The Xbox One Tuesday will introduce Reddit and MTV apps to the system, as well as increase functions and tools for Google's YouTube Twitch app -- complete with voice search and navigation. ReddX, the Reddit app, snaps to the side of the TV screen. Comments and posts flow down the left rail with video clips and photos on the right. Microsoft has designed for the user interface specifically for the screen on the Xbox One entertainment console. Down the left rail, insight into what's new is revealed, and posts containing albums are sorted. Users can click on a comment to read the post, reply, and up- or down-vote, similar to the feature on Reddit. Viewers can play embedded YouTube videos in the app, as well as pause and rewind animated GIFs. Microsoft also brings to Xbox One new features for Twitch, a Google YouTube-owned company. These include auto zoom and audio capture from headsets as well as "watch with friends," which allows users to see the same broadcast that up to six friends watch while on Xbox One. Twitch will add a feature that enables Microsoft's technology, Kinect, to follow and zoom in on the viewer's face while broadcasting. Microsoft also will bring MTV to the Xbox One in the U.S., featuring sneak peeks, bonus clips, and recent full episodes from select MTV series with a TV subscription. The app supports the latest in pop culture news, fashion, and glance behind-the-scenes of blockbuster movies.
Children laughing while playing in a park, honking horns from a busy Manhattan street intersection, and water running through the rocks of a rushing waterfall are some of the sounds that Google's Street View lacks. Developers at Amplifon have developed a code snippet that adds everyday sounds to Street View by fusing Google's application with a Web audio API. Sounds of Street View by Amplifon stereophonic output makes the experience more realistic. A sound from the left is heard from the left speaker and a sound from the right is heard from the right. It also takes into consideration when sound occurs behind the viewer, considering latitude and longitude and the mathematic distance between objects for every sound through marker images not seen by the user. It gets translated in the form of volume. The technology also considers the direction the user faces as well as ear limitations and the shape of human ears to limit frequencies, per the company's Web site, which gives step-by-step instructions on how to add sound. The Street View demonstration for the Buckingham Fountain in Chicago provides one example of how the application from Amplifon works. The closer the viewer gets to the fountain, the louder the water. The company also launched a campaign asking designers to upload their Street View projects to a Web site for a chance to win a holiday voucher and a one year's subscription to the Adobe Creative Cloud Students and Teachers package. There are five packages to give away that include the latest Photoshop, Illustrator and more, along with cloud features. The closing date for the competition is Dec. 1, 2014.
Online travel agencies were among the first Web businesses to feel the full impact of the consumer migration to mobile as customers began using their devices throughout the travel process from planning and booking to while traveling. For Orbitz Worldwide, one of the companies at the forefront of that change, mobile has become a core part of its businesses, integrated closely with its broader digital marketing and e-commerce operations. On the back-end, Orbitz now has seven mobile development teams staffed by a total of 75 developers. Speaking at MediaPost’s Mobile Insider Summit in Lake Tahoe on Tuesday, Megan Hughes, director of product, mobile at Orbitz, offered some insight into how the company is adapting to the mobile shift. She noted, for example, that a third of hotel bookings now take place via mobile—across its branded apps and mobile and tablet Web sites—compared to only 3% in 2010, when it began building out its mobile operations in earnest. Among hotel bookings, 65% are same-day, compared to only about 15% on the desktop, providing further evidence that travel bookings in mobile skew toward last-minute purchases rather than ones made far in advance. Among customers who aren’t yet booking via mobile, 75% plan to do so soon, up 36% from last year, according to a recent Orbitz survey. To create a more consistent experience across screens, Orbitz has recently begun rolling out a responsive design approach across its desktop and mobile sites. “Not that many Web pages today are fully responsive, but it is the direction we’re moving to really take advantage of the changes we’re seeing.” It’s also making its apps responsive across phones and tablets. In the last two months, Orbitz has gotten more active in push messaging, as well. On that front, it’s integrated flight status alerts into Google Now, Google’s virtual assistant app, as well as into native Android and iOS messaging services. Beyond that, the ability to get flight updates has also been integrated with social sharing through sites like Facebook. With customers often switching between desktop and mobile devices as they plan travel, Orbitz has also taken steps to be to cater to that behavior. To that end, it has started syncing recent user searches across its properties across devices so a user can pick up on one device where they left off on another. “So if you’re doing a search home on your iPad, you get to work the next day, you go on to the Orbitz desktop site, and you’ll see the searches you did the previous night,” she told the Mobile Insider audience. Oribitz also pulls in a dynamic background image of the last site someone searched, “just to carry that inspiration throughout the booking process.” At the same time, she noted that tracking cross-device behavior and attribution remains a challenge. “We know that our consumers are switching between different devices, and we know when they came in through a marketing channel to the mobile Web and made a booking, but it’s not all getting tracked back,” she said. Another challenge arising from the mobile shift is playing catch up on advertising within its apps as traffic moves increasingly from desktop to smartphones and tablets. While increased mobile bookings are welcome, display advertising hasn’t caught up with the surge in mobile use. “All the traffic that was getting impressions on desktop is moving over to mobile,” she said. “How do we create great monetization opportunities in the app and the mobile Web site that actually are actually a great consumer experiences?”
