Mobile Video Is Key Tool for 2015 Marketing Success

Based on my gut rather than any scientific analysis, I would say that prognostications around mobile adoption and use have been wrong about as many times as they have been right.

Sure, the forecasts for smartphone purchases hit the mark, but other so-called looks into the future have been wildly off. One example is the prediction that mobile payments would make physical wallets obsolete before the ball comes down in Times Square ushering out 2014. Ummm, that won’t happen over the next few weeks or even years.

Another miss is in the area of mobile video. Several industry observers forecast how-hum acceptance of mobile video for reasons that have included the cost of large data plans and the fact that many of us in America spend hours driving every day, an activity that gets in the way of hitting “play” and consuming short and long-form content.

But the opposite is true.

Viewers watching video via their tablets and smartphones account for 30% of all digital video views, an increase of 200% compared to this time last year, and an increase of 400% on 2012, according to Ooyala. And the mobile share of our video consumption is predicted to jump to 50% by 2015.

SMBs and larger brands have varying reasons to develop mobile video ads. Some want to introduce a new product. Others use the mobile video ads for awareness.

According to a study by YuMe and IPG Media Lab as reported by eMarketer http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Where-Digital-Video-Ads-Have-Consumers-Attention-Smartphones/1011322, purchase intent benefitted from high video attention on mobile devices. Among U.S. Internet users who viewed pre-roll video ads on a smartphone, 64% of those who were highly attentive planned to purchase the product advertised. In comparison, just 23% of smartphone viewers who paid little attention intended to buy.

In 2015, SMBs may further turn to Facebook to get mobile video before customers and prospects.

Dan Levy, Facebook’s Director of Small Business, told Inside Facebook http://www.insidefacebook.com/2014/10/23/facebook-smb-head-dan-levy-addresses-organic-reach-personalized-help-and-video/that the task isn’t as daunting as it may first appear.

“We’re seeing stuff that was produced in TV coming to Facebook,” he said. “We’re seeing stuff that was on YouTube coming to Facebook. We’re also seeing stuff that frankly just gets shot on smartphones, where someone just says, ‘You know, I’m just going to make this instead of a picture post.’ We think it’s great and we think there’s going to be a lot more.

“The creative canvas that people use on Facebook is going to continue to evolve — from text, to picture, to video — and that’s going to continue to grow and be more accessible to people as the technology for video gets simpler. We always talk about making sure that small business owners get the most effective return on their time and their money.”

More info for SMBs can be found at the www.facebook.com/business page.

While you have one eye on your mobile device next year, I recommend that you have the other on mobile video trends.

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This post was brought to you by IBM for Midsize Business and opinions are my own. To read more on this topic, visit  IBM's Midsize Insider. Dedicated to providing businesses with expertise, solutions and tools that are specific to small and midsized companies, the Midsize Business program provides businesses with the materials and knowledge they need to become engines of a smarter planet.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - Are You Ready For Some Football and Mobile Shopping?

We know where our eyes are on Sundays – watching the National Football League. But what about our fingers? It turns out that they are on our mobile devices making purchases happen.

Surprisingly, the most mobile shopping happens on Sunday and on Amazon, according to Opera Software. How does that compare? Desktop traffic to e-commerce sites tends to peak on Mondays and remains stronger during weekdays than on weekends. The day with the lowest mobile shopping traffic is Friday.

Has the Internet of Things made your 2015 marketing plan? Projections are huge for 2020 and 2025. Oh, I get it - nudge you around 2018.

Cyber Monday tablet users averaged $121.49 per order, per IBM.

Smartphones, which have lagged behind tablets in terms of mobile commerce, are making more of an impact as the year comes to a close. The majority (66%) of travel and retail (53%) mobile transactions now come from smartphones, according to Criteo, a performance marketing company.

High-end brick and mortars like Nordstrom are quite crowded these days despite the fact that 45% of affluents plan to all their holiday season online: eMarketer.

26% of people who call their cable companies are asking if they can cancel TV service, says Marchex. If your experience is like mine (yes, Comcast, I’m talking about you), it’s because of outages, overbilling, and a disregard for what matters – dependability.

43% of U.S. consumers know Apple Pay but only 3% have used it, reports Kantar. Security concerns remain.

“Responsive” is a marketer’s watchword for 2015 or so says eMarketer. I thought that happened in 2013.

Amazon and Sears have been known to change prices on 15 to 20% of their products at least once a day, according to 360pi.

Next year, Iowa will allow the use of the mobile app version of a driver’s license as a replacement for a paper license.

United attendants will get the iPhone 6 Plus models to serve customers in-flight. Will they need to keep them in airplane mode?

Instagram is now bigger than Twitter with 300 million monthly users.

There are 4700 app downloads from iTunes every minute, Oracle reports.

I spent lots of time in airports last week. There were no sightings of fingers triple-tapping on feature phones. It felt like a milestone moment.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - Is A Mobile Phone Just The Latest Thing To Distract Us?

A provocative question was posed on Twitter by @conradhacker, who is a Pew Research demographer: are smartphones really making us less social?

A quick, separate online search found several stories quoting psychiatrists, everyday folk, and others claiming that mobile devices are negatively impacting personal interactions. As an example, Dr. Gail Saltz, clinical associate professor of psychiatry at the New York Presbyterian Hospital, told NBC News: “Staring at your phone during a meal with your child is not a good thing.”

Maybe not, but is it a new thing? The embedded picture of heads buried in the newspaper brought me back decades and decades. That happened on more than one occasion at our kitchen table. We turned out OK. Actually, way better than OK.

Mitt Romney's tweets had to be approved by 22 people during the 2012 election, according to The Verge. In case you are wondering, my wife doesn’t approve Notes From A Mobilized Marketer.  I’m just happy when she reads it.

iPhone 6 made it into Yahoo’s top 10 searches of 2014 despite information being everywhere. Then again, the same can be said for the Kardashians.

