Mobile

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There’s no shortage of data that indicates that multicultural mobile users generally over-index their use of SMS, mobile web, and mobile advertising, as well as smartphone adoption. Research will also tell you that Hispanic tablet adoption is occurring at a greater rate than any other market segment, including African-Americans, and significantly ahead of general market. It also reveals that 31 percent of African-American consumers click through mobile ads versus 21 percent of the general market, and that Hispanics are cutting the cord and getting rid of their landlines faster than any other segment.

These are helpful data points; but it’s not research that allows brands, marketers and media companies plan their strategies because it describes the market as it is now, not how it will be. To help companies understand how multicultural mobile targeting will likely change in the fast-evolving world of digital communications we have conducted our own qualitative and quantitative research.

As a result, we have identified three market dynamics that will impact multicultural mobile targeting in the next 18-24 months: 1) the proliferation of 4G services and devices; 2) location-based services (LBS); and 3) the need for brands to “blend” all digital, social and mobile campaign elements to drive a personalized experience.

Granted, one could say that these dynamics will impact all mobile users everywhere on the planet. However, in a multicultural context, these drivers will be undeniable game-changers.

Growth of 4G

4G networks promise greater upload and download speeds, aimed to enhance the customer experience. These higher speeds will drive usage among multicultural demographics in one primary area: video sharing and streaming.

According to industry research firm Nielsen, in the US, Hispanics on average spend 20 percent more time on streaming video over mobile than the rest of the population (four hours and 20 minutes per month versus three hours and 37 minutes).

What’s more, research from Google indicates that African-Americans over-index versus other segments in accessing video-sharing websites via their smartphones (49 percent versus 43 percent).

Anecdotally, we at one50one see a much higher percentage of African-American and Hispanic audiences watching live performances via their mobile device. For example, leading up to the Allstate BCS National Championship football game on January 8, 2012, the pre-game festivities included a concert headlined by Cee Lo Green that was broadcast on Facebook and featured on Twitter using the Allstate and Cee Lo feeds.

Tens of thousands of followers watched the live streaming Facebook broadcast, and ultimately the Allstate Facebook page counted more than 13,000,000 impressions during the campaign, largely driven by views of the video.

Read between the lines, and the outcome is clear. As mobile devices become more sophisticated and feature rich, and 4G networks enable faster download speeds, video sharing and streaming usage rates is poised to skyrocket among diverse populations.

Location-Based Services

Regardless of the content or frequency of location-based mobile targeting, both of which can be touchy subjects with consumers when marketers abuse the medium, industry figures reflect the potential receptivity of multicultural audiences.

The use of SMS is much higher among diverse mobile users. In fact, according to Nielsen, African-American consumers average about 780 text messages per month, more than Hispanic and dramatically more than Asian/Pacific Islander or White consumers. This level of receptivity toward SMS bodes well for marketers pushing location-based offers and promotions via text notifications.

Based on usage trends, multicultural mobile users are more receptive to location-based offers and more likely to respond to them. As location becomes more precise with sub-one-meter accuracy, the opportunity for marketers should be huge.

Personalized experience

The concept of integrated marketing is well known, and the same practice can be applied to “blend” all digital, social, and mobile campaign elements to drive a personalized experience for consumers.

Despite the generality that diverse audiences over-index in the use of their mobile devices, each individual accesses the Internet in his or her own personalized way. Thus, brands and marketers need to cover all the bases across digital, social, and mobile domains.

During a recent campaign with global cognac brand Hennessy, a multi-channel DSM strategy was deployed to engage both the brand’s followers as well as those of its campaign partner, world-renowned contemporary artist, Kaws, who designed a limited-edition label for the Hennessy V.S. bottle. The digital strategy involved a series of video shorts to engage consumers in the story of how the label was created and produced. Visiting Hennessy’s headquarters in Cognac, France, Kaws narrated the videos, discussing how the Hennessy craftsmanship inspired the label artwork. Filming also occurred at Kaws’ New York City studio. To keep consumers engaged over time, the campaign released the videos at intervals and through various digital channels.

The mobile strategy included a custom-branded QR code using Kaws-inspired colors and an image of the actual bottle. The QR code was printed on each limited-edition bottle and on all press materials. A Kaws‑branded mobile website provided a destination for the QR code. The website – a simple, easy‑to‑navigate page – prompted visitors to watch the videos. In addition, users could download the label as wallpaper for their mobile phones, access cocktail recipes, and locate stores that carried the limited-edition bottle on an interactive map.

The social strategy spread awareness about the campaign primarily through Facebook. Calls-to-action to “Like” Hennessy on Facebook were featured as a prominent item on the mobile website, directing consumers to share it with friends.

By engaging across digital, social, and mobile platforms, Hennessy reached its followers through various delivery channels that personalized each individual’s interaction with the brand. As a result:

• The videos obtained more than 7,000 views across multiple channels
• The wallpaper was downloaded more than 101,000 times in the first three months of the campaign
• The custom-branded QR code obtained 1.3 million scans over the course of six months – a mobile industry record
• The campaign was named Mobile Campaign of the Year by a leading mobile marketing publication

The bottom line:

While multicultural mobile targeting can present challenges, detailed research and experience can help isolate trends in adoption and mobile usage among diverse populations. New 4G and LBS technologies will change the landscape for marketing to multicultural audiences. However, by effectively blending digital, social, and mobile strategies, brands and marketers can ensure they cover those areas where diverse audiences over-index and leverage those areas to perform high-impact, high-return mobile campaigns.

About Troy:

A. Troy Brown is the chief architect and president of one50one, a leading provider of DSM (digital/social/mobile) strategies in the digital entertainment and mobile marketing industries. With more than two decades of executive experience in digital platforms and product delivery, Troy has fostered digital and mobile content and marketing deals with Sony Pictures, Sony Music Group, Universal Music Group, Starbucks Entertainment and the first ever mobile branded content deal with Lucas Films. He also has secured direct international content deals with Tier 1 mobile carriers worldwide and premium online storefronts including Heineken, Amazon, Ford, iTunes, Napster, Rhapsody, Apple, Best Buy, Belvedere, Hennessy and Magic Johnson Enterprises and Walmart.com, among others. Troy sits on the board of several technology companies, including Express Mobile and IFK. Troy earned degrees in business administration and mathematics from St. Michaels College and has an Executive Certification in Leadership from The Wharton School of Business. In addition, he holds Digital Alpha IV Certification from Bellcore Laboratories. Follow Troy on Twitter (@mrone50one).

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Is voice the new battlefield as companies (Apple, Google, Microsoft, Nuance) jockey for position to control the voice interface and our personal search and assistance experiences? Roberto Pieraccini, industry veteran and author of new book The Voice in the Machine, looks and the evolution of voice in computing and communications and maps out the future of mobile voice and beyond.

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If you watch Kubrick’s 1968 classic movie “2001 A Space Odyssey” today, you will certainly notice that many of technologies we enjoyed in 2001, not to mention those we enjoy today, are absent from the movie. Everything looks so dated, so sixties: green alphanumeric terminals, no display windows, primitive graphics, no mouses, no portable tablets or wireless devices, no Web. People take notes with pencil and paper; they don’t consult Wikipedia for advice.

On the other hand, the intelligent, murderous, omnipresent computer that—I’m tempted to say “who”—controls the spaceship, HAL-9000, speaks and converses like a human. Its voice is soothing, it appears kind but determined, and it seems to have emotion.

While we have advanced way beyond most of the technologies portrayed in the movie, with gadgets that even visionaries such as Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick could not dream up, the conversational and general intelligence of today’s computers seems lame at best when compared with HAL’s. And this is even more striking because we have been trying to build “computers that understand speech” for 60 years.

Yes, 60 years. Why is that?  Is speech technology so far behind our expectations of a HAL-like machine that we should give up, or is it advancing along a different path of useful, but not human-like, applications that make our life easier?

This question is at the core of my book The Voice in the Machine, the first book to make the science and technology of speech understanding computers accessible to a general audience and track the 60-year journey that brought us to its applications today.

The mechanics of speech

Speech and language are complex phenomena that are not completely understood. Their complexity, as I explain in the book, is one of the reasons why machines cannot yet engage in spoken conversation as well as humans. We understand, to a certain extent, the mechanics of speech production and perception. But as we move closer to the inner workings of the brain, our knowledge moves from the realm of facts to that of hypotheses.  We can hypothesize different levels of abstract cognition in humans — from the lower acoustic and phonetic, to the lexical, morphological, syntactic, and semantic, up to human knowledge of the world — and we can try to mimic them in computers.

But we don’t know exactly how the human brain processes the complexity and infinite variety of language. That lack of precise knowledge is one of the reasons we can’t quite build a perfect replica, in a machine, of the human ability to talk and understand. However, even with limited knowledge of how humans work, we have built useful machines that interact with speech.

From voice dialing in your car to voice-recognition-based automated telephone customer care, people can issue commands and get a response. In the case of customer care centers, we have access to the right answers right away, without having to wait in a queue for the ‘next available agent.’

Siri changes the rules

The 60-year journey that culminated in current speech technology is marked by alternate phases of success, failure, hype, and disillusion. The tipping point that enabled modern speech technology was the development, in the late 1970s, of a mathematical model called the Hidden Markov Model, or HMM, and its application to the problem of speech recognition.

While the methods experimented with before required laborious accumulation of knowledge by expert linguists, HMMs allowed systems to learn the characteristics of speech, and as a consequence allowed its recognition both directly, from large numbers of transcribed utterances, and automatically. All modern speech recognition engines, both in research and in the commercial world, are based on the incremental evolution of the HMM paradigm.

The large corporate research centers, the giant ivory towers of IBM, AT&T Bell Labs, and Microsoft, were among the first to apply the HMM models to bring us huge advances in speech recognition technology. But it was the adventurous entrepreneurial spirit of young and agile startups like Dragon, SpeechWorks and Nuance that moved speech technology to a new and exciting level.

Why were these nimble newcomers able to compete head-on with the R&D giants? They had the agility, focus, and low costs that allowed them to get into small but market-shaping deals, and pursue a  strategy that the giants—like AT&T, IBM, and Microsoft — lacked. It was the ability to develop solutions that drove the adoption of speech recognition while simultaneously working to improve its core technology, rather than relying on third parties to pick it up and use it.

Siri stakes its turf

The rest is history. By exploiting an aggressive M&A strategy and relentlessly incorporating all the smaller players, Nuance became the 800-pound gorilla we have today in the speech technology arena.

However, the game is changing.  The use of speech recognition in smartphone applications has created a new consumer environment and has brought new players to the speech arena. For several years, Google has been investing in mobile voice search, which allows smartphone users to search the Web by voice. Apple, which has been dormant in speech technology for decades, has licensed technology from Nuance and introduced Siri, one of the first commercial and mass-marketed realizations of the vision of an omniscient personal assistant.

These new paradigms of speech recognition have created a wave of excitement and interest in the field of speech recognition. There is a new energy not only in the commercial space, but also in research. We know that speech understanding is not a solved problem.  While sophisticated design and engineering can make it work well in some limited, although remarkable, applications, its capabilities are still far from those of humans.

Whether we will ever be able to converse with a machine like HAL-9000, or witness the evolution of incrementally better “please tell  me the reason you are calling about” applications is an open question that will find, hopefully, some answers during our lifetime. In the meantime, Siri sets new expectations that the industry can’t ignore. More consumers will expect — even demand — to use speech with a wide variety of devices, not just mobile, but also home appliances, kiosks, TVs and everything in between (!).

As a result, speech will soon become the universal and de facto interface bridging our digital and physical worlds, and opening up a world of opportunity for existing and new companies. The pace of change will be phenomenal, matched only by the speed at which research works to identify and solve the fundamental problems of speech and language in order to build better “computers that understand speech.”

About Roberto

Roberto Pieraccini has always been interested in computers that understand speech. He started work at CSELT, a telecommunications research center in Italy, in 1981, when he built his first speech recognition machine. In 1988 Roberto was invited to visit Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, NJ. His one-year visit became a permanent job and a life-long passion. He enjoyed the fervent scientific atmosphere of Bell Labs, and then AT&T Shannon Labs until 1999. But Roberto wanted to experience first hand how a small startup can put technology into practice at a faster pace than large corporate research centers, and so joined SpeechWorks, which contributed hugely to the modern speech industry and is now known as Nuance. In 2003 he joined IVM research, and the in 2005 SpeechCycle as its CTO. In 2012 Roberto had a unique opportunity to expand his horizons beyond speech technology, and accepted the position of director of the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI) in Berkeley, CA. ICSI is an independent research organization, close to the University of California at Berkeley, that pursues advanced research in many areas of computer science, such as networking, security, speech, vision, artificial intelligence, linguistics, computational biology, computer architectures, and theoretical computer science. In addition to his work, Roberto is a photographer, storyteller and writer. Follow Roberto on Twitter (@RobertoPieracc).

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• M-Pulse: Mobile Voice Analysis & Trends; Will Apple Siri Set The Bar?(mobilegroove.com)

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• M-Pulse ANALYSIS Mobile Voice: Nuance Talks Multi-Screen, Multi-Tasking(mobilegroove.com)

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• M-Pulse: Mobile Voice Analysis & Trends; Will Apple Siri Set The Bar?(mobilegroove.com)

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• M-Pulse ANALYSIS: How Will Battle Around Mobile Voice Play Out?(mobilegroove.com)

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• Nuance now processing 2 billion mobile voice commands annually, even without Apple’s Siri (thenextweb.com)

Who are mobile financial users (people who engage with finance content and advertising on the mobile devices)? How can finance brands — including brands in insurance, banking, financial services and asset management — plan effective mobile strategies to engage their audience?

Tough questions. Fortunately, Mobile Intel: Finance, the latest in a series of Mobile Intel reports, provides actionable insights into what mobile finance users want and how brands can  benefit.

Affluent, passionate and loyal

Mobile finance users are tech-savvy (80 percent own a smartphone and 37 percent also own a tablet or e-reader). Compared to the overall mobile audience mobile finance users over-indexed on almost all major tablets and e-readers.

All the more reason for finance brands to create and deliver a rich tablet experience, whether through a branded app of mobile-optimized website.

But mobile users also have distinct tastes (beauty & fashion), passions (environmental causes) and behavioral characteristics (confidence) that provide important clues about the approaches and campaigns that will allow finance brands to align themselves with these interests and thus engage their target audience more effectively.

Specifically, mobile finance users consider themselves environmentally-friendly, health-conscious and influential. They are also 59 percent more likely to consider themselves a “tech geek” than the overall mobile audience, and 50 percent more likely than the total mobile audience to see themselves as fashion-conscious.

Interestingly, 37 percent of mobile finance are also “risk takers” – with nearly half (48 percent) of them proud to identify as such. They are also affluent and over-index in the $75,000+ and $100,000 income brackets.

Finally, mobile finance users have distinct attitudes toward brands they do business with (preferring brands that reflect their style, for example) and tend to stick with brands they like and trust.

Against this backdrop, it’s easy to imagine ideal (and perhaps obvious) approaches that would allow finance brands to reach and impress this unique audience. I’m thinking here of campaigns that pair personal finance products with personal lifestyle (high-fashion, high-tech, high-performance cars, high-profile celebs).  But brands should also think outside the box and consider matching their marketing with the other types of content mobile finance users access as part of their routine.

To this end the report also takes a deep dive into the types of content mobile finance users access/engage with (most frequently) on their mobile devices. Beyond finance content, they spend time on apps and sites focused on weather (84 percent), maps (74 percent), general news (67 percent), sports info (58 percent), entertainment news (58 percent) and tech news (47 percent).

Our finance habit

The good news: the Millennial Media/comScore report — with its important clues and insights into the interests, activities and behavioral characteristics of mobile finance users — supports finance brands as they plan and execute campaigns to reach users at scale.

The even better news: the advance of mobile commerce is driving a new phase of growth in how we use finance apps. A new survey of 1,000+ UK consumers conducted by Lightspeed Research (part of Kantar and WPP) points out that finance and banking is becoming what we do on our connected devices — full stop.

Specifically, Games and Business are the most frequently used tablet apps, followed by Finance/Banking, Entertainment and Health & Fitness.

No doubt form factors, screen size and the nature of our socially networked lives account for the differences in our app usage and preference on smartphones.  The survey shows Social Networking, News and Weather are the most frequently used apps. (Interestingly, these app categories mirror the content categories listed in the Millennial Media/comScore research — indicating a wealth opportunity for brands that harness  a variety of relevant content types to address and engage their audience.)

Big spenders, focused strategies

Finance brands ‘get’ mobile and understand the perfect match between our devices (personal, portable and packed with features that help us manage our lives) and financial services (insurance, banking, asset management), which are by nature personal, private and fiercely individual.

To take advantage of this finance brands have consistently increased their commitment to mobile, shifting ad spend from other media channels to connect with their target audience on the devices that matter most.

In fact, ad spend by the Finance vertical in 2011 grew over 300 percent worldwide compared with 2010. Moreover, Finance was the number one global brand advertising vertical on the Millennial Media platform in 2011 (ranked by spend), showing steady growth throughout the year.

Interestingly, mobile finance campaign goals were (and continue to be) squarely focused on lead generation and registration, encouraging users to apply for new banking and financial services accounts, apps, credit cards, insurance coverage and advice.

In fact, when compared with the goals of advertisers across all verticals on the Millennial media platform, finance brands focused much more heavily on lead generation than any other advertising vertical (70 percent vs. 25 percent of all other verticals).

The top targeting method used by finance advertisers (34 percent) was Content (running content-targeted campaigns on apps or sites within a specific content category such as news or weather). This was followed by Tactical targeting, a method used by 27 percent of advertisers focused on reaching audiences based on device type, carrier or operating system.

My take:

Who is the mobile finance user? This report tells us they are young, wealthy and confident. But they are also health-conscious, environmentally-friendly and likely to stick with brands they like and trust. (They are even willing to pay more for a brand they trust). Who are the finance advertisers? They correctly understand the lucrative link between mobile (personal devices) and their offer (personal finance products and advice). They have also shifted significant ad spend to mobile and focused the majority of these campaigns on lead generation and registration, objectives associated with the top of the purchase funnel. (By way of background, the stages of the purchase funnel are Awareness, Engagement, Consideration, Conversion and Loyalty.)

