Apps Make Affluent Feel 'Connected' To Their Luxury Brands

by Steve Smith, Apr 30, 2012

Very high-end brands such as Tiffany’s, Rolex and Gucci have become familiar sponsors of many smartphone and tablet apps in the last year. And for good reason. The rich like their apps the same as everyone else. Well, different apps, perhaps. According to new research from Luxury Institute in partnership with mobile marketing agency Plastic Mobile, apps from Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Saks Fifth Avenue and Gilt Groupe are the most downloaded by affluent smartphone owners.

The majority of these wealthy app users are downloading the branded experiences in order to find information on products and services. And a large share of these luxe app users (93%) say they have had good experiences with the apps. Perhaps more importantly, 71% report that the app experiences make them feel “better connected” to the high-end brands. Clearly, it is important for the high end to be present and accessible on devices, since 64% of these app users say they view brands with mobile apps more favorably.

Permutations Of A Billion-Dollar Mobile App

by Adam Singolda, Apr 27, 2012

When you look at the 21st century, a long time after early innovations appeared like the lightbulb or the phone, to later innovations such as the Arpanet protocol, to later search engines and portals,  you might ask yourself what the future of innovation will look like.  Will it be about solving a problem, with something never done before on a global scale (see above list) or will it be about mashing existing things together and making them better at a global scale?  Google made the world’s information accessible. Apple made the world of devices simpler/prettier. Facebook made the world closer.  But what’s next?

Video is one of the fastest-growing markets, according to eMarketer, and there is definitely going to be a lot of innovation around video -- especially in the mobile environment. What should the video mobile experience mobile be? An app, or an HTML5 one? Both?

3DBT: Location Awareness Is Behavioral Targeting With A New Dimension

by Steve Smith, Apr 27, 2012

The emergence of the app platforms in digital media has opened up an entirely new vein of data to mine – several, in fact. With the help of smartphone-embedded GPS and tablet location awareness, an app maker can know exactly when and where someone is referencing his content or functionality. But that is only one piece of the contextual puzzle. To make richer decisions about what the use cases are for mobile media, we need to paint richer portraits of context. The possibilities for leveraging the location data layer are at least as exciting as behavioral targeting was back in the early days of the Web, when we started to see that all of those clicks told us volumes about what people were after.

The start-ups are piling in. Some like PlaceIQ are profiling locations not only by resources nearby but by activities that occurs within areas at any given moment. They are aimed toward advertising and targeting mobile ad inventory at specific places and times.

Samsung Aims to Get in Touch With Media Players

by Walt Mossburg, May 1, 2012

Here’s a shocker: Not everyone wants to buy a smartphone.

Parents, for example, often balk at paying high monthly cellular-data bills for their teens and tweens and would rather they stick with simpler phones, if they have phones at all. And even some adults prefer simpler, less costly phones.

For a lot of these users, a popular solution has been what’s called a connected media player: Essentially a smartphone without cellular voice and data access, and without the monthly cellular bill. And the king of that category has been Apple’s iPod touch, which starts at $199. A Wi-Fi-only device, the touch looks like a thinner iPhone, with the same high-resolution 3.5-inch screen. It runs most of the same apps, handles email and Web surfing, and is a very capable hand-held game machine, music and video player, and photo viewer.

Attribution: IgnitionOne Gives Marketers Another View

by Laurie Sullivan, May 1, 2012

IgnitionOne will unveil features Tuesday to its Digital Marketing Suite (DMS) that allow marketers to compare multiple attribution profiles from the Analytics section of the tool. Each attribution path will show the credit attributable to media, such as display, search, video and social ads.

The tool allows marketers to test attribution profiles that are not based on the last-click model. It also gives marketers better insights to determine the best attribution profile and to enable them to make it actionable with automated optimization.

"If your attribution strategy is only looking at conversion data, you are missing out on 97% of the information available," said Eric Carlyle, SVP and knowledge architect at IgnitionOne. "Pay attention to media that helps drive the often-ignored middle funnel. This can be made possible by optimizing media that drives engagement in addition to conversions."

Kindle Fire Boosts Amazon Digital Sales

by Mark Walsh, April 27, 2012

Amazon’s first-quarter results suggest its strategy of selling a cheap tablet computer to drive digital sales is starting to pay dividends. The e-commerce giant attributed its 19% rise in media sales during the quarter in part to e-books, movies and music being purchased through the $199 Kindle Fire tablet it launched in November.

