@BasilPuglisi

Content & Strategy, Powered by Factics & AI, Since 2009

mobile

SMX: What Makes Mobile Marketing Beneficial?

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Mobile marketing changed its definition in the early 2000’s when the original meaning, which was marketing on the go, changed into mobile search marketing, which are in essence, marketing techniques carried out over a mobile device.

SMS marketing is an advertising technique that involves the collection of mobile phone numbers to add to a messaging platform database. These numbers are collected so that when a special promotion or offer becomes available, the number list owner can send out a mass message to what they hope will be future repeat customers.

SMS marketing relies on opt-in users due to practices established by the Mobile Marketing Association to help prevent unwanted messaging, similar to the protection offered by the Federal Do Not Call registry. The fact that SMS messages are commonly read in the first four minutes after receipt means that this form of marketing is highly convertible.

Social Networking

Social networks are also playing a huge part in how consumers find desired products and services even while on the go. Studies show that 1/3rd of Facebook users access the social network via mobile devices. The same study showed that 56% of mobile users find local business information via the company’s website, while 55% of them find them through other social networker’s recommendations.

A New Digital World

If we thought SMS marketing was impressive, then came the smartphone. A new world of marketing was then opened in many new forms.

  • MMS – Multimedia message service
  • Mobile Web Marketing
  • In-Game Marketing
  • Mobile Marketing via QR Codes
  • User-Controlled Media

Ever-Changing Media

So exactly what is changing about mobile search marketing? For one, it has become infinitely more complex than the simple SMS original formats. Mobile search marketing is unique not only in its format, but also in the way that it approaches the consumer. Traditional forms of marketing can be a combination of intrusive versus elusive.

Intrusive methods include telephone marketing, television advertising, and even door-to-door sales. Although intrusive methods have shown their own positive statistics about effectiveness, many elements such as increased crime rates, new laws and regulations, or increasing costs have made the intrusive forms of marketing much less lucrative in recent years.

Elusive methods are the most effective and can include in-game marketing, user-controlled media, or mobile web marketing. This type of marketing is effective in the sense that the advertisements are usually an ‘in addition to’ or bonuses. For instance, users can play the free game on their phone, or they can purchase the nearby advertisement option to achieve ‘pro’ status on the game. Users can utilize a particular browser and that browser may support and advertise their own series of media, apps, or programs.

Mobile Marketing on the Rise

Although some marketers still argue that mobile queries constitute too little of an overall end-result to make the campaign effort worthwhile, it is a notable fact that Google’s mobile query share has grown over five times in the last couple of years. Mobile search continues to grow at an accelerated rate than traditional search options.

As with any advertising campaign, offline methods should also be considered to garner online conversions. Case studies also show that 37% of consumers admit to using mobile devices to search for more knowledge about a product or service advertised via radio ads, newspaper, or outdoor methods such as billboard advertisement.

There may be no time like the immediate present to gain pioneer advantages and initiate your mobile testing and paid search campaigns right away.

Sources:

What Makes Mobile Search Marketing Beneficial?

by Leave a Comment

Mobile marketing changed its definition in the early 2000’s when the original meaning, which was marketing on the go, changed into mobile search marketing, which are in essence, marketing techniques carried out over a mobile device.

SMS marketing is an advertising technique that involves the collection of mobile phone numbers to add to a messaging platform database. These numbers are collected so that when a special promotion or offer becomes available, the number list owner can send out a mass message to what they hope will be future repeat customers. SMS marketing relies on opt-in users due to practices established by the Mobile Marketing Association to help prevent unwanted messaging, similar to the protection offered by the Federal Do Not Call registry.

The fact that SMS messages are commonly read in the first four minutes after receipt means that this form of marketing is highly convertible.

A New Digital World

If we thought SMS marketing was impressive, then came the smartphone. A new world of marketing was then opened in many new forms.

  • MMS – Multimedia message service
  • Mobile Web Marketing
  • In-Game Marketing
  • Mobile Marketing via QR Codes
  • User-Controlled Media

Ever-Changing Media

So exactly what is changing about mobile search marketing? For one, it has become infinitely more complex than the simple SMS original formats. Mobile search marketing is unique not only in its format, but also in the way that it approaches the consumer. Traditional forms of marketing can be a combination of intrusive versus elusive.