Connect the dots, and the way is clear for finance brands to broaden their campaign goals beyond brand awareness and focus more resources on creating and building lasting brand loyalty. Mobile finance users (with their tendency to pick a brand and stick with it) would likely respond well to campaigns aimed at CRM and boosting loyalty.

The research also highlights another development finance brands must factor into their strategies: the shift in how we access and interact with finance content and services. As I showed, Lightspeed Research reveals finance and banking apps lead the pack when it comes to the list of apps we access most frequently. Meantime, Millennial Media/comScore research reports an increasing willingness by mobile users to interact with finance companies via branded mobile applications. Given the high number of mobile finance users who own a tablet (and a raft of reports forecasting explosive tablet growth), it makes sense to deliver a suite of branded apps across a variety of operating systems backed up by a solid mobile advertising strategy to drive traffic to – and continuous use of – those apps.

The bottom line: The explosion of mobile commerce and mobile payments is moving mobile financial services such as banking into the center of our daily digital routine. Finance is THE vertical where supply (advertising/content) and demand (our interest in interacting with it) are in synch. It’s a great opportunity and this report covers all the bases to help finance brands grasp it with both hands.

ANALYSIS OF MOBILE ADVERTISING NEWS, STRATEGY AND BEST PRACTICES IS SPONSORED BY MILLENNIAL MEDIA.

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• Total global mobile revenues are forecast to hit $1.5 trillion in 2012, which is equal to over 2 percent of global GDP.
• The report also found that 2012 will be the first year that non-messaging data revenues make up the majority of the overall global data revenue (53 percent). SOURCE: http://www.chetansharma.com/GlobalMobileMarketUpdate2012.htm

Chetan Sharma also does the math to show penetration of mobile phones is greater than any other technology, and more accessible than safe drinking water and electricity.

• In fact, mobile devices are now “exceeding traditional computers in unit sales and revenue.” In the U.S., for example, 70 percent of device sales are now smartphones. Overall, Samsung and Apple now account for half of the smartphone unit share and 90 percent of the profit share.
• Upgrades and new devices are most likely to trigger consumers to start shopping. Almost half (48 percent) of consumers purchased their phone because they were eligible for an upgrade while 31 percent purchased because they wanted the latest and greatest device.
• SOURCE: http://www.chetansharma.com/GlobalMobileMarketUpdate2012.htm

Android has a serious monetization problem according to a new report from Flurry.

• The eye-opener: For every dollar of iOS revenue, developers only get 24 cents from Android.
• Flurry hints lack of a seamless payment system is to blame. Google Wallet, a new mobile payments system, was supposed to help solve this problem — but doesn’t. Peter Farago, VP of Marketing at Flurry explains: ”Google Wallet has limited penetration; there is commerce friction. Compare this to other platforms. With iOS, you can link your phone to your iTunes account and download an app with one click.”
• SOURCE: http://blog.flurry.com/bid/79061/App-Developers-Bet-on-iOS-over-Android-this-Holiday-Season

Where is the real opportunity? App analytics company Flurry reports that video and photo apps are setting new growth records.

• In fact, photo and video was the biggest growing app category outside games between October 2011 and March this year.
• In terms of minutes spent per active user, the category increased by 89 percent, followed by music at 72 percent.
• SOURCE: http://blog.flurry.com/bid/84831/Mobile-App-Growth-Led-by-Video-Sharing-YouTube-in-the-Crosshairs

And finally — another survey report that confirms mobile marketing goes a long way toward increasing revenue in the retailing sector.  According to ABI Research’s Technology Barometer:

• 45 percent of smartphone users with a retailer-branded app visit the retailer’s store more often.
• But only 25 percent of the respondents had downloaded a retailer-branded app.
• SOURCE: http://www.abiresearch.com/research/1011962

Editor’s note:

MobileGroove has partnered with éclat Marketing — a company that has consistently delivered breakthrough PR campaigns based on a deep understanding of developments impacting mobile, technology, and our society at all levels — to bring you Mobile Data Points.

This regular feature, which will highlight the mobile reports and insights you need to know to plan and run your business, is curated by Sophie Young, a member of the éclat team who has a passion for mobile trends, apps and her BlackBerry. If you have a report or survey you think should be included in this regular roundup, then reach out to Sophie directly via email sophie@eclat.co.uk or Twitter (@PheeYoung).

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Thank you for your question. I will be so bold (What?! A cocky marketing guy??) as to say that you can pin ANY of your marketing content on Pinterest. I’ll show you how.

A reminder that the opinions expressed here are my own, and come from my personal experience managing social marketing campaigns, leading social marketing teams, and consulting for social marketing clients. Every brand is unique. Use what works for you. Toss the rest!

Pinterest can be an easy win for B2C and B2B marketers. Why? Because Pinterest is a fast, easy, and free communications channel with incredible flexibility. Moreover, Pinterest is receiving a huge amount of both niche and mainstream media coverage, additional attention that is expected to continue for the foreseeable future. The sooner you begin using Pinterest, the sooner your business will benefit from this positive multiplier effect, and the faster YOU will climb the Pinterest learning curve for your brand(s). Said differently, everything you do for your business – and share on Pinterest – will receive more than its fair share of trade and mainstream media coverage. What marketer doesn’t want that!

Note that there are a near equal number of Pinfans (Pinterest enthusiasts) and Pin-”haters”. The Pinfans proclaim Pinterest to be a silver-bullet for marketers. The Pin-haters argue that Pinterest has zero value for business. Your results will depend on your audience, your brand, and…your skills.

Pinterest is simply a communications channel – albeit an incredibly powerful and cost-effective one – that allows you to engage your target audience. Debating whether Pinterest is the holy grail of marketing, OR a waste of time, is missing the point. Pinterest has given marketers a sound thump on the head that marketing has become increasingly visual, a trend we ignore at our [and our brands’] peril.

As a relatively new communications channel, Pinterest is experiencing a period of rapid innovation and experimentation. There’s plenty of room for marketers to jump in now, explore where the highest ROI is, and identify their best practices for this new social network. Please share your experiences on what works for your business on Pinterest in the comments section below!

To get us started, let’s begin with a quick recap of Pinterest’s four building blocks: the pin, the board, the like, and the almighty repin.

What is a “pin”?

A pin – which can either be an image or a video file – is content you post to one or more of your boards (see below). You can ‘pin’ in one of two ways:

1. You can pin directly from a website using Pinterest’s “Pin It” bookmarklet [after you’ve added the bookmarklet to your web browser].
2. You can also pin by directly uploading a file from your computer.

Please note that the process to tag/identify your content (and its URL) differs slightly depending on your approach. When you add a pin using Pinterest’s “Pin It” button, the URL of the source link is added automatically. When you add a pin from your computer, you will need to manually type in the URL you want associated with your image. As with all marketing content you publish to the Internet, you want your pins to have SEO-optimized images, names, descriptions, and URLs.

What is a “board”?

A board is a space you create on your Pinterest profile, which can either be empty (the Pinterest equivalent of being “under construction”), or contain one or more pins. You will want to fill your boards with brand-relevant images and/or videos, and their associated cover images, names, and descriptions. To answer the obvious question, I have not yet seen a limit to the number of pins you can have on a single board.

What is “liking” [a pin]?

Liking a pin adds the image/video to the “Likes” section of your profile. Think of this as “favoriting” a tweet on Twitter or “liking” a post on Facebook. Liking a pin is another way for you to engage with your audience. Note that liking a pin does not add the image to any of your boards, as does repinning [below].

What is “repinning” [a pin]?

Repinning a pin adds the image/video to one of your boards. Think of this as “retweeting” a tweet on Twitter. When you repin a pin to your board, you can also edit the repinned pin’s description to best suit your own marketing and SEO strategies. Again, this is analogous to a manual retweet (also called a modified tweet or “MT”) on Twitter. It says you like the person’s content so much that you want to post it so your own followers can see it. At the same time, you also want to tweak it to best suit your particular marketing objectives. The best example of this is where the person pins the image, but does not bother to add a description to their pin. Adding just a few words makes the pin more SEO-friendly.

Note that a repinned pin’s URL (source link) is added automatically. Just like”Likes” on Facebook and retweets on Twitter, you want your pins to be repinned. This is what exposes your brand to new people within your target audience, and makes Pinterest content so viral.

What else do I need to know to get started using Pinterest?

Like any social network, to use Pinterest, you first need to create a profile. Remember, the best practice is to use the same handle and avatar photo that you use on your other branded social network profiles. Therefore, if you use facebook.com/MYbrand and twitter.com/MYbrand, you should use pinterest.com/MYbrand.

Some users have criticized Pinterest’s user interface (UI) as being “awkward”, “klunky”, and”still in Beta”. While not “difficult” to use, some people find Pinterest’s UI to be counter-intuitive. An example? After you pin (upload) an image from your computer, you have to go back in and “edit” the pin to add the description and URL/source link. Is this difficult? Not at all. Is this kludgy? Absolutely.

A bigger feature outage [which will likely be addressed in an upcoming release] is that you cannot reorder the pins on your board. Currently, you must upload your pins in the order you want them to appear. For example, if you want your pins to appear in the order pin 1, pin 2, pin 3, you must upload them in reverse order – pin 3, pin 2, pin 1. Again, is this difficult? No. Is it annoying? Yes.

Remember to ALWAYS add your URL (think of it as your conversion link) and keywords in each of your pin’s descriptions. When you author a blog post on WordPress, your keywords are “hidden” in your post’s metadata. When you pin an image or video on Pinterest, your keywords are 100% visible – in your pin’s description. Marketers can (and should) add a URL to each and every pin on their boards. Doing so enables you to bring people directly to the original source version of your marketing content [if helpful], and/or directly to your “conversion” page, enabling you to achieve (and track!) your results.

Once you’ve mastered the mechanics of uploading content to Pinterest, give some thought to how you can best leverage your existing photo (hint: your Flickr inventory) and video (hint: your YouTube inventory) marketing assets.

If you would like more information on Pinterest “how to’s”, I recommend the “getting started” and “help” content on Pinterest.com, and the many Pinterest posts on Mashable.com and DanZarrella.com.

I’m busy. REALLY busy. Why should I bother to Pinterest-ize my sales and marketing collateral?

Now comes the fun part (and the answer to the #DearKen tweet). Not surprisingly, a large portion of our marketing content is ‘old school’ brochures, whitepapers, and collateral that is neither in photo nor video format. Therefore, our challenge is to find the fastest, quickest, and most effective ways to visualize our existing non-visual marketing content.

Why even bother? Depending on our target audience and brand (food, YES!; forklifts, not so much…), the benefits far outweigh the investment to tailor our content for this new communications channel.

It is significantly cheaper for us to invest in visualizing our existing marketing assets, than it is to create completely new marketing content from scratch, especially when we take into account the overhead of our review and approval processes. We can also co-publish these new visualized marketing assets on multiple social networks (Slideshare, Flickr, and YouTube to name just a few), not just on Pinterest.

The bottom line? Visual content converts. Research on the most effective social network content for brands tells us that social posts with images [regardless of whether they’re on blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or other social networks] have significantly greater conversion rates. Yes, for marketers, visualization is the new black.

How do I pin my “non-visual” marketing content?

Get ready. Set. Pin!

Live Events

• If your original source content is a live event – such as a trade show, customer event, press conference, keynote or panel presentation, webinar or teleconference – visualize it by pinning .jpgs of PowerPoint/Keynote slides you create with the top three messages, including context-setting introduction and call-to-action slides.

Marketing Premiums

• If your original source content consists of marketing premiums – such as trash and trinkets, tchotchkes, giveaway items with your company’s logo, or specialty advertising products – take photos of them, and pin the photos.

Audio Recordings

• If your original source content is an audio recording – such as an executive interview, radio show or commercial, podcast, or even a jingle – again, visualize it by pinning .jpgs of PowerPoint/Keynote slides you create with the top three messages, including context-setting introduction and call-to-action slides OR video-ize it by adding it as the audio”soundtrack” to these same slides.

Print Collateral

• If your original source content is printed material, or a Word or Excel file – such as a newspaper or magazine article, an annual report, a white paper, a bumper sticker, a billboard, a bus or taxi ad, a sales brochure, a fact sheet, a business card, a customer testimonial, a case study, a book, customer research, a poll or survey, or even a handwritten note on a yellow sticky – visualize it by pinning the .jpgs of the .pdf file [scan the articles and yellow sticky notes] of the document (see: how to convert a .pdf file to a .jpg).

Websites (or Computer Files)

• If your original source content is a website – such as a banner ad, press release, blog post, or infographic [when you don’t have/cannot download the .jpg] – visualize it by pinning the .jpg of the screen capture (see: how to take a screenshot).

Presentation Slides

• If your original source content is a presentation deck – such as PowerPoint, Keynote, or a .pdf-format presentation on http://slideshare.net – visualize it by pinning the .jpgs of the .pdf file.

Emails

• If your original source content is an email – such as a marketing email – visualize it by pinning the .jpg(s) of the [print to] .pdf file.

Over the past few years, marketers have been overwhelmed by the number of new communications channels. While we don’t need to [and absolutely shouldn’t] use each and every new channel that comes our way, we are directly accountable to our stakeholders and ourselves to explain why a given channel is appropriate (or not) for our brand.

Before I get the eyerolls, being a marketer means continually evolving how we communicate. An example? Picture it (pun intended), Twitter, 2007. Remember how fellow marketers shook their heads, and were ready to write off Twitter. They said it was folly to think that 140-character long tweets could deliver ANY value to “real” marketers or their customers.

This”resistance” didn’t last long, especially after we realized Twitter makes it incredibly easy [thanks to URL shorteners like http://bit.ly] for us to add ANY link, complete with tracking analytics, to our tweets. As marketers, we go where the eyeballs are. If our target audience is on Facebook, we are on Facebook. If our target audience is now on Pinterest, we are now on Pinterest.

That said, depending on your audience, co-publishing your marketing content on Pinterest can maximize the ROI of your investment in creating the content. Whether or not your audience is on Pinterest, it’s important to understand what is behind Pinterest’s success, and is arguably, THE marketing trend so far in 2012. Compelling. Visual. Content.

What are the most effective ways have YOU have found to pin your marketing content on Pinterest? How do YOU use your pins and boards to increase engagement to drive your business’ revenues? Please share your thoughts with us in the comments section below.

Editor’s note: Do you have a question about social marketing technologies, tools, and best practices? Tweet your question with the hashtag “#DearKen”.  All tweets will be acknowledged, and considered as being submitted for publication.

Growing public concern over privacy and the emergence of what mobile authority Joy Liuzzo calls “Mobile Sentient Beings,” highlights our very human requirements for simple, transparent services we can trust. (Read Joy’s recent column HERE.)

Clearly, our lives and our devices have become inextricably intertwined. Mobile empowers us to capture and consume content; it impacts how, when and where we connect with friends and family; it increasingly assists us in daily decision-making; and ultimately links our physical and digital worlds.

More importantly, mobile allows us to transact and conduct commerce. However, before we use these services to their full potential we must be confident we can truly trust the devices, services, brands and marketers we interact with to deliver on their promises, and not compromise our data.

The debate prompts me to recount the main points of my recent column at EContent magazine, which explores why trust is also the most fundamental competency required by all the players that make up the digital business ecosystem.

The takeaway: In a world where trust is key, all players across the ecosystem will need to focus on how to effectively build a lasting trust asset. They must also better understand what trust means to their customers and build trust-based relationships with them based on greater insights into what they really want.

Read the full column at EContent Magazine here.

Related articles

• M-Pulse: Chetan Sharma Talks Mobile Commerce, Payments & 2012 Mobile Predictions Survey Results(mobilegroove.com)

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The advance of user-generated content and consumers’ assumption that they are in control of their content and experiences has huge implications for the London Games — and the brands lining up to get mileage out of the event.

Seeking to prevent guerilla tactics from non-Olympic Games’ sponsors, the International Olympic Committee has decided to restrict precisely how athletes can transmit photos and other information to networks and the wider world.

Yes, you read this right.

The IOC has introduced The Olympic Athletes’ Hub, which it says will include the verified social media feeds of more than 1,000 current and former Olympians. According to Mashable, this destination will post content directly from athletes’ Facebook and Twitter accounts, and incorporate a gamification layer incentivizing fans to interact with the site. Users will be able to access exclusive training-tips videos and gain virtual and real-world prizes according to how many athletes they like and follow online.

Significantly, athletes will not be allowed to tweet photos of themselves with products that aren’t those of the official Olympics sponsors. They are also not permitted to share photos or videos from inside the athletes’ village.

Amazingly, the restrictions don’t only apply to the athletes. Fans who are ticketholders are also barred from sharing photos and videos of themselves during Games’ action via Facebook and YouTube.

The crackdown is largely linked to a pair of new and stringent brand-protecting acts passed in the U.K. in preparation for the Games. (By way of background — and via the Guardian — the pieces of legislation are the 2006 London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Act, and the 1995 Olympic Symbol (Protection) Act.)

How I See It: I have a long history with the Olympics, first as a reporter (Los Angeles 1984), and later as a brand marketer (Atlanta 1996, Nagano 1998, and Salt Lake City 2002). Traditionally, the national and international Olympic organizations have been aggressive (and successful) in seeking to prevent non-sponsors from associating with the Games. But that was before smartphones and tablets. Will these new measures stem the tide of user-generated content and activity? Don’t bet on it. Instead, expect to see ‘bootleg’ footage and content from people at the Games. And watch the Olympic lawyers come after brands and individuals who violate these new rules. The upshot? The Olympics aren’t the only games we will be watching this summer. While it might seem easier for companies (and people) to get around large sponsorship fees by harnessing user-generated content and content created by companies that are not official sponsors, be prepared for a tussle as rights owners struggle to lock down content and distribution in an age where mobile has changed the idea of ownership forever.

Mobile Spam Wrecks Mobile Marketing

A popular and often quoted report sponsored by SinglePoint (PDF) states that 97 percent of text messages are read within four minutes. It that seems astounding, keep in mind that real-life experience tells us that many messages are viewed within an even shorter time period. Either we belong to the group of people who drop everything to read a text, or we know others (family members, friends, colleagues) who automatically (even rudely) remove themselves from a conversation with us to respond to the ‘ping’ or ‘ding’ of their phones.

