Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - Facebook Is Finally Being Looked At For Real News

66% of Facebook users get news there, according to Pew. And, by news, Pew means something other than that the dog got a grooming and now looks like Dad. Or that Dad now looks like the dog.

Pokemon Go is the biggest U.S. mobile game ever. And, with that, it will soon get ads in the form of sponsored locations.

Smartphone use percentages by country: South Korea 88, Australia 77, Israel 74, U.S. 72, Spain 71, UK 68, Canada 67, Italy 60 and Turkey 59, and China 58 (Pew).

Turkey is second in Periscope usage behind the U.S. and led to real-time look-ins of the attempted coup.

The average mobile cost per click (CPC) for brand keywords rose 25-30% above where they were in early May, per Merkle.

A meteorologist won't fit in your pocket but the FEMA app will, according to a tweet from the National Weather Service. You don’t say.

Survey: One in four U.S. adults have refilled an prescription via smartphone, but 62% want to (Adobe Digital).

Smartphone video had a cumulative audience of 110.1 million adults in the U.S. in the first quarter, up from 85.4 million in the year-ago quarter, according to Nielsen. Those users consumed 5.69 billion gross minutes of video, a jump from 3.41 billion a year ago.

Video viewing on PCs declined. Cumulative audience was 77.7 million, down from 86.3 million.

60% of mobile users would have a more positive view of a retailer if they were provided with offers that could be saved to their smartphones: Vibes.

The television viewing numbers tell a convincing story that baseball is not a young-person’s must-see TV. The median age for the Major League Baseball All-Star Game was 54.6. There were 294,000 viewers aged 12-17, 1.2 million viewers 18-34, 1.5 million viewers 35-49, and 5.2 million viewers 50+.

We’ll get another high-profile viewership glimpse with the upcoming Rio Olympics. The amount of NBC Olympics broadcasting hours is equal to roughly 52 FIFA World Cups and nearly 1,700 Super Bowl telecasts.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - The Confusion Around Mobile's ROI

Few argue with the idea that more dollars will flow into mobile when we can get more clarity into the results of our efforts. But two studies apparently show how far we have to go. 67% of marketers told Forrester that they can't measure mobile's ROI. But 77% told Salesforce that they can.

Which is it?

Diving further into the Forrester study, we see that only 20% say that they have adequate mobile budget. Yet, as mentioned, 2 in 3 aren’t sure if it’s working or not.  I would love to be in on the conversations when these marketers are asked to justify the budget expenditures.

15% of Americans are “cord cutters” who used to have cable or satellite TV but now don't, per Pew.

The Associated Press – and therefore all of us -- will lowercase internet effective June 1. There’s more – in that same timeline, AP will lowercase web in all instances – web page, the web, web browser, etc.

A “suggested” Subway app in my Twitter timeline says that I can order a meatball sandwich. I haven't had one in more than 30 years. This is the best that we can do on personalization in 2016?

Along the same lines, 24% of U.S. respondents are “extremely frustrated” with restaurants for not making interactions and offers more relevant, Accenture says.

87% of B2B marketers struggle to develop compelling content, according to Forrester.

A study from Accenture finds that 60% expect the same customer experience across all touch points – from phone service to in-store & digital interactions. And that number grows every day.

Only 65% of U.S. marketers think that location data is accurate, reports the Location Based Marketing Association.

I was intrigued by a trending hashtag #IfIHadAnExtraFiveMinutes, but I didn’t so it remains a mystery.

StubHub is introducing a 360-view within app so buyers can see view seats before buying tickets.

Millennials living in their own home without kids spent 94+ hours on their PCs, tablets & smartphones in November, Nielsen says.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - MLB is Big League With Mobile App

It isn’t called the major leagues for nothing. Major League Baseball had 8.4 billion minutes streamed to its mobile app in 2015, per comScore. A total of 53% of the total minutes consumed were in the At Bat app with users watching or listening to games. The activity was more than than in all other U.S. official sports leagues apps combined.

Nearly one in four shoppers say that they have changed their minds while in a checkout line after looking up details on a smartphone: Google.

