Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - Wee-Wee Pads? Rover Actually Wants An iPad

NPR said that soon we might be sharing our gadgets with our pets, too. My three spoiled (human fault, not theirs) dogs want high-resolution smartphone screens and an iPad to go next to the wee-wee pads.

My frustrations with Apple Watch are well documented. With word that all Apple Watch apps must be native apps (built for the device) starting on June 1, I’ll say great rather than it’s about time.

If you missed National High Five Day last week, rest easy. Next up is National Fist Bump Day in June. #ridiculousness

Nine in 10 US smartphone owners use location services on their phone, according to data from Pew Research Center.

Smartphone owners use on average 26 apps and 52 mobile sites per month, Forrester reported.

59% of consumers have higher expectations for customer service today than last year: Microsoft. It used to be that you can manage public opinion in two hours. Now it’s closer to two minutes.

I asked Siri how much grass should you let a dog eat. Twice, she returned with "I found 15 restaurants. Tell me the one you are looking for"

The Yankees are offering a food-purchasing app, but only 20% of Stadium patrons can use it.

One-fifth of millennials don't use a desktop PC, per comScore.

It has come to this – a "smart mattress" will tell you if you're being cheated on.

The average mobile gamer is 36 years old, Nielsen says.

Approximately 10% of internet users are mobile-only: Accenture.

84% of mobile time spent is on just 5 apps, according to Facebook.

Cracker Jack has replaced its toy prizes with digital codes for games.

This year, mobile game revenue will surpass console and PC gaming, per new study: Newzoo BV.

92.5% of internet users in China had downloaded music apps to their smartphone, per Tencent Penguin Intelligence.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - On Mobile Procrastination For The Holidays

A tweet begins with "starting to think about your holiday mobile strategy?” Hello. Try to get going over a red Starbucks cup. And make it for 2016, but start now.

Speaking of which, mobile payments now account for 21% of transactions at Starbucks.

Adobe said that, for the first time ever, the majority of online holiday shopping visits in the U.S. – 51% -- will be on mobile devices. Adobe forecast almost a third of all sales taking place on mobile devices.

Digitally mature firms are three more likely to drive double digit revenue growth than other businesses: Forrester.

Mobile video ads are getting 66% of the total mobile ad spend, per AppLovin and AppsFlyer.

68% of adults now have a smartphone, nearly double the share in mid-2011, according to Pew. 92% of all U.S. adults own a cellphone of some sort.

According to Strategy Analytics, global shipments of smartphones grew by 10% from Q3 2014 (323.4 million units) to Q3 2015 (354.2 million). However, the 10% figure marks the slowest growth rate within the past six years since the global recession in 2009.

Amazon's Rich Koehler: "If it takes more than three taps to reach any part of your product catalogue, it basically doesn't exist.”

Apple has sold about 1.22 billion iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches, says VC Benedict Evans. Roughly 725 million are in use.

Fitness trackers and smart watches will make up two-thirds of wearable device shipments next year: eMarketer.

My diet must be taking.  I haven't seen a promoted tweet about gut bloat for two days.

The iPad tops the Best Buy survey of most desired tech gifts. Whoa, aren't tablets on decline given popularity of larger smartphones, and perceived "good enough" previous purchases?

Another tweet said that mobile is the operating system to our lives. I guess the "remote control for life" descriptor is old news.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - The Answer To Mobile's ROI Is A Shrug?

About half of marketers and agencies are not measuring mobile ROI, eMarketer said. A shrug of the shoulders is the answer to the question by the clients or senior management of how we're doing? My question for you – what will you do next after you are moved out?

Half of Pinterest’s users are outside the U.S., the company says.

58% of customer service teams view social media inquiries as their top challenge, Forbes reported.

44% of U.S. online shoppers start the buying process with Amazon, per BloomReach.

Nearly 8 out of every 9 minutes occurs within a user’s top five apps: comScore.

On Twitter, videos are retweeted 6x more than photos. Also, 90% of video views on Twitter are from mobile devices.

More than half of all Google searches now happen on mobile devices.

