Mobile plays a key role in Taco Bell's new launch of a 15-item breakfast menu with targeted messaging that leverages dayparting. Taco Bell's strategy with dayparting and mobile for the launch of the breakfast menu builds on a similar time-specific promotion that the brand rolled out last year called Happier Hour. In addition to mobile media, the QSR also plans to extend a pre-launch program for breakfast that doled out feature phones to key social media influencers to keep the hype going around the new menu.

There's a new commerce startup on everyone's lips within the fashion industry, not only because it promises to pioneer a new way to shop on mobile devices, but also because it's drawing some major talent from top retailers. A reliable source has told us that one of the original pioneers in the industry's social media space, Cannon Tekstar Hodge (above right) - Bergorf Goodman's social media director and the voice behind @Bergdorfs - is leaving the company after nearly a decade to join the team at Jello Labs, where she will be working on one of its products, Spring. (Neither …

Indian women fuelled online shopping worth over half-a-billion dollars last calendar and that figure is galloping five-fold to $3 billion in the next three years. Women-influenced sales would be 35% of Indian e-commerce market estimated at $8.5 billion by 2016, venture capital firm Accel Partners , one of the prolific backers of startups, said in a report shared with TOI. These projections come in the backdrop of a frenetic growth in internet penetration through smartphones and women lapping up the convenience of shopping online . Indian e-commerce industry totalled $2 billion last calendar, with women-influenced sales at $511 million, or …

A Kiip executive at the ad:tech San Francisco 2014 conference said that the same rules for unobtrusive, contextually-relevant advertising in mobile will have a bigger impact in connected device experiences. Executives from Kiip and Mojio discussed the opportunities around connected device advertising during "The Next Ads Frontier: Smart Homes and Connected Cars" session. Although the explosion of new tech-driven appliances and devices present a big opportunity for brands, marketers cannot apply the same best practices from mobile advertising to these experiences. "Ultimately there is a fine line between being interrupted while you're driving and also adding value based on your …

Toys "R" Us continues to make mobile a key part of its omnichannel shopping experience with a new mobile application that makes it easy for parents to engage with the Babies "R" Us print catalog to find out more about specific products and purchase items directly from its Web site. By giving users a way to discover new products with just a few taps or via scanning from the smartphones, Babies "R" Us hopes to drive more traffic to its Web site. The Babies "R" Us Catalogue app is available in Canada, with features including the ability to view product …

The payments and banking industries are making progress in getting more U.S. consumers to use their mobile devices to access bank and card-account information, a new Federal Reserve Board of Governors report released March 25 shows. As of December last year, 33 percent of all mobile phone users and 51 percent of smartphone users had used mobile banking in the previous 12 months. This is an increase from 28 percent in December 2012 for mobile phone users and 48 percent for smartphone users, according to Fed's report "Consumers and Mobile Financial Services 2014. Online consumer-research company GfK conducted the survey …

There's no doubt to it - mobile e-commerce is on the rise, with an IDC report predicting that by 2017 purchases on mobile devices will exceed $1 trillion. And Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten knows this clearly, which is why it is keen to fold messaging and calling app Viber into its "key priority" - mobile commerce. Last month, Rakuten announced that it was buying Viber for $900 million. As Rakuten launched its service officially in Singapore today, Shin Hasegawa, the global vice chief marketing officer, tells TNW that the company is "aggressively" working to integrate Viber into Rakuten. Mobile commerce …

The People's Bank of China has announced that it is considering revising the caps it has placed on mobile payments. This comes as response to backlash from consumers and Internet firms alike, claiming that the caps placed on mobile payments were unnecessary and inappropriate. The caps were introduced as part of new regulations proposed by the People's Bank of China. These regulations were meant to provide consumers and businesses with more security in the mobile commerce field while also introducing new standards to the mobile sector. The proposed regulations would have placed a cap on payments made from a mobile …

Amazon is leveraging mobile to address one of its weak points - product-related content - as it looks to do a better job of guiding smartphone shoppers along the path to completing a purchase. The ecommerce giant already has a comprehensive mobile experience for consumers but has, until recently, lacked a comparable tool set for the third-party sellers offering products on the site. With the recent price increase for Amazon Price, the online retailer appears to be focused on addressing its shortcomings in product content with a new mobile application and new mobile product ads for third-party sellers.

In an attempt to boost its mobile money services, MasterCard Inc. (MA - Analyst Report) announced a strategic alliance with London-based global mobile application provider for various banking and payment services - Monitise Plc to accelerate mobile commerce (mCommerce) globally. Additionally, the company also plans to buy a minority stake in the latter, the value of which remains undisclosed. MasterCard has been aggressively working toward developing mCommerce for over a decade now. The company was also the leader of digital wallet innovation for making payments from mobile devices through applications that are secured, convenient and user-friendly.