Meerkat is dropping the livestream. It’s a cautionary tale for those looking at "solutions"at SXSW that may be shiny and not stand test of time,

Headline: Retail Executives Say Mobile Investments to Increase This Year. Me: you don't say.

Two weeks after calling for an Apple boycott call, Donald Trump was using an iPhone to send half of his tweets: Marketing Land.

A man with a gun while taking selfies fatally shot himself in Concrete, Washington, police say. Interestingly, the Russian government has issued a guide to discourage people from taking dangerous selfies.

Consumers’ use of health apps and wearables has doubled in the past two years, according to Accenture.

After all this time, Apple has now opened a Twitter account to answer tech questions and to deal with problems.

I read a story that predicted: "When you tuck your iPhone 9 into your back pocket, it may well flex to conform to the contours of your butt" I can only say yay.

One in 10 U.S. Internet users (31.1 million people) will be mobile-only this year, eMarketer reported.

Mobile payments make up only 3% Of U.S. transactions, per GfK. Weren’t we told that cash would be gone by some Tuesday in 2015?

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - In Wireless Era, Banks Come To Us

We used to go to banks. Now, more and more, those institutions are coming to us. Or more specifically to our mobile devices.

imaginBank is the first mobile-only bank in Spain and the first in the world which is operated exclusively on cell phone and social network apps, according to the GSMA, which represents mobile operators worldwide. It also has an ATM search application for smartwatches and a service to check bank accounts, transactions and bills without having to leave Facebook.

69% of shoppers who use high-tech research products on a mobile device during a store visit vs. 54% of non-high-tech shoppers, comScore reported. Also, 76% of high-tech shoppers tracked delivery on a mobile device vs. 65% of non-high-tech shoppers.

Mobile spend is now 37% of all SEM spend (up 23% YoY), per Adobe.

In 2015, only 32% of email was opened on PCs, while 68% was opened on mobile devices, Movable Ink reported.

U.S. Hispanic and African-American voters are more likely than whites to get political news via mobile: Pew

A sanctioned Ted Cruz app enables the politician to capture individuals'  location, contact list, email addresses, AP reported.

Mobile was 86% of Twitter's $641 million in Q4 ad revenue (up 48% YoY).

Mobile games reached $34.8 billion in 2015, captured 85% of all app revenues, according to App Annie.

2016 will be the first year where more than half of the US population uses Facebook, eMarketer predicted.

In an international ranking of LTE download speeds, the U.S. came in 55th place, OpenSignal said.

By 2020, more people will own a mobile phone than have electricity, Cisco said in a forecast.

While lack of lots of mobile in Super Bowl ads was a missed opportunity, it didn’t take the cake on a week when a $63 million lottery ticket went unclaimed.

I came across what was billed as a mobile strategy blog with the last post 856 days ago? Nothing has changed since then, huh?

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - Gauging The Distance Marketers Still Need To Go

How far have we come – or not? Entering 2016, only four percent of marketers have a single view of their customers, says eMarketer.

Smartphone users will number seven billion in 2020, up from the nearly four billion today, Tune predicts.

On the new or renewed and repeated use of "App-ocalypse" - stop.

Purchasing happened more often from digital channels as U.S. retail sales grew 7.9% in 2015, per MasterCard. Furniture and women's apparel were the leading growth categories.

83% of consumers use 2.23 devices simultaneously with most of them 'feeling good' about it, reported Accenture Interactive. I, for one, always feel that something is lacking from that .23 of a device.

I am up to 26,000 tweets sent. .0000000000000000000000000000000000001% were about my meal choices.

With the mobile wallet, cash was supposed to be gone by Tuesday, no? Maybe some Tuesday in 2023.

My craziest tech moment of 2015 was when I got a “You Did It” Apple Watch message while at a urinal. Come to think of it, it was the best positive re-enforcement since I was 3.

Tabletop tablets enable Olive Garden to turn over tables six-seven minutes faster, the Washington Post reported.

I always gauge mobile adoption when the extended family visits over the holidays. This time around, they want from why to "oh, we'll just take Uber” and “Time to FaceTime with the grandkids cross-country”.

13% of Americans are “smartphone-only” as home broadband plateaus, via Pew. Meanwhile, 55% of U.S. adults have both a smartphone and home broadband subscription.