Intrusive methods include telephone marketing, television advertising, and even door-to-door sales. Although intrusive methods have shown their own positive statistics about effectiveness, many elements such as increased crime rates, new laws and regulations, or increasing costs have made the intrusive forms of marketing much less lucrative in recent years.

Elusive methods are the most effective and can include in-game marketing, user-controlled media, or mobile web marketing. This type of marketing is effective in the sense that the advertisements are usually an ‘in addition to’ or bonuses. For instance, users can play the free game on their phone, or they can purchase the nearby advertisement option to achieve ‘pro’ status on the game. Users can utilize a particular browser and that browser may support and advertise their own series of media, apps, or programs.

Although some marketers still argue that mobile queries constitute too little of an overall end-result to make the campaign effort worthwhile, it is a notable fact that Google’s mobile query share has grown over five times in the last couple of years. Mobile search continues to grow at an accelerated rate than traditional search options.

There may be no time like the immediate present to gain pioneer advantages and initiate your mobile testing and paid search campaigns right away.

 

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Google+ is Open to ALL and Google+ Leading Mobile Development

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Today Google plus went live and open to everyone. With 20 million people engaging in the first three months in its trail stage, the Google+ platform now hopes to capture the masses.

While some writers like Robert over at BundlePost are betting against Google+ and predicating it to be the threat to Google, I am confident that Google has secured itself in the mobile and cloud space. This move by Google to capture mobile so early is what will have Google on top for a very long time. Google+ is in a safe place, capturing Social Media engagement and tailoring to the mobile trend.

Google Leading in the Mobile Space:

While I will give credit to Apple and Facetime for being the first to the mobile video market, the wifi limitation left users feeling like video chat was still more Sci-Fi then reality. In comes T-Mobile and 4G with the MyTouch4G, now you can use video even when not on a wifi signal, however the user interfaces are scattered and the experience doesn’t seem to capture the social feel to being in a room with a real person.

Google Hangout is introduced on PC and groups of people start to engage, converse and learn about each other in real time in a social setting that makes you rethink about your daily appearance.  One of the first things I noticed was the trend of individuals who previously relied on a single picture having to rethink the way there where dressed, the room there where in and what was behind them. Communication skills kicked back into hi swing as the most important communication indicator was alive and kicking, body language.

This move to get a fully functioning communication tool in the hands of the largest growing market in the world should be enough to secure Google’s future.

Android & G+

When you take a look at how Android has performed in market penetration, you can’t help but realize that Google is just getting started. It’s the little things that are setting Google apart from the competition, i.e. Google Cloud contacts from the release of the G1. Androids first phone was cloud ready as anyone who stored their contacts on their google account never again had to worry about lost phones, moving contacts to new phones etc. This was done without wires and with no need for a PC or software.

Flash, love it or hate it Android got it. You almost wonder why Apple left the door open like this, but Flash adopted by the Google into Android mobile technology was the nail that broke the growth rate of the iPhone and then later allowed Android devices to surpass iPads in global sales and users.

Google+ brought lots of new features, in addition to the latest Hangouts, the G+ app allowed you to upload videos and pictures in real time to the google+ account meaning that in addition to ease of sharing, you could lose your phone during the day and still save your memories, promo photos etc.

In the end, google is innovating for the future, not just today. That’s the sign of a strong company, one I am sure my grandkids will love and hate, long after Apple and Facebook are gone.

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Twitter Tools You May Not Be Able to Live Without

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There are so many options these days when it comes to Twitter tools that users on Windows systems can implement to help them schedule tweets, manage followers, or aggregate relevant content. However, as with many things, options for Mac OS X may not be as easily found. This tool supplies users with a simple, clean interface that has easy-to-use features. Although Twitterific can be used for free, without paying for premium services, ads are displayed once per hour.

Look and Feel of Twitterific

Twitterifics screen is entirely resizable and can be used in full screen mode. Its white on black appearance may not be the most favored choice for many users but it works great for the formats it is used on. Since replies and direct messages are shown in different colors, this helps to distinguish quickly and exactly what a user may be focusing on.

Users can also configure a few of these options such as the ability to show Twitter errors as highlighted as to be easily recognized regardless of the size of device they are being viewed on. Across all devices, once a Tweet has been read, it will be dimmed.

Twitterific Coverage and Common Commands

Twitterific is available for Mac, iPod, iPad and iPhone. All of Twitterifics options are available through the click of a mouse on your desktop or the tap of a screen on other devices. Command Mac commands such as the command-W combo to close your screen also work on Twitterific.