Beyond a lack of manners, what’s driving this behavior? Much of it has to do with the value we place on a text message. Unlike email, the vast majority of texts are personal, sent by people we know or companies with whom we have a relationship (brands, retailers, political parties) through membership in permission-based, mobile clubs and loyalty schemes.

No spam? No way. But this is changing. According to a detailed, 1,100-word story in the New York Times (NYT), spam is becoming more pervasive on mobile devices.

The NYT quotes Ferris Research, a market research firm that tracks spam, to show just how dramatic this rise is. The company reports that consumers in the U.S. received roughly 4.5 billion spam texts last year, more than double the 2.2 billion received in 2009.

Do the math, and that is 4.5 million in a year spread out over 250 million text-enabled phones.

Does this problem compare to what we see in our email inboxes? Hardly. (Or at least not yet.)

Israeli Internet security developer Commtouch reports that we receive an average of about 4.5 million spam emails on our PCs approximately every 90 minutes.

So, what are the implications when the amount of spam we receive on mobile devices doubles?

It’s bad news (and business) for every stakeholder, starting with the consumer.

If we continue down this path, then mobile subscribers will dismiss texts as an intrusion and simply ignore them. That’s not great, especially when some of those texts are linked to advertising they explicitly opted in to receive in the first place.

Which brings us to the next stakeholder: the brand marketer. Marketers who have succeeded in providing value to consumers who opt in to their mobile programs will suffer the consequences of reaching a less attentive (and potentially more annoyed) audience.

Finally, the mobile operators are also impacted through a drop in messaging revenue. A logical consequence if many consumers say ‘no’ to the text option rather than risk receiving incessant and unwanted SMS.

According to the NYT, mobile spam is illegal under two federal laws — the 2003 Can Spam Act and the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which set up the Do Not Call Registry in 2003. Smartphone users can report numbers that spam comes from on both the Web sites of the F.T.C. and the Federal Communications Commission. The major wireless carriers — AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Bell Mobility and Verizon Wireless — all also offer ways to report the numbers on their Web sites and can block numbers.

How I See It: It is up to the carriers to enforce the laws and quickly shut down the spammers whether they are smishing (illegally seeking personal information) or marketing outside the rules. Anything less than vigilance will turn off consumers and marketers’ route to them.

• The straw poll of 100 attendees at the show conducted by affilinet found that 65 percent of respondents felt mobile, online and offline would play a major role in their marketing outreach.
• However, many respondents have not yet taken the critical first step. Two-thirds of those surveyed said they have yet to optimize their website for mobile browsing.
• SOURCE: http://www.gomonews.com/internet-world-attendees-survey-show-ambiguous-attitude-towards-mobile/

Research firm eMarketer estimates nearly 116 million Americans will use a smartphone at least monthly by the end of this year, up from 93.1 million in 2011

• By 2013, this new smartphone class will represent over half of all mobile phone users, and by 2016, nearly three in five consumers will have a Smartphone. The smartphone class is not defined by age, gender, income or race. Instead it is defined by its members’ shared behaviors. Understanding the common behavioral traits that unite the class makes members easy to recognize and underscores the influence this class of consumers is having on how Americans communicate, consume media and shop.

• The full report, “The Smartphone Class: Connected Consumers Transform US Commerce and Culture,” also answers these key questions:
• Who is part of the smartphone class?
• What insights do their behaviors provide? — and
• What marketing opportunities exist around this class of consumers?
• SOURCE: http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1009014&ecid=a6506033675d47f881651943c21c5ed4

Motorola Solutions has recently produced a survey identifying the future trends for the retail sector.

• 66 percent of retail respondents are interested in mobile Point-Of-Sale (POS), while 42 percent are currently piloting or starting trails within the next 36 months.
• Many retailers such as Bass Pro, Sephora and Eastern Mountain Sports have already turned to mobile POS, with a view to improving the quality of customer service and increase consumer loyalty.
• SOURCE:  http://asterisk.tmcnet.com/news/2012/04/30/6282548.htm

Independent mobile advertising network InMobi  has released its Quarterly Mobile Insights Report: UK Edition, which covers the period from January to March 2012. Among the findings:

• Mobile impressions on its U.K. network increased to 9.5 billion per quarter in 90 days.
• The top three handsets in Q1 2012 were Apple devices, which made up almost half (46 percent) of total handset impressions.
• SOURCE: www.inmobi.com/research

BuzzCity has also issued its latest quarterly report on the current trends it sees across its ad network. Specifically, it documents the global growth and adoption of smartphones.

• Countries where mobile smartphone adoption is on an upward curve include the U.K., South Africa and Nigeria.
• In total smartphones now account for more than 32 percent of all the phones models that that ads are served to across the BuzzCity mobile ad network
• SOURCE: http://www.buzzcity.com/l/reports/The-BuzzCity-Report-Vol-2-Issue-2.pdf

 ***

Editor’s note:

MobileGroove has partnered with éclat Marketing — a company that has consistently delivered breakthrough PR campaigns based on a deep understanding of developments impacting mobile, technology, and our society at all levels — to bring you Mobile Data Points.

This regular feature, which will highlight the mobile reports and insights you need to know to plan and run your business, is curated by Sophie Young, a member of the éclat team who has a passion for mobile trends, apps and her BlackBerry. If you have a report or survey you think should be included in this regular roundup, then reach out to Sophie directly via email sophie@eclat.co.uk or Twitter (@PheeYoung).

***

Talk to leaders in the mobile industry nowadays and you’d think they were all real estate agents with all their talk about ‘location, location, location.’  Granted, the ability to passively track a person’s movements over time, deliver a highly relevant message and drive them to take action (the old ‘get-a-coupon-when-you-walk-past-Starbucks’ scenario) has enamored marketers for years.  With the state of California announcing that they will be issuing guidelines to app developers about privacy, and with mobile advertising companies banding together to figure out an alternative to the UDID (unique device identifier) to track mobile ads,  the public is slowing becoming aware of the issues and the honeymoon period of mobile data collection is coming to an end.

I’ve been a data dork for longer than I want to admit and completely understand the excitement around location information.  We’re able to take information on what people are doing with their device, overlay where they are when they are engaged on their device, and turn it into a marketing/targeting dream come true.  It’s enough to make the researcher in me do a dubstep inspired wiggle dance.  But then the side of me that lives in the world outside of the Mobile and Advertising Industry, the one that advocates for people to be treated with respect and integrity, thinks through the impact on every single one of us, and the admiration for this approach is gone.

Command-control

Back in 2007, IBM released a report titled The End of Advertising as We Know it (PDF link) and predicted that four scenarios will emerge in 2012.   They were spot on with their Consumer Choice prediction that foresaw the day consumers would assert their control over intrusive ads, forcing the evolution of formats that put people in the driver’s seat.

We time-shift our TV viewing so we can fast forward through commercials; we run cookie-deleting programs on our PCs to foil the behavioral targeting companies; and we are taking steps to be less reachable by advertisers, challenging them to deliver us advertising we will appreciate and accept.

Sure, people understand advertising is a trade-off. They do have to accept a certain level of advertising in order to get the content and information they want about products and services they are genuinely interested in. But they are prepared to draw the line and start fighting fight back against the more aggressive and intrusive approaches.

Against this backdrop, mobile phones and tablets are poised to be the next battlefield. These are fiercely personal devices capable of delivering relevant and engaging advertising. So far many companies have played by the rules, and, because of this, ads have been perceived more favorably. And why not? The advertising was effective, not intrusive, and everyone won. People trusted that they were in control of the advertising they consumed and the personal information they shared in the process.

This was a boon to the ad networks, publishers, app developers, and everyone else in mobile. People were sharing data, mobile ads became some of the most relevant inventory available, and formats evolved to take advantage of the influx of data. Big data grew and so did mobile advertising as an industry. It was a happy time until the last months when news of abuses (see FTC report on Mobile Apps for Kids; Class-Action Privacy lawsuit against Path and others; and the great Carrier IQ exposure) revealed the darker side of data collection.

Since we didn’t stop the party, people have decided to take the initiative. It’s no surprise that we’re seeing more and more people becoming what I call Mobile Sentient, aware of precisely how public their private device and behavior has become and the extent to which third-parties have visibility into it.

As the population of Mobile Sentient Beings (MSBs) increases (and believe me it will!), so do that chances that mobile —the only channel that is personal and capable of supporting deep interactions and conversations with people and the brands they love—will lose its luster. Specifically, location-based services that consumers are open to now (TNS Mobile Life Study) — services that first whet consumer’s appetites for hyper-relevant advertising including special offers, mobile coupons and perks associated with check-ins and loyalty programs — will lose consumer trust.

Education, education, education

I know from my interactions with companies and execs that the vast majority of players in the mobile space are trying to establish guidelines. But, in the absence of clear rules, many have been using their own moral compass to determine what is acceptable (some less morally than others, by the way).  It’s a hard truth ­ — and one that should inspire us all to take action now — not later — and spearhead the efforts that will win us lasting and real consumer trust.

How can we head off this disaster?

1. Be honest with your audience and tell them what to expect.  If you are going to be serving them ads based on their location and browsing habits, let them know.  The worst that can happen is that they stop visiting, but that’s something you are facing anyway with MSBs.
2. Develop clear, simple and easy to understand Data-Sharing policies — and call them that! (After all, it’s a term consumers understand. What does ‘privacy’ mean anyway?)
3. Experiment and work to identify the data you should be collecting and ignore the rest.  All data is not created equal, and your models will tell you what is most important.  As a bonus, your IT team may send you a fruit basket as a thank-you.

The final thing I want to encourage is an industry-wide, proactive education campaign for real people.  If we get out there now with the story we want to tell (how contextually relevant, location-aware advertising can make people’s lives easier and save them time, for example), we can make sure the population of MSBs are educated about our intentions and in control of the situation.  If we wait until there is another media blast about a shady company using location-based data inappropriately, we’re going to be too late.

The competition is open to all developers who are developing or have developed a BlackBerry® WebWorks™/HTML5, Adobe® AIR® or Native Gaming app for the BlackBerry platform. An international jury of industry experts will select the apps that will participate in the AppCircus at BlackBerry 10 Jam (May 1–3) in Orlando, Florida.

Of course, it’s not just about being judged the best BlackBerry app. Entering the competition also gives you the chance to win one of three US$25,000 prize packages to  see your favorite bands rock! (Winners will have up to a year to use the prize, so you can be sure to take in the coolest concerts that make summer the best season for outdoor fun ­ bar none!)

One prize package is awarded for each category.

The prize package includes:

• $10,000 cash award to purchase concert tickets and to be used as spending money for you and your friends
• $15,000 travel voucher (booked through RIM’s agent) to purchase airline tickets, hotel reservations and ground transportation for you and your friends to attend the concerts in which you’ve purchased concert tickets

Deadline for submission is April 29, 2012, at 11:59 EST.

Get help with your BlackBerry app!

If you’ve developed – or are currently developing – a BlackBerry® WebWorks™, Adobe® AIR®, or Native Gaming app for the BlackBerry® platform, bring your app to AppCircus at BlackBerry® 10 Jam and take advantage of the opportunity to work with RIM experts on-site to port it to the BlackBerry 10 platform.

You can also connect with AppCircus experts and learn how to improve your pitch.

So, what are you waiting for? Take the first step and submit your app!

Follow @appcircus and @blackberrydev or hashtags #appcircus and #bb10jam on Twitter for latest updates and information.

Related articles

• Sponsor post: Be the first to develop an app for BlackBerry 10! (gigaom.com)

This is the key takeaway of the April 2012 SMART report (Scorecard for Mobile Advertising Reach and Targeting) from Millennial Media. The report provides a snapshot of top level findings from a research partnership that brought together independent mobile ad and data platform company Millennial Media and the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau), an organization of 500+ leading media and technology companies responsible for selling 86 percent of online advertising in the U.S. The research examines how mobile impacted our access and experience of the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) Basketball Tournament in the U.S.

To find out how people engaged with mobile during this popular and live event, the partners commissioned Harris Interactive to survey 2,000+ adults in the U.S. The results demonstrate that mobile has evolved beyond being the remote control of our lives (borrowing here from a milestone presentation by industry authority and author Alan Moore). It is fast becoming the first screen for following the action and news around live events.

Significantly, the viewing/following experience is even more valuable now that companies and marketers can also offer mobile apps designed from the ground up to enhance the viewing experience. Mobile apps hadn’t hit the mainstream in 2008, when Alan published his data and insights.

Mobile impact

How does mobile fit in how we experienced the 2012 NCAA Tournament? Here’s what the numbers tell us:

• 69 percent of fans who watched the tournament on TV were also using their smartphone
• 26 percent of fans were primarily using their smartphones to follow the tournament
• 69 percent of fans following the tournament saw value in their mobile devices, which they said allowed them to access content conveniently

But the shift in mobile behavior is about much more than an urge to multi-task. People used their mobile devices to engage with a variety of content related to the NCAA Tournament (before, during and after the event), including apps and updates.

Predictably, apps were a major part of the mix for sports fans wanting to follow the tournament action. Millennial Media measured this interaction in impressions (the number of times an ad unit appeared on a mobile device), and found that Sports apps experienced a 31 percent impression increase on the first day of the tournament, compared to the previous week (as the snapshot below shows).

During the 5pm-7pm time-slot in particular, Sports app impressions increased 158 percent week-over-week.

Overall, over one-third (40 percent) of fans who identified themselves as being “passionate” purchased/downloaded an app related to the NCAA Tournament. Almost half (48 percent) used mobile to check scores.

Location matters

Live events are where the excitement is naturally linked to the location. Predictably, mobile usage spiked on Millennial Media’s platform in several metro areas where the games (and the action) were hot. However, it’s not just about local fans rooting for the local teams. Passionate sports fans are everywhere and use mobile to engage with apps, news and more around their favorite teams. (On a personal note, I am based in Germany but born and raised in the ‘Burgh. I’m glued to my devices to follow the Pittsburgh Steelers — no matter the difference in time zone!)

My take:

Sports is a passion and it’s in our DNA to get the most out of every game. Thanks to the advance of smartphones we can multitask — and more. Yes, many of us watch TV or follow the games from the stands, but this new research  confirms that we also reach to our mobile devices to get much more out of the experience. We follow news and updates, check scores and trivia, interact with Sports apps designed from the ground up to enhance the tournament action — and the list goes on.

Yes, the chance to get in on March Madness has passed. But the timing is perfect for brands to run campaigns tied to other major sports events like the UEFA Champions League soccer games or the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. And use your imagination. Sports fans love the game, but it’s also an opportunity for brands and verticals to deliver advertising that adds to the experience before, during and after the fun. And don’t think of location as a boundary. In the case of the Summer Olympics it makes good business sense to focus your campaigns on London. But remember passionate fans are everywhere (and a significant number are engaging with Sports apps).

Disclaimer:  News and analysis of developments impacting mobile advertising and the business ecosystem is sponsored by Millennial Media.

Some of the posts that made the COM this week include:

• Looking for a mobile app developer? James Coops over at mobyaffiliates launches a new resource to help us find the right partner. The Best Mobile App Developer Directory includes iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone 7 and HTML5 developers, grouped by geographical region. If you’re not on the list, then you had better contact James to make your case.
• My own contribution from MobileGroove is Jeff Hasen’s latest column. He draws from his recent book (Mobilized Marketing: Driving Sales, Engagement, and Loyalty Through Mobile Devices) to help marketers identify what works around the world and how they can/should apply these learnings to their own strategies.
• COM newcomer Natasha Hutchinson over at Adfonic makes a splash with post that lays out why marketers must shift their media budgets to mobile. It’s packed with insights and stats — which is why it is also the Pick of the Week.
• Our hosts over at WIP bring us a recent interview they conducted with Gary Yentin, CEO of AppPromo. Want to know how to tackle the discovery dilemma without investing a lot in marketing to do it? Read on and find out!

Next week Optism steps up to host the COM and encourage a discussion about THE hot topic in mobile: mobile commerce.

Read the complete COM over at WIP.

Allow me now to put on my other hat (COM Connector & Coordinator) to remind the COMmunity to get involved.

1. We still have some slots if you want to step up and take the helm. Please check out the COM host calendar email me at peggy@mobilegroove.com or mobilists@gmail.com if you want to take the slot.
2. Further to my emails and ‘nudges’ please send in your image (thumbnail), your Twitter handle and a 50-100 word description of what you do so we can add you to a new page that lists Mobilists and all the people who contribute their ideas and insights. THANK YOU.
3.  And don’t forget to follow the COM on Twitter (@TheMobilists) and join us on Facebook!

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His advice to everyone, everywhere in mobile to put the experience (and the person) before the technology (or anything else) is not new. But it has new urgency as developers struggle to architect apps (and thus experiences) that respect our requirement for multi-screen multi-tasking. In a world where digital experiences must move across platforms and devices, the pressure is on developers to blur the borders that might disturb this flow.

In other show segments:

• Rob Woodbridge gives us his take on the Instagram acquisition by Facebook
• I highlight a recent, must-read blog post from friend, colleague and mobile authority Tomi Ahonen. He has compiled a list of the largest mobile social networks worldwide showing the real reach of Instagram (and presenting Google, Twitter & Co. with a shopping list as the land grab for social kicks up a gear). If this snapshot has whet your appetite for more, then check out Pearls Vol 2: Mobile Social Networking. the latest in Tomi’s series of eBooks bringing us mobile case studies and insights from around the globe.
• We raise our Goblet of Rock to IJM Mobile, an app from the International Justice Mission (developed by Brushfire Media) that combines content and community, allowing us to connect (unite) and raise awareness about oppression, slavery and sexual exploitation.

Responsible and responsive design

We’re not in Kansas anymore. Multiple screens have moved the industry to a new level. As Arturo puts it: The focus on screens and platforms is off the mark. It’s about the “fluidity of experience for the user, which manifests itself in multiple screens and multiple form factors.”