My best RTs this week – and every week, came from everyone who retweeted. Other yardsticks miss the point.

The equal to the StarWars fanatics are those who consented to push notifications for each score in 42 bowl games.

Google launched a 6-month accelerator to help startups build mobile products.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - Selfies and the Long Arm of the Law

To “hide” a selfie stick, an author named Mansoon purportedly bought two prop hands on Amazon, modified them and his clothes, and went into the world with the most ridiculously-looking selfie enabler that you will find. Since selfies are illegal in London, South Korea and elsewhere, I wonder if Mansoon will escape the long arm of the law.

Brands spend $3.04 to drive a single download of their mobile app; consumers use 70% of their downloaded apps once if ever, per Forrester.

Today, 90% of young adults use social media, compared with 12% in 2005.

Tweet from Fast Company: “In honor of #WorldToiletDay, how the most successful people poop at work: http://buff.ly/1MEGBKP”. I read that as how many people successfully poop at work.

eMarketer says that businesspeople are looking for short bursts of info on smartphones they need right then. Me – businesspeople or all people?

38% of job-seekers using smartphones had trouble entering a large amount of text on applications: Pew.

Also, 47% of people who used a smartphone in a job search accessed content that didn't display properly. Hello. It's 2015. A web site optimized for mobile is a must.

The YouTube Kids app hit 10 million downloads and expanded overseas.

Selling smartphone data that connects consumer demographics with locations will be a $79 billion business by 2020, according to Accenture.

850 apps are downloaded ever second from Apple’s App Store.

Dunkin Donuts has introduced mobile ordering.

The stat is a bit old but telling even today -- four apps in Google’s Play Store had been downloaded between 1 billion and 5 billion times as of September 2014 — Google Maps, Gmail, Google Play Services and YouTube, according to Pew. All four of these apps, however, are required downloads for all Android devices.

Seven apps — Facebook, Google Play Books, Google+, Google Search, Google Text-to-Speech, Google Street View and WhatsApp — had been installed between 500 million and 1 billion times. All were required downloads except for Facebook and What’sApp.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - An Alarming Number of Apps Share Personal Data

In a study of the top 110 apps by leading researchers from MIT, Harvard and Carnegie Mellon, 73% of Android apps shared personal information, such as email address with third parties. 47% of iOS apps shared geo-coordinates and other location data.

Transparency alone won’t satisfy mobile device owners. The Pew Research Center found that 54% of users decided to not install an app after learning about how much personal information that app planned to capture.

The majority of Americans say the latest technology is “totally necessary” to their daily lives, per CTIA. 69% believe that it’s personally necessary to have modern and up-to-date devices. 

Only a quarter of businesses have a coherent digital strategy to create customer value: Forrester.

Consumers may be spending as much as 6 hours each day multiscreening -- that's half their total media time, according to eMarketer. So stop creating a “mobile only” strategy.

Researchers from Duke wanted to see if utilization of a low-cost weight-loss app might help the 35 percent of young adults in the U.S. who are overweight or obese. A study showed that it doesn’t. The smartphone app didn't help young adults lose any more weight than if they hadn't been using the app at all.

There has been a 16% increase in the number of people in the U.S. using a smartphone and a tablet daily, eMarketer reported. The figure stands at 112 million.

Apple Watch sales have reached 7 million, more than all rivals combined. By that yardstick, it has been a hit. I use a different measuring method, one that puts the product in the disappointing category.

Google Maps for iOS now have spoken traffic alerts.

Facebook sees 8 billion daily video views from 500 million users. That’s double since the view numbers were reported in April.

Meanwhile, Facebook now gets 78% of its ad revenue from mobile.

Mobile accounts for more than 1/3 of Estee Lauder’s overall ecommerce business.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - Is Facebook Going Face Down?

The naysayers will tell you that Facebook is losing its popularity and will soon go face down. New numbers tell a different story.

72% of online American adults use Facebook, a proportion unchanged from September 2014, per Pew. In addition, 82% of online adults ages 18 to 29 use Facebook, along with 79% of those ages 30 to 49, 64% of those ages 50 to 64 and 48% of those 65 and older.

