It’s no secret that much of the activity on Twitter these days is happening on mobile devices. The company’s 140-character format has its roots in text messaging. But in a keynote talk at MediaPost’s Social Insider Summit on Monday, Guy Yalif, head of global product marketing at Twitter, highlighted that the company’s biggest mobile adherents are more likely to be active, engaged users and a receptive audience for brands. Yalif said 200 million people log into Twitter at least once a month -- and of those, 120 million, or 60%, do so at least once on a mobile device. Within that 60%, is a “large chunk” of users who interact with Twitter primarily through their mobile devices. Based on a new survey of these “mobile-first” users conducted with Compete, the company found they are 86% more likely than average users to go on the service multiple times a day, throughout the day. Yalif noted that this creates a venue to “engage directly with consumers to connect your brand and your message into what’s interesting to that consumer in that particular moment." Twitter mobilistas are more likely to use the service at work and school, and three times more likely to do so while commuting. People tweeting while shopping provides a natural opening for retailers and marketers, noted Yalif, citing the example of a Midwestern user “talking smack” with his buddies about sports teams via Twitter while buying gear at Target. “Mobile users are the core of our platform -- they’re the future of our platform, and are more engaged day-in, day-out, which creates many opportunities for us as marketers,” he said. As another example, Yalif highlighted a Starbucks outlet in the U.K. that promoted a “Frappuccino Happy Hour” through Twitter, which led to a 70% increase in people tweeting about going into the store. When it comes to social TV, the Super Bowl underscored Twitter’s growing role as a second-screen platform, with half of the ads featuring a hashtag and a total of 24 million tweets sent about the game. That’s up 76% from a year ago. Yalif added that 13 million tweets were sent out about the Grammys Sunday night, with up to 116,000 tweets a minute. Overall, Yalif noted that some 80% of viewers have a mobile device in front of them while they’re watching TV, and two-thirds of these are mobile-first Twitter users. "Invest in a TV ad and make those dollars work harder for you,” said Yalif, adding that 95% of the social conversation about TV is happening on Twitter. Building on its tie-in with TV viewing, Twitter recently struck an exclusive partnership with Nielsen to create a social media TV rating service. Yalif said the Nielsen Twitter TV Rating would give TV networks and advertisers a new currency for understanding TV audience social activity in the form of real-time metrics. In the same vein, Twitter last week announced acquiring social TV analytics firm Bluefin. Twitter’s primarily mobile users are 78% more likely to retweet a brand message out to their followers.
Sailthru, which specializes in content personalization, has closed $19 million in a Series B venture round led by Benchmark, but including prior investors RRE, DFJ Gotham and AOL Ventures. The funding brings the company’s total raised to date to $28 million. New York-based Sailthru plans to use the new capital to expand staffing, accelerate product development, and continue to enlarge operations in the U.S. and internationally. “We are increasing the size of the team in engineering, account management, marketing…it’s all about expansion so we can continue to improve our products and offer more products,” said Sailthru CEO Neil Capel. The company’s technology allows clients such as The Huffington Post, Fab and Thrillist to send behaviorally targeted email newsletters, as well as offer tailored Web site content, recommendations and e-commerce services based on users’ browsing habits and preferences. Sailthru typically enters into one-year, software-as-a-service (SaaS) contracts with clients, based on their volume of e-mail and Web site traffic. By delivering content personalized for individual users, the company says business customers have seen a three to five times increase in open rates and more than a 200% uptick in time spent on sites. Sailthru has filed for a trademark for the term “Smart Data” to describe its approach to targeting that relies on automated collection and analysis of first-party data to customize client communications in real-time. “As opposed to the normal amalgamation of data sets into some Big Data repository where it’s looked at and then humans make decisions,” said Capel. Through its focus on providing highly personalized content, Capel said Sailthru increased revenue 270% in 2012, with an average monthly growth rate of 9%. The company recently opened a San Francisco office and plans to expand in Europe in the second quarter. Sailthru’s headcount has roughly doubled to 85 since mid-2012, and Capel expects the sales staff alone will double in size this year. The company’s growth was accelerated last year through a pair of acquisitions. It bought Frame, which makes software allowing e-commerce businesses to optimize their Web presence for the iPad, and Seamless Receipts, which offers retailers tools for creating targeted promotions and tracking shopper analytics. Capel said the company had no further acquisition plans at present, but that it was interested in creating more tools for boosting engagement across social media and mobile platforms. “Everything, when it comes down to it, is going mobile, and we just really need to focus on making that as relevant an experience as possible.”