Many say that mobile has changed the purchasing funnel. McKinsey says the process is "circular”.

Wise words from @michaelwolf: “Until people drop their bundles, stop saying cable is dying.” I’m bundled. With Comcast, it feels more like a trap.

Steve Jobs famously dissed the phablet form factor. That was then. iPhone 6 Plus has grabbed 41% of the U.S. phablet market (Kantar).

No turkey - 70% of Walmart's Thanksgiving traffic was mobile.

Just one-third of publishers say their emails are fully optimized for mobile (eMarketer).

Finally an online ad that spoke to me - Provision a petabyte of data warehouse capacity in less than five minutes. I found my petabyte. WTF?

I wonder how many marketers pushed back on extending Black Friday for weeks, knowing dilution would come by making every day a “sale” day.

Sell a selfie stick in South Korea & you may get 3 years in jail. Here, you only get mocked for using one.

52% of Google health searches come via mobile.

70% of retailers surveyed by shop.org have invested in a mobile-optimized site.

Diluting and Confusing Is Hardly A Smart Holiday Marketing Strategy

We’re the all-powerful marketing team and when we say that something is a deal, then it darn well is.

Unless it’s not.

The slow-pitch, knock-it-out-of-the-park prediction was that mobile would set sales records Black Friday (whenever that is – more on this is a second) and Cyber Monday. More have smartphones, brands have made mobile a focus, mobile web sites aren’t buffering like they did on BlackBerry devices in 2005, and we’re a society that craves convenience. Or is lazy.

Or both.

What seems to have caught many by surprise is that much like a giraffe is a giraffe even if we tell others that it’s a rhino, Black Friday is a day. Not a week. Not a month. Heck, someone might try to call all of 2015 Black Friday.

Except that it’s foolish to extend a dedicated shopping day to a longer period and then to whine about a dip in Black Friday sales. Ummm, you asked them to buy on what everyone else calls a Monday. They were done by Friday – or didn’t believe that the “deals” were few and fleeting.

We might look back and say that extending the “special days” to longer periods made sense because overall sales were up, but it strikes me as dumb to have a Black Friday sale commercial during an NFL game two days after, ummm, Friday. And who’s to say it won’t continue next weekend?

If I’m wrong, let’s just say that Christmas lasts six months. Then we’ll have to read about Santa getting tired due to 182 consecutive days of chimney entrances and the kids will be bored by having to open presents when they could be playing spring-time Little League or soccer.

Here are some other things that caught my eye at the traditional start of the holiday buying season (which now begins in September, by the way):

The hyping crowd pointed to mobile’s advances in light of Best Buy’s online and mobile web outage on Black Friday. But did it say more about a lack of proper preparation from the shopping giant?

As background, according to company spokesperson spokeswoman Amy von Walter, "a concentrated spike in mobile traffic triggered issues that led us to shut down BestBuy.com in order to take proactive measures to restore full performance.”

Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter (maybe a hipster) told CNBC that the outage is a testament to Best Buy's traffic, and a testament to the fact Amazon is never down.

"This shows how hard it is to manage a website when it's busy, but props to Best Buy for being busy," Pachter told the financial outlet. "Their Black Friday deals are quite competitive."

Still, the attention given the problem did not serve Best Buy’s’ interest.

Said one consumer via Facebook: "Well, after a good few hours of setting up what I'm gonna get for my first potentially amazing Black Friday..... you crash. If you intend to be one of the leaders among sales in technology and electronics. ....... maybe, just maybe you should know how to run tech."

Separately, we’ve heard about the tablet slump/demise/near extinction, but tablets outperformed mobile phones for sales. Marketers, take note.

According to IBM: for the first time, online traffic from mobile devices outpaced traditional PCs on Thanksgiving Day. Browsing on smartphones and tablets accounting for 52.1 percent of all online traffic. Overall Thanksgiving online sales were up 14.3 percent compared to 2013.

Black Friday online sales were up 9.5 percent year-over-year with mobile devices accounting for one-in-four of all online purchases.

Smartphones drove 34.7 percent of all Black Friday online traffic, more than double that of tablets, which accounted for 14.6 percent of all traffic. Yet, when it comes to mobile sales, tablets continue to win the shopping war – driving 16 percent of online sales compared to 11.8 percent for smartphones, a difference of 35.5 percent. Tablet users also averaged $126.50 per order compared to $107.55 for smartphone users, a difference of 17.6 percent.

And all tablets aren’t created equal - iOS once again led the way in mobile shopping this holiday season, outpacing Android across three key metrics on Black Friday:

Average Order Value: iOS users averaged $121.86 per order compared to $98.07 for Android users, a difference 24.3 percent.

Online Traffic: iOS traffic accounted for 34.2 percent of total online traffic, more than double that of Android, which drove 15 percent of all online traffic.

Online Sales: iOS sales accounted for 21.9 percent of total online sales, nearly quadruple that of Android, which drove 5.8 percent of all online sales.

(article first appeared on imediaconnection.com - http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2014/12/01/diluting-and-confusing-is-hardly-a-smart-holiday-marketing-strategy/)

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - Have the 2015 Black Friday Sales Started Yet?

Have 2015 Black Friday sales started yet? One day turned into one week in 2014. Why not one year?

Seriously, merchants can call them what they want and try to convince us that the deals are as good as those offered the day after Thanksgiving, but it’s going to take more than words to change behavior patterns. The stats show that we made record Black Friday purchases on, ummm, Black Friday.

Safari only holds a 5% share of the desktop browser market, but 45% share of the mobile browser market thanks to iPhone and iPad usage.

For the first time on Thanksgiving, mobile drove more than 1/2 of all online retail traffic, says IBM.