CEO John Chen said that BlackBerry may quit the handset business if it the company is not profitable in a year.

eMarketer says that approximately 2 billion people have smartphones today. Another 150-200 million will buy their first in each of the next 3 years.

Americans spend 2+ hours a day on smartphone apps: comScore.

A headline proclaimed that mobile is "marketers' magic bullet". We haven't gotten more sophisticated than that hype nonsense?

54% are willing to end a relationship with a brand if they are not reached with personalization, according to Razorfish’s Jeremy Lockhorn.

Several more from Jeremy:

-- 46% of consumers will purchase more if you personalize across channel

-- 83% of consumers expect you to know them across channels and devices

-- there is a 1% conversion rate for smartphones, a third of the PC rate

-- 55% of marketers are using cross-channel technology to create single view of customer

Microsoft says that Surface is now a $3.5 billion business. Still, NFL announcers mistake them for iPads.

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 - Flying High With Mobile Boarding Passes

Mobile devices will issue a third of all airline boarding passes by 2019: Juniper Research.  That would double the current number. It’s also a good lesson on the lack of absolutes – not everyone will adopt this technology or any other.

Smartwatch as "the remote control of our lives"? Jeez, we’ve heard that hype for years around the mobile phone.

An accessory needed for Apple Watch - restraint. Self-control on when/if to react to more immediate info will be as important as anything, IMO.

As has been case with beacons, we won't know how much consumers want delivered on their wrists until we test, ask and learn.

To me, the No. 1 question remains around Apple Watch - is it really solving a problem?

As Yahoo pointed out, you could buy the most expensive Apple Watch, or one of everything else Apple sells.

Selfie drones are on their way, according to VentureBeat.

The mobile ad spend in the U.S. is projected to grow 50% this year, vs. 1.1% for traditional media, per eMarketer.

Tablet shipments will grow just 2% in 2015, projects IDC.

49% of shoppers ages 20-29 regularly use a mobile phone in-store to compare prices, Gfk says.

Starbucks has expanded its mobile-ordering service across the Northwest.

100,000 Coke vending machines in North America will accept Apple Pay by year end.

A California court has said that cops need warrants to get phone location data.

More than 40% of all time spent on TV properties is on mobile: comScore.

60% of users now choose mobile devices over PCs for local search: Thrive Analytics.

In Q4 2014, 16% of smartphone owners said they had recently acquired their phones within the last 3 months, according to Nielsen.

In 2012, 24% of US consumers wanted to use their mobile to send money to friends. In 2014 it was 50%: Mobile Payments Today.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - Keeping "Modern Family" Modern

ABC’s ‘Modern Family’ shot an episode using only an iPhone and iPad. The attention for the Feb. 25 airing has been significant and, as the Associated Press wrote, keeps “Modern Family” modern.

Mobile now accounts for more than 60% of all digital media time spent: comScore.

Swatch is reportedly working on a smartwatch you'll never need to charge.

90% of YouTube mobile views are less than 5 minutes.

Nearly 50 percent of consumers used a mobile phone to make a purchase in 2014, up from 30 percent two years earlier, per PwC.

By 2016, Deloitte says, mobile will be responsible for as much as 21 percent of in-store spending, or $752 billion.

Seeing someone use the "word" phygital on Twitter is grounds for an unfollow.

Staples reports that 30% of iOS sales are now driven through Apple Pay.

I’ve needed 50 shades to block eyes of 50 Shades tweets and headlines.

Is it too much to expect a conference that focuses on personalization to stop sending you invites to register weeks after you've done so?

New York Times C.E.O. Mark Thompson said the following at the Code/Media conference: “The battle will be won on the smartphone”.

The U.S. Treasury will now accept PayPal.

The NBC iPhone and iPad app has been updated to include live streaming in some markets.

There have been lots of “mobile malware on the rise” headlines. Can you name one person who did something because of it? Nor can I.

Flip phones are selling again– in Japan.

Decades after "hold the pickles, hold the lettuce”, Burger King is delivering on personalization through mobile.

