Five Burger King locations are serving as the testing ground for a new self-serve mobile ad platform enabling the brand to create, deploy and measure geotargeted rich media mobile ads by itself. Marketers typically work with multiple vendors to place mobile ads but by streamlining the process, this could help shift bigger budgets toward mobile. The Burger King ads are being delivered within a one-mile geofence surrounding the five locations and include a coupon that users can engage with and save to their devices without having to leave the content they are viewing.

Online travel agency Destinia.com has released the free "Hotel Near Me" application following what it claims is the world's first successful hotel booking through Google Glass. Aimed towards tech-savvy frequent travelers, the app uses the wearer's GPS location data to search for and display the closest hotels. By bringing up nearby locations, Google makes the results relevant and, if the consumer asks to see this information, it is logical to assume Google could boost its search business with paid listings.

As consumers in the United Kingdom become more interested in mobile shopping, retailers may be falling behind in their ability to accommodate this change in consumer behavior. A new report from Skava highlights this fact, showing that many of the country's top retailers are not effectively engaging mobile consumers. This is largely due to the fact that these retailers have not optimized themselves for the mobile world. Their websites, including e-commerce gateways, are not suited for use on mobile devices, which makes them somewhat unattractive to mobile consumers and lowers their performance in mobile commerce. According to the report, 24% …

Between 60 and 80% of mobile device users commonly allow mobile location-sharing, with an average location opt-in rate of 62%. According to a study from mobile relationship management software provider Urban Airship, 51% of mobile device users also opt into push notifications. Opting into both location and push notifications are necessary in order to receive messages based on beacon proximity, current location or location history.

US mobile commerce market has grown exponentially in the last 3 years (~99%) and roughly represents a tenth of the digital commerce market in 2013. US mobile commerce market is estimated at ~ USD 26.7 billion in 2013. Primary drivers for US mobile commerce growth are growing smart phone penetration, growing tablet ownership, increase in mobile internet penetration, consumer adoption and better apps and browser based solutions.At present, companies from multiple industries are vying for a pie of the rapidly growing mobile commerce market. We have large Retailer/Merchants such as Starbucks, Wal-Mart on one end of spectrum driving sales through …

No one can predict with perfect accuracy what technology trend will birth the next set of billion-dollar, venture-backed companies or "unicorns." Even more difficult is determining where the next $100B+ "super unicorn" will come from, as history tells us this rare breed of company only emerges once or twice in a decade. Yet given that the last three U.S. super unicorns have all been consumer technology companies (Facebook, Google, and Amazon), and given that venture investment in consumer technology companies is increasingly dominated by mobile-first startups, it is reasonable to expect that smartphones will be the technology that unlocks the …

Food Network has introduced an omni-screen commerce experience that will serve its fans thousands of contextual products from its programming to help viewers connect more closely to their favorite shows. The commerce experience will offer product from more than 50 shows and 30 celebrity chefs and hosts. It is available on television as well as Web, mobile and tablet. "This provides a really great value to their viewers," said Mike Fitzsimmons, CEO of Delivery Agent. "It is a thing that TV viewers have been looking for and asking for in a long time, to make it easy to purchase items …

Apple has now made the decision to allow the Bitcoin app back into its store so that iPhone users will be able to join Android smartphone owners in being able to send and receive this virtual currency through the use of their devices. While the Google Play store has long been permitting mobile application developers to create smartphone Bitcoin app wallets so that device users can make exchanges of that alternative currency, Apple has blocked it from its own App store. That has meant that if iPhone users wanted to take their Bitcoins with them wherever they went, they were …

Mobile commerce application Shop It To Me has replaced passwords with a one-time link sent to users' email addresses that will permanently login members until they choose to log out manually. Recognizing the inconvenience of memorizing and maintaining numerous passwords, app producers also realized choosing the "Forgot your password?" option is not an easy task to complete on mobile devices. While cyber attacks remain a daily threat, legacy systems have made it nearly impossible to login if passwords are forgotten.

With millennials active on their mobile phones throughout the day, loyalty marketers need to adjust their programs not just in terms of how they enable these consumers to engage but also with regard to what behaviors are rewarded and the types of content. Millennials use their mobile devices throughout their brand experiences, with 58 percent checking user reviews, 57 percent comparing prices and 24 percent seeking opinions from their social networks from their mobile devices, according to a recent study from Punchtab.