Several studies show that half of mobile users abandon a page if it doesn’t load in 10 seconds, and three out of five won’t return to the site.

People are now spending more time with mobile devices than with television.

80% of mobile retail research ends with a purchase, per Telmetrics.

41% of millennials will make mobile purchases while shopping in brick & mortar stores this holiday: Dynatrace.

Around the globe, the most popular tactic for the 40% of marketers using mobile this holiday season is SMS, according to Experian.

70% of retailers invested significantly in a mobile-optimized site in time for the holidays: shop.org.

By 2020, 90 percent of the world’s population aged 6 years and over will have mobile phones: Ericsson.

Stop the madness – I heard the term beacosystem for players in campaigns involving beacons.

Amazon was set to release new deals every 10 minutes on Cyber Monday with exclusive offers for mobile app shoppers.

Stupid tweet and headline on TheStreet.com – “Black Friday made it crystal clear -- mobile shopping has emptied our malls AND outlets.” Repeat after me – there are no absolutes in mobile or most anything else.

Twitter is reportedly experimenting with a mobile tool to help you determine the quality of your tweets. Isn’t that the job of your followers and others who look in?

Apps drive the vast majority of media consumption on mobile, accounting for approximately 7 out of every 8 minutes: comScore.

With So Many Cyber and Mobile Sales, Should SMBs Even Open Their Doors?

Black Friday and Cyber Monday will get the headlines in what surely will be another record-setting year of sales via computer and wireless devices. But who will get the customers post-long weekend and should SMBs even open their doors in an attempt to compete?

It’s something far short of dire for small and medium-sized businesses, according to those polled for the American Express Small Business Saturday Consumer Insights Survey http://about.americanexpress.com/news/pr/2014/small-businesses-drive-holiday-sales.aspx. Nearly that one-third (31%) of their holiday shopping will be done at small businesses.

The patronizing of small businesses won’t wait until the holiday weekend and Cyber Monday are concluded.

Eighty-two plan to shop or eat at an independently owned store or restaurant on Small Business Saturday Nov. 29. American Express, which started Small Business Saturday in 2010, says that 77% see Small Business Saturday as a catalyst to shop small all year long.

Maybe.

What’s to get someone out of their warm home or off a mobile website at a bus stop that makes buying fast and easy?

-- Nearly all (94%) U.S. consumers say that shopping at small businesses makes them "feel good”

-- Two-thirds (66%) of consumers say the main reason they patronize small businesses is because they value the contributions they make to their community

-- More than half (57%) say they know one or more of their local small business owners personally

As I’ve written about in this space, SMBs are winning with mobile programs, especially via loyalty clubs that remind opted-in customers to return to the store and reward them with offers, exclusive showings, and more.

Of course, mobile shouldn’t live on an island. The increase in traffic makes Small Business Saturday and the entire holiday season terrific times for SMBs to build their mobile VIP clubs.

Before the doors open following Thanksgiving, these businesses should ensure that there are prominent calls to action on premises, calling attention to the loyalty club and quickly communicating what is in it for the shopper.

Also, store personnel should not only be up to speed on the ins and outs of the program so they are prepared for questions, front-line folks should talk up the club and be given incentives to grow the database.

What about those SMBs that don’t have a text-based loyalty club (only 38% of businesses use mobile messaging for marketing, according to a 2013 survey by StrongMail)? Given the time to find a provider, provision a short code, and promote the program, there is zero chance to make something happen for 2014.

But for 2015? Holiday efforts for these folks should start as early as January.

It could make a meaningful difference as the competition gets even more heated next year.

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This post was brought to you by IBM for Midsize Business and opinions are my own. To read more on this topic, visit IBM's Midsize Insider. Dedicated to providing businesses with expertise, solutions and tools that are specific to small and midsized companies, the Midsize Business program provides businesses with the materials and knowledge they need to become engines of a smarter planet.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - Will "Text Neck" Be As Common As A Selfie?

A text neck “epidemic" due to excessive lowering of the head to look at our mobile phones? A medical researcher told the Washington Post that “it is an epidemic or, at least, it’s very common.” The web and Twitter went wild with the hype. Most of us read it with our heads down.

22% of men made a purchase on their smartphones last year, compared to 18% of women, per SeeWhy. Will that change this holiday season?

Square says the company will begin accepting Apple Pay next year.

Stop the madness – I heard a new mobile term “beacosystem” for players in campaigns involving beacons.

Another “say it ain’t so” mobile finding– Motorola says that spice isn’t just for your pumpkin latte anymore. MotoX has spice colored backs.

1 in 10 mobile ad impressions in retail leads to a store visit: iAd.

People are now spending more time with mobile devices than with television, according to Flurry.

Not just for newbies: 76-year-old retailer Nebraska Furniture Mart has deployed beacons.

Holiday web spending will rise 16%, comScore projects, with mobile growing 25%.

100% adoption of mobile payments? Ha. The day that there are no bank tellers.

ESPN has 94 million unique users via mobile — 76% of its digital users come through phones, tablets; 40% through apps, and 17% through ESPN Fantasy Football.

19% of shoppers plan to increase Cyber Monday shopping despite shipping costs and online security concerns: Kelly Scott Madison Holiday Shopping Study.

Over 50% of YouTube viewing happens on mobile.

Google is now highlighting mobile friendly websites in search results.

90% of the global population will have a mobile phone by 2020, says Ericsson.

Target has included product inventory search functionality into its mobile app.

In 2015-2016, the percentage of digital travel researchers using mobile will rise from 54.6% to 62.2%: eMarketer.

97% of fantasy football players make weekly changes to their teams using a mobile phone or tablet, according to Thinknear.

53% of Thanksgiving Day online shopping will take place via mobile: IBM. Because we’ll be too bloated to move to our computers?