46% of mobile device owners will shop elsewhere if a mobile site or app fails to load within 3 seconds, according to 451 Research.

REI’s Jeff Klonkowsi is one of the thought-leaders I interviewed for my upcoming book. Smart guy. Here’s what the director of digital retail, mobile and business development said last week at eTail West 2015:  “If we’re standing still, someone is going to eat our lunch, and we need to be aware of that.” 

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - How RadioShack's Mobile Strategy Led To Its Downfall

In doing research for my upcoming book, I learned that while many were too slow when it comes to mobile, RadioShack actually moved too fast. In 2009, it abandoned its core do-it-yourself customer in favor of mobility products.

"We completely pissed them off," Chief Marketing Officer Lee Applbaum said of the retailer's core DIY customers, who are (or now were) 55 year old Caucausian males with jobs or interest in engineering. "We had turned our back and were ignoring them. We had alienated the very consumer that had given us that core credibility in electronics."

As the mobility business grew, RadioShack’s core business fell from 38% of sales in 2009 to 32% in 2010. And despite going back to its roots, the drop continued all the way to bankruptcy.

More notes:

Thanksgiving was highest sales day during the holiday season for REI mobile properties. But Christmas Day saw the most traffic.

Just one-third of mobile users will buy apps in 2015, per eMarketer.

Tweet of the week from @BillGates – “Today, 2 billion people don’t have a bank account.  In 15 years they’ll be making payments with their phones”.

Only 47% of retail brands engage on Twitter when tagged in an @ mention, according to Brandwatch.

62% of consumers expect a brand to have a mobile-friendly website, 42% mobile app, 23% location-specific experience, says Forrester.

Tablet shipments fell 12% last quarter, its first-ever decline: Canalys.

Twitter says 36,048,635 tweets about the Super Bowl were viewed 2,500,732,548 times.

Apple Stores reportedly will be outfitted with safes to protect gold Apple Watches. No price has been given. Speculation centers on these being priced at several thousand dollars each.

Mobile will account for half of all U.S. digital commerce revenue within two years, per Gartner.

61% of mobile consumers want to call a business when making their purchasing decision, according to Marchex.

Facebook served 65% fewer ads last quarter but cost per ad was up 335%.

More than half a billion users only access Facebook from mobile.

Panera: 80% of mobile payments are from Apple Pay.

Meanwhile, Apple Pay is said to be coming to 200,000 vending machines, kiosks, paid parking, other self-serve locations.

Headline on TechCrunch - Microsoft Faces Stiff Mobile Challenge. Me - the things you learn on the net.

Starbucks' mobile app payments now represent 16% of all Starbucks transactions: Fast Company.

Last year, mobile apps generated the most revenue in Japan, South Korea and the U.S., says App Annie.

93% of all U.S. app downloads in 2014 were organic, down slightly from 95% in 2011 according to Flurry.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - When Mobile and People Do Good

Often dubbed the most personal device, mobile phones can also be among the most useful for serving others. The latest example is the Be My Eyes app that finds volunteers to view and provide information on photos or video taken by sight-impaired people.

Following a test in Portland, Ore., Starbucks Mobile Order & Pay will soon be available in over 600 stores in Pacific Northwest. The promise is that you get to order ahead of time and pick up with little to no delay.

Starbucks’ innovation has already made it the leader in sales at brick and mortar locations. The company says that it is averaging more than seven million mobile transactions in stores each week.

Meanwhile, a Deloitte study says in-store mobile payments overall are set to rise 1000% in 2015.

The National Hockey League will broadcast live GoPro footage during games.

Google may be close to launching its own wireless service using Sprint and T-Mobile.

Many envision a shakeout of mobile wallet players in 2015. The first domino? Amazon is said to be folding its app beta.

42% of shoppers would share mobile information for text messaging offers, per IBM. Yet we are still, after all these years, needing to convince marketers of the opportunity.

NBC will stream the Super Bowl, but not to all smartphones since Verizon owns the rights.

Intel generated $2.1 billion from the Internet of Things in 2014.