Few are more bullish on text-message driven mobile loyalty clubs, but even I have to question these stats from MarketLive: 78% of shoppers are likely to visit a store as a result of a text promotion, and 62% will make a purchase based on a text notification or offer received while in-store. If you cut those percentages in half, I could believe the study. There are so many variables in such campaigns, like the offer, frequency of deals, and timing of messages sent.

I received another promoted tweet suggesting that I have an extended belly and gut yeast. I'd like the company more if it led with my movie-star looks.

Radio took 38 years to reach 50 million people. It took Angry Birds 35 days, according to Brad Jakeman of Pepsi.

Wal-Mart’s CEO says the average in-store only customer spends $1,400 a year. An e-commerce only shopper spends $200. Customers who do both spend $2,500.

43% of consumers expect companies to have their own mobile apps: Forrester.

PepsiCo is working with a licensing partner to market a line of mobile phones and accessories in China in the next few months. But the food and beverage company has no plans to get into the mobile phone manufacturing business, a PepsiCo spokeswoman told Reuters.

"Available in China only, this effort is similar to recent globally licensed Pepsi products which include apparel and accessories," the spokeswoman said.

Mobile programmatic display ad spending expected to surpass desktop this year: eMarketer.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - The Mobile Era Really Began 50 Years Ago With a Shoe Phone

I contend that the first mobile phone appeared 50 years ago this month when Get's Smart's Maxwell Smart said “Sorry about that, Chief” to his boss via his shoe.

88% of teens text their friends at least occasionally, and 55% do so daily, per Pew.

In the last year, T-Mobile shares have climbed 37%. Sprint's have fallen the same amount.

A smart you-know-what asked if my new The Art of Mobile Persuasion book is about sexting. #missedopportunity

Forrester says that 30 billion “mobile moments” occur in the U.S. each day.

87% of Chinese moms who are digital buyers prefer the smartphone because “they can use it anytime, anywhere,” according to eMarketer.

In 2014, 41% accessed the Internet on a mobile device, per Forrester. The number was 17% in 2011.

Mobile ad revenue is expected to overtake online for local TV by 2019, BIA/Kelsey says.

By 2019, CMO's say that 75% of budget will go to digital marketing (Accenture).

Fiksu said that iOS 9 reached 12% adoption in the first 24 hours.

Teens spend twice as much time with mobile as they do with PCs or TVs, per Marketing Land. Nearly half say that they try at least four apps a month.

Combined, QVC and Zulily have seen $2.36B in mobile sales in a year, Internet Retailer reported.

In 2014, 38% of travelers used a mobile device to make a travel purchase (Thinknear).

Mobile online back-to-school sales increased 42% this year, according to IBM.

With 36.9%, Google doubled the U.S. mobile ad revenue of Facebook, which was No. 2 in the category, per eMarketer. The gap is projected to be cut this year with Google projected to see 32.9% and Facebook looking at 19.4%. The dominance of the two companies is expected to continue at least through 2017.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - Of Meaningful and Meaningless Looks At A Mobile Screen

During the same week that we learned (learned?) that many mobile users look at a device “for no particular reason” comes additional word that wireless interaction is dramatically improving health for some.

First, the meaningful news:

Out of a pilot study at New York’s Bellevue Hospital called Mobile Insulin Titration Intervention, or MITI, 88% of insulin-dependent diabetics were able to get their blood sugar in check after receiving a daily text reminder or phone call.

According to NPR, the program worked this way. Nurses reviewed individual blood sugar information daily online to check for values that were too high or too low, indicating the insulin dose needed to be adjusted. They then reached out to the patients who needed modifications, many of which were low-income New Yorkers who, while owning a phone, lacked access to computers and other resources to manage their health.

Note that text messaging was used, ensuring that even feature phone owners had the capability to view an SMS. A miss for this demographic would’ve been to rely on a smartphone app.

Only 37% of the comparison group that did not receive texts or calls managed to control their blood sugars.

MITI may soon become a hospital-wide program at Bellevue, NPR said.