Are You Successful If 5-7% of Your Customers Engage Through Mobile?

Google’s Jason Spero, up there with Mary Meeker as a “must-hear” speaker on mobile activity and where we are headed, recently chided the industry for focusing so much on app installs.

He also said that while a brand that sees 5-7% of its customers being reached by mobile is labeled a success, there is an opportunity for much more if marketers would give consumers more ways to “take action”.

“My fear is that we as an industry have over-indexed on app installs as the goal, when what we need to focus on is the mobile consumer who wants to solve real-world problems like booking a flight or buying makeup,” Spero, Google's VP of Performance Media, said in a keynote at the M1 Summit in San Francisco.

“There is so much revenue to be made for an app install, but it's a very small part of what is going on for consumers in mobile. It’s about recognizing that moment and recognizing what they want and need in that moment”.

Spero (@speroman) pointed to what he called ”fundamental consumer behavior changes”, adding that they are “planning, researching, buying and finding on mobile.

“Think about how you serve broader action on mobile.”

Meeker, a partner at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, often comments on the disparity between consumer time spent on mobile and marketing dollars that go to the channel. More money surely will come when outcomes can be identified, affected, and tracked.

Some companies that Spero mentioned that are seeing success:

-  Progressive, which has begun to do predictive rendering that takes into account an individual’s history. For example, if a consumer has filed an insurance claim, that information gets prominent placement when the brand is reached on a mobile device.

-  1-800 Contacts, a company that has simplified it form fill to make it easy to get a new supply of contact lens, and an app that solves a pain point by enabling a consumer to process an order by taking and uploading a picture of a prescription.

He named satisfaction, dreaming, and motivation as reasons that we all use mobile and said that as an industry,  "we are just now grasping the opportunity".

Among other comments that caught my attention at the conference:

-  During a panel on CRM, there was considerable talk about personalization and the so-called “creepy” factor where mobile users feel that their privacy is invaded. The definition of creepy was all over the board, including this one from Appboy CEO Mark Ghermezian -- “Customers are expecting personalization. If you’re not personalizing and telling them what they want to hear, that’s when you are creeping them out.” That, in my opinion, is case dependent. For instance, we don’t want a brand knowing that we are at the dentist, nor do we want a company to send us an offer when we’re in the chair. That, to most, is TMI and out of bounds.

-  Bill Gross, the founder and CEO of Idealab, said that mobile will be bigger than keyword advertising. "The smartphone is the biggest disruption to retail since the automobile, and it's just getting started."

(first posted on imediaconnection.com - http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2014/11/16/are-you-successful-if-5-7-of-your-customers-engage-through-mobile/)

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - Why A One-Channel Marketing Strategy Will Fail You

Here are words of caution to those marketers who live in a one-channel world. Consumers aren’t anything like you.

The latest evidence comes from the automotive industry. While smartphones and tablets accounted for 40% of total Web traffic for the car space in October (Dealertrack), a large portion of consumers migrated to a computer to fill out a form. This led to a 32% increase in lead captures.

Meanwhile, 1-800 Contacts has advanced in mobile due to the simplification of the form fill, as well as the ability for a consumer to take a picture of a prescription, according to Google’s mobile lead Jason Spero (@speroman).

Stride Rite has introduced an iPad app that measures a kid’s shoe size. It’s a smart and efficient way to solve a parent’s problem.

Nearly 50% of consumers believe their personal mobile devices are more efficient than store associates in helping them make buying decisions, Motorola reports.

Approximately 456 million Facebook members only access the network via mobile.

U.S. online adults are three times more likely to visit your website than engage with your brand on Facebook, per Forrester.

35% of holiday email click-throughs will happen on mobile, IBM forecasts.

Wal-Mart will match Amazon's prices in stores this holiday season.

The lack of smartphones held back Shazam pre-iPhone, according to a company executive appearing at the M1 Summit. You used to request and get an SMS with the name of a song.

75% of Pandora listening is on mobile, the company says.

The gap increases between mobile leaders and laggards in 2015, Forrester forecasts.

A new Usher song is available via download with info at the bottom of a box of Cheerios.

Folks with incomes lower than $100,000 a year plan to do more in-store shopping, according to Deloitte.

75% of HR managers say mobile HR can build satisfaction, per ADP.

Mobile May Not be A Fit, But It Should Be Considered By Every SMB

I’ve said and written repeatedly that there are no absolutes in mobile. Cash won’t be gone by Tuesday despite the advancements of mobile payments. Some will join and see value in loyalty clubs while others will shy away due to privacy concerns or misplaced worries that they will be “spammed”.

Given my “no absolutes” beliefs, I have to give a thumbs-up to the Why Mobile Marketing Isn’t a Fit for Every SMB headline http://streetfightmag.com/2014/11/04/why-mobile-is-a-split-decision-for-many-small-businesses/ in Street Fight Magazine. That statement is true.

But a more robust handclap for the story? Nah, I have some issues with the particulars.

“Small businesses are being bombarded by marketing programs that promise to deliver calls, customers, and sales right from a prospect’s cell phone,” the piece says. “And for some companies that may be true — mobile could be the answer.

But the facts on the ground indicate that mobile marketing is, at best, a mixed bag so far for most small businesses.”

Author Todd Bairstow, Founder and a Partner at Keyword Connects, said that he works with hundreds of home improvement and home services companies across the country to drive online leads.  He wrote that mobile works well for them, but less so for window companies, remodeling businesses and others that have high prices and usually require extensive research.

Where Bairstow begins to lose me is when he writes about mobile as if it’s a self-contained channel. It isn’t for me, you, and everyone we know.

SMBs should think about more closely integrating online, mobile, and brick and mortar efforts. Why? While mobile represents nearly a quarter of time spent with media per day, the majority of mobile-related conversions are offline – 60% come in store, according to xAD.