Getting there from here will require app developers to develop a new mindset that puts people first. As Arturo sees it: “The only way to stay mentally healthy is to think more in terms of the experience and disregard … the screen sizes, the platforms and even the technology.”

Interestingly, Arturo believes getting UI and UX right in this new cross-media world demands developers adapt Responsive Web Design (RWD), an approach all about adjusting the layout of content to the viewing environment, to how they think about their apps. (RWD allows users across a broad range of devices and browsers to have access to a single source of content, laid out so as to be easy to read and navigate with a minimum of resizing, panning and scrolling.)

RWD has helped Web developers tackle the challenges of delivering a great experience via one Internet (not a Splinternet), and Arturo is convinced mobile app developers — increasingly confronted by the challenge of creating apps we can enjoy on a multitude of screens — would benefit from a similar approach. “As a designer it is time to start implementing some of these Responsive Web design best practices and start thinking in terms of layout and of being fluid.” (By way of background, RWD uses fluid proportion-based grids to adapt the layout to the viewing environment.)

Metro and more

Arturo also gives us the include track on the seismic shift at Microsoft since it made the brave decision to build a product from scratch. This thinking is at the core of Windows Phone — and central to Metro, the design language that represents a new design paradigm at Microsoft. For a deep (and satisfying!) dive into the philosophy driving this shift, check out http://ux.artu.tv/, where Arturo shares his views on the Microsoft UX and related stuff world from a *designer* perspective.

Put simply, Metro is a comprehensive, end-to-end, flexible and extensible design language. No doubt an excellent match with our requirement for fluid experiences where we are in control, not technology.

Metro design language description excerpted from Arturo's blog

My take:

Arturo’s advice is timely and pertinent. Apps are more than applications. Companies across all verticals are harnessing apps to deliver experiences (content, advertising, interactions) that must be free to flow across the screens that define our lives (PC, TV, smartphone, tablet, games consoles). Is Responsive Web Design the answer? Arturo is convinced the way forward in mobile is for developers/designers to adapt RWD best practices and mindset.

In the meantime, it’s exciting to see RWD take center stage in a wider discussion about digital strategy led by my esteemed colleague Matthew Snyder (formerly Director of Strategy at Nokia) , who heads up both his consultancy ADObjects and a new venture focused on RWD called ResponsiveAds. In a recent (and excellent) presentation he has broken down the consumer journey into two sections: Awareness, Consideration and Intent, where the Web is the engine of discovery and action; and Support, Loyalty and Advocacy, where mobile apps add a needed personal and portable aspect to the relationship established between the consumer and the company. (And — more importantly — triggered by interactions via the Web!) Matthew’s central argument: Matthew’s central argument: It’s not “mobile first in a multi-screen world,”, but rather “context first in a  cross screen world.”

In his view RWD could be “10x greater than Mobile Web Design (MWD) in just one year from now,” as companies (and agencies) seek to deliver a fluid experience across all screens, a fluid presentation that requires common content and links (ensuring they are findable via Google; Twitter and Facebook  regardless of screen/device, for example). The inevitable advance of RWD also creates the necessity for Responsive advertising, which is why Matthew has also launched  ResponsiveAds. The company offers completely customizable publisher supply side tools to give website site owners the ability to deploy an advertising and monetization strategy across all screens, thus leveraging their existing operations and relationships with ad networks, mobile and online ad servers. ResponsiveAds has also launched its Private Beta, allowing a handful of publishers, ad networks, ad servers and agencies to work with the company to refine the cross-platform features and self-serve process before the full open launch.

Check out Episode #12 of m-pulse here.

Next week we continue the countdown of what app developers need to know to grow their business.  Check out untetherTV for the full-length interview – and I’ll provide additional analysis in a companion post here at MobileGroove. If you have a good company or a great story, then submit it for consideration (peggy@mobilegroove.com or rob@untethertv.com). It may be that we include YOU in an upcoming segment of the show.

Related articles

• M-Pulse ANALYSIS: inneractive Cracks The Code On Mobile App Monetization(mobilegroove.com)

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• M-Pulse ANALYSIS: Bango Helps Mobile App Developers Hone Their Sales Pitch (mobilegroove.com)
• Mobile First, Responsive Design & the iPad (lib.uiowa.edu)

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Digital Natives (people in their 20s who grew up with the Internet and mobile devices) switch media, devices, and platforms about 27 times (!) per nonworking hour. This one statistic — the key takeaway from a new study entitled “A Biometric Day in the Life“, commissioned by Time, Inc. and conducted by Innerscope Research ­— is no doubt the most terrifying to content purveyors and advertisers. It brings to light their greatest fear and confronts them with their greatest challenge: how to cope with the ever-dwindling attention spans and ever-more distractions that are the norm for Digital Natives in the developed world.

While the study only surveyed 30 participants, it highlights the serious concerns faced by those seeking to engage, market and sell to this always-on generation. Anecdotally, other reports — and the observations my fellow contributors and I captured in the book Dancing With Digital Natives — suggest that generation lacks focus and suffers from information overload and an inability to filter quality from the quantity.

Fortunately, this new research does more than diagnose the problem. It is laudable that this research was undertaken in an effort to provide a rational foundation to develop engaging content for younger consumers. To accomplish this the researchers employed some impressive methods as well: Participants wore biometric belts that monitored their physical responses and glasses with embedded cameras that tracked which platforms they used and for how long.

Advertising To Address Digital Natives

Digital Natives are distracted by a dizzying array of media choices. Is this a problem or opportunity?

Ad Age looks at a few advertising approaches that seek to address this emerging propensity among Digital Natives to info-snack. (In my recent article for Social Media Marketing Magazine I also offer five key insights to help companies understand Digital Natives and ways they can leverage this generation’s connectedness to achieve their business objectives.)

Ad Age suggests marketers should use ads that follow consumers as they migrate from one channel to the next, migrating the marketing across all the screens people interact with (TV, PC, mobile) to reinforce the brand message. In line with this the article recommends the advertising messaging should take on a ‘snack-sized’ form as well.

Put another way, if this study’s results are even close to representative of the information consumption tendencies of this generation, hearty fare in bite-sized packages must be on the menu.

Consumability and Connectedness

The study also compared the habits of Digital Natives with those of Digital Immigrants and found that the later group are intuitively linear: They expect to see a beginning, middle, and end to stories. Digital Natives like the whole story, but they prefer to multi-task to get it.

According to the study, “Digital Natives are subconsciously switching between platforms and can pick up different pieces of a story from different mediums in any order.”

Read between the lines, and companies will have to accept that Digital Natives are comfortable switching across channels and get on with their business. As Dr. Carl Marci, CEO and Chief Scientist of Innerscope Research puts it: “Storytellers and marketers in this digital age will continue to face an increasingly complex environment with a higher bar for engaging an audience of consumers.”

This is certainly true. If your opportunity for engagement is brief, and content may be consumed in an unpredictable non-linear way, it is essential to rethink what and how you communicate. Your approach should focus on delivering high quality information in independent, yet interrelated chunks.

Size does matter, but so does quality, consumability and connectedness.

The takeaway:

Content creators, marketers and companies that want to connect with Digital Natives need to rebuild their content construction strategy from the ground up. The days when content or advertising –  audible, narrative, visual – could be delivered pre-packaged to a mass market audience are gone. The good news is this is a generation of voracious information consumers. Like stones skipping on the water and the potentially infinite ripple effect they produce, these consumers come at information from every angle and wants to follow it anywhere. The challenge, however, is to deliver Digital Natives bite-size content that is appealing and engaging (and importantly achieves the business objectives of the company offering it in the first place), while acknowledging their requirement for multi-screen multi-tasking. Content and advertising doesn’t exist in isolation; it must be interconnected and interrelated with the devices, platforms and contexts that now define our digital lives.

Related articles

• Dancing With Digital Natives Helps Brands Keep In Step(mobilegroove.com)

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To start us on this journey I have collected ideas and insights from doers and movers. From C-Level execs and pioneers to brand marketers who are finding their way as they confront (and conquer) the challenges of mobile, their observations and accomplishments are the focus on my new book, Mobilized Marketing: Driving Sales, Engagement, and Loyalty Through Mobile Devices.

It is estimated that the total number of global mobile subscribers will reach approximately 7 billion by 2015 and the penetration in Asia is expected to be 65 percent of the total. As we approach this milestone it’s important to recognize that mobile (the technology) may well be global, but marketers still need to be aware of important regional differences.

What flies and why (and where)? Here are five tips based on the learnings documented in my book to provide a clearer idea of what is needed to market internationally (and successfully) via mobile.

1.) Consider each market individually: Some of us read books like Mobilized Marketing. Others attend conferences. Benjamin Gauthey, Microsoft’s digital marketing lead, Asia and Pacific, learns about mobile by visiting Starbucks, museums, parks, and trains in every city he goes. As a rule, Gauthey spends three or four hours per trip observing everyday wireless users.

He says Singapore is “extremely overwhelming” with mobile use the norm on trains where commuters play games and connect via WhatsApp, a cross-platform mobile messaging app that allows users to exchange messages without having to pay for SMS. The mobile group messaging app from U.S.-based WhatsApp is clearly making (global) waves.

Gauthey has also found Korea to be home to high-definition video viewing of soap operas and YouTube video.

“Mobile has unique local context,” he says. “One size does not fit all.”

2.) Drop the thought that what happens in Asia spreads to all markets: Ride along in a train across South Korea and you’re sure to see many commuters watching live television on their mobile devices. Through digital multimedia broadcasting, or DMB, mobile subscribers are able to watch news and sports feeds —supported by ads and ‘commercials’ — provided for free on DMB-capable devices from the country’s television broadcasters.

Mobile TV isn’t coming. It’s part of life. Surveys show the average viewing time among mobile users is approximately 15 minutes. Advertisers have taken consumer habits into account and produced 15- to 30-second commercials to fit the slot, as opposed to the minute-long spots that are typical for Korean television.

The U.S. is another story. Here everyone from ESPN to Verizon has tried to make mobile TV viewing our new on-the-go pastime. But it’s a no-go — at least for now.  Nielsen tells us  that less than 1 in 10 watched TV on their mobile devices in 2011. Hardly a crowd-pleaser.

Frank Barbieri, who first built mobile products for MSNBC in 1999, believes he knows why.

“I predicted a faster adoption of mobile viewing over the air,” says Barbieri, who has led product initiatives at Microsoft, InfoSpace, Transpera, and now at YuMe in Silicon Valley. “We thought the handheld screen would be the next consuming screen for viewing content. I think that turned out to be wrong. People were not watching over the air.”

Instead, people were buying content from iTunes (Apple’s content store) and putting it on their iPhone.  Where are we now? Barbieri tells me apps may tip the scales. But right now applications “trend toward gaming, utility and social, and less toward consumption of long-form video content on mobile phones.”

Why doesn’t the South Korea model apply?

Barbieri points out that there are “particular quirks with the Korea experiment that aren’t necessarily true in North America.” One is the commuter culture. “There’s a lot of downtime. North America is more car-based versus public transport.” Second, live video mobile services are free. “We’ve never had that. It’s always been a subscription-based service. That has kept usage fairly low.”

But the U.S. is moving more toward view on demand. “There is more interest in time shifting and sideloading the content (by transferring data between devices) versus watching over the air.” Marketers thinking mobile TV are advised to take note.

3.) Leverage the convergence of mobile and social: Everywhere you look the use of social networks is on the rise. But the real growth is in our requirement to access these communities using our mobile devices. Social networking giants Twitter and Facebook report that users are twice as active on mobile as they are on PCs. As I have written before, the boundaries between mobile and social are blurring. Adapt your approaches to embrace this shift.

4.) Don’t forget feature phone users — ever: Feature phone users outnumber smartphone users by a ratio of nearly six-to-one. According to the annual mega-trends presentation by Mary Meeker, renowned industry analyst and partner at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), feature phones are not just in the majority. They are driving services innovation as people in emerging and developing markets use simple text messaging to improve their lives, conduct commerce, transfer money and even oversee elections. In the U.S., more than 70 percent of mobile subscribers text on a regular basis. In other parts of the world, the numbers are significantly higher.

This is why Coca-Cola — a global mega-brand —considers SMS to be an integral and essential element of its marketing programs and campaigns worldwide.

A review of Facebook’s worldwide mobile strategy also reveals a sharp focus on feature phones. As the company works to increase from 425 million mobile users worldwide, it has struck sweetheart deals with carriers across the globe to provide users Facebook experiences on their feature phones that are similar in features and functionality to what Facebook delivers to us on smartphones and online.

The power and impact of feature phones is strong in India, a country that has a fervor for social networking. There are even feature phones retailing below $50 have a Facebook button and come bundled with a first year of unlimited Facebook service for free. The takeaway: smartphones and tablets offer amazing opportunities, but the mass market is still about feature phones.

5.) Stay current: You would be hard-pressed to find an industry moving faster than mobile. In many ways, that is great for marketers. We have more ways to reach people on their most personal devices and mini-computers that they carry with them 24 hours a day. But behaviors and interests change fast. If you read something in 2011 and think you have this whole mobile thing down, don’t bet on it. The winds of 2012 change may knock you over.

Let’s start with a high-level view of Deep Web Technologies…

Deep Web Technologies started in 2002. We’re about 20 people, based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and we started out by building public federated search applications for federal government clients. Our best known application is probably Science.gov. It’s a public site and searches about 50 different R&D data bases from across the U.S. federal government. We followed on with worldwidescience.org that searches about 80+ databases from all over the world, including databases that are not in English. We have a very unique patent-pending technology that does multi-lingual searching, so we can take a query, translate it from the user’s language to the languages of the databases being searched, which include German, French, Russian, Chinese — about 10 languages total.

And then from there, we expanded into working with commercial customers. One of our customers is BASF [major German chemical company]. We’ve also expanded into providing federated search to academic libraries. Numerically, they’re the largest number of our customers, and the marquee customer on that list is Stanford University.

The model for the company is mostly subscription based. Our customers, our partners pay us a subscription to develop, run and maintain applications. Stanford University, for example, pays us an annual fee to run the application for them. In the future, ad-based revenue can be a viable part of what we do. The mobile apps — Biznar and Mednar — are free.

Tell me about your Biznar mobile app — where does it fit in your larger mobile strategy?

So far, Biznar and Mednar are about us ‘dipping our toes into the water’ in mobile applications. Mobile isn’t a source of revenue, and the apps are free, so we have released our mobile apps without much promotion to watch the user response first. Having said that I think what we offer works well on an iPhone for people who are heading to a business meeting and need one last fact or piece of information to prepare for that meeting. Now, we get asked all of the time: “How is Biznar — or any of our apps — different from Google?” The difference is that we search quality information sources. Google has great stuff in its results, but it also has a lot of sources that are not so reputable or so useful. You don’t have that problem with Biznar.

Today we’re searching 70 sites. Because we’re doing a real-time search we’re getting information as it’s available on the sites we’re searching. Charles [Knight] points out that we’re also always listening to input from users about sites and sources they would like us to include. That’s great and, as a small company, we can be pretty responsive to their recommendations.

You’re all about business search, a focus and a capability that you could also extend to other companies that want to built services or apps…

I’m always looking at opportunities through the eyes of federated search. So, I’m not so interested in creating unique content, but I am interested in providing related content. We’re working with a number of partners now who will each have their own niche, and we’re looking at providing related content. One company we’re working with is Data Planet . They provide access to all kinds of statistical data from government agencies and the census bureau, as well as some  commercial sources. What we are doing is building an application that searches their data and will also provide context through related content to the data that they provide. Say you’re looking for a chart on teenage pregnancies in Montgomery County. We could provide some related content to that search like a news story about teenage pregnancies in general, or other information specific to Montgomery County. I think there’s a lot of opportunity in providing content that complements what someone is looking at or searching for.

My bigger vision here: to create a catalog of thousands of information sources and make it easy for a user to pick their own sources that they want to search — either the ones they’re familiar with, or sources others have recommended. Imagine a user finds a source that really meets their needs and they could go to the catalog and ask ‘who are the other people who use this?’ Similar to the Amazon model. So, what other people use this source, or search this source? What else are they searching for? And my even bigger vision: translate that into mobile and smart devices to make it easy for any user to basically create their killer app.

Hmm.. sounds like you could imagine becoming a platform tool provider allowing me — or an app developer — to use your approach to federated search and catalogs of sources to create my search engines on top of your technology. Is that correct?

Absolutely. We definitely want to move much more into becoming the platform that allows partners and customers to be able to configure what they’re providing to their users. Take health-related information. Imagine that in our catalog we have a selection of sites that are hepatitis related for example. Some health organization, or some individual that’s created a health related site, can leverage access to related content tailored to their needs that can be provided through our apps. A lot of this is in the roadmap, but we have the ability now. We also have an alerts capability that can be set up to return results on a daily basis, weekly basis of new information that meets a particular user profile.

Finally, we know Charles is sharply  focused on iOS, and covers your iPhone app in his own road test. What are your plans for other platforms?

I think it’s important to get an Android app working. I don’t have a specific timeframe for that. There are also engineers in my company who think we should also be looking at HTML5. So, we’ll have to consider that as well.

Related articles

• Deep Web Technologies: Cracking Multilingual Search 1 (arnoldit.com)
• A greater need than ever for multilingual federated search (deepwebtechblog.com)
• THE Future of Mobile; Authorities Weigh In On Mobile Megatrends (mobilegroove.com)
• Mobile Search App Review & Road Test: Biznar (mobilegroove.com)

Why “alternative?” Because that’s where the excitement and the innovation is! Sure, our smartphone devices present us with three whole choices — Safari / Google, with Bing and Yahoo! (GBY) available in your ‘Settings’. However, our requirement (even demand) for more personal and precise search services and results on our personal mobile devices opens the door for dozens of alternative search engines to make their mark — and gain market share.

That takes us to Biznar, a serious and comprehensive business search engine developed by Deep Web Technologies that uses a technique known as Federated Search to deliver results that GBY do not. (Biznar also has a sister app Mednar, which specializes in medical search.) More about the company and its mobile strategy in the companion post.

Deep Web Technologies has built a reputation as the “researcher’s choice” for its advanced information discovery tools, and I concur. As I stated in the press release when their App was released in November of 2011: “For business and medical research, Deep Web Technologies has selected just the right approach for their Biznar and Mednar Apps: advanced Federated Search.”

