India Mobiles

I’ll admit it, I’m late to the game when it comes to understanding the potential of Amazon’s Kindle, or any so-called “e-reader” for that matter, but as the tech progresses, I’m beginning to understand the immense marketing potential associated with the concept. Google has created an infinite goldmine by way of collecting the worlds information, organizing it and serving up highly targeted advertising alongside it.  That method has proved very beneficial for digital content, but printed material is a different story altogether.  Google has begun to digitize books and other printed material in hopes of extending its advertising reach away from Web content, but it’s a slippery slope to climb. That’s where the Kindle and the concept of e-readers come into play.

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Harnessing The Kindle’s Mobile Marketing Potential

We all rely on GPS to get us from home to the mall on Black Friday, but when we get inside how do we know where to go? There’s always the map displayed somewhere near the entrance, but what if you’re wandering around lost looking for the perfect Black Friday deal at a store that’s somewhere in the mall? There’s an app for that. MEDL Mobile’s Mall Maps iphone app has skyrocketed to the top of the must-have iPhone apps for the holiday season. It features more than 1,000 shopping centers across the US and GPS Location-based search to help you find all the malls around you, in case you want to do a multi-mall Black Friday hunt

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Mall Maps iPhone App Avoid Lost-in-Mall Black Friday Syndrome

Google is feeling extra generous this year when it comes to appreciating the small businesses looking to do big business this holiday season. As a result, Google has announced that they are enabling small businesses and other local retailers to display coupons for in-store use on mobile devices of Google-searching users. Although Google has not previously given the small business community exceptional exposure to its mobile coupon platform and prowess, Google seems poised to make up for lost time with this latest endeavor. Essentially, small business owners utilizing Google Local Business Center can quickly create and upload their mobile coupon offers.

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Google Helping SMB Owners with Mobile Coupons

AdMob’s latest Mobile Metrics Report focused on taking a look inside each operating system to analyze the distribution of requests coming from different handsets, instead of comparing smartphones platforms against each other as in previous reports. The report focused primarily on devices from RIM and devices running Android to determine the most popular handsets running each OS, in terms of mobile ad-requests.  Since we all know the iPhone dominates AdMob’s mobile ad-network, it’s interesting to see how Blackberry and Android-based phones stack up in the realm of mobile marketing. In terms of the distribution of traffic from RIM devices, the 8300 Curve series and 8100 Pearl series still make up the majority of traffic.  However newer devices such as the Tour and updated versions of the Curve (8900 and 8520) are generating an increasing percentage of RIM requests.  The Flip (8220 and 8230), launched over a year ago, has not gained much traction and generated less than 2% of RIM traffic in October 2009.  The first generation Storm generated 12% of requests and has seen its percentage share stay the same over the last year. What’s more interesting is data derived from Android-based ad-requests.

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AdMob Mobile Metrics Report: Android & RIM

Tomi Ahonen wrote an excellent piece called What happens to mobile advertising when economy comes back? that combined with a MediaPost article by Sarah Mahoney about retailers’ Black Friday plans has got me thinking about the future of mobile marketing. Ahonen’s point is that once the economy comes back to full swing advertisers will look to add new engagement marketing techniques to their plans instead of just beefing back up their budgets on the old technology. Mahoney’s article got me thinking about how retailers could use mobile campaigns during Black Friday

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Mobile Marketing after the Recession

A new survey published by Xiam Technologies indicates that users are still having difficulty accessing certain types of mobile content, and as such, it’s remaining a barrier to the mobile Web for most consumers. According to the survey, some 80 percent of users in the US and UK report some difficulty or problem when trying to access mobile content.  Time spent searching/downloading was the primary reason cited, followed by device/interface issues.  Judging by user’s responses, the means to access mobile content seems to remain the number one barrier

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Survey Finds Users Still Struggle To Access Certain Mobile Content

The Mobile Marketing Association has officially released a new definition of the term “mobile marketing.” According to the MMA, mobile marketing is described as: “A set of practices that enables organizations to communicate and engage with their audience in an interactive and relevant manner through any mobile device or network.” While easy to spot on the surface, there’s more to mobile marketing than digital coupons and the incessant ad campaigns that target our handsets. During the Mobile Marketing Forum in Los Angeles, the MMA delved deeper into the existence, function, and, yes, the definition of mobile marketing – although the organization’s language has proven confusing to some, particularly when it came to discussing the “two parts of its taxonomy.” The “set of practices” includes “activities, institutions, processes, industry players, standards, advertising and media, direct response, promotions, relationship management, CRM, customer services, loyalty, social marketing, and all the many faces and facets of marketing.” To “engage” means to “start relationships, acquire, generate activity, stimulate social interaction with organization and community members, (and) be present at time of consumers expressed need.” Furthermore, engagement can be initiated by the consumer (”Pull” in form of a click or response) or by the marketer (”Push”).