AOL has unveiled a new privacy policy specifying that the company's properties -- including the recently acquired Gravity -- don't honor the do-not-track requests that users send through their browsers. “Previously, Gravity provided users with the ability to use the browser 'Do Not Track' signal to opt out of certain personalization,” Gravity says on its site. “AOL has consolidated and simplified many of the preferences and opt-outs we offer, and as a result, 'Do Not Track' browser signals will no longer be recognized." AOL purchased the personalization company Gravity in January for around $83 million. The company's new privacy policy will take effect on Sept. 15. Gravity says that users can eschew personalization by visiting an opt-out page, including the ones operated by the Digital Advertising Alliance and Network Advertising Initiative. But privacy advocates say that opting out through links on those sites poses challenges, because those links are tied to cookies -- which are seen as unstable, given that consumers who are especially privacy conscious often delete their cookies. AOL's other brands, including publishers like TechCrunch and Huffington Post, also will ignore the browser-based signals. But that decision isn't inconsistent with the current view of do-not-track, as outlined by the World Wide Web Consortium. The do-not-track commands aren't aimed at preventing publishers from collecting data about their own visitors, says the Center for Democracy and Technology's Justin Brookman, who chairs the W3C's effort to forge a consensus about how to respond to the signals. In fact, publishers are allowed to gather information from users who have activated do-not-track, according to the W3C's most recent formulation of the concept. All of the major browser companies now offer do-not-track headers, which tell publishers and ad networks that users don't want to be tracked. But the header doesn't actually prevent tracking. Instead, ad networks and publishers are free to ignore the signals. Earlier this year, the Web companies, computer scientists and privacy advocates in the W3C's tracking protection working group tentatively decided that a “do not track” request will communicate that users don't want data about themselves collected by ad networks and other third parties. But the organization also says that ad networks should be able to collect some type of information -- such as data used for ad-frequency capping -- even when people activate do-not-track. The group is still debating exactly what type of data can still be collected in that situation. AOL suggests in its newest policy that it might change course after the industry reaches a consensus about do-not-track. “If and when a standard for responding is established, we may revisit its policy on responding to these signals,” the company says. For now, very few Web companies appear to honor do-not-track signals -- and even some of the companies that previously respected the signals have retreated. In May, Yahoo said it would no longer honor the do-not-track requests that users send through their browsers."Privacy Keyboard" photo from Shutterstock.
Salesforce ExactTarget Marketing Cloud has new data via a joint study with Forrester Research. The new work looks at how personalized communication affects loyalty and retention, and where marketers are spending money to keep up with their customers’ own expectations on how brands should reach out to them. Forty-eight percent of marketers queried reported that they face challenges in personalizing each customer interaction, and 42% of marketers reported they face challenges with analyzing customer interaction data. The study, “Refresh Your Approach to 1:1 Marketing,” via Forrester Consulting on behalf of ExactTarget Marketing Cloud, reports that over three-quarters of digital marketers feel loyalty is affected directly by how well they do personalization. Marketers also see value in predictive intelligence, with 86% reporting they use broad segmentation and simple clustering for personalized marketing. About half concede personalizing each customer interaction is the challenge because of the mindset of always-connected customers. And about 42% also say analyzing the constant flow of customer interaction data is difficult. Said Woodson Martin, CMO of ExactTarget, in a statement, "Today’s hyper-connected consumer requires companies to create personalized experiences and deliver value at each touch point to increase brand loyalty and drive sales." The study says marketers will spend more money on tolls falling into four predictive and data analytic buckets. Nearly 60% of marketers say they will increase spending in site optimization. A little over half say they will increase spending in real-time interaction management. Fifty-one of marketers say they plan to increase spending in predictive algorithms and the same percentage has guided selling as a spend target. Even with these beefed-up marketing and research tools, customers hold the reins because as social technology becomes more sophisticated, their expectations follow suit, per the report. "They have instantaneous access to information across multiple devices and want to interact with brands on their terms — across channels and whenever they want.” "Watching TV on mobile" photo from Shutterstock.