Pizza Hut is offering a Valentine’s Day solution for procrastinators. Between Feb. 11 and 13, those who tweet @PizzaHut using the hashtag #LastMinuteLovers with a plea for help will have a chance to win one of 24 daily (one per hour) Last Minute Lovers Packages. The packages include a bottle of the chain’s perfume, Eau de Pizza Hut, and a $20 Pizza Hut gift card good for a Lover’s Pizza or the new Big Pizza Sliders. The packages will be mailed in time to arrive for Valentine’s Day. Pizza Hut offers four different Lover’s Pizza varieties. The Big Pizza Sliders, available in three different recipes with up to three toppings each, are sold nine to a box for $10 or three for $5. The V-Day promotion is open only to U.S. residents of the 48 contiguous states.
It’s no secret that much of the activity on Twitter these days is happening on mobile devices. The company’s 140-character format has its roots in text messaging. But in a keynote talk at MediaPost’s Social Insider Summit on Monday, Guy Yalif, head of global product marketing at Twitter, highlighted that the company’s biggest mobile adherents are more likely to be active, engaged users and a receptive audience for brands. Yalif said 200 million people log into Twitter at least once a month -- and of those, 120 million, or 60%, do so at least once on a mobile device. Within that 60%, is a “large chunk” of users who interact with Twitter primarily through their mobile devices. Based on a new survey of these “mobile-first” users conducted with Compete, the company found they are 86% more likely than average users to go on the service multiple times a day, throughout the day. Yalif noted that this creates a venue to “engage directly with consumers to connect your brand and your message into what’s interesting to that consumer in that particular moment." Twitter mobilistas are more likely to use the service at work and school, and three times more likely to do so while commuting. People tweeting while shopping provides a natural opening for retailers and marketers, noted Yalif, citing the example of a Midwestern user “talking smack” with his buddies about sports teams via Twitter while buying gear at Target. “Mobile users are the core of our platform -- they’re the future of our platform, and are more engaged day-in, day-out, which creates many opportunities for us as marketers,” he said. As another example, Yalif highlighted a Starbucks outlet in the U.K. that promoted a “Frappuccino Happy Hour” through Twitter, which led to a 70% increase in people tweeting about going into the store. When it comes to social TV, the Super Bowl underscored Twitter’s growing role as a second-screen platform, with half of the ads featuring a hashtag and a total of 24 million tweets sent about the game. That’s up 76% from a year ago. Yalif added that 13 million tweets were sent out about the Grammys Sunday night, with up to 116,000 tweets a minute. Overall, Yalif noted that some 80% of viewers have a mobile device in front of them while they’re watching TV, and two-thirds of these are mobile-first Twitter users. "Invest in a TV ad and make those dollars work harder for you,” said Yalif, adding that 95% of the social conversation about TV is happening on Twitter. Building on its tie-in with TV viewing, Twitter recently struck an exclusive partnership with Nielsen to create a social media TV rating service. Yalif said the Nielsen Twitter TV Rating would give TV networks and advertisers a new currency for understanding TV audience social activity in the form of real-time metrics. In the same vein, Twitter last week announced acquiring social TV analytics firm Bluefin. Twitter’s primarily mobile users are 78% more likely to retweet a brand message out to their followers.