Why is this approach significant? Because Biznar takes a different tack than crawling and indexing the Web. That’s a good idea since the Web includes good and bad source material, old and new articles, legitimate and not so legitimate scholarship and a whole lot of marketing — all of it warehoused for some period of time by the time your search query comes along.

On the (mobile) mark

Biznar has preselected a corpus of around 70 high-quality business sources and searches them all in real-time the moment that you launch your query. These sources include leading information destinations such as ResourceShelf and MarketResearch.com and Fortune, as well as Deep Web Technologies partners APA PsycARTICLES and APA PsycBOOKS.

In some cases the results may take you to a site that requires registration or subscriptions), so it’s up to you to decide if you want to pursue that information in greater detail. The main point: these are 70 top-notch sources sure to provide results you can appreciate — a far cry from what is available if you conduct your search using GBY.

Moreover, biznar.com— the website that you can pull up in your mobile browser —gives you the freedom to pick and choose among the sources. If there is a source that you don’t want included in your search, you can simply deselect it from the list. This is not a feature currently available on Biznar’s mobile app, but you do have the option to suggest a new source you think should be added to the corpus via the ‘Contact Us’ page. What’s more, you will receive a personal reply.

As I mentioned, Biznar is real-time, a capability that allows it to deliver genuinely relevant and useful results. In practice this guarantees that your query will fetch the freshest results — even if one of the sources had a brand new article added to it just minutes (or milliseconds) before you submitted your search query. So, this is indeed “advanced federated search.” It’s real-time federated search of a numerous high quality sources, and who wouldn’t want that?

The test drive

Once you have downloaded the Biznar app onto your iPhone or iPad and launched your first search, you will notice that you are immediately presented with two choices. Specifically, the app will start off by asking you if you want to look at the very first results returned to it, or if your would rather wait for a synthesis of all possible responses.

I find that the additional time needed for all 70+ sources to return results is well worth the slightly longer wait, so I suggest just pressing the black “Display New Results Now” button every time. (Should DWT just drop the red bar altogether — I wonder?)

Additionally, there is a gauge in your ‘Settings’ when you select the Biznar App which allows you to select the precise time the first batch of results are fetched. Again, simplify your life by setting it in the middle and forgetting it.

Search query: Absinthe

For my road test I chose the keyword “Absinthe,” which regular readers will know is an inside joke with me and my own avatar over at my new consulting business ap(p)tly named Appaholics Anonymous.

Absinthe can actually mean many things. It’s a drink, a band, a jailbreak software and even a Las Vegas show. But a quick search on my iPhone 4S using Safari / Google returned seven shopping related sites within the first 10 results! Hardly useful for a serious business person.

The same search with the Biznar app on my iPhone produced a mixed-bag of results. There were good business articles from Forbes and Financial Times, several Wikipedia results (not surprising given the query), a broken link, some pages that required an account or app to view, some frozen Google results, and one fleeting case of nasty spam. But when I performed a web search for “Absinthe” using the internet website www.biznar.com I was delivered results all neatly sorted by topic, publication, date, etc,  with a host of ways to rank order and filter them but on my mobile phone with its small screen these great results were too detailed to keep zooming in and out.

This brings me to a wider observation I’d like to make about many search engine apps. Some search engine companies develop mobile optimized Web apps made for mobile devices, and possibly a native iOS iPhone app as well. Several companies have gone on to make their apps universal, which often just means releasing a larger screen version of the iPhone App. Making a truly stellar iPad app is a tall order for many smaller companies.

Given the search results from the road test, I think the company should consider making the current version of its iPhone app “Beta” x.x, and allow their growing community of app users to be honorary beta testers. It’s crowd-sourcing at its best because Biznar users are serious about business and well equipped to offer valuable input on bugs to fix, as well as suggest savvy new features that would make this finished product even better. A crowd-sourcing approach could also forestall negative reviews on the Apple App Store. What better way to arrive at the ultimate goal of having the capabilities to conduct a quick, easy Biznar search with a limited feature set made for the task?

Bigger is better

That leaves us with the iPad app. When I do a quick search on my iPhone I expect a stripped down version of the full Biznar website. Not so when I’m surfing on a tablet device. When I pull out my iPad I’m usually looking for a slick touch and swipe version of the online website. (Of course, pulling up a medium-sized view of the website is easily done using the browser.)

So is there a compelling argument for a company like Deep Web Technologies to undertake what would likely be a very expensive and intricate effort to develop an iPad app? Is there a distinct difference that would merit such a sizable investment of time and resources?

I went back to my iPad, switching back and forth from the full-size website site in my browser and the iPad app version. For sure, the print appears smaller on the full site, but in both cases the search results themselves are identical iPad sized pages.

If I was Biznar, I would put a notice and link on the opening splash page of their iPad app to read, “To take full advantage of our advanced technology, please click here to go to our online website.” They should say this right up front, not in a subpage. Secondly, the larger screen size of the iPad would allow for in app settings to allow for more features such as deselecting sources (like Wikipedia in my example) and some sorting, perhaps even swiping to delete unwanted search results.

My take:

Serious about business search using a mobile device? I tested three options: Safari with GBY, the Biznar apps, and the Biznar internet site on both my iPhone and my iPad. Predictably, Safari/Google misses the mark for a business researcher. Ultimately serious research will continue to be done with www.biznar.com on a PC or Mac or a decent laptop. So why have an app? Because professionals also need access to Biznar’s search technology whether they are on the go (truly mobile), or just multi-tasking. The Biznar iPad app will continue to coexist with the iPad sized website, but as feature and filters are added to the app it will no doubt grow into a better fit for the device.  Personally, I like the idea of a very simple iPhone version. When you only have your mobile phone to search for quality business results, that’s exactly what you want. Simplicity. In the case of the iPhone app I would stick to the Beta and tweak, tweak, tweak until the testers get 20 solid results consistently.

What do you think? Download the free Biznar and Mednar apps to your iPhone and/or iPad and road test Biznar.com / Mednar.com across all your devices (including PC), and please come back and share your thoughts in the comment section.

Next in the series: Hipmunk – the travel search app. Download it now so you’re ready for my next road test! You may want to start a folder of these apps and label it “Search Engines.”

Editor’s note: The mission to discover and promote every alternative Internet search engine in the world took Charles three years and over 4,000 posts to accomplish. Now he’s back with his pick of mobile search engine Apps. If you have a mobile search app or service, or would like to suggest a company for this series, then please reach out to Charles (csknight1@hotmail.com).  Through Appaholics Anonymous (AA) Charles hosts the informal and formal sharing of the very best Apps he has discovered in the Apple App Store, and encourages discussion around the gems that other ‘Appaholics’ have found. What’s the coolest app you have? Let Charles know and you just might end up an honorary member of Appaholics Anonymous!

Related articles

• THE Future of Mobile; Authorities Weigh In On Mobile Megatrends (mobilegroove.com)
• Federated Search: A Definition (arnoldit.com)

[Spoiler alert: The answer is co-publishing!]

You’ve been invited to share your expertise and passion with a live audience. Congratulations! Every time you present — whether it’s to a dozen people, or a thousand — social media gives you the opportunity to better engage your in-person audience and effectively reach people around the world [beyond just your “live” audience] who are interested in your topic.

Thank you for your question. At the risk of hyperbole, it is impossible to overstate the importance of social media in magnifying both the reach and the impact of your content, regardless of whether it is a formal presentation or your regular blog post (like this one!).

Think about how the 1967 movie “The Graduate”, starring Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft, would change if it were to be remade today. It’s easy to imagine how the famous scene, where Mr. McGuire gives Benjamin career advice, might go.

Mr. McGuire:                    I just want to say one word to you. Just one word.

Benjamin:                         Yes, sir.

Mr. McGuire:                    Are you listening?

Benjamin:                         Yes, I am.

Mr. McGuire:                    Co-publishing.

Yes, even more than “plastics” (Mr. McGuire’s advice in the film), my advice to you to make the best use of social media for your next presentation is to co-publish. I am defining co-publishing here to mean the “strategic creation and reuse of your marketing content.” To maximize the ROI of your investment in creating content, you can simultaneously publish your content on all of your different social networks.

“Show me” is exponentially more powerful than “tell me,” and to prove it, I have  co-published this #DearKen column. You will see the links further down in the post – designated by a Show me Ken! – linking to where I have co-published this column [in different formats] on some of my social networks.

You are no doubt familiar with the phrase “reduce, reuse, recycle.”  Well, this is about taking “reuse” to the next, social level. You have invested a significant amount of time to research, write and visualize your presentation. To help you get the most out of it (before, during and after you present), I have created the following three checklists to help you better engage your in-person and online audiences.

A reminder that the opinions expressed here are my own, and come from my personal experience managing social marketing campaigns, leading social marketing teams, and consulting for social marketing clients. Every brand is unique. Use what works. Toss the rest!

Co-Publishing Checklist: Pre-Event

The pre-event checklist details the different items you can do in of your presentation to build in-person and online audience awareness. Please don’t let it overwhelm you. Select the items that most excite you, and don’t think you must do everything on the list in order to have a significant impact.

1.) The day you accept the invitation to speak, is the day you need to start getting the word out. How? Write a blog post. Share the details of the event on all of your social networks. Include the event’s hashtag and website in all of your posts. Call out your fellow speakers by name and publicly tell them how much you are looking forward to meeting them and hearing their presentations. There is no better way for you to grow your network, publicize your presentation, and get other high-profile speakers to promote you.

2.) Create a Twitter List of all of the event speakers, sponsors and principals, taking every [appropriate] opportunity to mention them in your posts leading up to the event. This fast, easy, and free tactic will be enthusiastically supported by the event organizers. Why? Because it promotes and drives attendance to their event.

3.) Create and register — using Twubs and/or #tagdef – a hashtag for your presentation.

4.) Share the story of creating your presentation with your audience. Crowdsource. Test ideas, preview content, and engage your audience before they even leave home.

5.) Join – or create, if the event organizers have not yet already done so – a group for the event on LinkedIn and/or Eventbrite.

6.) Upload a relevant and visually compelling (critical!) cover page for your presentation on Slideshare as soon as possible, letting people know you will upload the final presentation to the same URL after the event. Unlike YouTube (Hey YouTube, you listening? We want this feature!), Slideshare allows you to update your presentations after uploading them, keeping the same URL and analytics/view counts.

7.) Create a trip (even if the event is within walking distance of your home) for the event on social network TripIt.

8.) Find out in advance how (and if) the event organizers are going to capture, record, and share your presentation. The organizers may record audio (content you can share via your website and iTunes), or video (content you can share via your website and YouTube channel), or both. If the organizers have no plans to record your presentation, then consider making alternate arrangements to do so well in advance of the big day.

9.) Do a full simultweeting dry run BEFORE you go to the event. What is simultweeting? Simultweeting is pre-writing tweets summarizing the content on each slide of your presentation deck. Each time you advance the slide of your presentation, your pre-written tweet for that page will automatically be tweeted out to your followers. Is this cool? Yes. Must you absolutely, positively do a full start-to-finish dry-run of this in advance of your event to ensure you have it set up correctly? YES! It’s geeky, but it’s also a guaranteed “wow” factor.  There are several easy-to-use free software tools available to help you simultweet, whether you prefer to present with Microsoft’s PowerPoint or Apple’s Keynote.

DEEP DIVE: The How’s and Why’s of Simultweeting

In the three years since simultweeting began, it has become an extremely valuable, though not yet widespread, presentation tool.

Put simply, it is a co-publishing tactic that allows you to squeeze every possible drop of social juice out of the investment you are making to create and deliver outstanding content. What’s more, simultweeting allows you to provide your in-person and online audiences with interactive play-by-play ”coverage” of your presentation. It’s a bit like the audio commentaries you get as extras on DVDs (remember those?), but it has even more impact because it shares what you are saying as you say it with everyone everywhere, encouraging them to join in on the conversation.

However, simultweeting isn’t just about engagement. It also helps when you present difficult or sensitive content. How? Simultweeting enables you to get your content out in your own words – ahead of the responses and reactions of the media, critics, analysts, and sign language and foreign language interpreters.

If at all possible, don’t just simultweet, but actively listen to the conversation. To do this, you may want to consider having a trusted colleague monitor your backchannel – people’s responses to your presentation via social media.

Having someone be your eyes and ears is a great way to glean real-time intelligence that you can then incorporate into your presentation while you are still presenting. Should you speed up or slow down? Are there items that need further explanation? Are there specific questions you should address? Having a trusted colleague watch your back – your backchannel – frees you to focus on your in-person audience and helps you to ensure the message received by your in-person and online audiences is the message delivered.

Increasingly, speakers [like it or not] are having their backchannels projected on stage on monitors or screens to encourage the in-person audience’s participation in the presentation AND to increase the online reach of the event. While incredibly powerful, it requires more up-front planning, including rehearsals. (Do NOT skip these!) Work closely with the event organizers if you want to do this. Also, reach out to other speakers who have done this previously for their advice. None of us learned how to manage our online backchannel when we learned public speaking.

Co-Publishing Checklist: The Day of the Event!

The big day has finally arrived, and you are ready to rock and roll. While you will have a million things on your plate, here is my checklist of the items to do before you take the stage, podium, or milk crate.

1.) The moment you arrive, check into the event on Foursquare and Facebook.

2.) Have your trusted colleague take photos of you presenting for all of your social networks – not just for Flickr and Pinterest.

3.) Share geotagged Instagram photos that show you with other people at the event. This will encourage the people with you in the photographs to share them with their audiences on their social networks, thus further growing your network.
Tweet – with the geolocation feature on your mobile device turned on – so people know you are tweeting “live” from the event.

4.) At the beginning of your presentation, tell your audience your presentation hashtag, and that you have included it in the bottom right-hand corner of your slides as a reminder.

5.) Take a deep breath. Smile. And knock your audience’s socks off!

Co-Publishing Checklist: When You Walk Off That Stage

You wowed your audience and even became a trending topic on Twitter, but you’re not done yet. This is where co-publishing really kicks in, and adds the greatest value.

1.) Upload the final version of your presentation to your Slideshare account. Take full advantage of the opportunity to add in anything you may have missed, or additional detail that will increase understanding. Consider foreign language versions of your slides and/or adding your own voice narration. And don’t forget to add your name as one of the keywords! Show me Ken!: Slideshare.

2.) “Photo-ize” your presentation. Save each slide of your presentation as a .jpg file, and upload it to your Flickr and Pinterest accounts. Show me Ken!: Flickr and Pinterest.

3.) “Video-ize” your presentation. Convert your PowerPoint or Keynote presentation to a .wmv, .mov, or .mp4 file with voice narration [or appropriate royalty-free music] and upload it to your YouTube channel (personally, I’m a big fan of using Animoto to video-ize presentation slides). Add foreign language captions to your video in the languages of your audience. But don’t stop there. Also add English-language captions to make your video fully accessible to people who are Deaf and Hard of Hearing, to remove inadvertent communications barriers AND to increase your SEO. Captions tip? http://UniversalSubtitles.org is the best free tool I have used. Show me Ken!: YouTube.

4.) Add links and annotations as appropriate to your YouTube videos to help people discover your other relevant YouTube content. Extra SEO credit? Upload a transcript to further increase your SEO. And it’s not extra work if you’ve already added captions, as the transcript can be your captions file!

5.) Upload your photos from the event, and the video of you presenting. Don’t forget to include full metadata (your name, the conference name, your presentation name, the names of people who were also captured in the footage, your keywords, etc.) for every photo/video you upload.

6.) Upload the audio recording/podcast of your presentation to your iTunes channel. Show me Ken!: iTunes (.mp3 file download).

7.) Write a post-mortem blog post about your participation in the event, appropriately addressing all backchannel feedback.

8.) Socially thank the event sponsors, and send follow-up social posts (with the most relevant URLs) to the people you connected with at the event. Remember to connect with everyone you met on LinkedIn and your other social networks as appropriate.

9.) Finally, upload your presentation to your Google+ account. Whew! Show me Ken!: Google+.

As I said at the start, pick and choose the items on these three co-publishing checklists that work best for you. You do not have to do everything on each of the three lists in order to have a big impact. And yes, these checklists work just as well for your product launches, press releases, and blog posts as they do for your presentations!

Co-publishing your marketing content on your different social networks will maximize the ROI of your investment in creating this content. But there is an even bigger benefit than increasing the reach, understanding and retention of your in-person and online audiences. Sharing your expertise — before, during, and after the event — will establish you as a powerful voice in your industry AND one that must be included in [internal company and external] conversations about your topic and your company. Now, GO KNOCK THEIR SOCKS OFF!

What additional social items do YOU have on your event checklist?  How do YOU use social media to leverage your investment in the creation of marketing content, including your participation in events?  Please share your thoughts with us in the comments section below.

Editor’s note: Do you have a question about social marketing technologies, tools, and best practices? Tweet your question with the hashtag “#DearKen”.  All tweets will be acknowledged, and considered as being submitted for publication.

The interview is entertaining and hands-on, in part because Innteractive has seen the market from all the angles. Founded in 2007 as an in-game ad network, inneractive has since evolved into a mobile app monetization exchange that pulls together the resources (and reach) of 100+ ad networks and local premium agencies.

To round out the picture (and the ecosystem) inneractive has also cleverly forged ties with development platforms such as Corona SDK, a complete solution for developing across platforms, OS versions, and screen sizes; Marmalade, a software allowing developers to build and distribute cross-platform applications; and Unity, a development environment for Web, mobile and console. These alliances insert inneractive as the de facto monetization layer on top of these already advanced development environments. Smart!

Another ace in inneractive’s hand is an approach that understands the last thing mobile developers need is more complexity. Write once, run everywhere? Well, how about insert once, monetize everywhere?

This is certainly where inneractive is placing its bets, and raising the stakes. The key here is the inneractive cross-platform SDK, one line of code developers can insert into their apps to monetize them across all the ad networks and agencies that work with inneractive (100+ and counting).

The deal for developers is a 65-35 split (after agencies take their share) in favor of the developer. If a third-party (such as a platform development environment) is involved, then Itay tells me inneractive feeds that stakeholder out of its 35 percent share. The developer keeps 65 percent — full stop.