Shopping in categories like jewelry and watches and apparel helped boost online retail spending 14% in July from a year ago, according to a new analysis by RBC Capital Markets, citing comScore data. That rate was faster than the 10% growth in the second quarter overall, and the 8% increase the prior month. Jewelry led the way with online sales up 18%, followed by clothing and accessories (17%), and packaged goods (16%). The only non-travel category with single-digit growth was books and magazines, up 7%. Online travel, separately, had a spending increase of 10% in July year-over-year -- slightly above the 9% level for the quarter -- and 9% in June. Looking at specific segments, online revenue for hotels grew 12%, airlines (11%) and car rentals (6%), while sales travel packages were also up 6%. “All in, we view these trends to imply that summer travel trends remain stable,” stated the report by RBC Capital analyst Mark Mahaney, benefiting online travel companies such as Expedia, Priceline and TripAdvisor. Overall, the investment bank projects U.S. online retail sales will grow 16% to $305 billion this year, with online travel increasing 8% to $149 billion. Separate monthly data that comScore released on Monday showed e-commerce powerhouses Amazon and eBay both picked up traffic in July over June. Amazon increased to 95.4 million monthly visitors from 92.5 million in June, while eBay saw a more modest gain, to 59.3 million from 58.5 million. Overall, Google widened its lead over Yahoo last month, with its U.S. traffic reaching 191.2 million, compared to Yahoo’s 165.1 million, and Microsoft’s 164.8 million. Facebook came in at 144 million, and AOL at 105 million. Yahoo had the biggest drop from June, when it had 171.2 million visitors. "Tablet User" photo from Shutterstock.
The Internet of Things is still early in the hype cycle, generating a lot of buzz in marketing circles around the potential for reaching consumers all the time and anywhere when everyday items are connected to the Web. That’s before privacy, technology, security and other considerations are factored in. The gap between potential and reality is still a wide one when it comes to marketing via wearable devices and the connected home. New research from Acquity Group, an e-commerce and digital marketing agency owned by Accenture Interactive, found that only 19% of men, and 8% of women have heard the term “Internet of Things.” The firm surveyed 2,000 people in the U.S. about their current and future adoption and perception of technologies that fall under the heading of IoT. Even if not familiar with the term itself, survey participants indicated plans to buy connected gear of various kinds in the coming years. Expected to gain the most traction are wearable fitness devices, with 22% already owning or planning to make a purchase by 2015. Smart thermostats, like those made by Google-owned Nest, by next year, with connected security systems in 11%. Those figures are forecast to reach 43% each for fitness device and smart thermostats, and 35% for security systems. But that’s a long way out to predict with much accuracy. Conversely, “smart clothing” and devices using heads-up displays — any transparent display that shows data without requiring users to look away from their usual viewpoints — drew the least interest, with only 3% planning to adopt in the next year, and 14% and 16% in the next five. That doesn’t bode well for Google Glass. The Acquity Group study also found planned adoption rates varied by age group, gender and region. More than half (53%) of millennials, which the firm defines as those ages 18-25, plan to get an in-home IoT device in the next five years versus 35% of baby boomers. Generation X consumers (26-35) are the most likely to get wearable devices, followed by millennials and boomers. Men are more apt to acquire wearable connected gear than women (53% to 45%), and in-home IoT technology (70% to 67%) by 2019. Regionally, three-quarters (74%) of consumers living in the Northeast plan to purchase an in-home IoT device in the next five years, compared with 68% in the Midwest and 66% in the Southeast. The adoption of wearables across each of the three areas of the country is expected to break out more evenly, at between 55% and 58%.
