Imagine a world where Heineken bottles put on their own little light shows (and flash when they feel neglected); consumers only need to tap a box of Cheerios to order more; and smartphones can detect everything from bad breath to cancer. That's all already possible -- or will be in a few short years -- as part of a sweeping sensor revolution, according to Ben Gaddis, Chief Innovation Officer at T3 (The Think Tank). Rest assured, the implications of the coming sensor insurgency get "way creepier," Gaddis told attendees of MediaPost's Mobile Insider Summit, on Tuesday. And, it's all thanks …

Speaking at a Mobile Insider Summit panel on beacons, Jeff Jensen of inMarket discussed results from a test the beacon ad network ran on behalf of Hillshire Farms among 25,000 shoppers increased interaction with the brand 19 times for those exposed to messages sent from beacons in grocery stores. The frequency of the app used in the test went up 16 times, while the life of the Hillshire app for those shoppers increased six-fold, according to Jensen. The campaign targeted the launch of Hillshire’s new American Craft sausage links.  Patrick Moorhead, VP, mobile brand development at Catalina, however, expressed skepticism …

Beacons are the latest technology buzzword to capture the imagination of mobile marketers by hitting shoppers with messages and offers while they’re in store. But during a panel on the topic at the Mobile Insider Summit on Tuesday, Patrick Moorhead, VP, mobile brand development at Catalina warned of going overboard with beacons. He raised the prospect of people getting pinged from every SKU in a store, leading them to simply shut off their phones, or an app, to escape the annoyance. Jeff Jansen of beacon network inMarket and Rob Canterbury, VP, business development, Gimbal, a proximity marketer, stressed that consumers …

Beyond the goldmine that is location-based data, mobile remains a remarkably difficult channel for advertisers to track, and property attribute value. That was the general consensus from a panel of analytics pros at OMMA's Mobile Insider Summit, on Tuesday. Among other problems, "The attribution aspect [is] new," said Rahul Bafna, VP Product at Drawbridge, an ad tech startup with a focus on cross-device marketing. No "attribution story" means it's still really hard to show clients what impact their mobile strategy is having, said Lauren Moores, VP of Analytics at analytics and ad-targeting startup Dstillery. One solution, she said, is to …

Recent data from Nielsen Social says that over 80% of TV watchers are using a "second screen" while watching, and Deirdre Bannon, VP of product at Nielsen Social, on Tuesday took a deeper dive into the company's findings at the Mobile Insider Summit in Tahoe, Calif.

Why should marketers care about social TV audiences? Because they’re big, for one thing, with 64% of people who tweet about brands also tweeting about TV. That’s according to Deirdre Bannon, VP, product, Nielsen Social, speaking at the Mobile Insider Summit. In addition, that group that tweets about TV and brands, account for 78% of all brand tweets. Third, people who tweet about TV, send three times more tweets than those who just tweet about  brands. “They’re way more vocal, they’re way more social,” Bannon said. Fourth, people who tweet about brands and TV have twice as many followers on …

One of the aspirations of digital marketers and publishers is to be able to follow a customer as they move from device to desktop and back, allowing users to pick up where they left off. To that end, Megan Hughes, director of product, mobile, at Orbitz Worldwide, said the company has recently begun syncing recent user searches across its properties on different devices—desktop, apps and mobile and tablet Web—to suit to the longer travel purchase cycle. “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 …

Mobile and social go hand in hand, in part because consumers have a hard time not sharing when they have a mobile device at hand. To take advantage of that, Orbitz is making is easier for travelers to share their, well, travels.

Speaking at MediaPost’s Mobile Insider Summit in Lake Tahoe on Tuesday, Megan Hughes, director of product, mobile, at Orbitz Worldwide, offered some insight into how fast the mobile shift is affecting the travel site’s business. In that vein, she said a third of hotel bookings now take place via mobile—across its apps, mobile Web and tablet Web—compared to only 3% in 2010, when it began building out its mobile offerings. Among hotel bookings, 65% are same-day, compared to only 15% on the desktop, providing further evidence that travel bookings in mobile skew toward more immediate purchases. “These types of stats …

Rachel Pasqua, head of mobility at MEC North America, has given the Mobile Insider Summit crowd a new set of marketing "4 Ps." The old 4 Ps of product, price, placement and promotion are giving way to the new, mobile-driven, 4 Ps: portability, personalization, proximity and presence.