability to reach the right customers on Facebook and will lead to more relevant ads. We will be rolling out these enhancements over the coming weeks, starting with marketers in the U.S.," stated a Facebook blog post today.
The cost to acquire app users fell 7% in January, as the number of downloads increased. The marketing expense for developers to gain loyal customers -- those who open an app three+ times after downloads -- dropped from $1.67 to $1.56, per new data from Fiksu, the mobile app marketing firm. The dip in marketing costs reflects a typical post-holiday softening of the ad market, coupled with increased inventory from the surge in new smartphones and tablets activated in December. The decline, however, was far smaller than a year ago when costs fell by 37% to $1.14. Fiksu’s App Store Competitive Index, which tracks the average aggregate daily download volume of the top 200 free U.S. iPhone apps, rose 13% from 5.3 million in December to 6 million in January. The record number of device activations on Christmas Day played a major role in boosting app activity last month. “We expect brands to allocate more dedicated spending to mobile advertising campaigns in 2013 and to only get savvier about aligning seasonal spending to the ebbs and flows of user acquisition costs,” said Fiksu CEO Micah Adler, in releasing the latest index data. The company’s platform is intended to help marketers acquire new users and optimize campaigns on iOS and Android devices. Its system to date has logged some 81 billion app-related actions including launches, registrations, and in-app purchases.
Meltwater's "parasitical behavior" poses a threat to news organizations, The New York Times Co. says in new court papers. The NYT and other news organizations make that argument in a friend-of-the-court brief backing The Associated Press in its copyright lawsuit against the paid clipping service Meltwater. The newspapers are asking U.S. District Court Judge Denise Cote in New York to reject Meltwater's argument that it has a fair use right to draw on the AP's content. "If the massive, systematic copying of expression engaged in by Meltwater is held to be fair use, the AP (and others) would lose not only the revenues that Meltwater and others of its ilk should have been paying, but also the revenue that other media monitoring services and aggregators have been and are paying for licenses," the news organizations argue. Groups signing on to the brief include Advance Publications, Gannett, McClatchy and the Newspaper Association of America. The AP sued Meltwater for copyright infringement last year, alleging that the clipping service unlawfully copies news stories and displays portions of them to its customers. But Meltwater says it merely offers a search engine that enables users to monitor and research information that's available across the Web. Meltwater and the AP each recently filed court papers seeking a ruling on the key issue in the lawsuit -- fair use. Meltwater says it has the right to index news stories and display snippets from them, while the AP disagrees. The Computer & Communications Industry Association, a trade group for tech companies, recently weighed in on Meltwater's side. The CCIA argues that a ruling in favor of the AP could harm many search engines. But the news organizations counter that Meltwater shouldn't be considered a search engine, equivalent to Google or Bing. "No authority is cited that categorizes as a 'search engine' a closed-end, commercial content delivery business like Meltwater (whose value proposition is based on selling to its paying customers, at a lower price, the very thing a copyright owner suing for infringement is already selling)," they argue. The news organizations also ask Cote to reject Meltwater's argument that its use of the AP's articles is transformative -- which is one of the factors that courts evaluate when deciding fair use. "Meltwater's News Reports lack any transformative quality. Meltwater does not employ abstractors, but instead uses the AP's own expression, relying on technology to compile its reports automatically," the news groups argue. The NYT and other organizations also dispute the argument that a ruling against Meltwater would cripple innovation, noting that other companies like LexisNexis, Huffington Post and Factiva currently pay licensing fees. "There is no evidence that requiring Meltwater to pay a licensing fee, or stop using the AP's content, would have any impact on technological innovation," the news companies argue.