Tweet of the week from Laptop Magazine editor in chief Mark Spoonauer @mspoonauer – “Dear wireless carriers. Stop changing your plans every day. It's getting confusing for us, nevermind everyday shoppers.”

Last year, 38% of all online advertising was delivered on a mobile device: Borrell.

By 2019, the firm expects it to be 70%.

Facebook is nearing 1 billion mobile users worldwide, with much of the growth coming in developing countries on lower-end phones.

Retailers with the biggest share of mobile traffic tend to be in athletic apparel, footwear & cosmetics, says research for the 2015 Search Marketing 500.

Mobile accounts for nearly half of the paid-search ad spend, according to Marin Software.

A new survey by Harris and Dell finds tablets boost employee productivity by 20%.

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.

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.

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.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer: The "Just Shush Already" Edition

Twitter is testing a mute button to quiet your follows. This would be for temporary silence rather than a more final unfollow. Will hashtag be #shushalready?

I want a weather app to be simple. The latest ones are visually nice but make it harder to get basic info. Or is it just me?

Apple has 800 million iTunes accounts. The 800 million credit cards on file are more than any other company in the world.

And Apple says two-thirds of iPad registrations and one-half of iPhone registrations came from new users in the last quarter.

We're supposed to view wearables as inexact but needed? I don't understand that.

Sephora's mobile, online and in-store shoppers are 4X more valuable than single-channel shoppers, according to the company.

The reason why in-store mobile interaction is important to Walgreens? There are 45 million weekly in-store shoppers compared to 14 million online visitors.

More than 119 million people in the U.S. will watch video on tablets this year, eMarketer says.

Nielsen: The U.S. radio audience has hit an all-time high; 244 million (age 12+) listen to radio each week. The dummies said it was dying.

But the world is changing, of course – the average U.S. adult spends 5 hours 46 minutes with digital media - 2 hours and 51 minutes of that with mobile - per day, according to eMarketer.

80 percent of Twitter's advertising revenue now comes from mobile ad buys.

More from Nielsen: for the first time, a majority of Americans of all age groups own smartphones.

18-24 year olds are over 20% more likely to log onto Twitter via a mobile device.

70 percent of U.S. consumes will use a mobile device to redeem a discount in 2014, Accenture projects.

89 percent of mobile devices aren't recycled, according to Verizon.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - The "Monkeys Flying" Edition

NBC received the highest Opening Ceremony ratings in 20 years. I’ve loudly complained that we should be able to see it live on mobile, online, or elsewhere. Given the numbers, that will happen when monkeys fly out of our “you know whats”.

NBC not-withstanding, we live in a real-time world. Imagine if Twitter delayed tweets the way NBC delayed coverage.

Samsung reportedly gave Olympians phones because it didn’t want to see the Apple logo at the Opening Ceremony.

Amazon has updated its iPhone app to enable users detect and buy products using the camera.

In Starbucks, I observed a woman in her 70's sitting with girl under 10. Both were on iPhones. What generational technology divide?

Despite the hype, doctors still turn to desktops for most work purposes, ahead of smartphones or tablets, according to eMarketer.

Mobile advertising was more than 75 percent of Twitter’s total advertising revenue in the fourth quarter of 2013.

60 percent of mobile users expect a website to load in less than 3 seconds.

14 percent of people captured “naughty” content on a mobile device, according to McAfee. That depends on what your definition of “is” is.

Worldwide mobile data traffic will grow almost 11 times the next 4 years, Cisco says. Also, monthly mobile data traffic jumped 80 percent year-over-year in 2013.

25 years ago, half of the world's population had never made a telephone call, much less played Angry Birds.

70 percent of mining executives believe mobile devices have prevented accidents, according to SAP.

iPhone and iPad thefts alone accounted for 18 percent of all grand larcenies in New York City last year, according to the New York Police Department.

One billion people have tried Twitter and three quarters of them have stopped using it, according to multiple reports.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer: Aspirin Tablets To Handle Tablet Ad Blitz

 With a tablet advertising blitz coming between now and Christmas, we will need aspirin tablets. Microsoft is said to be coming big with Surface ads, but not quite to the Samsung spending level.