Now the separate “revelations” about mobile usage:

A third of millennials take out their cellphones in public “for no particular reason”, Pew reported. 82% of smartphone owners rarely or never turn their phones off. 79% witness annoying and/or loud cellphone behavior in public at least occasionally.

Apple Watch users - any of you lose at least a bit of faith and won't buy Apple products sight unseen or untouched? I'm in that camp.

A tweet offered to help me find my next handbag. I’m waiting for the one hawking manpurses.

87% of Facebook's one billion daily users are on mobile for at least part of their experience.

Few are surprised by Amazon’s decision to exit the mobile phone-making business. Of course, it never caught Fire.

Almost three-quarters of all WhatsApp users access the messaging app on Android, per GlobalWebIndex.

Here are the top 10 magazine publishers with the biggest number of monthly mobile visitors, according to  Association of Magazine Media: 1. ESPN: 42.9 million. 2. People: 28 million. 3. AllRecipes: 24.5 million. 4. Forbes: 21.6 million. 5. Time: 18.1 million. 6. Entertainment Weekly: 14.3 million. 7. Cosmopolitan: 13.7 million. 8. Bloomberg Businessweek: 11.2 million. 9. New York: 9.8 million 10. Bon Appétit and Epicurious: 8.3 million.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - What A Dog Can Do Better Than An App

An app to tell you to feed or walk your pet? Isn’t that already covered by Fido begging at the dish or going to the door?

In Marietta, GA, cops are dressing as road workers to catch drivers checking their phones. Violators, even stopped at red lights, are receiving $150 fines.

Advertisers shifted $1.5 billion From TV to digital year-over-year, per Standard Media Index. Advertisers spent $25.5 billion on national TV and $6.4 billion on local and syndicated TV from October through June, vs. $22 billion spent on digital.

Tweet of the week from @chrispirillo: “Bison attacks woman taking selfie with it. Man tries selfie with rattlesnake, gets a $150,000 doctor's bill.  Smartphones.”

78% of retailers are planning to make a new mobile POS decision by mid-2016: IHL Group.

While no breakout was given, it is believed that more than half of Facebook’s $3.8 billion in Q2 2015 ad revenues came from small businesses.

Half of American adults had their personal information exposed to hackers last year alone, per a New York Times report.

Tom Brady's mention of switching out a Samsung for an iPhone was a negative value of $617,000 for Samsung in the 1st 2 1/2 hours, according to Apex MG Analytics.

15% of Americans still do not go online. They must obviously get enough of DeflateGate and the Kardashians elsewhere.

The average person under 25 sends in a day the same number of texts that a 55 year old sends in a year, Creative Strategies reports.

Mobile payments account for 20% of Starbucks revenue. There are 10.4 million active members in its loyalty program.

On Saturday, Apple Watch told me I reached the achievement of completing my first elliptical workout. The problem is that was about No. 71, all "recorded". Hello.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - It Isn't The Young That Value The Smartphone The Most

To those who still claim that there is still a technology divide among generations, I offer this: the older you are, the more that you value the smartphone, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.

82% of the 65+ crowd say that their device gives them “freedom”.  The same percentage consider mobile a connector rather than a distraction. That's primarily because the devices are intuitive.

Conversely, 36% of 18-29 year olds say the smartphone is a leash and 37% call it a distraction.

Six ducklings that fell down a storm drain were lured out by a firefighter using the duck call ringtone on his iPhone.

Meerkat has introduced its app for Android, temporarily giving it a difference-maker over Twitter’s Periscope.

Meanwhile, the use of these apps is being limited by sports leagues and associations. The latest? The PGA Tour revoked a reporter’s credentials for using Periscope.

There are more mobile-only Internet users than desktop PC-only users in the U.S., per CTIA.

My new on-demand mobile foundations course is now available via Market Motive. There is actionable discussion to drive ROI.

20% more Americans use PINs/passwords to protect data on smartphones and tablets in 2015 vs. 2012, CTIA says. What stops the others?

Secret, a $100 million social app, closed but the co-founders made off with $6 million and a Ferrari. Evidently, they spent no money on a PR strategy.

Nearly half of Fortune 500 websites aren't mobile-friendly by Google's standards, according to Merkle.