Tumblr is partnering with Ditto Labs to help the photo-analytics start-up track brand logos that show up in user posts. At the moment, Tumblr is positioning the deal as purely research-based. “At this time, there are no advertising implications for Tumblr,” a company spokeswoman said on Monday. Rather, she described the tie-up as a Tumblr “firehose partnership,” which gives Ditto access to the roughly 130 million photos that Tumblr users upload every day. The point is “to help [Ditto’s] clients understand visual conversations happening around their brands,” she said. The partnership represents a coup for Cambridge, Mass.-based Ditto Labs, which recently raised about $2 million from Cue Ball Capital, Stage 1 Ventures, and a number of industry notables, like John Battelle and Mike Sheehan, CEO of The Boston Globe. Built by a team of MIT-trained computer scientists, Ditto’s visual search engine attempts to make sense of the millions of photos posted to social-media sites. “We’re able to find brand logos and patterns inside of public photos shared on social media,” David Rose, Ditto’s CEO, said on Monday. “We can also tell if people are smiling or not in a picture, as well as the type of environment a person is in.” Ditto also helps clients identify top brand affinities and relevant influencers in the photo-dominated social media ecosystem. Since dropping about a $1 billion on Tumblr, last year, Yahoo has made a number of efforts to start monetizing the social network. This past June, Yahoo announced plans to begin pulling ads from Tumblr directly into the portal’s own properties. The plan was to run Tumblr’s sponsored post ads on Yahoo’s owned-and-operated sites, including Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Beauty and Yahoo Tech. The Tumblr ads are being sold through the Gemini ad marketplace -- Yahoo’s main platform for buying search and native ads. Despite such efforts, however, analysts remain skeptical about Tumblr’s own revenue-generating potential “Monetization on Tumblr seems mostly elusive … so far,” Brian Wieser, senior analyst at Pivotal Research Group, wrote in a note released just before Yahoo reported second-quarter earnings, last month. More troubling still, Tumblr doesn’t appear to be growing, according to recent comScore figures. While its mobile monthly visitors increased from 19.8 million in June 2013 to 25.7 million in June 2014, desktop traffic declined from 36.1 million to 23.3 million, year-over-year. As such, according to comScore, Tumblr’s unduplicated, cross-platform audience fell from 46.6 million in June 2013 to 43 million in June 2014.
A major complaint by marketers -- and viewers -- in this new digital/media world: Too much repetition when it comes to seeing the same ad over and over. TV advertising system manager/provider BlackArrow has added an update to its Advance Advertising System with an “audience-based frequency capping” component, allowing clients to set limits on the number of times an ad is seen by a household on any device by the day, week, month, or throughout an entire ad campaign. With too many ad exposures, marketers run the risk of lower overall effectiveness of its message. In particular, the new component can help control TV viewer exposures, says BlackArrow. Online advertising sites use cookies to keep track of frequency counts. But there are no cookies for TVs and traditional set-top boxes. “The future of TV is bringing high-quality TV content to viewers when and where they want to watch it,” stated Jacob Naim, vice president, product management at BlackArrow. “To monetize this content, the industry needs tools that can deliver targeted, frequency-controlled, dynamic ads to both TVs and IP-based devices.” BlackArrow has developed what amounts to a “server-side cookie.” Says Naim: “Ad servers can then check this frequency count when a TV, set-top box or device requests an ad and ensure the frequency capping rules are respected.” BlackArrow’s advanced advertising software system, used by on-demand and linear programmers delivered to TV and devices over traditional or IP (internet protocol) infrastructures, reaches nearly 32 million homes.
Google has convinced a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Illinois resident Alice Svenson, who said Google violated users' privacy by sharing the names of app buyers with developers. Svenson sued Google last September, several months after Australian developer Dan Nolan revealed on his blog that Google automatically shares app buyers' personal information with developers. "Every App purchase you make on Google Play gives the developer your name, suburb and email address with no indication that this information is actually being transferred," he wrote. With the information I have available to me through the checkout portal I could track down and harass users who left negative reviews." For its part, Google didn't see any cause for concern. On the contrary, the company intentionally designed its platform so that people who purchase apps do so directly from the developer. The privacy policy for Google Wallet says the company may disclose information that's necessary to process transactions. Google takes the position that it's necessary to share users' data, because the company isn't itself processing the purchase. Still, Google's practice blindsided many people -- probably because Google's model differs from Apple's iTunes, which keeps purchasers' data confidential. Svenson alleged in her complaint that she purchased an app from Google Play for $1.77 in May. She said that Google then shared her personal information with the YCDroid, the developer of the app, which converts SMS messages to emails. She accused Google of breaking its contract with her by allegedly disclosing her personal information to a third party. She specifically alleged that Google's decision to transfer her data created “a significant and imminently greater risk of identity theft.” Last week, U.S. District Court Judge Beth Larson Freeman in San Jose, Calif. threw out the lawsuit, ruling that Svenson hadn't shown any damages. “Plaintiff does not allege that what she received -- the app and unauthorized disclosure of her contact information -- was worth less than what she allegedly bargained for -- the app and non-disclosure of her contact information,” she wrote. Freeman also rejected Svenson's theory that she was at risk for identity theft, ruling that possibility was too speculative to justify a lawsuit. Even though Google won this round, the company's victory could prove short-lived. That's because Freeman dismissed the case without prejudice -- meaning that the user who sued can revise her complaint and try again. Whether she will remains to be seen. Freeman herself expressed skepticism about whether Svenson would be able to do so successfully. “Under these circumstances, it is not clear how Plaintiff could amend her complaint to allege contract damages,” Freeman wrote. But, she added, she would give Svenson an opportunity to try to do so. Meanwhile, Google still faces a separate lawsuit that includes allegations relating to disclosing app purchasers' data. That case stemmed from Google's 2012 decision to revise its privacy policy in a way that allowed it to consolidate information about users. Last month, U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul Grewal in San Jose, Calif. said that users who are suing Google for its privacy-policy changes could continue their lawsuit -- but only over allegations that the company wrongly transfers users' names and contact information to app developers. Grewal ruled that users could move forward based on their allegations that Google “left a privacy policy in place which led consumers to believe that access to their data would be limited to certain groups ... even though it knew that it planned to distribute the data outside of those groups.”