Despite those who want to convince you otherwise, Twitter is gaining in popularity among teens.  So is Instagram.

HTC will donate $1 for every Movember HairstoChange picture posted to Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

T-Mobile's “free” tablet data plan costs $10 a month.

As my friend and keen industry analyst Ross Rubin says about early holiday sales, “If every day is Black Friday, no day is Black Friday.”

The strength of the Apple brand? I bought two iPad Airs for holiday giving sight unseen.

Almost half of Facebook's daily users are mobile-only. Please tell those who still view mobile and social in silos.

Facebook's mobile ad revenue was 49 percent of total ad revenue during third quarter (up from 14 percent in Q3 2012).

Home Depot approaches 100,000 mobile point of sale transactions per week.

For the first time ever, ESPN mobile properties saw more unique visitors than http://ESPN.com in September.

Yet another rumor of larger iPhone has me wondering whether I'm in small group that doesn't want size changed to bigger or smaller.

Heard about a tanning salon that had its best-ever Monday after sending out its first mobile blast. Mobile success doesn’t necessarily need scale – it needs customers.

How do you feel about this one? 38 percent of children under 2 use mobile media, a new study says.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Google’s smartwatch will launch in the next few months. Marketers, please take a measured approach to wearables. It’s very early days of adoption.

Free registration for the Nov. 14 webinar with the Mobile Marketing Association, Mobivity, and Valley Yellow Pages - enabling local business to thrive with mobile https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/851664870.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - Mom, Baby and Phone Make Three

New moms spend more time on smartphones than other adults, an AOL survey says. Researchers found that new moms turned to their phones as a “lifeline”  - namely personal assistant to manage schedules, social hub, personal shopper, “informer” to get educated on a slew of new topics, and escape route to get away from the pressures of motherhood.

Wikipedia will start texting info to users in Kenya who don't have Internet access.

I haven't talked to one person who said “Great, BlackBerry BBM is on Android and iPhone”. Timing is everything.

Amazon fired away at Apple's new iPad with an ad that says the Kindle Fire HDX is "Lighter than Air".

With limited supply expected, positioning to get an iPad Air or Mini will be like going after Springsteen tickets.

It’s smart for Apple to call the new thin iPad Air. The Air laptop is beloved and considered by many – including me - as best out there.

I was asked if there is a reason for a business with 40 percent of its traffic coming from mobile to not have a mobile optimized site. None.

SMBs should look further than Foursquare ads for marketing - think permission-based databases.

By 2017, 83 percent of retailers expect to have in-store wireless and 56 percent envision having guest Wi-Fi, a new report claims.

Devices with voice recognition will top 1 billion units in 2013. I recently met someone in that space. Advancements are coming, including voice authentication like “fingerprinting”.

The U.S. healthcare industry reportedly will spend $539 million on mobile marketing by 2015.

Four years ago, less than 4 percent of emails were read on mobile. It’s now near 50 percent.

New York City, the country's largest metro area, has the lowest adoption rate of smartphones -- 48 percent. That’s a surprisingly low number.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - The Impact of Mobile On The NFL Edition

My friend Peter Knox has a four-screen NFL experience: Red Zone on the TV, Eagles on the iPad, fantasy tracking on the iPad Mini, video/chat on the iPhone. And some think that the Vince Lombardi era was the NFL’s heyday?

News that BlackBerry is pulling back from the consumer market was met by an “or vice versa’ comment by tech journalist Colin Gibbs. Exactly. Four years ago, BlackBerry had 51 percent of the North American smartphone market.

I was intrigued by a tweet on a "fully flushable toilet". I prefer one that flushes only 35 percent.

Tired of iOS7 and iPhone 5 and iPhone 5C comments? Judging by history, we're minutes from the rumor churn on iPhone 6. Maybe seconds.

Separate turns to desperate in iPhone auto-correct. I nearly gave someone a heart attack. WTF?

Several stories are out that seniors are now the growth opportunity for mobile. Yes, the technology generational divide is shrinking. 50-64 year olds spent more on tech than 18-29's over the last 12 months, according to Adobe.