Sailthru, which specializes in content personalization, has closed $19 million in a Series B venture round led by Benchmark, but including prior investors RRE, DFJ Gotham and AOL Ventures. The funding brings the company’s total raised to date to $28 million. New York-based Sailthru plans to use the new capital to expand staffing, accelerate product development, and continue to enlarge operations in the U.S. and internationally. “We are increasing the size of the team in engineering, account management, marketing…it’s all about expansion so we can continue to improve our products and offer more products,” said Sailthru CEO Neil Capel. The company’s technology allows clients such as The Huffington Post, Fab and Thrillist to send behaviorally targeted email newsletters, as well as offer tailored Web site content, recommendations and e-commerce services based on users’ browsing habits and preferences. Sailthru typically enters into one-year, software-as-a-service (SaaS) contracts with clients, based on their volume of e-mail and Web site traffic. By delivering content personalized for individual users, the company says business customers have seen a three to five times increase in open rates and more than a 200% uptick in time spent on sites. Sailthru has filed for a trademark for the term “Smart Data” to describe its approach to targeting that relies on automated collection and analysis of first-party data to customize client communications in real-time. “As opposed to the normal amalgamation of data sets into some Big Data repository where it’s looked at and then humans make decisions,” said Capel. Through its focus on providing highly personalized content, Capel said Sailthru increased revenue 270% in 2012, with an average monthly growth rate of 9%. The company recently opened a San Francisco office and plans to expand in Europe in the second quarter. Sailthru’s headcount has roughly doubled to 85 since mid-2012, and Capel expects the sales staff alone will double in size this year. The company’s growth was accelerated last year through a pair of acquisitions. It bought Frame, which makes software allowing e-commerce businesses to optimize their Web presence for the iPad, and Seamless Receipts, which offers retailers tools for creating targeted promotions and tracking shopper analytics. Capel said the company had no further acquisition plans at present, but that it was interested in creating more tools for boosting engagement across social media and mobile platforms. “Everything, when it comes down to it, is going mobile, and we just really need to focus on making that as relevant an experience as possible.”
Pizza Hut is offering a Valentine’s Day solution for procrastinators. Between Feb. 11 and 13, those who tweet @PizzaHut using the hashtag #LastMinuteLovers with a plea for help will have a chance to win one of 24 daily (one per hour) Last Minute Lovers Packages. The packages include a bottle of the chain’s perfume, Eau de Pizza Hut, and a $20 Pizza Hut gift card good for a Lover’s Pizza or the new Big Pizza Sliders. The packages will be mailed in time to arrive for Valentine’s Day. Pizza Hut offers four different Lover’s Pizza varieties. The Big Pizza Sliders, available in three different recipes with up to three toppings each, are sold nine to a box for $10 or three for $5. The V-Day promotion is open only to U.S. residents of the 48 contiguous states.
Ever ask a friend or co-worker to write you a coveted LinkedIn recommendation, to boost your online business profile? It’s up there with pulling teeth. And when someone does write a recommendation, chances are they’re a close colleague or friend, not a random LinkedIn connection that you’ve never met. A&W Restaurants saw an opportunity in this space and created a LinkedIn profile for its mascot, Rooty The Great Root Bear. Anyone who connects with Rooty will receive the ultimate LinkedIn gift: a free, personalized (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) recommendation. A sample recommendation reads: “I have looked up to Whit my whole life, even though I’m pretty sure he’s younger than I am. He provided invaluable mentoring during a particularly rough time in my life – I won’t go into details but let’s just say it involved an unfortunate incident on a ropes course.” “It’s a new, unique use of a known social media platform,” said Ashlee Harris, assistant account planner at Cornett-IMS, the agency behind the campaign. “The thinking behind this was that brands are all using Linkedin the same way – to network and connect with current and potential employees and clients. While it is intended for business networking, there was a huge opportunity for a brand like A&W to engage with consumers in a fun way.” Rooty’s LinkedIn page launched last week, and so far 22 recommendations have been sent. Presently, Rooty’s LinkedIn page isn’t being promoted; the page is part of a larger campaign for A&W. The brand recently launched a new website where it expects users to find out about Rooty’s LinkedIn page, as well as via word of mouth on LinkedIn.