How many times this year have you heard some mobile evangelist decry the gap between time spent with mobile and the share of ad spending it gets? Maybe you’ve even found yourself repeating the mantra — stemming from the release of Mary Meeker’s annual Internet report this spring — that mobile attracts 20% of media time in the U.S., but only 4% of the ad dollars. If you do feel the urge to opine on that topic, don’t do it as part of a pitch for business from hotel chain La Quinta Inn & Suites. “That’ll get you kicked right out of my office,” said Amy Bartle, director, media & digital marketing for La Quinta, in a session at MediaPost’s Mobile Insider Summit in Lake Tahoe on Monday. She suggested the focus on the quantity of time spent in mobile is too simplistic, with no consideration of the quality of time spent. In that vein, she cited figures that 68% of time with mobile takes place at home, which she said indicates that people are often doing something else while they’re using a mobile device. Furthermore, she said that 80% of mobile use is focused on personal matters rather than in shopping or search. One study last year by AOL and the University of Virginia found that three-quarters of all mobile ad impressions were viewed within the home, and a quarter of all digital time is spent at home on tablets or cell phones. Even as the mantra of the mobile advertising gap persists, some observers have pointed out that the direct correlation of media budgets with the proportion of time spent per medium is spurious. Pivotal Research Group’s Brian Wieser wrote in a research note in May: “Whether or not budgets flow to a medium depends on the ad products developed by media owners, the degree to which certain segments of marketers find different ad inventory uniquely impactful in driving marketing goals, and the degree to which ad inventory is bundled together.” As a result, he reasoned that it’s more likely that time and money will remained mismatched for most media than not. As it is, mobile’s slice of ad spend will likely grow over time, but it won’t necessarily be in lockstep with share of time. By the end of this year, eMarketer projects mobile (smartphones and tablets) will represent 10% of all U.S. media ad spending -- overtaking newspapers, magazines and radio for the first time. The Mobile Marketing Association two years ago came up with a formulation recommending that mobile spending should make up 7% of media budgets. While the MMA has not updated that figure, a representative for the trade group noted that the report projected that proportion should increase as the installed base of mobile devices increases. Current MMA research with brands including AT&T, MasterCard and Coca-Cola indicates the optimized mix for mobile is higher than 7%. La Quinta’s Bartle did not reveal how much of the company’s marketing budget goes to mobile, but salespeople pushing the mobile ad gap argument in hopes of generating higher spending are likely to be shown little hospitality.