End of television? Yeah, right. According to eMarketer, the TV ad spend grew 6.4 percent in Q2 2013 compared to 4.1 percent for digital display.

A mobile trend from Pew - Less "checking in"; more "here's what's near you". Yes, we’re talking about Foursquare, which now has Yelp aspirations.

Only 15-20 percent of Africans have bank accounts but 60-70 percent have mobile phones.

NPD says that over half of children in the U.S are now using smart devices.

The use of mobile news apps on smartphones and tablets has increased from 30 percent to 50 percent since 2012.

Forrester says the recipe for mobile marketing success includes big helpings of analysis. You think?

Mobile shopping is expected to take 16 percent share of holiday e-commerce says eMarketer.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - The Mobile Generation Edition

Surprisingly by about 70 percent, 90 percent of kids 8-17 say it’s OK for parents to set rules on how they use their cellphones, according to CTIA.

Meanwhile, Pew reports that 78 percent of teens have a cell phone and 23 percent have a tablet. Also, 58 percent of all teens have downloaded apps to their mobile or tablet.

I’m bored with gold iPhone stories. It's about personalization. If you don't want it, don't buy it.

eMarketer revises numbers upward to say that the U.S. mobile ad spend will rise 95 percent this year to account for 20 percent of all digital ad spend and 5 percent of total media ad spend.

Advertising Age asked if the iPad era is already coming to an end. My observations all across country loudly say otherwise.

Another from eMarketer: 86 percent of U.S. healthcare practitioners use a smartphone for professional purposes.

28 million will use Twitter on a mobile device at least monthly this year. The number is big but still under under 10 percent of subscribers.

It's not about channels, but about consumers, said a Gap mobile executive at last week’s Mobile Insider Summit. No gap in solid thinking there.

A report says that 3 percent of U.S. Internet users are on dialup. My experience says about 83 percent of hotel biz centers are, wasting our time as we wait for boarding passes to print.

The main in-store mobile activity is comparison shopping with 59 percent showrooming, new numbers say.

How much of Steve Ballmer’s resignation had to do with Microsoft’s mobile missteps? Lots.

Apple wins three times more customers from Samsung than Samsung does from Apple. Speaks to the loyalty shown by Apple users.

What's Working and Not In Mobile

I am of the age where I must admit that my best Mouseketeers days are behind me.

Still, my mobile phone delivers an ad seeking talent for Disney. Oh, and by the way, I have no kids.

My luck is better than most – how else could you explain the level of success that I have attained?

But I am not so fortunate as to repeatedly be told through an iAd that I have been selected to finish a survey in exchange for a free iPad 2, $500 gift card or an iPhone 5. What is too good to be true is not too good.

Mobile is advancing, much like summer. But we still have a ways to go to deliver on all of the medium’s promise. Relevance, personalization and trust are not nice-to-haves – they are absolute necessities.

Here is some of what is working:

Loyalty clubs, many built off of unsexy but highly effective SMS, are delivering both for the consumer and for the brand. And it is happening even at the local level.

For example, this summer, a Chick-fil-a in Olathe, KS, saw a 46 percent response rate to a product offer sent to those in an opt-in database.

Three weeks ago, 45 percent responded to another offer.

In each case, sales numbers were hit despite the giveaways.

The store manager said that mobile is working for her because she is able to engage her customers, entice them to try a new menu item, and still meet business objectives.

Separately, Corona capitalized on the undeniable marriage between mobile devices and photo-taking by creating a program that enables customers to “find,” chronicle and share their summer. Winners will be featured in a Corona ad.

In addition, Corona rolled out on-product codes that consumers can enter via their handsets for a chance to win weekly prizes.

Consumers can submit a photo via MMS that shows how they celebrate summer to the short code 24455.

A bounce-back message then prompts users to reply with their birth date and their state’s two-digit postal abbreviation to be entered into the sweepstakes.

After a photo is submitted, a follow-up message encourages consumers to opt-in to Corona’s SMS program.

Beautiful. Mobile and photos go about as well as beer and a lime. Corona's target audience not only enjoys a good time, but they enjoy sharing those moments.