Smart business owners chart the customer journey. The purchasing funnel goes from awareness to action, and the consumer often goes from mobile to desktop to tablet, back to smartphone. We should all look at the entire journey and think holistically while understanding the role that mobile can play.

Also, several studies tell us that mobile users act swiftly after doing research on their devices. Microsoft says that 70% of Bing mobile users convert within five hours of their mobile search. PC users take weeks to convert. (Conversions include calls, store visits and purchases across screens.) 

Sure, mobile isn’t for every business. Few things are beyond heat and a lock on the front door. But, according to Nielsen’s Digital Consumer study, more than 4 in 5 smartphone and tablet owners are using a mobile device for shopping activities. Twenty-six percent of smartphone users plus 35% of tablet users do more shopping because of mobile devices.

Those are numbers that no SMB can ignore.

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This post was brought to you by IBM for Midsize Business and opinions are my own. To read more on this topic, visit IBM's Midsize Insider. Dedicated to providing businesses with expertise, solutions and tools that are specific to small and midsized companies, the Midsize Business program provides businesses with the materials and knowledge they need to become engines of a smarter planet.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - South Park Says Freemium Is Latin For Not Really

Viewers of Comedy Central’s South Park know that there’s usually an underlying truth in a show that is heavy on satire. Mobile gaming got in the crosshairs recently with the program skewering app makers for a “freemium" modal that South Park says is Latin for "not really".

The show that the goal is to make the user wait but pay for not having to sit through ads and other supposed wastes of time. True? Yes in many cases. But not everyone falls for it. According to Swrve, half of a game's in-app purchase revenue comes from just 0.15% of its players.

Meanwhile, mobile gaming revenues are set to surpass traditional console games by next year: eMarketer.

An alarming 31% admit they have no mobile strategy or simply view mobile as a campaign, says a new CMO Council study. Clearly there’s more work to do in educating.

I'm in your loyalty club, but an offer via text at 6a has me thinking I made a mistake in joining. Heard of best practices and common sense?

Adult mobile users are planning to do 40% more holiday shopping on their devices this year, per study by Burst Media and Rhythm NewMedia.

Weird Al in ads is going to make us shop more at Radio Shack? I'm not buying it.

JetBlue says that it spends two-thirds of its budget on digital.

The iPad still dominates traffic among tablets in North America,with an 80% share, Chitika reports.

I lost zero sleep due to Twitter moving its status box. Others apparently sweat the small stuff.

Mobile will account for 31% of online sales on Thanksgiving, compared to 21% in 2013, according to Adobe.

How quickly things change - Samsung restructured its U.S. marketing team as the mobile division faltered. Is this marketing or product-related?

20% of all the pictures taken in the history of the world have been taken in the last two years, marketer Seth Matlins said at the 3% Conference.

Google & Facebook control 75% of all mobile advertising. Is this a surprise to anyone?

Over 2.5 billion adults do not have a formal bank account, per MasterCard. But more than 1 million of the “unbanked” have access to a mobile phone.

35% of holiday email click-throughs will happen on mobile devices, IBM forecasts.

40% of online adults start an activity on one device & finish on another: Accenture.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - Assessing An App That Predicts The Second That You Will Die

The new Deadline app guesstimates your death day for you. I’m not sure why anyone would want this, but similar “forecasting” has been available online for years. But with this app, you can set up notifications to view a countdown clock to the second of your supposed departure from Earth. Just ate French fries? Whoops, there went another 12 minutes.

In Virginia, cops can force you to unlock an iPhone with Touch ID, but can't ask for your passcode, according to Engadget.

83% of U.S. consumers now stream TV, up from 74% a year ago: Magid.

Tweet of the week – from @jefftiedrich: Instagram is down. Can I come over and look at your food?

Half of YouTube's traffic is now from mobile.

A third who bought a wearable in the past year no longer use the device regularly, according to PwC. Is it a success that two thirds still do? I’d say so.

Facebook now makes 66% of its money from mobile.

“Expose” on bgr.com says that Tim Cook works hard at Apple and expects other to work hard, too. News here?

70% of consumers delete an email immediately if it doesn’t render properly on their mobile device, per Blue Hornet.

Mobile offers are redeemed 10 times more frequently than print offers, according to eMarketer.

Saying that it is not moving fast enough, Twitter has replaced its CFO, COO, and VPs of media, engineering and product — all in the past six months.

Dubbed Shazam for birds, an app called Warblr is able to identify a bird’s species by comparing sounds that users record to previously recorded birdsongs.

According to CEO Howard Schultz, the Starbucks app processed $1.17 billion in 2013, and the company has already processed nearly $1.4 billion in 2014. It is expected to reach $2 billion by the end of the year.

Next year should be even better - in the second half of next year, customers in select markets will be able to use the mobile ordering and payment app to have food and drinks delivered.

China has 600 million mobile uses (2X the U.S. population).

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - Renee Zellweger As Spokesperson For "Not Your Selfie" App

Celebrity endorsements have flopped in mobile, but how can Renee Zellweger not be the face of Loosery, a video chatting app that supposedly makes one look more attractive? Renee can build the “Not Your Selfie” category.

Mobile offers are redeemed 10x more than print, Hubspot says.

A TiVo study reports 51% (vs. 36% last year) of TV viewers multitask every time they watch TV.

A study by American Express says that fewer will use mobile device this year vs. last for holiday shopping. I’m not buying it.

82% worry that wearables would invade privacy, according to PwC report. That’s a hurdle beyond the issue of wearables not solving problems.

After a week with the iPhone 6, I have to say it is borderline too big for me. I’m coming from a 5 and really feel of that one in my pocket. I realize that it’s a to each his/her own thing, like most things in mobile.