Who Uses Twitterific?

Twitterific is currently ranked #209,891 globally and it is currently ranked as a desktop application. Twitterific users are commonly men under the age of forty-five who are highly educated.

The TweetedTimes

The TweetedTimes can generate a newspaper from your Twitter account. This can certainly help any Twitter enthusiast to aggregate the most important messages to them, which their Twitter account has picked up during a busy day. Delivering these messages in an easy to read format allows them to be viewable on many mobile devices.

Who Uses TweetedTimes?

Currently, TweetedTimes has a three-month global ranking of #50,787. Most of its users tend to be women with postgraduate educations who commonly browse from work.

The Tweeted Times features sophisticated filtering and ranking algorithms that can help to allocate the most important information, and cut out the outright spam. Users can create a newspaper from any search term and TweetedTimes newspapers are updated hourly. This real-time personalized newspaper can cut your Twitter time in half and provide you with the most important tidbits you would have happily searched for.

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Why Online Videos are Important to Your Business?

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Videos are increasingly attracting huge audiences online. People love to share online video content, especially young people. They post them on social networking sites or spread them through e mails. Marketing people say that if you are not using video in your marketing campaign, you might soon be behind the crowd.

Why is that?

Think about this simple fact: 1 minute of video equals 1.8 million words, as demonstrated by Dr. James McQuivey of Forester Research. The amount of information contained in one single frame can take 3 pages to describe. The mood, the colors, the message is seen immediately. It is a known fact that people engage more when they watch a video and tend to stay watching it. They are also happy to pass it along.

Since e commerce has become so impersonal, a video that shows the business owner, the business itself and the products makes it more personal and human. There is now a face behind the business. The choice of music in the background makes the experience fun and uplifting, retaining the audience.

How big will online video be in a marketing campaign? It will be huge the experts say. Statistics done by Cisco.com and Invodo.com reveals some amazing facts:

  • In their estimation video will be about 90% of all internet traffic in 2013.
  • 64% of retail site visitors who view video stay two minutes longer in average compared to a site that does not contain video. In the e commerce world, the longer a visitor stays on the site, the greater the chances of him turning into a buyer.
  • Between January 2010 and January 2011 viewing time of videos grew by an amazing 44.5%.
  • Video in e mail marketing has been shown to increase click through by 96%!
  • With the right optimization, video increases the chances of a front-page Google search result by 53 times.
  • Internet retailers report that visitors who view product videos are 85% more likely to buy the product than visitors who do not look at videos.

With these kinds of numbers, no wonder many experts turn to video in an attempt to get to the first page of the search engines.

Studies reveal the need for engagement from the viewers, and videos provide this kind of engagement. Just like comments and reviews on product pages, YouTube looks at the number of comments to a video when it decides which video should be on their front page. It’s more than just broadcasting, videos engage audiences and sends them to your site if the video is insightful, funny, gives information, educates and talks about people – how your product can help others to be more… what they want to be.

Where do most of those videos originate? On Google, 82% of video originate from YouTube, 3% from DailyMotion, 2% from MetaCafe, 1% from Google video and 10% from other sites which support self-hosted videos.

On Bing, 38% of the videos come from YouTube, 37% from Bing, 9% from Vevo, 4% from Fox News, 3% from CNN and other news organizations. The others, about 5%, come from different sites.

Does it mean we all need to become film makers? Not necessarily. There are many ways to create sales and promotions video; telling a story (which is the most complicated), using a simple camera and following the owner around, using screen shots, animation or just captions with music in the background to explain a complicated point. The big companies have been doing so for some years now but with modern technology, cheap cameras and free software, everyone can do it too.

Videos are an Information Experience:

Here is a law firm talking about the importantce of video, almost as if the lawyer is selling the product he just bought!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9t2RmvrfV7k]

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Tweet Tools: Increase Your Twitter Productivity with TweetSpinner

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If your direct messages inbox is full of auto-follow spam messages or otherwise delayed or old information, you are probably like most other Twitter users that do not have TweetSpinner.

Direct Messaging Inbox Archiving

TweetSpinner provides more control over many important elements of managing your Twitter account fully, accurately, and lucratively. It will allow you to finally de-spam and archive those messages cluttering up your direct message, or DM, inbox.