Said Amazon CFO Thomas Szkutak during a call with analysts:  “When you look at our North American media growth from Q4 to Q1, you're seeing that accelerate.”

As a result, Szkutak said the company would continue to add more content across all digital categories. Amazon continued to expand its catalog of offerings in its Prime Instant Video service during the quarter, for example, through licensing agreements with Discovery Communications and Viacom, bringing thousands of episodes from MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and the Discovery Channel.

Ask.com Readies Investments To Supplement Q&A Search

by Laurie Sullivan, Apr 27, 2012

Ask.com will likely make a series of investments this year to support its question-and-answer platform, capitalizing on the company's core technology. It has begun to test application programming interfaces that give developers the building blocks to design mobile and desktop applications.

The move would create a network of app developers supporting services, publishers and more.

"We are at the beginning stage," said Doug Leeds, Ask CEO, who described the API project as a test, or "a little bet," that could become interesting. "We're at the stage as a company where we're going to have to make a couple of big bets, and a bunch of little bets."

While Leeds declined to talk about "big bets," such as acquisitions supported by its deep-pocketed parent company IAC/InterActiveCorp and capital generated from the search business, he did explain how "intelligent investments" in technology would make sense. While IAC has made a few acquisitions, the search business has not invested in companies to supplement what it does.

Moms Take Pinspiration To The Next Level

by Jenny Vandehey, May 4, 2012

The other week, Pinterest moved in to the No. 3 spot as the most-popular social network in the U.S, trailing only Twitter and Facebook, eclipsing LinkedIn, Tumblr and other more seasoned social sites. Where Pinterest is winning is with women, and, in particular, with moms.

It is hard to imagine moms, the most time-strapped community, using their precious minutes reserved for sleeping, pampering, cleaning or relaxing, to pin items to their boards. Pinterest is time-consuming, yet it seems that moms are willing to trade those last few hours of sleep in the morning for a good pinning session.

But moms have gone beyond simply hunting for ideas and are taking their Pinterest inspiration boards to the next level, and turning browsing into action.

Apple Remains Mobile Rev Leader

by Mark Walsh, Apr 28, 2012

In a report last September, Yankee Group dubbed Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook the “Four Horsemen” of what it called the mobile content revolution. The mobile-focused research firm has since updated its findings, estimating that more than half the collective $200 billion in revenue of the four tech giants came from mobile sources.

Considering that Apple’s portion accounted for the vast majority of that $100 billion-plus in mobile revenue, however, Gladys Knight and the Pips might be a more apt metaphor. Still, the companies together drove three-quarters (76%) of worldwide mobile app downloads and ad revenue last year.

The big payoff is yet to come, with mobile content revenue expected to grow at an annual rate of 35% in the next three years, from $10 billion in 2011 to more than $43 billion in 2015. That compares to only 10% annual growth for mobile device sales.

Mobile Video on Pace to Surpass Web Video in 2012

by Daisy Whitney, Apr 28, 2012

The mobile video ad market will surpass the online video ad market later this year.

That’s a bold prediction, but it’s one Tod Sacerdoti, CEO of ad network BrightRoll is making based on ad requests he’s seen. “It’s happening fast and people are not quite comprehending the speed. By the end of this year we are pretty confident that more than half of all digital video ads will be mobile,” he said.

In March alone, more than 40% of the global video exchange requests at BrightRoll were for mobile. A year ago that figure was less than 5%, underscoring the rapid trajectory for mobile video, especially in the last few months. Sacerdoti said the number of global mobile ad requests BrightRoll handles has grown 4000% in the last year. Web requests are still rising too, at about 645% year over year.

Study Finds Gen Y Responds To App Ads

A new study by mobile application company Tapjoy and market research firm Interpret polled 2,000 consumers on mobile app attitudes and usage. The study found that adults 25-34 are more likely to value the influence of advertisements, and they recall seeing more ads while using mobile apps, particularly video ads or fully sponsored/branded apps. They also recall a larger number of ads per single app use: seven, compared to six among the total population.

Once members of this age group saw an ad within an app, half of them decided to click on it, versus 45% of typical app users. Twenty-eight percent of people 25-34 and 29% of those 18-24 have followed an ad to download another app, compared to 24% of total app users. Over one-third of adults 18-34 have downloaded an app to earn rewards, compared to 29% of typical users.