Take a deep breath and close your eyes for a second. Imagine a sunny beach with beautiful white sand, palm trees and clear, glistening turquoise water. Gives you a feeling of relaxation and peace, doesn't it? Reading the description automatically paints a picture in your mind of the setting, even if I hadn't told you to imagine it. It's simply how our brains are wired. We prefer pictures and visuals rather than having to read. Text goes into our short-term memory and information that needs to be processed. Psychologist George Miller researched this function of our brain and published his findings in an article in 1956. Miller determined that the working memory can remember "7 plus or minus 2" pieces of information. Images, on the other hand, go into our long-term memory, allowing us to store and remember them much more vividly. Keeping this in mind, it's no surprise that most marketing and advertising utilizes visuals of some sort to leverage this emotion and create a brand experience. Messaging should aim to do the same. When given the option to read a text message from a company or to receive some sort of visualization, most consumers would prefer the latter. It engages the customer more and provides an image -- something that resonates better with our brains. The better experience a potential consumer has, the more likely he or she is to complete the purchase journey. Evolution of Marketing In the 19th century, a man by the name of Aaron Montgomery Ward revolutionized the advertising and retail world by including pictures in his business catalog. He was the first to attempt such a tactic, realizing that people will be more affected by visuals than plain text. Although at that time no studies or experiments were done to prove that visuals resonate more strongly with customers, he used his intuition and what was deemed to be logical for marketing purposes. His innovative idea to change customs in order to better serve his customers led to huge success while creating a new standard for advertising. The evolution of marketing did not end with pictures in catalogs. Rich content with images and videos made it to nearly every marketing channel, except mobile messaging. Today, we can complete what Ward started and apply it to modern day direct mobile marketing -- especially mobile messaging. Research done by Nielsen suggests that there are 27 million pieces of content shared a day. That's about 313 pieces of content shared every second. People are blasted with messages from every direction on a daily basis. With more and more competition for the attention of consumers, companies must engage in techniques that will be unique and grasp the audience's attention. Visuals are processed up to 60,000 times faster than text. A picture of a cute puppy will elicit an emotional response from a person much faster than a textual description of the puppy would. The same concept can be applied by mobile marketing to your customers. Visualizations and Advertising Not only can imagery help grasp the attention of customers, but it can also help with a company's branding efforts. We have seen the enhancement of advertising in a variety of domains as new technologies become more sophisticated over time. This situation is also relevant to email. When it was introduced, email was plain text and then simple html. Since then, it has developed and expanded to include banners and rich media along with a whole set of analytics, telling us if the e-mail was actually opened and how the customer interacted with the email content itself. Advertisers figured out that a visual together with behavioral analytics is much more powerful to a consumer than plain text, which offers very limited feedback on customer engagement. It only makes sense for new mobile touchpoints, like mobile messaging, to follow the same image evolution. With new innovations like Rich Media Messaging (RMM), companies can deliver branded and personalized messages to customers with high quality video and images to any device. Better yet, it is delivered as a message, meaning there is no need for a data plan or links directing the consumer to a Web site, and the set of analytics available upon message delivery is much closer to email rather than simple text message. When sending out RMM to consumers, it is very easy to include a branded image along with customized device specific content to enhance the user experience. The image portion of the message helps to enhance brand recognition, and if paired with a product image, it generates twice the performance of a text-only experience like SMS.
The Internet is now ahead of TV, and it shows no signs of stopping its growth. For the first time, the number of broadband customers exceeded the number of cable subscribers, according to end-of-June data from the Leichtman Research Group analyzing numbers from the nation’s nine largest cable companies. As of the second quarter of 2014, the numbers of broadband subscribers clocked in at 49,915,000 customers, compared to 49,910,000 cable TV customers. Fine, fine. So we’re talking about a difference of 5,000 customers. Still. These numbers underscore the direction that media consumption is headed in — and it’s a digital one. While this milestone might suggest the decline of TV at first blush, what it actually underscores is the omni-platform nature of consumption. Consumers are still watching plenty of TV; but now, many are watching it through digital means, via over-the-top services, game consoles or online video. As an example, in the second quarter, digital viewing jumped by 28% over last year, said video ad management platform Freewheel. Also, the use of mobile phones for video viewing grew 93%, while the use of over-the-top devices for video rose 236% over last year. Leichtman Research Group also found that the country’s 17 largest cable and telephone providers added nearly 385,000 new broadband customers in the second quarter. In the past decade, cable providers have added more than 30 million broadband customers.