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MMA Revises Mobile Marketing Definition

With the rise of mobile marketing, you may be wondering — where do I go to get expert training and certification in the field? Here’s an answer for you — the Mobile Marketing Association, earlier this week, launched its first mobile marketer certification program for professional marketers and mobile marketing noobs alike. The training and certification will cost $349 for MMA members and $399 for non members. The MMA Track is a program which consists of three certification tiers, intensive training and assessement to progress levels of knowledge and experience.

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Mobile Marketing Association Launches First Certification Program

With the amount of potentially dangerous spam and other bogus mobile content threatening our digital way of life, it sure helps to have an extra pair to eyes to watch out for the dangers that lurk around the corner. Fortunately, Cisco has acted on this need and introduced a new (and free) iPhone app chronicling the latest security threats to computers and mobile devices by offering alerts from Cisco’s enormous internet traffic and security experts (better than 500 in all) monitoring the cyber dangers that loom large, occasionally unbeknown to us.

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Cisco Unveils New iPhone Security App

Yahoo is planning to bid farewell to its Yahoo Go mobile application in early 2010. For three years, Yahoo Go has served as Yahoo’s all-in-one native app for our favorite Yahoo services on Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, and Symbian phones. Famous for its simple and efficient access to the broad range of mobile offerings like search, messaging, news, etc., it seems Yahoo is letting go of Go in order to direct more energy and resources to the development of its mobile web efforts. “In the past 18 months, browser quality has been increasing at an accelerated rate,” Yahoo’s global head of mobile product marketing Adam Taggart says. “We’ve doubled down on our mobile web strategy.” This week, Yahoo Go users will be notified by email of the company’s decision

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No Go for Yahoo Go in 2010

With the likes of Apple and Google making huge headway in the areas of mobile marketing and app distribution via app stores, wireless carriers have been forced to play catch up.  New research suggests carriers are planning to invest heavily in “service delivery platform software and services,” or in other words internal means for self-serve mobile marketing and app distribution. Market research firm Infonetics released its latest “2009 Service Delivery Platform Software and Services” report that indicates mobile marketing and app store development are the two leading drivers behind carrier’s renewed interest in internal “Service Delivery Platforms,” due in large part to the revenue potential both concepts provide

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Carriers Rushing To Invest In Internal Mobile Marketing Platforms & App Stores

The Mobile Marketing Association redefined “mobile marketing” this week at the Mobile Marketing Forum in Los Angeles. Here’s the new official definition: “Mobile marketing is a set of practices that enables organizations to communicate and engage with their audience in an interactive and relevant manner through any mobile device or network.” I love the MMA’s new definition because it encompasses all the different tools of mobile marketing that are available today and those that will become available. Also, it brings up two very important concepts: communication and engagement. After all, if a mobile phone isn’t about communication we’ve really missed the boat.

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What is Mobile Marketing Anyway?

The Mobile Marketing Association announced the winners of the 2009 MMA Global Mobile Marketing Awards at their Fifth Annual Global Mobile Marketing Awards during a dinner yesterday evening. Each year, the MMA’s awards receive hundreds of submissions in 12 categories from companies across the globe. Winners are selected by the MMA Awards Selection Committee comprised of global industry leaders from wireless carriers, technology and content providers, agencies and industry publications. TIM Father’s Day: Gift Express by TIM, McCann Erickson & Mobext, UPS jobs – Problem Solved Mobile Media Campaign Delivers Hires, UPS & TMP Worldwide Advertising, and Who Killed Summer 09 (Vodafone Group), OMD Mobile won in a three-way tie for Best Mobile Campaign Overall. North American Winner Highlights: *Mobile Display Campaign: Pizza Hut iPhone App, Pizza Hut, Inc

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2009 MMA Global Mobile Marketing Award Winners

Millennial Media, the leading mobile ad-network who just scored a $16M round of funding , has released its October “SMART” report, or “Scorecard for Mobile Advertising Reach and Targeting.” This month’s report includes a special section dedicated to analyzing the reach, platforms and CTR data associated with mobile apps.  Though you can probably guess who dominates the mobile app landscape, the data still includes some interesting tidbits. According to the report, Apple dominated the number of total apps year-to-date with 115,00, as well as total app downloads with 100M.  In addition, Apple users downloaded roughly 11 apps per month- three times more than Android users and six times more than Blackberry users. More interesting though, was that while Apple led with the most entertainment and book apps year-to-date, Android dominated the games category with 32 percent of apps.  In terms of total app downloads, the Android platform accounted for some 20M, while Blackberry users only downloaded 300K.  While Apple’s downloads are still five times that of Androids, it still shows how quickly Android is catching on

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Millennial Releases October “SMART” Report

Google’s new mobile marketing child, AdMob, announced today the launch of a new video ad unit with real-time interactivity for the iPhone. The company claims its ad unit will be the first to bring “true interactivity to mobile video advertising,” using in-player actions that allow consumers to browse Web sites, view additional videos and more all while the video is playing. AdMob already has a slew of iPhone ad units including “Multi-Panel Banner,” “Scrolling Canvas,” and search.