The moment you log on you can choose to one-click archive your DM messages to quickly clean up that inbox 200 messages at a time. This archiving process saves them to your account so that you can browse through them when you have the time, while still keeping your DM inbox clean and clear. Users are allowed to set filters on what constitutes spam and even if those messages are preferred for archives or deletion. The archived messages are stored at TweetSpinner, not on your machine.

Follower Management

TweetSpinner provides highly sophisticated follower management and analytics with easy to configure filters that will help users locate the most receptive followers while ignoring spam accounts.

It will provide an ongoing and updated display of:

  • People you follow
  • The number and percentage that do not follow you back
  • People who follow you
  • Those whom you do not follow back
  • Ratio of friends to followers

Users with paid accounts then have the option to configure, or prune, their settings, as well as setting some fairly intricate options. Depending on the level of the account, the customization for auto-following, as well as auto-unfollowing, can be incredibly detailed. Keyword following and mimic following are also options within the user Follower Management tool.

Logging onto TweetSpinner is as easy as visiting their sign in page and creating your account. Simply authorize the account and you are on your way.

Profile Rotator

The profile rotator does just as it says. However, this one allows users to important colors and background images of items you utilize on Twitter. Simply change your design at Twitter and try the import feature once more. You then have two unique designs to choose from. These can be rotated on a schedule to keep your Twitter profile interesting and aesthetically pleasing.

Since Twitter only allows for a very small bio and a URL you can now add a bit more of a profile with TweetSpinner. You can create more than one which can also be set on a schedule to rotate to help your account maintain the ability to effectively express yourself to your followers.

Other features such as Smart Tweets will help to guide you into making the most out of your 140 characters or less and the DM Outbox options can help to send out far more personalized messages than before. Their rules-based DM system will make sure that when rules you pre-set are met, a correct trigger will return a personalized message to that user.

Site navigation is as easy as it gets with most management activity occurring from within the same page.

Who Uses TweetSpinner

Currently, users are predominately between the ages of 35 and 65 with global site traffic ranking hovering at 31,003. Most are professional females who are browsing from home. In Johannesburg the site has achieved a much higher ranking at #825.

TweetSpinner does offer a free version but most who will want to use this tool for a professional account will likely want to take a closer look at paid package versions that start at $16 USD per month and can go higher for Pro versions or those accounts purchased for social media agencies.

 

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Publishing: A New E Book Revolution?

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Mike Matas: A next-generation digital book

The popularity of e books is undeniable. According to the BBC, the use of e books in the UK has quadrupled in 2010. What started with Amazon’s Kindle and continued with other publisher producing their own version, like Nook from Barnes and Noble, has gotten a tremendous push with the introduction of the iPad and the smartphone apps. Now you can have all your reading material on one portable device that can play videos as well.

Most of the e books still look like books, letters on a page, flipped with a drag of the finger, except the children’s books which have become somewhat interactive, as paper children books have been. Apparently it is easy for 3 year olds to figure out the interactive buttons on the iPad.

How about fully interactive books for adults? That is what Mike Matas presented at a TED conference in Long Beach, CA. in March 2011.  The young developer, who while at Apple, helped design the user interface and artwork of leading Apple products, has shown a demonstration of the first full length interactive book for the iPad.  The company he co-founded with Melcher Media, Push Pop Press, has presented a book called “Our Choice” by Al Gore, a sequel to “An inconvenient Truth”.

This is a book that takes advantage of everything today’s technology has to offer. It starts as a regular written page, with pictures. You can choose which page you want to see by scoring fast through the pages at the bottom. When you want to look closely at the pictures, you can pinch them out of their place and see them full screen. Then you pinch them down and put them back into the book.

The innovation continues when those pictures become narrated videos, which open and close instantly, without loading time. “Our Choice” has over one hour of documentary and interactive animation material throughout the book. Pinch it closed and put it back on the page, or keep it at the bottom for later view. All the photos are narrated as well. Some of them have interactive maps. And while it is playing you can scale it down and continue reading, you can zoom out and see where in the world the photo has been taken etc. You want to find more information about a statistic you read? Swipe right ahead to Google Earth and see how it will impacts different parts of the world, country by country. It has real interactive infographics, and an actual interaction that has been seen on the iPhone and iPad. When you blow on the side of the screen, it moves a wind turbine on screen that shows how much electri city is produced by the wind you are creating. In short – it makes the book come alive with all pertinent information about the subject, and a lot of interesting facts.

And the books are really portable. You can start reading at home on an iPad and continue where you left off on your iPhone, with all those wonderful features on a small screen.