81% of U.S. online consumers say they're likely to avoid websites that have left them dissatisfied, per Forrester. Are the others just gluttons for punishment?

I see where Moms find tracking family health via smartphone too time consuming. Quick, ease of use are musts in new iterations.

Yahoo shared mobile sales for the first time: $200 million last quarter, 17% of the total. It says that mobile revenues for 2014 will exceed $1.2 billion.

The iPhone 6 "caught fire" allegation was as predictable as a new Apple rumor starting within 5 minutes of a product release. Exploding phone stories, too, are almost always hoaxes.

Microsoft reportedly plans to launch a wearable device within weeks.  Supposedly it will work with iOS and Android, unlike the Apple Watch.

Tweet of the week? From sportswriter Rick Reilly: “Cowboys' RB Joseph Randle steals underwear, gets an underwear endorsement deal. Lesson? Next time steal a Mercedes.”

Is Convenience Without Loyalty Enough For Businesses To Want Apple Pay?

I realize that you might find this hard to believe, but it is my wife who is the actual jokester in the family.

Impossible, you say. Nah.

Here’s an example:

Her take on Apple Pay to explain how an expensive handbag may soon make its way into our house:

“What if I’m in the Louis Vuitton section of Nordstrom and my phone just happens to swipe?”

Of course, the technology doesn’t work that way. Thankfully.

Education is a big hurdle for Apple Pay and other mobile payments services with questions around everything from how the process works to how secure the transaction will be. Small and medium-sized businesses wonder, too, how available it will be for them in the near future.

Among the most interesting aspects of the Apple Pay rollout is the pushback by some retailers who have loyalty worries on their minds.

In a Bloomberg Businessweek story titled Apple Pay Is Too Anonymous for Some Retailers, http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-10-20/apple-pay-is-too-anonymous-for-panera-starbucks-and-other-retailers#r=read, a Panera Bread executive said that Apple’s new service is too impersonal.

As the magazine reported, “Apple Pay, with its built-in anonymity, won’t eliminate the need to swipe a loyalty card or give the cashier a phone number. ‘Obviously, that’s not where we want to be,’ says Blaine Hurst, Panera’s executive vice president for technology and transformation. ‘Why can’t I just walk up to a cashier with my phone and all that information magically appears?’”

Not to be left out at the launch, Panera decided to be an Apple Pay merchant despite its concerns about what the new service is supposedly missing – personalization that rewards loyalty.

Study after study tells us that the modern-day technology user wants personal experiences.

Personalized emails improve click-through rates by an average of 14% and conversation rates by 10% (Aberdeen Group).

Nearly 75% of online consumers get frustrated with websites when content (e.g. offers, ads and promotions) appears that has nothing to do with their interests (Harris Interactive).

What we don’t know is whether consumers will trade a personal, loyalty-driven experience for a speedier one. And that’s provided that they get over any concerns that they may have about privacy and where individual purchase data may or may not go.

As stated in the Bloomberg Businessweek story, the world’s largest retailer, Wal-Mart Stores, is rejecting Apple Pay altogether. It has said it has no plans to accept Apple’s payments, and is working on its own system developed by Merchant Customer Exchange, or MCX, in conjunction with a handful of other big merchants.

MCX and Wal-Mart declined to discuss their reasons for not working with Apple Pay. Analysts told the publication that the primary reason for the parallel effort is to make sure that merchants retain control of the relationship with their customers.

As of now, ApplePay is unavailable to many merchants, including those small and medium-sized businesses on Main Street. If, and when that changes, entities of all sizes will get to decide if Apple Pay pays for them – and their customers.

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This post was brought to you by IBM for Midsize Business and opinions are my own. To read more on this topic, visit  IBM's Midsize Insider. Dedicated to providing businesses with expertise, solutions and tools that are specific to small and midsized companies, the Midsize Business program provides businesses with the materials and knowledge they need to become engines of a smarter planet.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - Do Your Customers Practice "Click and Mortar"?

There are supposed mega dollars in same-day delivery, enough for Amazon, Google and others to make it a large emphasis. Among the hurdles is so-called "click and mortar”.  Who does that? As an example, 15% of target.com orders are picked up onsite with 80% being fulfilled within an hour.

Another behavior to keep an eye on with the same retailer - mobile app usage has increased 50% since Target rolled out in-store Wi-Fi.

A tweet I saw says that “cool kids buy shoes covered in poop”. It’s more evidence that Twitter is the land of never-ending learning. Aren’t you glad that I didn’t feature this one in the lead paragraph and accompany it with a picture?

About the argument about too many messages – a second one via beacons incents American Eagle Outfittter customers to try on clothes. The percentage who visited the fitting room area to try on clothes was more than double for those who received a beacon-enabled incentive offer versus for those users that did not.

Worldwide mobile device sales will hit 2.4 billion unit this year, Gartner says.

Starbucks “order-ahead” app will begin a test in Portland.

Retailers accepting Apple Pay at launch this week is a who's who. That was one of the battles. Customer usage is next.

Mobile will account for 44% of the programmatic ad spending this year, up to 56% next year, per eMarketer. The same source forecasts mobile ad spending to overtake desktop ad spending by 2016.

Fifty percent of marketers don't have a full understanding of their customer journey, according to an ANA/McKinsey study.

The "sweet" story of Bill Murray's recent first smartphone purchase of a BlackBerry couldn't be a paid endorsement, could it? Nah.

A tweet from Apple executive Craig Federighi – “News that Google will announce their new Nexus Tablet on Wed.  Hope they've got the 248 units they'll need  for opening weekend sales.” Ouch.

The mobile-only newspaper audience has doubled in the past year, eMarketer tells us.

We'll have zero bank tellers the same day we have a world with no cash. Never. There are no absolutes.