Ever since the first direct-to-consumer mail order catalogue in 1872, marketers have been on a quest, and successfully, to better understand their customers and reach them in a more direct and personal way, irrespective of the media channel. Today, marketers are waking up and wondering where their customers have gone. According to eMarketer, consumers are now spending 23% of their media time on smartphones and tablets. For many marketers who lack thorough mobile and cross-device strategies, this is the equivalent of going dark. As few as two years ago, the mobile ecosystem was still finding its way - identifying mobile audiences was a major challenge. Back then, buyers were afforded little ability to accurately target mobile audiences across scattered mobile web and in-app inventory. Fast forward to today and things have massively evolved thanks to mobile-first technologies that reliably identify mobile audiences, even as users move between app and web environments. With this opportunity comes a new challenge - there is now more data available to advertisers than ever before but knowing what to do with it isn’t so obvious. The real problem here is that many advertisers are ignoring the value of their customer and campaign data, thereby losing a critical competitive advantage to savvy competitors. Advertisers need to get out of the traditional media centrifuge and seize the mobile opportunity. The cross-device jump In a mobile-first world, advertisers can uniquely leverage audience data across multiple screens, making their advertising more targeted, relevant and effective in unprecedented ways. By helping understand the interplay between device, location, environment and behavior, mobile unveils unique audience insights that simply cannot be derived from desktop. Mobile advertising reaches audiences on the move – serving people with hyper relevant, geo-targeted campaigns. Sitting in an airport waiting for your luggage en route to a conference? That’s a great opportunity for Avis to deliver ads promoting their new executive fleet directly to your smartphone. This is all made possible by statistical identification technologies; the made-for-mobile targeting that relies on statistical equations to determine audiences in a non-personally identifiable manner. While Facebook and Google rely on user logins to identify audiences across mobile and desktop devices, statistical ID is the process of connecting dozens of anonymized data points, tied to key anchor data points at the mobile device level. Identification is not reliant on the cookie, and this requires that advertisers change the way they think about mobile targeting. By pairing statistical identification with transparent programmatic buying technologies, advertisers and their agencies are now geared up to reach their multi-screen consumers with the right message, no matter the device. Moving forward, benefiting from the deluge of big data requires both the technology and the tools to understand it. The data goldmine Owning first party data is just the beginning, marketers face the challenge of deciding what to do with the vast amounts of data collected from their customers via mobile devices. Do we store it? Use it? Sell it? The answer could be all three. Data is not inherently valuable, it needs to yield actionable insights and ultimately drive revenue for marketers. Transforming data into gold is no easy task - this can only be achieved by working with truly self-service, transparent technology platforms where buyers own and control their data, while generating new insights from every impression, click and conversion. Whether first-party (advertiser or publisher-driven), second-party (proprietary insights leveraged from campaigns), or third-party acquired data, it’s crucial for buyers to process, combine and analyze this information in a safe and controlled way, conscious of how these customer insights feed into a larger data-strategy. The ability to activate and model data will soon become a requirement from both buyers and sellers. By this, I mean the ability for businesses rich in desktop customer and campaign data assets to map their audiences across to mobile, thereby unifying their audiences. Innovation will come from agencies, agency trading desks, large retailers and other advertisers rich in CRM data - not to mention publishers with highly engaged, cross-device audiences. Data owners must harness the power of open platforms to help them build unique trading capabilities in mobile and by extension, cross-device advertising. Maintaining control and data ownership will be critical. Time and time again we see instances of leaked customer information, or data leaking in a way that benefits competitors. Data owners need to wake up and ask their advertising partners a tough question: How is my data handled, and how can you help me build value from my media buy? What now? Established players and new entrants are desperate to better understand changing audience dynamics and to do so, it’s crucial that advertisers take control of their valuable data. It’s no longer enough for data to be shuffled around, there needs to be an aligned data strategy between advertisers and their respective media buyers. The future of data-driven ad buying lies in open technology and self-service platforms where advertisers can benefit from the transparency, customization, and control offered by a true data driven model. Done right, the future of multi-screen advertising looks very smart indeed.
According to an analysis of strategies of leading brands and forward-thinking marketers by Lisa Gevelber, Vice President of Americas Marketing, U.S. Hispanic demographic trends indicate a 163% increase in population between 2010 and 2050, making up 30% of the population by July 1, 2050, and one trillion dollars in buying power in 2010, rising to $1.5 trillion next year (an increase of 50% in just five years). Marla Skiko, senior vice president and director of digital innovation at SMG Multicultural, says "… marketers may think they trail… general market in adoption of new tech… (though) they are far ahead… should be among the first prospects for marketers… to grow their consumer base…" A survey of a panel of senior-level marketers, says the report, saw 11–25% of their company’s growth coming from this demographic in the next three to five years, but most brands didn’t have a marketing strategy for this audience. The analysis found that, in looking at the strategies of leading brands and forward-thinking marketers, "U.S. Hispanics are ahead of the curve when it comes to digital. They lead in adoption of new devices. They are power users of mobile and over-index in video consumption." Selections of the data supporting these observations and conclusions are included in the report… Fabian Castro, senior vice president, multicultural marketing for Universal Pictures, notes that they promote “close to” to 80% of its releases annually to the U.S. Hispanic audience. The average Hispanic spends more than eight hours watching online video each month, over 90 minutes longer than the U.S. average, according to Nielsen. According to Think With Google, YouTube views of top U.S. Hispanic channels are up 1.25x year over year. In the two years since the launch of the bilingual multi-channel network MiTu, the network has grown an audience of more than 36 million subscribers, one-third the number of subscribers to HBO, a forty year old network. Brands are tapping into this growth through endorsements and sponsorships. A lot of Hispanic video watching happens on mobile, says the report, as smartphones are becoming the "first screen." Nielsen reports that 10 million Hispanics watch mobile video for an average of more than six hours per month. Among smartphone owners, Hispanics are 17% more likely than non-Hispanics to access the web more through their phone than through a computer, and more likely to upgrade or replace their mobile headsets and buy tablets. According to a Google Consumer Survey, Hispanics are 1.5x more likely to buy mobile apps and digital media than non-Hispanics. Too often, marketers think they’re reaching U.S. Hispanics by simply translating ads and websites into Spanish, suggests the report, but there is a big opportunity to reach these consumers in both languages. A recent Google Consumer Survey showed that the majority of U.S. Hispanic mobile users typically search in English or a mix of English and Spanish. At the same time, the number of Google searches that include common Spanish-language question words nearly doubled over the past three years. Language isn’t enough, though, notes the analysis. To speak to this audience one needs to be culturally relevant as well. As Castro puts it, "Culture is the new language.” The U.S. Hispanic audience will only gain cultural and economic prominence in the coming years. This isn’t just sheer numbers; it’s technology, concludes the analysis and report. For additional information from Think with Google, please visit here.
