Answering a question about whether offering special deals to mobile users is worthwhile, the panelists suggested mobile customers tend to be more loyal than other customers. Eric Vaughn, Director, Interactive Marketing, Monte Carlo Resort and Casino, said the company’s mobile clients spend more than average based on campaign testing it’s done. Similarly, Luanne Bryant, Senior Manager, Digital Marketing, City Furniture, indicated customers responding to SMS campaigns are loyal customers, feeling they have a relationship with company through mobile messaging. Warren Zenna, Managing Director, Digital / Mobile Practice, Woods, Witt, Dealy & …

In a panel looking at location in mobile campaigns, discussion focuses on the cost-benefit analysis of layering on additional location and other targeting to improve ROI. More targeting means working with more vendors and more complexity. Starting simple is one answer, using SMS, direct response ads that drive to a mobile optimized site. Craig Weinberg, mobile practice lead, Mindshare, emphasize that mobile is still about utility. Keeping things simple is key to engaging people through mobile. He points to working with a service like Foursquare as a less expensive way to do mobile targeting at the local …

At Day 2 of the Mobile Insider Summit, Kristin Ryba, Senior Marketing Manager, Product and Brand, Meguiar’s presented a case study on a campaign combining hyper-local targeting with rich media mobile brand assets. Mequiar's is a 3M-owned company that makes car care products. Worked with its agency FRWD and mobile geotargeting platform PlaceIQ to focus on five markets mostly likely to be receptive. Because the business is very seasonal, it included markets with changing weather like Chicago and Cleveland. PlaceIQ helped the company find places where “auto moments” occur--locations with recent buyers of used and new vehicles, …

"Privacy was dead a long time ago," says Arthur Coleman, chief scientist, 4INFO, speaking at the Mobile Insider Summit. This started, said Coleman, in the 1950s when credit cards starting amassing consumers information, as well as other marketing tools. Short-term it'll still be an issue, and will continue to get  "noise". But long term he feels consumers will get use to it. Coleman says mobile marketers/platforms know key informationa such as "where you are" and "who you are".  Putting those two pieces of information together, however, creates some major …

In the morning’s second keynote, Jonathan Stephen, head of mobile, JetBlue Airways, discusses how the company last year launched its “Digital Refresh” effort to overhaul its range of digital services to improve the travel experience. That initiative led to JetBlue launching a new Web and mobile site as well as its first iPhone and Android apps. A key design theme, based on consumer input, was to create mobile services that assist uses throughout the “travel ribbon” from booking to in-flight to reaching their destination. One of the main benefits JetBlue has seen after launching its apps last year was a …

Randy White, vp, media services at CareerBuilder, explained that employers aren’t keeping up with mobile shift in reviewing job candidates. He says companies have to learn that if they’re contacting a candidate that’s on a mobile device, they can’t soliciit a lot of information, including sensitive data like social security numbers. That leads 99% of candidates on mobile to drop-off because they're not comfortable going beyond providing basic contact info. White says companies are losing huge volumes of applicants this way. “We’re trying to drag them into this new world,” he said, but most haven’t adopted a mobile-first mindset as …

On the day’s first panel at the Mobile Insider Summit, executives from companies including AutoTrader, For Rent Media Solutions, and CareerBuilder spoke of how they’ve been surprised by the rapid level of mobile adoption last year. Melanie Allgood, sr. manager, at AutoTrader explained how mobile has become an integral part of the car shopping process and how the company has to do more to make the experience of shifting between desktop and mobile use more seamless for customers. Likewise, Michelle Castillo, sr. online media manager, at For Rent, said the company ha seen smartphone use rise in particular in apartment …

First of all, Bryan Boettger is an awesome multi-tasker, and a better moderator than I am, because unlike me, he can keep his panel on message, while looking over his shoulder at the Twitter feed on the screen to see things like my blog post quipping about his Syms "educated consumer" line. So he asked, me what I meant by ending it, "Are we going there?" Fair question, and since I tried to address it during the summit, let me share it with readers here. By going there, I meant does the advertising and digital media industry really want to …

Well, the natives were restless on my "Native Advertising" panel at the Social Media Insider Summit. Unfortunately, I can't blog and moderate panels at the same time. And since there's no rest for the weary, I will be writing something on it later, so check back for more.

When Social Media Insider Summit "Social Responsibility" panel moderator Bryan Boettger cited defunct New York area clothing retailer Syms' famous tagline -- "An educated consumer is our best customer." -- during his "Social Responsibility" panel, he posed a very awkward question to his panelists, noting that the company went out of business in 2011. "Is an educated consumer really a better consumer," he asked? Really, are we going there?