Print It – Print Advertising Is More Meaningful to SMBs Than Mobile Advertising

You may recall that last month I wrote http://www.jeffhasen.com/blog/2014/9/29/assessing-a-forecast-of-slow-mobile-advertising-use-by-smbs about a forecast by BIA/Kelsey that it will take until 2019 for mobile to be a “big player in the local advertising space.”

What has caught my eye since is a statistic from Borrell Associates that says that “37% of SMBs claim that print newspaper ads are the best source for attracting customers”.

Notice that Borrell phrased this as SMBs “claim” rather than these businesses actually see those type of results from print advertising. Regardless, if that perception is there, it makes the 2019 prediction that I considered pessimistic that much more possible.

Something else has happened since my September post. Facebook introduced a new ad category principally targeting small businesses: local awareness ads.

Facebook is marketing the initiative as a way for SMBs to “create ads that will reach your local audience at the lowest possible cost.”

It works this way:

Businesses choose an area around their business, then select a photo and headline within the Ads Create tool. SMBs can pick an area as small as one mile and get guidance from Facebook based on its physical location. The budget determines the maximum amount of people that will see the ad. There are no contracts or minimum spend requirements.

Once the ad is approved, it will start showing in customers’ News Feed.

Whether a significant number of the more than 30 million Facebook Local Pages owners go this route remains to be seen.

Another large question is whether a business’ consumer will turn on location services within their mobile device settings. Some don’t because they are unaware, while others opt out of this scenario due to privacy concerns.

“Local awareness ads were built with privacy in mind,” Facebook said in a blog post https://www.facebook.com/business/a/local-awareness. “Advertisers select locations, not specific individuals, for local awareness ads. Facebook does not tell advertisers which specific people are in any audience and, as with our other advertising products, all audiences must meet a minimum required size. People have control over the recent location information they share with Facebook and will only see ads based on their recent location if location services are enabled on their phone.”

The way I see it, the fate of this program will be determined by whether consumers see value in the ads, and act accordingly – visit a business, try a new product, redeem a coupon, etc.

Also, Facebook needs to be responsible, ensuring that the location information is used in ways that the consumers can trust.

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This post was brought to you by IBM for Midsize Business and opinions are my own. To read more on this topic, visit  IBM's Midsize Insider. Dedicated to providing businesses with expertise, solutions and tools that are specific to small and midsized companies, the Midsize Business program provides businesses with the materials and knowledge they need to become engines of a smarter planet.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - Beware of Self-Destructing Picture Apps

Have you heard about Xim from Microsoft, a so-called self-destructing photo app? It’s because the picture goes away over time, not because the images are of an act leading to one's downfall. I suppose that it could be both.

Download an app called Rest Room Gallery designed to show your artistic side while on the toilet. Then explain that to your wife. Ready. Go.

Is there bigger proof of the iPhone's allure than millions waiting for supply rather than buying something else? Last week, I went to an Apple Store that had received two units to sell for an entire day. And that was typical, according to an employee.

Tweet of the week? This one from @levie aka Aaron Levie, CEO of Box – “Jeff Bezos is opening a retail store and owns a newspaper. Turns out everything we thought about the Internet is wrong.”

As for my reaction to Amazon opening a physical store in NYC – the company is about selling stuff. The what remains the same here. This is just another how that will work out or won’t.

Over 65% of users use Facebook in a language other than English, the company says.

Half of the traffic on AT&T Wireless comes from YouTube & Netflix, the carrier reports.

With 7 billion mobile phones and a war chest to get things done, there is plenty of room for Google to create a messaging app that it hopes will rival WhatsApp.

Forrester says that mobile will be 40% of the online ad spend in 2015.

37% of SMBs claim that print newspaper ads are the best source for attracting customers, Borrell Associates tells us.

It has come to this for BlackBerry - Wall Street cheered an $11 million quarterly loss.

Digital video and mobile now make up 20% of Mondelēz's global spend, according to Adweek.

Disney Proves That The Naysayers Belong In Fantasyland

The cynics said that we would protect our privacy at all costs.

The doubters waved their arms and said that there wasn’t anything to entice us in large numbers to join and see value in permission-based programs run by brands. We will be spammed, they foolishly predicted.

The doomsday gang said that we are all too busy to notice calls to action that ask us to do something.

Wrong.

Wrong.

And wrong.

In the most eye-opening permission-based wireless success to date, Disney World has enticed more than half of its 18.6 million annual park visitors to use its MagicBand wearable device and the accompanying app to, as Wired put it, “skip long lines, preorder food, and charge purchases to their Disney resort room. And it kind of feels … fun.” http://www.wired.com/2014/09/design-package-2014/

Fun. And of value to the masses. Here today, not something that you can only find in Fantasyland.

 “The things you want to do at the park all become the family's mission,” says Tom Staggs, Disney's chair of parks and resorts, told Wired. “Being able to lock that mission in de-stresses your whole vacation.”

And there’s value all along the journey, making the Happiest Place on Earth even happier.

According to Wired, visitors use an app to pre-select three rides for which they can enter express lines. Taking into account ride availability and proximity, the app plots those choices into itinerary options. The app also offers updates on wait times for every ride. Disney had sped up entry into the park by 25% by created V-shaped gates that all viewers to walk side by side.

Visitors can use the app to reserve a table and select a meal at Be Our Guest. When a visitor with a MagicBand crosses the bridge to the restaurant, a host greets him or her by name and the kitchen is alerted to prepare the food. Sensors in the tables let the servers know where the patron is.

The lessons here? Some want their anonymity, but not many.

Wired reported that an RFID chip lets resort guests swipe their bands to pay at any register in Disney World, access express lines, and unlock their hotel room. Readers throughout the park flash the wearer's name so that employees can give personal greetings.

Disney has seemingly thought of everything. The battery in the band works for two years because it knows to go to sleep when the wearer leaves the park.