Elsewhere, Starbucks now sees more than 10 percent of its transactions in the United States are made with a phone. And Starbucks is installing wireless charging mats in more stores, not only extending its digital offerings but raising the expectations of a Venti-size group of heavily caffeinated consumers.

Of course, Starbucks is not doing all this for benevolent reasons.

“Our internal measures tell us that these various digital initiatives have added demonstrable impact to our U.S. business in the third quarter, with the promise of even greater growth in the months and years to come,” said Starbucks chief digital officer Adam Brotman.

We certainly can say the same about mobile.

The opportunity is huge, but it is not a slam dunk.

Summer will soon turn to fall. I have old, tired eyes, but I am not in the market for mascara. That is for my wife’s phone across the room.

The expectations for personalization and the deliverance of value have never been greater.

(first published on Mobile Marketer - http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/opinion/columns/15927.html)

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - The "Wife Again Had It Figured Out" Edition

An augmented reality app for the two minutes it takes for Haagen Dazs to "temper"? A certain wife cuts that to 10 seconds with a microwave.

Time spent visiting retail sites on tablets and smartphones has eclipsed that of time spent shopping via desktop. And the reason why you haven’t optimized your web presence for mobile is what?

A Wall Street Journal headline said Best Buy Works To Get Its Website Up To Snuff. Wow. Snuff is me-too. Snuff-plus is called for here.

The iPhone 5S event is reported to be Sept 10. I'm unlikely to bite for an upgrade from the 5 because of the incremental change. Someone in the Apple Store told me that it would be wise to wait for the next version.

Meanwhile, a report says that one third of new smartphone owners buy an iPhone. Also, half of previous iPhone owners buy another. The repeat buyers’ number seems low.

A story asks if we check our mobile device before we go to bed and as soon as we awake. You think?

Thirty-five percent of mobile owners do mobile banking, according to a new Pew report.  Thirty-five percent of more than 330 million is a big number.

Three more top executives have left BlackBerry. It’s about three years after many of us did.

Ninety-four percent of mobile payments in the U.S. are at Starbucks. Not only are they moving their business, they are moving the mobile industry along.

A tweet says The Hackable Japanese Toilet Comes With An App To Track Poop. Finally. It's the Year of Mobile.

Two hours into a flight last week, my new MacBook Air had 9:08 of battery life left. Certainly more battery life than I had.

Notes From a Mobilized Marketer - The All-Knowing Wife Edition

I saw a story titled Apps That Know What You Want, Before You Do. Duh - I have a wife for that.

Mobile ads with four words or less supposedly receive 28 per cent more clicks. Of course, they need to be relevant words.

BlackBerry was asking for a retweet if you have had one of its devices for at least two years. Careful what you ask for. That can’t be pretty. BlackBerry’s share of U.S. smartphone sales is now 1.1 percent. Too little, too late.

I had a range of Apple experiences within 24 hours. I need a “Genius” to spend nearly half hour syncing my calendars (and, without me know until later, screwing up my MacBook Pro mailbox). I set up a new MacBook Air in 10 minutes.

Power chargers that will hack an iPhone? Security is not on most mobile users' minds, much like PCs early on.

Great tweet from CNET’s Maggie Reardon – “Not sure why people get bent out of shape about "plastic" smartphones when these are the same people who put plastic covers on them. #MotoX

Samsung is readying a new flip phone. Will the masses go wild for it? No, this isn't 2004.

Nielsen says Facebook attracts more 18-to-24-year-olds than the four major TV networks during primetime.

With Google speeding up Starbucks Wifi speed 10X, how about tackling in-flight next? Please. Pretty please.

Samsung’s Galaxy S4 reportedly burns down home. Beware - these type stories are almost always hoaxes.

I asked Siri to remind me to print a boarding pass. The reminder came back as jacket. This is acceptable all this time later?

Google has one fourth the mobile users of Facebook, but is said to have 4 times the mobile ad share.

Another calendar app is hardly news, except there is one coming from a 14-year-old who received funding.