Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - Live Más, Spend Más With Taco Bell's Mobile App

Taco Bell tells it customers to live más. It turns out that its mobile app users are spending más, too. Mobile app orders are 20% higher on average compared to in-store, according to BI Intelligence. These mobile shoppers in large numbers are adding more toppings and making group orders.

As expected, Mary Meeker’s annual look at the web and mobile brought significant learnings.

Among the best:

- In America, mobile has eclipsed the desktop in time spent in digital media - now 51%.

- Spending on mobile advertising in the U.S. is up 34% year over year.

- Only $13 billion of $50 billion total U.S. Internet ad spend is on wireless.

- User-shared and curated video is rising rapidly. There are 4 billion video views per day, up 4x in six months on Facebook.

- The next new Internet users are likely already non-smartphone ‪mobile users and most likely to onboarded via messaging platforms.

If your app fails, 47% of your customers will switch to the competition, according to IBM.

74% of people 55+ used the mobile Internet in 2014, per comScore.

On a related note, my wife and I were sent a selfie from my soon-to-be 86-year-old mother-in-law.

General Motors’ Chevrolet brand will offer Android Auto and Apple CarPlay compatibility in 14 vehicles for the 2016 model year.

Over eight in 10 interested in wearables want such devices to enhance in-store experience: PowerReviews. For these, such devices are more than health and fitness tools.

Through a partnership with Shazam, Target is giving app users the ability to scan any of its print or television ads to access “shoppable” content.

75% of Google mobile search revenues come from Apple devices.

Friday was National Biscuit Day? My appreciative dogs have a ruff life.

Google and Apple have adjusted their strategies on mobile payments. We’ll see more tie-ins with loyalty plans, but still need consumer education. Much more, in fact.

Native Apple Watch apps are coming this fall. Not a minute too soon. The current experience is exasperating.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer -- Are Two-Year-Old Smartphones Useless or Good Enough?

I read on Business Insider where "80% or more of current iPhone users are due for a new phone because they're using old iPhones that are near the end of their useful lives." Says who? Two-year-old or more devices are “useless” for those with limited budgets?

Pew reports that 47% of those mobile users with a household income under $30,000 own a smartphone. Who says that they will put the next purchase of one before anything else?

Techcrunch took the same stance as I did. "The next two years will be the era of good-enough smartphones."

Integrated cross-platform ads are not driving reach, ROI: Nielsen. It’s the early days. The study doesn’t say that they won’t. It’s says that they aren’t.

That study aside, the obvious question from Mary Meeker's new Internet Trends report - with mobile adoption and usage so broad, why are brands slow to use the channel? Mobile now gets 11% of all the digital advertising spend.

Mobile advertising was up 47% year over year, Meeker noted.

The death of the tablet, eh? Tablet units are growing faster than PCs ever did -- +52% in 2013 , Meeker reported.

The U.S. market in on track to exceed $100 billion in mobile data revenues in 2014, analyst Chetan Sharma says.

As compelling as possible products that we'll see, I'm most intrigued by how ultra-strong personalities from Beats play within the Apple world.

A memorable tweet from Southwest Airlines: “You are now free to skip the printer: Mobile boarding passes land at all domestic Southwest airports!”

A new study says that 70% of retail marketers say personalization represents the future of marketing. Do the others think “one to all” will get it done?

Are these tons of World Cup apps meaningful or just for kicks?

Nearly a quarter of digital ad spending by U.S. healthcare and pharma firms will go toward mobile this year, eMarketer says.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - The "Do You Need An App or Common Sense?" Edition

A new app uses Kinect technology to prevent you from running into things while texting. An alternative is to put the device down.

The No. 1 pet peeve about smartphones is people checking it too much, according to a poll.  I found this by checking my smartphone.

If gadgets could measure emotions as is being discussed, would an insurance company raise fees if you show signs of being depressed or sick?

I saw a headline that said TV Networks Play to “Second Screen”. Do you know anyone who leaves mobile in the other room? Me, neither.

Either real-time bidding will change everything or it's most hyped ever? To me, it’s somewhere in between, but closer to hype.

Will we see a revitalization of camera sales if they get 1m000 times better in low light or will smartphones satisfy? For most, it’s the latter.

I heard a true recent story of a 96 year old who was getting hearing aids for first time. She said, "This is not as easy as my iPad.”

One percent cut cord on at-home Internet for LTE, Wifi out and about. That’s more than cut cable, but hardly a stampede.

49 percent of tablet shoppers are dissatisfied with the buying experience – report. Non-optimization leads to anticipointment.

"We're all in on mobile. We were created for mobile" Words from Twitter CEO Dick Costolo.  And some still have social and mobile in silos?

Today I again violated that rule of not looking at email in the first hour of the day. I’m thinking I should start with the first minute.

The mobile ad spend in the U.S. was $4B in 2012 compared to $37B for web advertising, according to Mary Meeker. That’s consistent with forecasts

Headline of day - PayPal Founder Launches Startup To Get More Women Pregnant.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - The "Items May Appear Larger" Edition

A study says augmented reality apps will generate $300 million in 2013. Put on special glasses and it will look like $300 billion.

Unable to deliver iPhone 5s to satisfy demand, word comes that Foxconn may build 130-inch Ultra HDTV panels. Rest assured fewer will want them.

I will remember 2012 as year Twitter became my number one news source. You?

47 percent of 18-34 year old smartphone owners have reportedly clicked on a mobile ad in the past three months. How many have “fat fingers” causing unintentional clicks?

It’s $60 for TomTom's new North America Android app - cheaper than a standalone unit, pricier than Google Maps.

There were 66.8 million viewers for at least a minute of TV election coverage between 8 and 11pm. It was 71.5 million in '08. I expected a bigger dropoff.

Meanwhile, Mitt Romney's "victory" speech was written on an iPad. Was it autocorrect or the nation that changed it to a concession? Or both.

The tablet market is now nearly 32 percent the size of the traditional PC market. It happened in LTE speed, so to speak.

"It's gonna be raining tablets," said AT&T’s CEO on shared data plan growth. To me, it’s first about consumers understanding usage, then making decisions.

Nearly 40 percent of U.S. mobile users accessed social media networks on their device in Q3, according to comScore.

We're in a smartphone frenzy, but feature phones have 80 percent share worldwide, according to new stats from Mary Meeker.

If history of inaccuracy is a guide, Siri will sell you tickets to the wrong movie through the Fandango tie-in.

An analyst said that Facebook will "disappear" in 5-8 years. The better bet is that analyst will vanish.

A headline asked, “Who Will Be Disrupted By The Rise Of Mobile?” The better question is who won't be?