Digital health has received a tremendous amount of attention over the last year with the mobile adoption driving a more fragmented ecosystem for publishers, users and marketers. No longer is one screen, or even two, a consumer’s resource for information and services. The linchpin for successfully engaging in this splintered environment is focusing first on user experience. Disruption coming from smartphones and tablets has forced many companies to focus first on technology — advertisers are rushing to create mobile-only/mobile-first strategies — instead of understanding how consumers demand, access and consume digital media across devices on a typical day. It explains why one in four mobile apps downloaded is never opened again. This technology-focused approach ignores an essential piece of audience behavior: the desire of consumers to seek knowledge at a specific time. To ensure the information seeker’s digital world is frictionless, publishers and advertisers must examine audiences and their devices to find trends and behaviors that map to particular audience connectedness across different screens. Once that user journey is identified, the trick is to marry elegant utility with contextually relevant content. Take, for example, the expectant mother. Even before she embarks on her pregnancy journey, she diligently tracks her fertility and ovulation from her smartphone while still searching for in-depth information on her laptop. However, she is often on-the-go so she requires access to that same comprehensive content on her phone but in a format that is easily viewable. Imagine she just left her OBGYN appointment with a slew of recommendations from her doctor. Her first instinct, in the elevator, is to do a search for those topics on her phone. By providing a clean, mobile-optimized version of that website, the publisher ensures that information reaches her at the point of need. The next morning before leaving work she checks her email on her laptop while she eats breakfast. In her inbox, she finds a newsletter that piques her interest about breastfeeding. And once the baby is born, she is using her phone again with an app to track the feeding schedule and her baby’s milestones to share with family and friends. By creating a point of engagement to help the new mom keep track of not only her health information, but also questions she wants to ask her friends, family and her physician on any device, the publisher creates stickiness for that ongoing behavior. It isn’t just helping her do one activity, but helping her participate better in her child’s care. Understanding this continuum means we can create a cross-platform strategy that speaks to her needs and natural behavior, giving her access to content and tools whenever and wherever she wants it. It’s just not enough to have mobile programs in place to target one audience on only one platform. Instead, marketers must continually learn from their audience’s behavior and responsiveness in each channel. It’s important to understand that as mobile technology and adoption evolves, so does the device’s influence over the user’s decision making, buying habits and consequently a brand’s reputation. This means that all mobile initiatives need to be fluid, derive intrinsic value, and connect the dots from screen to screen. Focusing less on creating individual apps for individual devices and more on creating personalized services across multiple platforms can move companies to an audience-platform strategy and away from a device-specific strategy. Consider mobile as less of a channel. Apps, SMS, mobile web, and even QR codes are the channels. Each one presents unique advantages, so take time to find the appropriate use for the technologies you should leverage. The daily journey your audience takes and how they access, value and consume digital media will define your strategy.
Mobile adoption and online ad spend are soaring. Online advertising should reach $50.8 billion in the United States by 2015 -- up from $36 billion this year. Search will contribute nearly $19 billion, and social media, $8.4 billion -- up from $15 billion and $4.6 billion this year, all according to the ZenithOptimedia New Media Forecasts report. Through the ads, marketers will attempt to connect with an estimated 268,283 million Internet users by 2015 in the U.S. -- up from 257,362 million this year, estimates eMarketer, MRI Fall 2011, and Zenith Advertising Expenditure Forecast. Individuals going online -- most to connect with others through email and social networks -- will access content through a variety of devices. Expect about 26.1% to own tablets or ereaders, and 58.6% to own smartphones by 2015 -- up from 19.4% and 42.4%, respectively, in 2013. The study identifies 19 digital markets across the world, ranked according to size and percentage of total ad spend, and examines how consumers in the marketers use digital media; how Internet advertising, social media and e-commerce continue to develop; and the pace of new media adoption. Adults ages 18 to 34 use the Internet for an estimated 1.85 hours daily on average, equivalent to nearly 20% of their daily media consumption. While it's the highest use among the age groups, online still falls behind television and radio consumption. Print media emails are less important to this age group, with newspapers averaging less than 30 minutes daily. They use if for work and play, such as to pay bills and shop. Online buyers represent 70.3% of Internet users. Online shoppers number 87.5%, although growth should slow to an estimated rate of 8.8% during the next five years, totaling 79.1% by 2016. In fact, $1.115 billion of U.S. offline sales -- 41% of total retail sales -- in 2011 were influenced by Web content, according to the study, which cites eMarketer. The average adult age 55 years and older flips the numbers that marketers identify with adults ages 10 to 34. This age group spends 7.49 hours watching television daily and less than one hour per day on the Internet. They also read newspapers more often, with 0.56 hours of reading per day.