Our latest data shows that WhatsApp is now the most popular messaging app – being used by 39% of the mobile audience to push Facebook’s own Messenger service into second position (38%). Naturally, this global headline masks some notable local trends. WeChat is still the dominant playerin China (and by quite some way: an impressive 84% of the Chinese mobile internet population are using it). Meanwhile, Kakao Talk dominates in South Korea, Line is top in Taiwan and as many as 50% of teens in the UK and USA are wedded to Snapchat – a demographic which WhatsApp is yet to conquer in quite the same way. Facebook’s Messenger tool has also received a significant boost from the network’s decision to remove the messaging functionality from its main app; in the UK, for example, its numbers jumped from 27% in Q4 2013 to 40% in Q2 2014 – and this is a pattern we’re highly likely to see in other countries now that this change has been rolled out globally. Across the board, though, one pattern remains pretty consistent here: all messaging services are continuing to enjoy buoyant rises and are capturing more and more of the conversations that used to take place inside social networks proper or via SMS. We’re still using the big platforms like Facebook but for fewer things; in fact, about 50% of WhatsApp users in the UK confirm that they’re now using chat apps far more than text messages or networks. Having snapped up WhatsApp, that’s not an issue for Facebook per se; it’s still hosting all of these conversations, just in a slightly different space. It’s likely to be more of a concern for the other big networks, though, and that’s why we can expect to see more acquisitions and innovations in this area over the next year. Only last month, Quack! Messenger became the latest name to enter the arena, promising UK users a chance to earn money in return for watching “wanted” advertising during conversation breaks (as it has already been doing in Spain and Italy under the name Chad2Win). But as the messaging space gets more and more crowded, what exactly do users want from messaging services? According to our research among 500 UK WhatsApp users, convenience and reach stand out as key drivers; two-thirds say that mobile messaging services are the easiest way to send photos and videos, with a similar proportion claiming that they use them because most of their friends/family do, too. Cost is another big factor: people like the idea that they are saving money, especially when sending messages internationally. Our research also shows why Mark Zuckerberg and Co. have been treading so carefully in relation to advertising and potential monetization of WhatsApp (beyond its nominal $1/year fee): quite simply, users are extremely uncomfortable with their data being used to make money. Over three-quarters of current WhatsAppers believe that Facebook has no right to sell their personal information for the purposes of ad revenue, while an overwhelming 85% are concerned about how their conversations might be being used by companies behind-the-scenes. What’s more, only a quarter of users support the basic model that underlies WhatsApp and similar tools: that personal info can be used by companies in return for their services being free to use. Security and privacy are extremely important too. More than 4 in 10 say they want to know that a deleted conversation really has been deleted – and is not stored somewhere without them knowing it. For mobile chatters, then, privacy really does matter. Of course, real-life behaviors do not always reflect expressed opinions; large majorities typically continue to use services even if they have reservations about them. Nevertheless, loyalty in the mobile messaging space isn’t yet as ingrained as it is elsewhere: no single tool has established itself as the global messaging app par excellence and a mighty 84% of the WhatsApp audience say that they would start using a new app if their friends and family were on it too. In short, it’s easier for messaging apps to win new users away from other services that it is for networks to poach people from Facebook. By owning the two most popular messaging apps, Facebook certainly has the potential to dominate this space as it does with networking more generally – something which helps to contextualise WhatsApp’s price tag as well as the forced migration of conversations to the Messenger app. But the contest is far from over.