Last quarter, Apple sold an average of 8 iPhones per second, 24 hours a day, for 90 straight days.

Starbucks says that its mobile transactions top 8 million weekly.

An Apple Watch fitness app from a deodorant company doesn't pass my sniff test.

39 of the top 50 news sites get most of their web traffic from mobile: Pew.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - Are Wearables For Pets Barking Up The Wrong Tree?

You can now put a wearable on your pets and track activity or perceived laziness. If I tell my wife that our dogs are chubby, she will say, “Takes one to know one”.  I’m staying mum.

That reminds me of my favorite tweet of the week. From @BillMurray: “The problem with diets is nachos”.

Speaking of eating, Taco Bell's order-ahead app has seen purchases 20% higher on average compared to in-store, per Business Insider.

24% of teens go online “almost constantly”, facilitated by widespread availability of smartphones – Pew.

Also, 71% of teens are Facebook users. Boys and girls are equally likely to partake.

My kind better half brought me home a visor and killer shirt from The Masters. Pictures? None. No smartphones are allowed on course, much less selfie sticks.

64% of mobile game revenue is from 0.23% of players, Swrve says.

Leading to pre-order day, Apple spent $38 million advertising the Apple Watch. Was it money well spent? Many of us bought one without touching it or even eyeballing one.

Later on pre-order day, I did a hands-on with the model of Apple Watch that I purchased that comes with a sport band. I had thoughts of my Fitbit often slipping off, but in the case of Apple’s version, there is a tuck-in feature. We’ll see.

Ready for a concert of simultaneous notification sounds via iPhone, MacBook Air, and Apple Watch? How long before we say, "Yeah, I got it".

The other day, I was 35 folks in before recognizing anyone on People You May Know feature in the Facebook app. It seemed as random as pointing in phone book.

Major League Baseball says that it delivered 60 million live and on-demand video streams across digital platforms on Opening Day, up 60% from last year.

It was a great week. I was just added to a list of fun people. Unfortunately, it’s not my wife's list.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - Now We Need To View Minutiae Via Live Video Apps?

I’ve long asked why we need to know via Facebook minutiae like a school bus caused a delay in someone's commute. Now we're supposed to watch live video of it on Meerkat or Periscope?

In a related note, 85% of mobile sharing happens on Facebook, per ShareThis.

I’m a couple of weeks away from saying that I was so unconnected before Apple Watch. Well, not exactly.

According to Nielsen, 146 million watched video on the Internet, and 164 million people used an app/web on a smartphone in the fourth quarter of 2014.

An unwanted promoted tweet says "goodbye to clutter". What irony.

Mobile devices generate 25% of all digital travel transactions in the U.S., Criteo says.

Drexel University has installed an iPad rental vending machine for students, library card holders.

Slightly over a third of smartphone buyers in the past three months were first-timers, Kantar reports.

The activity that more smartphone users do than any other? Apps? No. Web? No. Picture taking? No. Text message? You got it, per Pew.

61% of ESPN’s visitors are mobile only. There will be tons on the ramifications of this for marketers in my upcoming book, The Art of Mobile Persuasion. 

The New York Times will publish “one-sentence stories” on Apple Watch.

To those who readily lead with mobile first, advertisers spent $1.13 billion on TV ads during March Madness.

Only 27% of marketers have bought mobile ads programmatically: IAB.

An eMarketer report estimates that global mobile ad spending will rise to $100 billion by 2016, a 400% increase from 2013.

For every $1 spent on the mobile web, $3 is spent via apps.

I appreciate the Facebook-suggested post from seniorpeoplemeet.com. She needs a boyfriend. I need better targeting.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - Curves of All Kinds Were On Display At CES

There were lots of curves at CES - no, not those kind. OK, those kind, too, but curved screens caught my eye. Supposedly they help eye strain. The other curves cause it.

Holiday shoppers tweeted more than 28 million mentions about their gift purchases - up 8% year over year – SAP.

Lots of new interesting numbers from Pew -- Almost half (49 percent) of Instagram users are on the platform daily; 52 percent of online adults now use two or more social media sites, a significant increase from 2013; Facebook is still the most popular, but other platforms have seen a higher growth rate.