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AdMob Launches Interactive Ads for iPhone Video

With Google’s three-quarter billion dollar purchase of AdMob, it gives a sense of validation for the bright future of mobile advertising.  The big players have begun to take notice at the innovation brewing at mobile-ad startups, and investors have as well. Once such innovative startup, Millennial Media, announced today that they’ve secured a $16M series C round of financing to lead the company into its next phase of continued growth in the mobile display advertising segment. With Millennial already reaching some 79 percent of the total US mobile Internet audience, the company will use it’s latest capital infusion to continue its international expansion, streamline its technology offerings, continue to forge relationships with handset, OS and service providers, and recruit world class talent to bolster its offerings.

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Millennial Media Raises $16M Round, Reaches 79% Of US Mobile Users

As a growing number of major media outlets proceed with eliminating free digital news content in favor of premium, subscription based services, a new report from Forrester Research doesn’t offer promising data to support the transition from free to paid content. According to the study, 80% of US consumers will not access the content provided by publications (both newspapers and magazines) if it is not free. Only 8% are agreeable to a subscription model for all online content, while another 8% would enjoy a paid service that includes web, print and mobile device access. The remaining minuscule 3% minority would like to see a micropayments-based model where each article comes at a particular price. “This data suggests two things: Publishers should continue to offer free, ad-supported products to the 80 percent of consumers who won’t pay for content online; and publishers should offer consumers a choice of multichannel subscriptions, single-channel subscriptions, and micropayments for premium product access,” says Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps

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80% of Consumers Won’t Pay for Mobile News

Every now and then the truth spills out in regards to how the general public as a whole views mobile marketing from an engagement standpoint.  It’s easy to get caught up in the idea that mobile marketing can do no wrong, but when it comes down to those who actually interact with the medium, it sometimes tells a different story. A recent study put out by BIGresearch took a look at the current composition of mobile marketing’s audience, and the results may surprise you.  A key finding, and one that may seem ominous to any mobile marketer, is that since June of 2008, the percentage of people who don’t like mobile marketing has increased.

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User Distaste For Mobile Marketing Is Growing

A lot of mobile app developers are happy but scratching their heads nonetheless as a result of Apple’s somewhat surprising decision to allow app developers to monitor their approval status through a new feature added to Apple’s Dev Center. According to initial reports, there are multiple status levels for apps under review, such as “ready for sale” and “rejected.” Apple is likely hoping the change will restore the faith of many developers disenchanted in recent months by both the App Store submission and approval processes. Despite the acceptance of more than 100,000 apps to the App Store, Apple and scores of 3rd party developers now have a less than positive relationship – if any relationship at all – as a direct consequence of the perceived hypocrisy in the approval process, vague rules and confounding policies, and a series of controversial app rejections that resonated with developers everywhere. Although plenty of developers and their marketing associates may not agree with the App Store’s eventual decision to accept or reject a submitted application, developers now at least be able to determine more rapidly whether to celebrate or punch a hole in the wall. Share This

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Apple Gives Developers Status Access

With Google’s purchase of AdMob , it proves even further what many have already speculated for a while- that mobile advertising will be dominated by the major players for some time to come. A few months ago, Jeff Lindsay of Bernstein Research released a report titled “The Long View: How Will The Wireless Internet Impact Online Advertising,” in which he expressed opinions on how he thinks the big players such as Google and Yahoo will take most of the mobile ad-spend over the next five years.  The reason for this, according to Bernstein, is the fact that most advertisers – when testing the mobile waters – will go to one of the major players with “legacy agency relationships” versus smaller, newer entities. We already knew Google was serious about mobile advertising with mobile enhancements to both its AdSense and AdWords programs, the addition of mobile metrics to its Analytics solution and much more- but its acquisition of AdMob will introduce the search-giants immense reach into the realm of mobile app monetization as well- AdMob’s specialty.

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Google’s AdMob Deal Solidifies It’s Future Mobile Marketing Dominance

There’s been numerous studies, surveys and analysis regarding consumer’s view of SMS marketing and how they respond to messages from advertisers, with most coming to the conclusion that SMS marketing is always welcomed by consumers as long as its worth their while. A new study put out by the DMA (Direct Marketing Association) polled consumers regarding their view of SMS marketing and found that users request much more control, as well as a sense of trust from the brands that are reaching out to them.

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Consumers Seek Control Over SMS Marketing