Can you image how much fun reading and learning can be? Many smaller charter schools are already introducing tablets in their classrooms. How long will it be before the students backpacks will be thin and easy to carry?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LV-RvzXGH2Y]

 

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Mobile Business: Have All Shoppers Gone High-Tech?

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No, likely not all of them, but a recent study has shown that shoppers are now regularly checking prices online before purchasing in-store. Aware that shoppers had been checking pricing on larger items online, such as appliances, furniture, or home improvement items for quite some time, it seems this has finally carried over to everyday items such as grocery prices or even deals at local restaurants before enjoying a night out.

Shoppers Interact with Retailers Via Social Networking Sites

Many shoppers and retailers report an increase in social interactions via Twitter, Facebook, and other social networking sites, that can lead to purchases later off-line. It seems shoppers have begun to utilize these methods far more often. It is actually quite a smart idea and seems to have swayed once again, more of the power over to the shoppers.

Consumers are actually doing a great job negotiating pricing on anything from shampoo to a new washer-dryer combo. They are achieving the incredible when it comes to getting the best they can for the money available to spend. So how are they doing this?

  • By visiting the social media sites for major or even smaller retailers to browse for specials.
  • By interacting with retailers or their representatives via social networks and suggesting lower prices, providing proof of lower prices elsewhere, or simply just negotiating a special deal for themselves.
  • By suggesting helpful tips to retailers from consumers point of views.

 This interaction has definitely proven beneficial to many shoppers and encouraged them to continue to negotiate purchases from the largest to the most insignificant.

How Did This Get Started?

It is truly a mystery exactly what caused this to become a more common occurrence but a few have made some great suggestions as to why.

  • Gas prices. Gas prices have gone haywire. While many consumers consider the cost in fuel that may occur when they have to price compare via physical footwork, they have taken to the internet to save on gas funds.
  • In-Store pricing deals. Many consumers utilize pricing deals in-store such as Wal-Mart’s price guarantee that says if a consumer can bring in another stores flyer, or a coupon targeted to a specific retailer, they will meet or beat that price. Some consumers rightly assume that if price guarantees are the name of the game, the game applies everywhere. Seeking out better deals from other stores, to get better deals at their favorites has become far more common. 
  • Many may have simply headed to a retailers social media site in effort to stage the time-honored effort of saving time itself by pre-shopping for the best deals.

Interesting Shopper Statistics

There have definitely been some serious changes in the way consumers manage their shopping needs in the last few years.

  • There has been a 25% increase in price based shopping.
  • 62% of consumers report researching pricing online for the most basic items before they head to the store.
  • 80% of women admit to paying more attention to the prices on most things they buy.
  • 39% of shoppers research the prices of baby products before purchase.
  • 20% of shoppers report researching food and drink prices.
  • 33% of shoppers research their pet products prices before shopping in-store.

Online Shopping Statistics for 2011

  • 38% of consumers report purchasing online, up 5% from 2010.
  • 60% report carrying out more in-depth searches online before purchasing in-store, up from 52% in 2010.
  • 17% share that companies that provide social media interaction, or mobile applications for their stores do make price comparison shopping easier for them.

With sites like PriceGrabber, where consumers can set up alerts on pricing, even setting configurations to email or text message them when a price reaches a preset threshold, consumers are unlikely to forget that the entire retail world can be at their disposal when it comes to searching for, and finding the best deals available in the off-line shopping world.

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Skype: The Platform that Microsoft Just Bought

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An announcement on May 10th that Microsoft had bought Skype was obviously colossal business news, however, most users seem more concerned with how the eight and a half billion dollar deal will impact their user experiences.

Skype in 2010

In the past year, Skype has seemingly remained focus on providing a positive user-experience for their consumers, and that focus may have also been a driving factor behind a reported $7 million dollar loss for the company. With whispers of a holographic Skype in the works, among other improvements, it seemed to be doing fairly well in keeping up with the times though. Other key elements in important improvements to Skype in 2010 included:

  • Two way video calling for the iPhone was implemented
  • New capability for phoning friends on Facebook
  • Even the President took the first-ever Skype call at a town hall meeting to help bring the entire world into the digital dimension.

In early 2010, Skype teamed up with Citrix to provide remote desktop capabilities in GotoMeeting for Skype video chat users. This partnership brought an entire new aspect to Skype’s capabilities when it came to meeting and beating the curve for a fully bundled, big business remote meeting or educational tool.