Where the money is

The vast majority of apps are free because ad-funded is the model that adds up. (No pun intended). As Itay puts it: Apps is “where you can make more money when you provide it as a free product, than as a paid one.” To make his point Itay walks us through the numbers.

Let’s say you go with a pay for download model and a per app price of US$0.99. Generally, a developer will make about US$0.70 from each download. “But if you go to the ad-funded model, then you’ll have a much larger deployment….and create revenues on a monthly basis from the same applications.”

Do the math — as Itay does — and freemium model pays off because developers can make money on premium features (example, an upgrade from a free cut-down version to the paid full version). “Let’s say 5 to 9 percent is the conversion between the free and the paid-for version, then you have 9 percent (maximum) of the entire inventory that has  upgraded to the premium version. Meantime, the rest of the 90 to 95 percent [of the inventory] is still generating money because the apps are free, but they’re also ad-supported. That’s the magic.”

Itay also maps out the differences between a mobile ad network and a mobile app monetization exchange .

One, an app monetization exchange like inneractive, which works with a lot of ad networks to choose the highest paying bid, does not require developers to manage multiple ad networks on their own. The exchange does this “automatically.” To ensure transparency and visibility into this process— and the pricing— developers can see what each ad network is bidding via a dashboard.

Two, most ad networks typically focus on a specific region, limiting reach if you want to monetize or market your app across multiple markets. At the other end of the spectrum,  global ad networks will offer developers coverage, but might also deliver lower fill rates and eCPMs (effective cost per thousand impressions or the effective cost per thousand ad impressions displayed). I can’t comment based on first-hand experience since my own series of road tests — though relevant — focused on other offers and approaches.

Getting rich on rich media

During our interview Itay shares some frank insights on the current range he sees for eCPMs. In the case of display ads, the “range will be somewhere between US$0.50 and US$2.50 or even UD$3.00.” This, of course, depends  on a laundry list of variables including operating system (OS), geography and category of the app.

Meantime, rich media is making significant gains. Itay reveals he is “seeing a lot of campaigns that use video,” as well as expand/collapse banners that encourage deeper brand interaction. “The CPM is amazing, between US$5.00 to US$20.00. This is where it’s going!” And this is also why the inneractive SDK supports rich media, and not just in-app display advertising. Opportunity is knocking…

So, what’s next?

You’ll have to tune into the video interview (below) for a more detailed road map.

Meantime, let’s just sum it up by saying inneractive will support the delivery of “hyper-localized ads,” focus more on in-app search and optimize its monetization tools to support virtual currency. And all these monetization verticals will be automated and  optimized by using the one line of code SDK that is core to inneractive’s USP.

My take:

One code (ring) to rule them all? As I point out in my post-interview chat with Rob, how you monetize your app depends entirely on your business model. For some developers, particularly ones short on resources and patience, inneractive’s single line of code and singular focus will no doubt be perceived as a huge plus. After all, not everyone has the capabilities to micro-manage their app monetization, especially now that marketing  models are more high-maintenance. Hyper-local. Device-specific. Virtual currency. Rich media. There’s an ad (network) for that. (I’m purposely playing here on the Apple ad slogan  ‘there’s an app for that’…) That’s where inneractive’s simplicity could play in its favor. Significantly, inneractive ‘gets’ ETDBW (which stands for Easy To Do Business With), the concept that has its roots in the milestone business book Customer Service On The Internet by Jim Sterne. The key takeaway: companies that make their money from online commerce must be ETDBW and make it as frictionless as possible for customers to order and pay for goods and services. Taken in context of today’s app explosion, the ability of companies (like inneractive) to offer developers (and marketers) a frictionless way to manage the monetization of mobile apps may well be the capability that separates the leaders from the laggards.

Check out Episode #11 of m-pulse here.

Next week we delve even deeper into the developer ecosystem. Check out UNTETHER.tv for the full-length interview – and I’ll provide additional analysis in a companion post here at MobileGroove. If you have a good company or a great story, then submit it for consideration (peggy@mobilegroove.com or rob@untethertv.com). It may be that we include YOU in an upcoming segment of the show.

Related articles

• Three Quick Tips To Monetize Your Mobile App(mobilegroove.com)

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These hyper-connected and super-social individuals expect (even demand) marketers to conduct conversations with them and — more importantly — listen to their responses. And advertising they are delivered must match the context of what matters most to these Millennials:  their lives, their experiences, their networks and their worlds.

From marketing to media the Digital Native generation is impacting all aspects of how we do business. To provide companies a blueprint to follow as they seek to engage effectively with Digital Natives, a number of recognized authorities and authors have contributed their insights to Dancing With Digital Natives: Staying in Step With the Generation That’s Transforming the Way Business is Done, edited by Michelle Manafy and Heidi Gautschi.

By way of background, contributors to this book include Mary Ann Bell, Shashi Bellamkonda, Sarah Bryans Bongey, Jami L. Carlacio, Albert M. Erisman, Brynn Evans, Susan Evans, Lance Heidig, David Hubbard, Richard Hull, Marshall Lager, Christa M. Miller, Emilie Moreau, Carolina M. Reid, Michael Russell, Arana Shapiro, Dan Schawbel, Rebecca Rufo-Tepper, and Robert J. Torres.

I am proud to have contributed the chapter titled: Inspired Interaction: Youth Marketing on Mobile. I am also proud to announced that the book has been well received, reviewed and has recently added yet another book award to its recognition.

Bronze for #DWDN

Last November DWDN was named an Award-Winning Finalist in the Business category of The USA “Best Books 2011″ Awards, sponsored by USABookNews.com, the premiere online magazine and review website for mainstream and independent publishing houses.

In March DWDN was recognized as one of the “world’s best business titles” in the 5th Annual Axiom Business Book Awards. DWDN was the winner in the bronze medal category, and was chosen from a total of 381 books entered.

By way of background, the Axiom Business Book Awards are “intended to bring increased recognition to exemplary business books and their creators, with the understanding that business people are an information-hungry segment of the population, eager to learn about great new books that will inspire them and help them improve their careers and businesses.” The Axiom Business Book Awards are presented by Jenkins Group, a Michigan-based book publishing and marketing services company that has operated the popular Independent Publisher Book Awards contest since 1996.

Again, congratulations to Michelle, Heidi and all of my fellow authors who contributed their insights, ensuring that DWDN is again recognized as a cutting-edge business book that provides information and ideas critical to success in today’s competitive marketplace.

In the ‘Groove’

I am also happy to formally welcome Michelle to the roster of columnists and contributors at MobileGroove, where she joins Jeff Hasen (mobile marketing), Ken Herron (all things social), Charles Knight (alternative mobile search) and Gary Schwartz (Impulse Economy). Michelle has already written several columns on MobileGroove, including an insightful summary of three key things to keep in mind as you find your way to successful interactions with Digital Natives. Her views on privacy (Privacy has evolved – and so must your approach); knowledge sharing (Share the wealth); and marketing (No hard sell) are riveting and relevant.

In many ways, DWDN is more pertinent today than ever, which is likely why Optism decided last week to post this same column on the company blog.  The key observation that “Digital natives are excited to do business with organizations that connect with them” clearly resonates with Optism, an offering that enables mobile operators to create permission and preference-based inventories of mobile subscribers, providing brands and advertisers the opportunity to engage in an interactive dialogue with an opted in audience.

My take:

The rise of mobile and the emergence of empowered Millennials. These two mega-rends combine to transform marketing, media, and business everywhere on the planet. The fierce desire of digital natives to have what they want the way they want it (and delivered to the device of their choice) forces a major re-think. Forget a lot of what you learned in business school, this is a game with new rules. One thing for sure: Digital Natives want to connect and share their experiences. They gravitate to companies that allow them this flexibility, and flock to the ones that listen back.

Peggy adds: I would also like to recognize my esteemed colleagues and friends, whose insights and ideas inspired my chapter contribution on mobile and marketing. My personal thanks to best-selling author and consultant Tomi Ahonen; futurist Alan Moore, Antti Öhrling (former Blyk CEO),  Rosemary Tan (SPTI Asia’s Executive Director of Mobile Entertainment); Graham Brown (MobileYouth); Rory Sutherland (Ogilvy UK Vice Chairman); Nigel Shanahan (Rapide Communications); and Mark Curtis (Flirtomatic & Fjord) – to name (and thank) a special few. I also drew from Optism’s ongoing research conducted by the Global Youth Lab, an innovative primary research program managed by Alcatel-Lucent which was also recognized by the Mobile Marketing Association with the Academic Of The Year Award for its work to uncover new information about youth attitudes toward mobile marketing.

Related articles

• Money Isn’t Everything: Rethink Incentives To Motivate Millennials (mobilegroove.com)
• Dancing With Digital Natives Helps Brands Keep In Step (mobilegroove.com)

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Most mobile app developers have realized that earning a living from their activities is no walk in the park. Not every app achieves the success of Angry Birds, Cut the Rope, or Fruit Ninja. Putting aside the issue of getting a mobile app discovered and downloaded, developers, especially on Android, are finding it increasingly difficult to generate any significant revenue from their apps.

App monetization is a huge challenge. Gene Munster, Wall Street analyst with Piper Jaffray, found that the vast majority (81 percent) of iOS app downloads in 2011 were free. In other words, the developer did not cash in on the download, which might explain the hardship many developers are experiencing.

Of course, there are other alternatives to charging users outright for an app. These include the most traditional and widespread form of monetization, mobile advertising, as well as in-app purchases. Another route is paid search advertising, which picks up on users’ keyword search terms to suggest apps that match.

Each of these options has its own challenges (and advantages), and mobile advertising is no different.  Making the decision to display advertising in your app is only the first step. To wring real value out of this potentially successful app monetization strategy, developers also have to think through how and where these ads should be displayed to drive the best possible results.

Three quick tips

Indeed, developers need guidelines to follow as they make these tough decisions. The following is my pick of three quick tips on how to integrate ads into a mobile app in a way that will generate clicks and —ultimately — more revenue for developers.

1.) Relevant and targeted: If you have advertised on the Web or even dabbled in the world of traditional advertising, you’ll know the name of the game is ‘conversion.’ How many people see the ads and – more importantly – how many of them actually become customers. To drive CTR (Click Through Rates) in mobile advertising, you must be able to deliver the user the right and most relevant ad. In practice this means making sure a user in Japan is not presented with an ad for a sporting goods offer from a store in New York, for example. Likewise, a person viewing a children’s book app should not be served an adult advertisement. Targeting users based on factors such as location and the content they view is essential, and sure to increase the bottom line numbers of clicks, conversions, and overall revenue.  A report by Amdocs in 2010 revealed that personalized, targeted ads are almost twice as effective as generic ads.

2.) Helpful and not annoying: The last thing users want to experience is an ad that prevents them from continuing whatever it is they were doing in the first place. If they are busy playing a mobile game, the ad should not interrupt the gameplay. Instead, the ad should appear at precisely the moment that it will actually encourage the user to engage with the ad. Displaying an ad between levels, for example, is one of these moments.  Put another way, the ads you are serving should be relevant and helpful and — if implemented properly — avoid annoying the user. Integrate this thinking into your mobile advertising and monetization strategy, and you can greatly enhance the overall user experience.

3.) Integrated and well designed: Ads should be perceived as an integral  part of the app in which they appear. An ad that sticks out like a sore thumb not only ruins the esthetic of the app itself; it will most likely not generate a click by the user. Let’s go back to my mobile game example. If the ad appears in the same color theme as the UI of the app, or if it appears on its own separate screen in between levels, then it is not a distraction. Instead, advertising has become part of the experience, encouraging users to engage and click the ad. This interaction (as opposed to interruption) boosts the developer’s revenue — and the enjoyment of the app user. But don’t limit yourself to just one ad format. An ad that has an interactive layer, which facilitates rich media such as video or HTML5, will be even more of an enticement for the user to click the ad.

Streamlining monetization

While these tips should help you to increase your success in generating higher CTRs and — ultimately — increase your income from your app, your work is far from done. There is still the task of getting your apps in front of enough consumers to generate a sustainable income.

Building your business and scheduling new versions of your app is tough enough. Managing the monetization of your app is like having a second business on top. Mobile advertising generally requires you to negotiate different commercial agreements with a variety of ad networks and agencies around the globe. This is a grind that requires time, which we know is equal to money.

Rather than manage relationships with a slew of mobile ad companies, developers can work instead with an app monetization exchange like inneractive.  This approach can give you instant exposure to a global ad network and a ready-made ad inventory for your app. Since inneractive also makes this possible through a single integrated SDK, there is no need to write code for each different ad network

An app monetization exchange can help take the heavy lifting out of marketing your app, a task that is only going to get harder as apps go multi-screen, multi-device and hyper-local.  To stay ahead of the game, developers will need to focus on managing their business, not their ad networks and creating apps that keep the users coming back for more.  Get all this right and who knows,  you may just end up with the successor to Angry Birds after all…

About Hillel

Hillel is Head of Marketing at inneractive and a well-known personality in the worlds of mobile technology and social media. In addition to his marketing activities with inneractive, Hillel works with Appboy, a leading mobile discovery engine on their dynamic web content and brand awareness.  Hillel is a guest author for various sites including Mashable, Business Insider, Gigaom, CNN Money, and others. You can follow Hillel on Twitter (@HilzFuld).

Related articles

• M-Pulse ANALYSIS: inneractive Cracks The Code On Mobile App Monetization (mobilegroove.com)
• Want To Market Your App Better? Identify Loyal Users First (mobilegroove.com)

Meantime, there are still openings for bloggers to step up and host the COM. I encourage everyone to check out the schedule here, and let me know which dates you would like to step up to the helm.

I might add that there is more to this task than the personal satisfaction of being able to read and curate the week’s best blogs (submitted by passionate Mobilists everywhere on the planet). Hosts also get great exposure and extra traffic for the week that they host. Once the Carnival is live on your site, bloggers that submitted blogs that made the lineup (and the greater COMmunity) will amplify your post, link to your page and — ultimately — send you lots of their traffic.

Before we dive into the week’s best blogs allow me (as COM Coordinator and Connector) to run through a few housekeeping items:

• The COM is also there to promote your work, your services and your sites — so please start off by emailing me (peggy@mobilegroove.com) your image or avatar (thumbnail), your Twitter handle and a 100-word description of what you do.
• I am looking for another place to meet, but until I find another virtual space that covers all the bases please join the Google Group (Carnival of the Mobilists) and provide your email so you will be sure not to miss out on announcements and updates. You can also sign up here when you visit the homepage: http://mobili.st/
• And don’t forget to follow the COM on Twitter (@TheMobilists) and keep up to date on Facebook.

Best & brightest

Over the last two weeks we received a large number of submissions — no doubt due to the shout outs from Tomi Ahonen, one of our most loyal and passionate Mobilists.

With that in mind I have submitted his latest blog on his behalf. His controversial blog (The CEO Insane – How To Rescue Nokia) focuses on “catastrophic situation with Nokia’s smartphones unit and the Lumia line.” Tomi also interjects some humor and hard-hitting sarcasm to drive home his key points — arguments that have caused a tidal wave of comments on his blog and across the blogosphere. Do Stephen Elop’s actions scream “insane CEO” and allow us to pigeonhole him as an exec who consistently “puts his own ego ahead of the profitability of Nokia”? Read the blog and decide for yourself

Tomi’s blog is also my Pick of the Week, all the more reason to check it out (and be sure to share your views in the comments).

Other blogs that made this week’s lineup include:

Mobyaffiliates has a double-dose of mobile advertising insights. First is a detailed SWOT analysis of Facebook mobile advertising and the likely impact. Is Facebook a game-changer? Read on and find out. The second post looks at the pros and cons of rich media advertising. Running a rich media campaign requires some more effort, but the pay-off can be worth it. James Coops shares the example of one rich media mobile campaign that “saw its brand awareness increase by 10 percent” as a result.

Jonny Evans over at Orange Business blog brings our attention to their most recently-published infographic and post, which explores the security implications of the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) trend on business. What are the risks when 60 percent of enterprises follow a policy allowing employees to use the device of their choice (and so connect it to the wider company network)? Just one of the tough questions this infographic addresses.

Chetan Sharma brings us another installment of his must-read U.S. Wireless Market Update, providing us insights about the market in 4Q2011 and forecasts for 2012. It is chock-full with key data points and the deep analysis that is synonymous with Chetan and his management consulting and advisory firm (Chetan Sharma Consulting). But it’s also livened up with some humorous observations sure to make any Mobilist LOL! (“If the Martians landed on earth in early 2012, they will conclude the following: there are only 3 things certain on earth – death, taxes, and the direction of Apple’s stock price.”) From the growth of Big Data, to the impact of miniaturization, this report (and post) has it covered. I don’t want to give it all away here, so please read it for yourself. And — if you missed it — check out Chetan’s detailed analysis of the Chinese and Indian mobile market. The next global update will be released in April 2012.

MobileGroove brings us a companion analysis of the latest episode of M-Pulse, the weekly video show with UNTETHER.tv (@untether) that continues a month-long look at the developer economy. They welcome Caroline Lewko and discuss WIP’s new must-read guide for developers, as well as what it really takes to cultivate  developer community. Another post from MobileGroove is a podcast interview with BJ Emerson, VP of Technology at Tasti D-Lite, a company that literally wrote the book on SoLoMo. Will Social CRM be the next big thing for marketers and brands? Listen in and find out.

Lynette Anthony Hundermark, new to the COM, sends us two submissions as well. First, she road tests a mobile-optimized site by Four Seasons and critiques its (many shortcomings). The hotel may be a crowd-pleaser, Lynette argues the site disappoints when it comes to functionality, usability and understanding the requirements of a user on mobile. Her second post didn’t make this lineup But it does receive an honorable mention on the COM companion post going live tomorrow.

The Voice on Telecom suggests that all companies (retailers, banks, the works!) could drive money (and more importantly, stickiness) if they were able to support/enable voice, text messaging and video chat via their own sites. Read between the lines, and the next Big Opportunity for mobile operators may be in serving these companies. The post doesn’t present us with a new idea, but it does gives this idea a new immediacy.