Despite slowing growth, tablets will pass the 1 billion mark in 2015, per eMarketer.

If your, ummm, behind is your best side, and, you want to, ummm, share it, you may like the Belfie Stick.

From a man on the street - actually a cabbie in Las Vegas, on the prospect of a smart refrigerator alerting him when low on milk or beer: "Why would I want that?"

There was signage at CES for a $33 Android tablet. That follows talk of a $25 smartphone.

58 percent prefer to look up info on mobile device while shopping, rather than talk to an in-store employee, according to the Consumer Electronics Association.

64 cents is the average consumer cost for cable per hour of entertainment, per Flurry. 18 cents for mobile.

Also from Flurry: app usage grew 76 percent in 2014 with shopping apps leading the way.

More surprising than seeing a large RCA presence at CES was news that it introduced new mobile devices.

Uber has been sued for allegedly violating TCPA rules and sending unwanted text messages.

From Nestle’s Pete Blackshaw: "Don't overthink it. Have simplicity in messaging, good search on your mobile website, plus sharing."

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.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - Do QR Codes Have Better Prospects Than The New York Giants?

QR codes have more doubters than the New York Giants, but they may have a better chance than the football team of having a successful fall season.

According to a new Adobe report, 76% of consumers asked said that their QR code scans brought them to a mobile-optimized experience. It provides a lesson about staying current on mobile activity. Report after report in the last 18 months or so put QR codes in the “can do without” pile.

My takeaway from Pew’s expert predictions that, by 2020, most people will adopt smart-device swiping for purchases? Maybe. Even so, will the payment companies and Apple, among many others, be patient for this to grow over a half-decade?

As Yahoo’s David Pogue tweeted, “This business of paying with your phone won't be real magic until it works everywhere (not just the 200K stores with receivers).”

More than three-quarters of the leading brick and mortar department stores use push notifications. Of course, that’s a tactic, not a strategy.

Customers are eager to share their location if you give them something in return, says Ryan Craver, who leads mobile for Lord & Taylor.

I’m not promising that I won't get an Apple Watch (I know myself and, ummm, time will tell), but I’ve been living with the feeling that I'm too connected at times. More often equals bad. Or at least stress that isn’t welcome at what could or should be off-times. I know, I know, it's all about self-control, right? Easier said than done, especially with the expectations of others.

I see that Rolex is advertising on the BBC homepage. Do you think that company feels breath on back of neck with Apple Watch. Probably just a little for now.

Even with an intuitive interface, education needs to come with Apple Watch and health apps. With my now departed Fitbit (it went back due to a recall), I was surprised to know that I was burning calories sleeping.

Speaking of education, the same goes for Apple Pay. My wife's first questions were around unintended purchases while walking by a terminal.

Is it wise for Apple to compel Apple Watch owners to also have an iPhone? Or does that limit sales by shutting out too many who carry other devices?

An app lets women call taxis driven only by women.

Twitter suggests that I follow Karl Rove. It is as clueless as TiVo suggesting poker matches for me, a non-card player. Recommendation engines leave a lot to be desired.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - The "Silencing The Loudmouths" Edition

Scientists are working on ways to enable mobile users to charge their phones by yelling. It has to do with what smarter-than-me folks at Queen Mary University of London and Nokia call “stray energy" sources. This idea is as bad as allowing passengers to talk on phones during flights. Silence is golden, people.

Elvis’ Graceland home is implementing beacons for tourists. No word on whether visitors will get messaging asking “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” Of what the message would be after that.

With perks via mobile app and more, 7-Eleven marked the 50th anniversary of the sale of the first “freshly-brewed” coffee. Admittedly, I’m a coffee snob from Seattle, but isn’t using the term freshly-brewed “grounds” for claims of misrepresentation?

As many as 70% of retailers are employing omnichannel strategies, says KPMG.

Mobile spending on programmatic more than doubled this year, eMarketer tells us.

Due to privacy regulations and concerns, Apple has reportedly banned iOS developers from selling HealthKit data to ad networks.

Sony's rumored QX1 lens could turn a smartphone into a DSLR (digital single lens reflex camera), according to Gizmodo.