Consumers are using mobile devices in stores to price match, but they’re not showrooming. After comparing prices and reading reviews, the next most popular activities among mobile shoppers are checking for in-store deals (49%) and browsing a brick-and-mortar retailer’s own Web site (36.5%). Those findings are based on a survey of 1,400 mobile customers by location-based ad network JiWire, as well as from the billions of impressions across its combined Wi-Fi and mobile advertising platform during the fourth quarter of 2012. JiWire’s report indicated that when it comes to using Wi-Fi-enabled mobile devices in stores, women outpace men in seven of nine activities it tracks, including looking for in-store deals, communicating with friends, finding other product options and social-media posting. Men are more likely to get product reviews and browse a store’s Web site. Overall, people are almost twice as likely to use mobile devices when shopping in an electronics store (44%) than other locations, with clothing retailers the next most common, at 26%. JiWire noted that more retailers added in-store during the holiday season as a value-added service, following the pattern of coffee shops, hotels and airports. Some 80% said the availability of Wi-Fi would influence or somewhat influence where they shop. A separate showrooming study from Ipsos MediaCT and IAB this week showed that while 42% of people using their phones in-store ultimately made a purchase online, 30% did so in the store. Smartphones and tablets now represent 58% of all public Wi-Fi usage, up from 38% in the year-earlier period. By contrast, laptop use has dropped to 42%, reflecting a 12.5% dip from the first half to the second half of 2012. People tend to use tablets more in hotels and airports, while the portability of smartphones makes them the device of choice in cafes, restaurants, malls and restaurants. The survey pointed to continuing strong demand for tablets. Among tablet owners, 72% said they plan to buy another, with most (75%) eyeing an iPad. On the JiWire network spanning 315,000 Wi-Fi hotspots, the iPhone, iPad and iPod together accounted for 71% market share. The Samsung Galaxy II and III had just 7.2% and the Kindle Fire, 2.35%. "Mobile Shopping photo from Shutterstock"
Deals, discounts, and exclusive content are all nice -- but not nearly as important to social-media consumers as the inherent loyalty they feel for certain brands. In the fourth quarter of 2012, 60.7% of mobile users said they followed brands on Twitter in a show of natural support, compared to 51.9% who did so simply to receive sales or deals, according to mobile video ad technology company Rhythm NewMedia. Conversely, 51.1% of mobile users said they followed brands on Twitter just to receive exclusive content and updates. Similarly, while 57.6% of mobile consumers reported “liking” brands on Facebook in a sign of allegiance, 55.9% did so simply for the sake of sales or deals, and just 39.8% reported doing so for exclusive content. But can’t brands build loyalty by offering deals, original content, and other incentives? Yes and no, according to Ujjal Kohli, CEO of Rhythm NewMedia. “You can definitely strengthen brand loyalty through mobile video advertising that provides an optimal launching point to drive social engagements with your brand,” he said. Regardless of how brands court them, mobile engagement is soaring. In the fourth quarter of last year, a full 74% o of users accessed Facebook -- and 63% accessed Twitter -- several times per day via smartphones and tablets, Rhythm reports. 68% of mobile social users "like" brands -- be it a show, product, store, or service -- on Facebook, while 56% follow brands on Twitter. As a result, 24% of marketers are now activating social media through mobile campaigns, which represents a 430% increase year-over-year, according to Rhythm. In 2012, Rhythm said it oversaw mobile video ad campaigns for some 200 brands, including Disney, Samsung, McDonald’s, and General Motors.
Big data is great -- but what if it's wrong? A shift toward too much automation in programmatic buying prompted Casale Media to re-ink its agreement with IgnitionOne to maintain a more personal touch with publisher relationships and monitor the data more closely. Let the automation support basic steps that consume most of the marketer's time, but allow buyers and sellers to form personal bonds, said Andrew Casale, VP of strategy at Casale Media. A robot will buy media based on data, but if American Airlines gets the chance to buy an ad on Expedia versus some random site, they will. A robot might not have enough information to make that call. "Approach big data with caution, and monitor consistent patterns of events before trusting it," Casale said. "Did the event happen once last week or 1,000 times consecutively during the past few months? Just because it happened once it doesn't mean the process will repeat in the same way." Casale Media's Index platform allows IgnitionOne to strike direct deals with publishers, carrying out transactions through real-time bidding. IgnitionOne's data management system capabilities are brought together by technology that tracks user-level behavior and interests to deliver the right message. Results yielded from the Casale partnership gave IgnitionOne 300% quarter-over-quarter growth in spend by being able to identify and maintain new relationships with publishers in the RTB space. Overall, CPMs post 50% higher than the market average, showcasing that its algorithm seeks out value rather than simply aiming to race prices to the bottom.