Anne Thomas (Wapple’s COO and @Miss_mobile_web to me and all her other followers on Twitter) gives us a new twist on an old dilemma. Her post, playfully titled Unrequited love on mobile web, makes a hard case for mobile-optimized sites. Consumers love the mobile web, but brands are not returning the affection. Instead they direct them to not-made-for-mobile sites and deliver a bad user experience. Will consumers break off the relationship? Anne shares some numbers and observations sure to get brands thinking.

Nigel Scott submits several posts, but the one that makes this week’s lineup is a hard look at the business value of gamification. Does this approach build brand awareness? His controversial look at this approach — titled Here’s why Gamification = Garbage — is sure to spark some lively debate. (Nigel’s other posts are listed on the COM homepage.

Ged Caroll draws from his personal observations (overhearing a loud business meeting and pitch) and draws our attention to deeper questions about the state of the Android ecosystem. I miss a stronger conclusion in his post, but maybe your comments will fill in the gaps.

And we wrap up with Steve Litchfield, whose submissions focus on the practical side of mobile. First, he takes us back 10 years to recount the top 10 Qwerty Symbian phones. Did he miss any? Then let Steve know. The second blog comes from his colleague David Gilson and looks at the evils of Micro SIM cards. His hands-on post walks us through our options if we want to use our Micro SIM in a Mini SIM device. Adapters? Cutters? It’s a confusing world when standards are in flux.

Submit your best blogging by end-Friday (March 30), and see if you make next week’s COM hosted by the great guys at Tego Interactive. 

But it’s not just about providing a platform that makes it possible for mobile app developers to sell apps and collect payments using carrier billing. Bango has cleverly inserted itself at the center of the burgeoning App Economy, collecting data and insights (about how users pay and how they prefer to be treated when they make their next purchase). It’s a stockpile of anonymized data that allows app developers plugging into the Bango platform to architect entire retail strategies, not just manage occasional sales.

RIM, Facebook and Amazon

Bango may be billed as a platform for developers, but recent mega-deals show Bango has its eye on the Big(ger) Picture.

RIM chose Bango in 2010 to provide billing across its App World appstore, a move RIM says has not only made its easier for developers to charge for their apps. It also claims that one-click to payment (and allowing that purchase to be charged to the carrier mobile phone bill) has helped its developers make more money.

This post (via Ingrid Lunden at TechCrunch) tells us Bango is also providing back-end billing to Facebook, a capability the social network giant will offer to developers that want to offer premium content around apps built for Facebook’s mobile Web platform.

Amazon is the newest deal — and the one we know the least about. TechCrunch lists some directions the deal could take. Bango’ carrier billing could be incorporated into Amazon’s existing appstore, or it could end up the basis of an altogether new product. Of course, it could also be something else…

Ray is vague about his plans with Amazon in his answer. But he does confirm my hunch that Bango is sharply focused on making digital commerce — that is, the sale of anything over any mobile phone or tablet device — a no-brainer.

Ray’s take is that Bango sees “interesting opportunities” with companies that have different forms of content to sell — all easily accessed through our smartphones. “And therefore if a person wants to pay for them, why can’t they just pay for them on their carrier bill?”

Data to drive sales

To make serious money with their apps mobile developers have to know their customer. This requires insights into many aspects of the customer, starting with the basics (like the device they own and if they are on Wi-Fi, for example) and growing encompasses other more granular details (like the payment mechanism the individual prefers).

Significantly, this is just part of what Bango sees and records, insights that its community of merchants contribute to (and improve) as part of the payment process. As Ray puts it: “The more people that join Bango, the better it is for everybody else because the interactions with those people are made better by all the other people who are on the platform already.”

To make his point Ray walks us through the following scenario.

Say Ray, who is British, shows up in San Francisco Airport. A developer who is not plugged into the Bango platform would assume that Ray is just another guy in San Francisco on a certain make of smartphone, and start a sales pitch based on that knowledge. Bango goes deeper. “They can ask Bango to tell them a bit more about the guy and [we'll] say he’s a Vodafone UK subscriber and can pay on his mobile phone bill.”

Armed with this background the developer can approach Ray in the way he appreciates. They can offer their apps in pound sterling (GBP), instead of U.S. dollars. And developers know the payment option they need to offer to deliver the customer the best payment experience. No need to list all the payment options, or assume Ray would like to input a credit card number. It’s all about reducing the clicks, screens and distractions that separate us from the apps we want to buy.

How is this possible? It’s all wrapped up in the Bango Identifier, homegrown IP the company has used since it was founded in 2002 to facilitate payments.

In a nutshell, Bango’s technology allows it to assign a unique user ID (Identifier) based on information Bango gathers from browser analysis, session information and its long-established billing relationships with mobile operators. This unique user ID enables Bango to distinguish between new and repeat users, and piece together the digital bread crumb trail users leave behind as they visit websites and make purchases.

Let’s make a deal

Of course, this data is anonymized. But it nonetheless allows mobile merchants and app developers to approach customers in a way they would likely appreciate based on current and past data regarding their preference in payment — and pricing.

The latter may have not been a USP when Bango started out a decade ago and mobile commerce was focused on the sale of ringtones and downloads. However, knowing about what a customer is prepared to pay at the moment they are intend to purchase is crucial. As Ray explains:  Bango has clients that use Bango to find out if the customer is able to pay easily. If the data says the customer is not able (or willing) to pay, then the developer may make the decision to offer a cheaper alternative or an app supported by advertising.

The logic here: making a sale at a lower price point is most times better than not making a sale at all. The trick is to know how low to go, and not simply dump your app on the market at a ridiculously low price.

Turn it around and Bango also aims to act as a kind of Experian, helping app developers manage risk. Take refunds and customers who tend to ask for their money back more often than others. “It’s good … if there aren’t too many refunds because the carriers don’t want to handle the refunds,” Ray explains. In fact, refunds are a hassle for everyone, particularly since the revenue sits with so many providers and players.

Bango can see if a user has done refunds in the past. Just about to sell a six-month subscription to a user? You may think again if that same user has a high propensity to ask for a refund a couple of months later.

My take:

The big news isn’t about the huge deals Bango has sealed. (Although it is to the company’s credit that it has managed to ink deals with RIM, Facebook and Amazon — as well as over 60 carriers, leading app publishers (EA, Gameloft, Fox) and Opera (for its app storefront). Nope. I am excited about the evolution in models and mindsets that is making it possible for app developers to think ‘strategy’ and build real customer relationships. For the App Economy to grow and thrive we need a robust ecosystem capable of conducting serious and sustainable business. But just because it’s all about apps doesn’t mean the rules are that different. There are lots of payment companies out there (Boku, Zong, Netsize, OpenMarket) and developers must choose what works for them. Meantime, Bango is riding a wave because it knows it is still (and always will) be about delighting the customer. Add mobile devices to the equation and part of exceeding my expectations as a customer lies in the merchant’s ability to reduce clicks, present me with the payment options I want from the get-go and enable instant sales and gratification.

Check out Episode #10 of m-pulse here.

Next week we delve even deeper into the developer ecosystem. Check out untetherTV for the full-length interview – and I’ll provide additional analysis in a companion post here at MobileGroove. If you have a good company or a great story, then submit it for consideration (peggy@mobilegroove.com or rob@untethertv.com). It may be that we include YOU in an upcoming segment of the show.

Related articles

• There’s Something About Bango: The Billing Company Behind Facebook, BlackBerry And Soon Amazon (techcrunch.com)

But rather than speculate about consumer attitudes toward customer service apps Nuance teamed up with Vocalabs to find out what consumers really think about their self-service apps. The findings are a wake up call for companies everywhere.

Based on a December 2011 survey of 900 smartphone owners conducted by Vocalabs on behalf of Nuance Communications, the vast majority of respondents (72 percent) have a more positive view of a company if they have a mobile app.

And, if the app experience is positive, then these customers become brand advocates and ambassadors on a mission. The survey reports 81 percent will tell others, effectively recruiting more users for the apps (and brands) that succeed in satisfying their service requirements.

Apps users across all demographics

Think that people downloading and using you customer service apps are Digital Natives who prefer high-tech to high-touch? Think again. Christy Murfitt, Sr. Manager, Solutions Marketing, Nuance, tells me mobile apps have a significant appeal among more mature users, a customer segment that “typically values convenience, ease of use and life-simplifying solutions.”

Thanks to the advance of smartphones, users across all demographics now share a common trait: they are empowered. Their devices provide them easy and instant access to information they need. Interestingly, respondents have also come to expect their customer service apps (like all their other mobile apps) to deliver what they want on their terms.

What is the appeal of these apps? Almost half (45 percent) of respondents say they like to use customer service apps because they are convenient. Another 40 percent are hooked on the always-on nature of mobile apps, answering that they like and use apps because they are “always available.”

Clearly, customers use apps that provide them value. However, the new research from Nuance and Vocalabs shows that not all verticals offering customer service apps are doing a good job of it

Significantly, banks and mobile operators lead with the largest number of app downloads. However, these same verticals stand out as the companies that experience the most serious drop-off in usage.

While 60 percent of respondents have downloaded customer service apps from mobile carriers, only 25 percent are actually using them. That means over one-third (35 percent) of respondents are not using the apps. Banking apps show a similar disconnect.

Banking apps disappoint

The serious shortcomings in banking apps is also the topic of a new report by My Private Banking Research headquartered in Switzerland. Based on a survey of 350 users and an audit of some 300 mobile apps the report confirms that banks are failing to meet our customer service requirements.

But it’s not just about being able to conduct banking transactions or find the nearby branch or ATM. The report shows there is also a demand for app features that allow us to move directly and seamlessly from our mobile app to a real-time conversation with a bank advisor.

The report criticizes banks for the “big mismatch between what users expect from their banking apps and what banks offer.” It advises banks to “start now with integrating not only all banking services, but also with opening up their apps to each client’s preferred medium of communication, be it e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, or any other communication channels.”

Turn it around, and the research from both Nuance and My Private Banking also shows there is a huge opportunity for these two verticals to increase traffic to their customer service apps — if they get their app strategies right.

Freedom to choose

What features and functionality could convince consumers to use their customer service apps more? Nuance consumer research highlights areas where improvements would pay dividends. Over one-third (35 percent) of respondents would appreciate a seamless and effortless way to shift from a self-service task on their app to connect with a call center agent.

It’s all about the freedom to choose. If consumers can’t accomplish what they want within an app, they have to disengage and try another channel. But transitioning to another channel means starting all over, explaining why they are calling in the first place. That adds up in both call minutes and increased customer frustration with the brand.

My take:

Mobile apps started out as a great way to access games and entertainment, but they are also an extremely important channel to the customer. Granted, there will always be people that want to talk to agents first. But there is also a significant and growing group of consumers that want to perform self-service tasks on an app and connect to an agent (without having to hold) only when an issue can’t be resolved using other channels. Smart companies see apps as a means to deliver customer service. Unfortunately, research from Nuance and My Private Banking reveals that some verticals are shortchanging their customers — and themselves. Kudos to Nuance for stepping up to provide us key data points that will allow companies to understand what is at stake — and the improvements they must make to deliver personal, convenient customer service people will genuinely appreciate.

Ovum expects the decline (nearly 6 percent of total messaging revenue in 2010 and 9 percent in 2011) to continue as the popularity of messaging apps continues to grow. Ovum warns operators to rework their legacy services if they want to secure their future position in the messaging market.

How can mobile operators hold their ground? Neha Dharia, consumer analyst at Ovum and author of the report tells us collaboration, not competition is the way to succeed. “Tapping into the creativity of app developers, forming industry-wide collaborations, and leveraging their usage data and strong relationships with subscribers are the key ways for operators to ensure that they hold their ground in the messaging market.” Read the press release.

Social apps disrupt the status quo

Interestingly, the impact of social messaging apps such as Whatsapp was also a  topic I covered last year in the Netsize Guide by Gemalto, a comprehensive mobile industry analysis I wrote on behalf of my client Netsize. The chapter dedicated to this development (aptly titled TRANSFORMATION) described how IP-based applications that enable one-to-many messaging (and the growth of one-to-many broadcast models) might disrupt telecoms strategies that placed mobile operators in control in the first place.

To drive the point home I also interviewed Pamela Clark-Dickson, Informa Telecoms & Media Senior Analyst, Mobile Content & Applications (@PamelaC­_D).  She remains my go-to person for all things related to messaging, and I also reached out to her again in prep for the last episode of M-Pulse to get her perspective on the Ovum forecast.

Ovum’s observation that the increased of IP-based voice and messaging services are costing mobile operators revenue is a given. In South Korea, for example, the staggering popularity of social messaging services such as KakaoTalk and Daum’s MyPeople have driven down SK Telecom’s SMS traffic considerably.

But there is an upside to the story. To use the services offered by these IP-based voice and messaging providers, people need a smartphone and a mobile data plan. Put another way, mobile operators may be losing SMS revenues, but they are also gaining smartphone subscribers and the data plans that come as part of the package.

What is the outlook for smartphone penetration? In a word: buoyant.

Informa forecasts that global smartphone penetration will reach 50.9 percent of total handsets sales by 2016. Predictably, developed markets in regions such as North America, Asia Pacific and Western Europe will see higher smartphone penetration (69.8 percent in Europe, 78 percent in North America, 92 percent in Japan and 85 percent in South Korea).

Informa is still forecasting that SMS will remain a multi-billion dollar industry for mobile operators through 2016, with global SMS revenues rising from US$114.9 billion in 2011 to US$135.6 billion in 2016.

Mobile operators react

What can mobile operators do in the meantime? Both Ovum and Informa advise mobile operators to move fast (and now) to restructure their price plans in order to fight back against the over-the-top (OTT) players such as Google, Apple and Amazon providers.

KPN Netherlands and Vodafone need little convincing. They are already offering their subscribers attractively-priced packages of voice minutes, SMS and mobile data to   encourage their  customers to stay on their networks and use their services. As Pamela sees it:  These operators are “achieving good conversion rates” in the youth markets they           target with social messaging services.

At the other end of the spectrum, some mobile operators are pursuing their own strategies and provisioning IP-based services. Prime examples are O2 Connect (U.K.), T-Mobile Bobsled (U.S.) and Rogers One Number (Canada).

Social shortcomings

We are witnessing an avalanche of applications that enable one-to-many messaging. In practice these allow users to create or add groups, and send messages out to those who join the group. Thus, one-to-many broadcast models are springing up and entire communities are forming around messaging using these applications.

But there is still one major obstacle: a lack of interoperability between the different social messaging apps and services. “That may not be such a problem if you are Facebook or Apple, and already have a large user community,” Pamela observes, “but it could be a point of vulnerability for the smaller players.”

My take:

No argument here. With the possible exception of WhatsApp, many of these nimble newcomers are not yet generating meaningful revenues. They clearly need to rethink their business models (which will likely happen), but — keeping in mind most are funded by venture capital — time (and money) could run out before they make the move. Where does this leave mobile operators? Social is where the action and the opportunity is — supported by data around how we use our mobile devices to connect and communicate. Clearly, the barriers between social and mobile are fast disappearing. Now its up to mobile operators to rethink their business models and choose their allies carefully. There’s strength in numbers — and they is what operators need to face the challenge from Web giants, who have a foot in all the platforms that define our connected lives.

Check out Episode #9 of m-pulse here.

Next week we continue our focus on developers with Bango CEO Ray Anderson. Check out untetherTV for the full-length interview – and I’ll provide additional analysis in a companion post here at MobileGroove.

If you have a good company or a great story, then submit it for consideration (peggy@mobilegroove.com or rob@untethertv.com). It may be that we include YOU in an upcoming segment of the show.

In other segments:

Co-host Rob Woodbridge raises his Goblet of Rock to salute Snackr– the company disrupting terrestrial radio by delivering us personalized audio bite-size. Rob also looks backs on the ‘social discovery’ startups that left their mark on SXSW.

I examine a recent report from Ovum that claims social messaging applications cost mobile network operators $13.9 billion in lost SMS revenue last year. The impact of social messaging apps such as Whatsapp was a topic I covered in-depth in Netsize Guide by Gemalto, a comprehensive mobile industry analysis I wrote on behalf of Netsize. I draw from my observations — and those of Pamela Clark-Dickson, Informa Telecoms & Media Senior Analyst, Mobile Content & Applications (@PamelaC­_D) — to provide a more balanced perspective on this report. (See companion sidebar post.)

Warning! The marketing stuff for app developers

WIP may be billed as an international company building mobile developer communities, but its role  as ‘the connector’ in the mobile space places WIP at the center of the new App Economy. WIP supports the overall ecosystem by encouraging discussions, co-creation and exchange, and its most recent publication makes good on the WIP promise to make the path easier for mobile developers to reduce cycle times.

App store strategy (multi-store strategy vs. single-store strategy), business development (how to meet the right contacts), revenue models (freemium, subscription and ad-funded), customer engagement (why bother — and how to get it). You name it. This Guide has it covered.

Moving beyond the WIP guide, which is slated to be updated with a 2nd edition this fall, we used our time with Caroline —the supreme Connector of WIP — to talk about what’s really top of mind with developers across the global community.

Where do developers need support?

Caroline tells us developers need help getting their head around the need for more versions of their apps. “For a lot of developers, they develop one app, one version, and then they think they are going to be the next Angry Birds.” Not a great mindset if we consider that the winning version of Angry Birds came after 50-some iterations of the app.

To close this knowledge gap the new Guide also dedicates a section to helping developers plan additional versions and the monetization models that match. “Once you add a new feature, then a different revenue may or may not work depending [on the function you introduce in the app].”

What monetization models deliver?

As Caroline sees it, the freemium is the “one that’s winning right now.” It all comes down to what people are willing to pay for, which is why mobile advertising is a route to consider (and a big part of the new Guide).

The best rule of thumb: know your customer, and experiment to find what works best. Caroline tells it straight: “Developers need to do trial and error. If it doesn’t work, change it.”

Developer community do’s & don’ts

It’s a boom time for developer communities, with everyone opening up APIs and wanting to run a developer community to encourage innovation on their tools/platforms/content. But it’s not that easy. WIP, which also provides consulting to companies building developer communities, has valuable insights into what flies (and fails).