Ending the year with a crash due to shaky servers and a possible bug in the client software, Skype may have been sent plunging towards the edge it was brought to when the decision to sell began to seem like the best one for current users.

Skype Users

It seems that everyone is using Skype for either personal reasons that can include things like communication with family in the same country, or across the globe, to large corporations that have begun to use it to conduct meetings, or even hiring processes, thereby saving immense expenses in travel and other costly elements for their companies.

Predominantly used by highly educated males ages 45 years old and up, global traffic statistics shows its three-month traffic ranking stands at #198, while the US ranks it at #281. It is also incredibly popular in other countries such as Algeria, India, and Russia. Skype is still currently located in Luxembourg.

Future positive prospects for Skype may be possible, however, Microsoft may need to go as far as needed to retain the best, brightest employees that Skype currently has while implementing lucrative changes for the products longevity. Whispers of possible changes for the Skype program have included a wide variety of possibilities.

Facebook Friendly

One of the rumors includes putting the Skype product in front of over 600 million Facebook users by integrating video chat into their social network. Although it may have been no more than a passing comment, it was mentioned around the recent sale that ‘social’ may be one of the possible new uses for a Microsoft-lead Skype.

Since Microsoft still actually owns a small piece of Facebook with a buy-in of $240 million in 2007, it seems a quite likely, time and money saving idea for their developers.

Improving Microsoft Mobile Technology

It is no huge secret that Microsoft’s Windows phones are no true leaders on the cell phone market circuits. Since Android and Apple products already have the capability to run Skype apps, it seems likely that Microsoft would now follow suit, however, it is also obvious from a marketing standpoint that not quite everyone is into the video chat scene quite yet, although it of course remains a frank possibility for future benefit.

Gaming Integration

Although the Xbox remains a very popular gaming console with off and online capabilities, for high-end gamers, other consoles still remain top priority when it comes to real-time communications.

Considering that at least 10 million Xbox users now have cameras attached to their Xboxes, those 10 million now owning the Kinect system, already have the works for setting up video chat capabilities, indeed, video chat gaming integrated capabilities, could be quite endless with Skype as their video tool, and immensely intriguing to the gaming world, another extremely lucrative industry. No doubt putting Skype on the Xbox could be a significant push forward for both products.

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Mobile Advertising is Expected to Reach 5B in 2015

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Whether you are aware of it or not, the iPad and its clones have created a revolution. They are changing the using habits of computer users. Tablets are expected to outsell desktop computers as soon as the end of this year. Coupled with the rapid rise of smartphone sales, it can potentially result in millions upon millions of additional mobile searches, sites visits and transactions done on mobile devices.

Google’s dominance is still grabbing most of the internet advertising dollars. But with over 100,000 apps and growing, even Google is trying to get a foot in the door of the applications market. Google is also doing some very interesting research on the user habits of mobile connectivity.

Google reported that display ads on Youtube increased by 50% from 2009 to 2010, selling 2 billion views per week. It is well known that Youtube is one of the most accessible and viewed mobile app.

At the end of 2010, Google surveyed 5,000 US adult users of smartphones and published some interesting statistics:

–          Activity on smartphones:

  • 81% said they use it for browsing
  • 77% did a general search. General search includes general information, search for local establishments and specific retail information
  • 68% were using different apps and
  • 48% use it for video viewing

–          Search patterns:

Action orients searches: The first on the list are the big search engines. The next most visited sites are the social media sites, after that comes retail and video content. It’s amazing to find that 90% of respondents indicated that their search resulted in direct action. One in four recommended a product to others as a result of a search.

Local information: 95% of users said they use their smartphone to locate local establishments. 88% of those follow it with action within a day. 75% say they contact an establishment as a result of the search, 61% made a phone call and 59% physically traveled to the business.

Purchase driven searches: 80% said they use their smartphone to assist them in shopping, in activities such as looking up competitive pricings. 75% of those end up making a purchase in the store.

That is why the U.S. is expected to grow to $5 billion spent on mobile advertising by 2015, according to research done by Smaato/mobileSquard. They point out that more than half of smartphone users in the U.S. did not yet see an ad on their phones yet – that is approximately 160 million users in the United States alone. Of those who did see an ad, 59% clicked but didn’t buy, 16% clicked and completed the purchase on a computer and 25% clicked and made a purchase. With the growing popularity of tablets and smartphones these number have a lot of room to grow.

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