Will eye and head-tracking do what police and Mom can’t - convince people to stop texting and driving? General Motors will install a half-million devices in cars over the next few years, according to the Financial Times. The technology supposedly will know when a driver is texting by gauging eye and head movements. More importantly, it will then implore the driver to stop.

The tweet of the week is from friend and former colleague Mick Prendergast (@rMEDIUM) -if @apple can't keep nude selfies safe...how can we trust them with our money?

Per a study by Internet Retailer, mobile ecommerce accounts for 21 percent of all online purchases.

There has been a 49% growth in mobile malware since 2011, McAfee found. I would’ve bet the over on that number.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - Will We Need Cash After Apple Introduces Mobile Payment Option?

The next iPhone will include near-field communication (NFC) mobile payments, per Wired.  To me, it’s significant but not "cash gone by Tuesday" significant. There will continue to be slow adoption to mobile payments due primarily to security concerns, but faster with Apple pushing it.

Push notifications boost mobile app engagement, according to Localytics.  That makes sense since it's permission-based. When done well, value is provided.

Headline: Really. It's Time For Brands To Deliver Real-Time Personalization. My reaction: time? The word is overdue.

Apple is reportedly considering a $400 price tag for its wearable device, which supposedly will be introduced Sept. 9 but not go on sale until early in 2015.

70% of college students post to Snapchat daily, Sumpto says. 46% post to Twitter. 11% take to Facebook.

50% of Square businesses are owned by women. Women own approximately 30% of all businesses in the U.S.

There were 1.1 million tweets during the Emmys telecast, seen by 8.8 million people.

The Falcons app allows you to click for an in-stadium "cheerleader visit". Watch out for the blitz since your wife will surely visit next.

There are nearly as many McDonald’s with free Internet (12,000) as public libraries (15,000), Pew reports.

My favorite tweet of the week came from Bob Davis (@BobDavisHCP), a VC with Highland Capital. “Auto correct makes me say things I didn't nintendo.”  

The runner-up tweet comes from marketer and friend Rick Mathieson (@rickmathieson). “Kimberly-Clark potty training app offers rewards every time your toddler downloads.”

73.4% of smartphone owners used them to access the Internet in 2013, Harte Hanks tells us.

Juniper Research predicts that there will be over 1 billion mobile coupon users by 2019.

The majority of digital media consumption occurs in apps with most activity coming from 7% of power users: comScore.

751 million users access Facebook from mobile with 7,000 different devices.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - The Smartphone Turns 20 And No Longer Connects To Fax Machines

The world’s first smartphone just turned 20. Yes, there was a smartphone before the iPhone.

The IBM Simon wasn’t called a smartphone, but it did feature software apps. It could also be linked to a fax machine. Young ‘uns, consult Wikipedia or a history book if you have never heard of a fax machine.

It was amusing to see some tech sites diss TMZ for showing and hyping supposed bogus iPhone 6 photos. Of course, hunting for clicks, the same sites went that route themselves.

Headline: Researchers Say They Can Charge a Phone With Ambient Sound. Me: consumers need a compelling reason to upgrade. A device that constantly has power is meaningful to many.

Half of Facebook and Twitter users get news on those sites, Pew reports. It was on Twitter that I learned about the deaths of Robin Williams and Michael Jackson, not to mention the ultimate fate of Osama bin Laden.

More than one in three seniors in the U.S. will make a digital purchase this year, eMarketer tells us.

Travel "deals" on Twitter remain a head-scratch - who do you know who will head to Ho Chi Minh on Friday as result of Wednesday night "offer"?

How many times are Promoted Tweets repeated? I wasn't interested the first, fifth or 20th time.

Real value - Google Now for Android shows alternate flights when yours gets delayed.

Lookout Mobile Security nabbed $150 million in funding. As was the case with PCs, consumers will be slow to protect their devices. This is an Enterprise play for now.

Apple supposedly wants to be a “hub” of health data and is in talks with top hospitals. Tracking will soon be more robust than calorie counts and steps taken.

More than half of 18- to 24-year-olds say they "never" unplug from technology, according to eMarketer. We at least have that in common.