And the design of the band ensures that it fits every wrist.

It’s all sensible and valuable.

Many of those aforementioned naysayers claim that location-based services, including ones employing beacons, will be invasive and distributors of spam. I disagree. Disney showed that on Main Street and elsewhere a responsible marketing and customer service program puts a smile on one’s face much like a few minutes on Space Mountain.

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Article first appeared on imediaconnection.com http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2014/10/06/disney-proves-that-the-naysayers-belong-in-fantasyland/?imcid=nav

In My New Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - Should We Be Proud That There Are More Mobile Devices Than Toothbrushes?

Rather than trying to prove mobile’s popularity by saying that there are more wireless phones in the world than toothbrushes, why don’t we buy the world some toothbrushes? There are organizations that serve this mission, but we still have a need. Carriers, handset manufacturers, marketers, are you with me?

Led by “back to school shopping”, mobile commerce increased 47% in Q2 vs. a year ago, comScore said. And sales via tablet were up an eye-opening 75%. As comScore reported, some brick-and-mortar retailers prominently offered online-only “Back to School” deals on their sites to promote digital commerce.

One more to note as we near the holiday shopping season: mobile has become the primary medium for consumers to engage with retail brands online, with 70% of engagement from mobile devices.

OK, another one because the stats are so important – more than 34% of the top 10 retailers’ monthly unique visitors are mobile-only.

It has come to this for Blackberry - Wall Street cheered an $11 million loss in the second quarter.

More than one in eight Americans has deposited a check within the past year using a mobile app.

A third of all pictures taken by millennials are selfies, according to a report from Mitek Systems and polling firm Zogby Analytics.

From the same study: 36% of millennials have decided where to spend money or have switched companies based on a brand's mobile offerings.

As crazed as we are about mobile in the U.S., we take a back seat to Austria where market penetration in mobile is 130-140%, according to the IAB.

Multiple studies show that half of mobile users abandon a page if it doesn’t load in 10 seconds. I would’ve guessed 5.

86% of time on mobile is spent on apps, ExactTarget said.

Tablet sales are estimated to increase 39% this year, Brainshark stated. Some think that it’s a dying category. I’m not one of them.

Fear of going without your phone is called nomophobia. As in no mobile. Going without a toothbrush is worse.

Ford “Borrows” A Better Idea To Get Closer To Customers

In the late 1960s, Ford’s advertising proclaimed that the automaker had “a better idea”. During Advertising Week, the company admitted that its mobile learnings have come in large part from others.

This is hardly a bad thing. As was said more than once during a frenetic week of marketing and advertising conferences across Manhattan, a good thought can come from anywhere. Ford is wise to look outward as well as inward.

“Ford is where Facebook was when it pivoted to mobile,” Jim Farley, Executive Vice President of Global Marketing, Sales and Service, Ford Motor Company, said at the Mobile Marketing Association’s SM2 Innovation event.

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

Ford is hardly a newbie in mobile. In fact, an “unsexy” text messaging initiative more than three years ago that added an SMS call to action to traditional media yielded an eye-opening 15.4 percent lead conversion.

In that instance, in much larger numbers than expected, consumers who texted in to get the loan rate in their local area consented to be contacted by a dealer close by. That campaign stands out for me. I, for one, would say “no” 1,000 times in a row if asked if I wanted to field a call from a car dealer.

Still, it was striking at this week’s show when Farley said, “We are so far behind our customers' use of mobile.” That, in part, can be explained by the long planning cycles that occur with the carmakers.

Ford shared the stage with Facebook. Each spoke of mobile’s growing importance, and the coming of more personalization.

Forty percent of Ford’s web traffic comes from mobile. Farley said that much of it comes from prospective buyers walking car lots after hours. Further, he said that 29,000 cars were sold last year through the mobile website.

Farley said that the big opportunity resides in our ability to “talk to each customer”. But he warned the audience members that with that comes “a higher burden and standard of excellence for marketers.”

To illustrate the importance of creating a dialogue with customers and prospects, Farley said that transactions come second behind creating “a more meaningful relationship with our customers.” Coming soon is an owner app to assist in accomplishing that goal.

Here are some other moments that I will remember from the MMA event and the Mobile Media Summit that preceded it:

We’ve known for a long time that one of the holdout groups in the migration to mobile marketing has been the agency creative.

“The creative magic is in the context,” said Jaime Robinson, Executive Creative Director, Pereira & O’Dell. “It freaks creatives out because we don’t know how to deal with it.

“Mobile is not a one-way broadcast – it’s a two-way conversation.”

Robinson said that marketing has lived in the same “box” for decades.

“When you change the box, what the hell do you do with it?” she asked. “But, creatives are starting to understand it.” …

The MMA shined a bright light on the so-called Internet of Things. But Richard Ting, R/GA’s EVP, Global Executive Creative Director, Mobile & Social Platforms, cautioned us against spending large marketing dollars at this point.

“The very definition of mobile is still in flux,” he said. “The Internet is moving beyond laptops, desktops and mobile. Billions of devices, artifacts and accessories will be networked, but we’re still in the early days.”

Ting advised us to look at history and to certain companies for advancement.

“Just like they did with the Internet, the big platform providers are laying the groundwork for the Internet of Things,” Ting told us. …

Fresh off a rebrand of his Clear Channel to iHeartMedia to reflect his company’s transformation, Chairman and CEO Bob Pittman forecasts another morphing that will impact us all.

"I don't think we'll be in a world of impressions and ratings - we'll be in world of ROI," he said. “We’ll make more money giving them (advertisers) ROI.”

We’ll be wise to follow Pittsman’s wisdom. As I heard more than once in New York, the only thing that matters is sales. As well it should.

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article first appeared on Mobile Marketer http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/opinion/columns/18831.html