Number one: You can’t own a developer community — and you can’t expect developers to be part of just one community. Caroline notes that many communities expect that, and that is where the problems start.

But you can attract developers by being open and sharing the information you have so that they can benefit and — ultimately — contribute value. “So, you really need to be able to provide information for them to want to use what you’ve got, not to demand that they use it, but for them to get interested about what it is,” Caroline explains. “We actually find the best developer communities are the ones that are actually true advocates for developers within their own company.”

Importantly, developers need to feel they are a key piece of the ecosystem. “I think because a lot of the suits are used to dealing with the t-shirts, they don’t give the t-shirts enough credit for what they actually are bringing to the table.”

Content companies open APIs

These lessons are even more important if we consider that the health of all ecosystems (whether they are managed by operators, platform providers or tools companies is dependent upon the size and support of its developer community (as Andreas Constantinou pointed out in this earlier episode of m-pulse).

Caroline discusses this shift with us, and explores the repercussions of the recent news that sport content giant ESPN had launched a Developer Center, literally opening its doors to third-party developers and providing them access to its stockpile of editorial content, stats, and other data. If you missed it, then check out this detailed post (via TechCrunch) and think of it as ‘just the beginning’ of a wider trend that will surely see more content companies — even brands — open up their APIs to jumpstart innovation around their offer.

As TechCrunch sums it up:

As Y Combinator Founder Paul Graham tweeted recently, APIs are self-serve business development. Many startups are catching on to the business development catalyst that APIs can be, but certainly few would say that ESPN, the self-tagged “world leader in sports,” needs as much help in that department as the many startups out there just trying to get off the ground.

My take:

Each episode of our series this month looks at another facet of the fascinating app ecosystem. I raised my Goblet of Rock during the last episode to the Mobile Developer’s Guide To The Parallel Universe. But it’s not just a great new resource from Caroline and her team. The Guide underlines a larger shift underway in the developer community. Yes, developers are becoming serious businessmen (who sorely need the advice and direction the Guide offers). But they are also becoming stakeholders in an extended ecosystem where they alone provide the innovation, ideas and apps that allow keystone companies (the ones that own the tools, data, IP etc…) to survive and thrive. It’s time to take out Henry Chesbrough’s milestone book Open Innovation, and read it with apps in mind. Indeed, opening up APIs can unleash a torrent of business innovation, enabling developers to build value-adding mobile apps. Caroline reminds us that the only way to get there from here is for companies to shift their own internal models from command-and-control to coordinate-and-cultivate. Insisting on strict control over what happens comes at a heavy cost.

Check out Episode #9 of m-pulse here.

Next week we continue our focus on developers with Bango CEO Ray Anderson. Check out untetherTV for the full-length interview – and I’ll provide additional analysis in a companion post here at MobileGroove.

If you have a good company or a great story, then submit it for consideration (peggy@mobilegroove.com or rob@untethertv.com). It may be that we include YOU in an upcoming segment of the show.

In 2010, the Next Big Thing was location-based social networking, a mobile-megatrend CNN reminds us was led by the likes of Foursquare and Gowalla. Last year it was all about group messaging services such as GroupMe or Beluga. And this year the excitement is all about “ambient location” and “social discovery” — a new category of interaction that brings together all the GPS-enabled mobile apps that run in the background on our devices and alert us when like-minded people are nearby.

We also learned that the group of must-watch geo-location apps allowing social  discovery has grown to include Highlight, Glancee, Banjo and Kismet — to name a few.

The heightened interest in this new category was a given if we consider that it is a natural evolution (not revolution) of the mega-trends that went before. Combine location-based services and group messaging and you get messaging triggered by location and interest. There is a certain perceived “sexiness” around apps that allow us to bump and connect with like-minded peers on the fly. But what about the business value, let alone the results?

Despite the hype, the geo-location marketplaces that caused many a marketer to rethink social and mobile are hardly “crowd-pleasers.” Currently, there are only 15 million users of Foursquare worldwide.  The ability to reach mere millions is less impressive if we consider there are well over 300 million mobile subscribers in the U.S. alone, and more than 6 billion mobile phone users worldwide.

Another topic that caught our attention and imagination was mobile payments and the economy that is unleashed when we can all pay using our devices. In line with this, we heard more about ISIS Mobile Wallet, the mobile payment system app that is supported by major U.S. credit card companies (MasterCard, Visa and American Express) and three U.S. carriers (T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon). The system also has the support of banks, including Barclays, Chase and Capital.

During SXSW, we had a glimpse into how this could play out with the help of an advanced demo that adequately portrayed the ease of use. But before marketers start thinking about how to react we should all keep in mind that this mobile operator-led initiative is not live in the U.S. To the contrary, it will roll out in only two markets over the coming months.

Social discovery and mobile wallets were by far the hot topics at this year’s SXSW. However, the real indication of where we are and where we are going was delivered by renowned futurist Ray Kurzweil.

He grabbed my attention with some very provocative comments:

• “You can start world-changing revolution with the power of your ideas and the tools that everyone has. A kid in Africa has access to more information than the president of the United States did 15 years ago.”

• “As we go through this decade, search engines aren’t going to wait to be asked. They’ll be listening [to humans] in the background. And [the search results] will just pop up.”

• “If we can convince people that computers have complexity of thought and nuance … we’ll come to accept them as human.”

The first statement is inspiring and shows how the Internet has helped democratize innovation and information. The other statements can be debated. (And please feel free to share your views in the comments below.) Will many people really want or accept a machine that listens and interprets behind-the-scenes in order to give us advice?

I agree with Kurzweil, who also shrugged off a suggestion from the interviewer that connectivity is a curse. As he put it: We are all in control and “time triage” is an individual decision.

How I See It: SXSW was buzzing with ideas, but some of the buzz about geo-location was just noise. These models obviously have their fans, but they also have their shortcomings, flaws that should prompt marketers to think before they leap. Take Gauss, which is positioned as a “people magnet.” It may attract people (as in peers), but if you want to connect with a lot of people, then geo-location will only get you lost. SXSW did a great job of exposing marketers to what is coming. But we can’t lose sight of what is already here — and the requirement to learn and use the mobile tools and approaches at our disposal first. There is no replacement for the more mass-market mobile activities — and companies like Ford and Macy’s are proof that there is a lot more that can be done (and achieved) if we get the marketing mix (messaging, app, website, in-store, outdoor) right. The results speak for themselves: heavy lead conversion and meaningful engagement. Another takeaway from my time in Austin: the discussion of whether a campaign is mobile or social is finally passé. No one mentioned it, a tacit recognition that these two have converged. Consumers caught on before the marketers did, and it was awesome to see the business models that are factoring both social and mobile into the equation.

***

Probably the smartest words I heard during SXSW in Austin: People don’t care about your products — they care about solutions to their problems. Amen. …

But that’s not to say people aren’t passionate about a few select products, even if the incremental innovation they represent is a far cry from being a solution to a problem.

Case in point: the new iPad that comes out this week, pushing tablet products further.

Here’s my take on the latest release: Some observers expected Siri to come installed on the new device, but I wasn’t one of them. In my opinion, the exclusion of this voice-activated smart assistant is a logical step in view of the some 50 million additional iPads Apple is projected to sell this year. That’s a lot of consumers who can potentially jam the Siri voice recognition system. After all, it was overwhelmed by demand when the iPhone 4S was first introduced. My hunch is the backend can’t handle another 50 million users asking Siri to point them to the nearest place to buy a taco.

How I See It: Fanboys and fangirls in the media were more than pleased to write about iPad pre-orders selling out for launch-day delivery. But isn’t that just one half of the story? It would be helpful to know precisely how many devices have been ordered because the sellout could have as much to do with a lack of supply as with a jump in demand. And a word about marketing at Apple, which is hailed as flawless on all counts. It isn’t. The best Apple could come up with this time was “resolutionary.” FAIL. It joins clear marketing misses like the phablet term tossed around for the tablet/smartphone hybrid device.

It’s a massive mobile advertising trend that marked 2011, and sure to gain additional momentum in 2012, according to the 2011 Year In Review SMART report (Scorecard for Mobile Advertising Reach and Targeting).

By way of background, the SMART report, based on network data provided by independent mobile ad and data platform company Millennial Media, delivers advertisers strategic intelligence and insights aimed at helping them make informed mobile media planning and campaign decisions. The SMART report series was also the first in the space to track the “Vertical Explosion” and the increased mobile spend among new and exciting verticals (such as Pharmaceuticals and Education).

Significantly, nine verticals experienced triple-digit growth year-over-year. Health: Fitness & Wellness broke into the Top 10 for the first time. Advertisers across this vertical leveraged mobile to provide seasonally relevant messages to customers, heavily promoting fitness products during the beginning of the year and summer months, while promoting wellness products and services during the cold and allergy seasons.

But the real story was Finance, where mobile ad spend jumped up a whopping 314 percent. Advertisers primarily used mobile to create awareness campaigns and drive customers into their branch locations. Insurance and credit card brands leveraged mobile to generate leads.

Top 3 global advertising trends

What is the real power of mobile? Its ability to target a specific customer segment? Deliver contextually relevant advertising? Drive footfall and traffic in real bricks-and-mortar places of business? Something else?

According to this report (and drawing from the Top 250 campaigns run monthly on the Millennial Media platform) three clear (and global) advertiser trends around the unique characteristics of mobile emerged:

1.     Local market targeting – More brands leveraged mobile to connect with local markets. In EMEA, for example, this translated into campaigns by retailers to target people nearby and drive in-store footfall. In South East Asia (SEA) the focus was more on delivering locally relevant advertising messages to target audiences.

2.     Mobile video – The ‘wow’ effect of video (ideal to create and drive brand awareness) continues to capture the enthusiasm (and spend) of advertisers in North America, where Millennial Media noted a significant increase in investment in mobile video campaigns. In EMEA, where this trend was also strong, Entertainment led other verticals in incorporating mobile video into campaigns (primarily around reaching audiences at scale with movie trailers and TV spots). In SEA the story was slightly different. There the rise of smartphones had a knock-on effect on brands, encouraging them to extend their TV creative to mobile.

3.     Mass market reach – Whether enhanced by deep integration with social media activities, or chosen as the anchor for ambitious cross-media/cross-channel campaigns, marketers everywhere leveraged mobile to reach audiences at scale.

Campaign goals and post-click mix

What did advertisers aim to accomplish with their mobile campaigns in 2011? “Sustained In-Market Presence” — Millennial Media’s term for efforts aimed at increasing brand awareness and loyalty — was the chief objective for 31 percent of campaigns. (A big part of this was about driving people to download apps and play branded games, for example.)

Lead Gen/Registrations was the end-goal for 25 percent of campaigns.

Finally, the SMART report sheds light on what advertisers wanted us to do after the click. Branded apps — branded applications with the full functionality of the advertisers’ websites — hit the mainstream in 2011, a trend that pushed Application Download into a top-notch spot in the Post-Click Campaign Action Mix. Other actions to note include: Watch video (24 percent), Store locator (23 percent) and Retail promotion (22 percent).

My take:

Media planning and making the right campaign decisions requires solid data and this SMART report delivers it in spades It is chock-full of data and tables far beyond the scope of my analysis here, so I encourage everyone to download and read it and the dozens (!) of reports Millennial Media produces (a collection of research and resources that now spans SMART, Mobile Mix and the Mobile Intel Series).

Many data points deserve our attention, but I was struck by the rise of Health: Fitness & Wellness. Mobile ad spending is up (and the last Mobile Mix tells us that Health is also a leading app category). So, is it the vertical to watch? It’s hard to call, but one thing for sure: Count on Health: Fitness & Wellness it to be a top ranking vertical throughout 2012. Interestingly, we also learn that Education brands got deeper into mobile, leveraging the channel to generate leads for the regional degree programs. This confirms that mobile advertising is not just about reaching people at important stages of the purchase funnel. Mobile is also becoming a life-management tool that people reach to when they are looking for advice and ideas. Connect with people when they are in this mode, considering options and choices related to their personal lives, and you’ll reach an audience eager to listen.

Disclaimer:  News and analysis of developments impacting mobile advertising and the business ecosystem is sponsored by Millennial Media.

BJ, a champion of SoLoMo and an authority on the ways companies can and should harness mobile and location to super-charge Social CRM, spoke at dozens of industry events in the last year, where he discussed the importance of moving beyond mobile integration of loyalty and rewards programs to really understanding the emotions consumers feel and want to express as they engage with brands on this deeply personal level.

The approach certainly delivers results. This last year went on record as the “greatest growth” year in the history of the 24-year old brand. The brand —whose popularity has grown largely by word of mouth — is a veteran when it comes to customer engagement and social media marketing. Beyond U.S. growth, Tasti D-Lite is also expanding internationally, opening locations in Mexico, Australia and the United Arab Emirates.

Customer rewards that matter

How has Tasti D-Lite encourage engagement? By understanding that consumers want to celebrate and share their experiences. In some ways this insight is more important than the mobile and location technologies that make check-ins and gamification possible.

As BJ puts it: “Our desire all along has been to reward them for their digital activity because if they’re going to share their Tasti D-Lite experiences with their friends. We want to celebrate that with them, and we want to reward them for that.”

It’s a balanced give and take that lays the groundwork for effective mobile (and word of mouth) marketing. “They’re sharing their whereabouts with their friends, so we’re using their network to spread the word about Tasti D-Lite.”

Interestingly, Tasti D-Lite also lets social media pick up some of the heavy-lifting around opening franchises and getting customers in the door. BJ recalls how — in many cases — “the first marketing efforts we have in a new state is a Facebook presence.” In fact, the chain has one location that had over 600 fans on Facebook before it even opened. “We use the social networks of our existing customers and advocates to drive awareness and meet new folks and help new folks understand what Tasti D-Lite is. And then they go and try it and they love it and so that’s how we’re growing with social media.”

Why fight Facebook & Co?

Social media and social networks are more than marketing table stakes. They are also the life-blood of brands seeking to build customer engagement. Little wonder that some brands are quite apprehensive about integrating with existing social networks, essentially building on top of a foundation they don’t own — and where they can’t own the customer.

However, Tasti D-Lite made the conscious decision to integrate its loyalty program with Twitter, Foursquare and Facebook.

What was the motivation for this model? BJ tells me it was about reach. “We didn’t want to build our own closed community; we wanted to be able to integrate with these other communities and use their popularity with the millions of people they have on each of these networks.”

To achieve this Tasti  D-Lite integrated its loyalty program and database with leading social networks. The aim: a loyalty program that allows Tasti D-Lite customers to “earn extra loyalty points when they enable connections between their personal loyalty account and [their] Foursquare, Twitter and Facebook accounts.”

In practice a message goes out to friends and followers when a customer’s loyalty card is swiped at the point-of-sale. Nearly a year and a half after the fully integrated point-of-sale loyalty social solution was up and running, BJ counted over one million social impressions.

Our emotions matter

BJ left a huge impression on the audience when he spoke at the last location services event organized by The Where Business, the event organizer that is also behind the upcoming Location Business Summit Europe (May 22-23, Amsterdam).

In the run up to this must-attend event, I asked BJ to recount the highlights of his last presentation and give us his perspective on how (and why) companies should move up on the SoLoMo learning curve — fast.

For one, companies need to understand the “dynamics of these networks and applications versus the simple mechanics of them.” It’s not about how the technology works; it’s about how they trigger our emotions.

Put another way, it’s not enough to install the infrastructure to swipe cards and send out tweets. Companies have to celebrate with the customers.

Beyond finding ways to share (and so celebrate) the experience of becoming a mayor of a location, for example, BJ thinks there is a significant growth opportunity in “really bridging the gap between what’s happening in the virtual realm” and our real lives. One approach to consider: digital out of home now integrated with location-based marketing.

My take:

BJ Emerson (@bj_emerson)has become my go-to-guy for all things SoLoMo. I look forward to reading The Tasti D-Lite Way :Social Media Lessons for Building Loyalty and a Brand Customers Crave and having him back as a guest on MobileGroove soon. Is the next frontier about bridging the gap between digital — the gamification and the check-ins — with the physical world? The jury is out on that — but you can bet it will be a hot topic at the Location Business Summit Europe (May 22-23, Amsterdam).MobileGroove is proud to be a media sponsor — and I’m excited to attend the event.

Listen to the podcast here. [16:03]

Disclaimer: Look for more podcasts in this series, sponsored by The Where Business.

VisionMobile, which consistently delivers the industry actionable insights and definitive reports on all things mobile,  just last week released the Cross-Platform Developer Tools 2012 report. This ambitious work analyzes the complex cross-platform tools landscape and — more importantly — gives us the inside what developers really think about cross-platform tools.

The key takeway(s) from our interview: The days of the Google/Apple duopoly are numbered. Cross-platform tools are gaining momentum, and an enthusiastic developer community is gravitating to these tools to target multiple platforms (and multiple screens) thanks to “low incremental costs and high levels of code reuse.” The 97-page report is a must-read resource and one that I will analyze in more depth in a  separate post Thursday. Meantime download your copy of the Cross-Platform Tools 2012 report here.

In other segments I walk through the Mobile Mix 2011 Year In Review, a comprehensive look back at the mobile device trends that defined 2011 (and will no doubt shape 2012) published by Millennial Media, the leading independent mobile advertising platform.  My co-host Rob Woodbridge looks at the Apple acquisition of app search engine Chomp and we discuss why solving the discovery dilemma is the first order of business for all app stores — full stop.

I wrap up by raising my goblet of rock to the great guys at WIP (Wireless Industry Partnership) for publishing The Developer’s Guide to the Parallel Universe, a 100-page booklet that literally lays out everything developers need to know about marketing their app. It’s a great primer for developers and companies that have to get their head around the business of making money with apps, and I salute WIP for delivering a how-to guide with teeth. I’m thrilled to report that Caroline Lewko is also our next guest at m-pulse — so watch this space…

Mobile Mix: Watch Health & Fitness apps

Are you a developer or brand determined to monetize your mobile app? Then you require access to the right data and a detailed view into how smartphone devices and operating systems really rate.

Fortunately, the most recent Mobile Mix from Millennial Media provides both in its new 2011 Year In Review Report, an essential resource that draws from global campaign and platform data to reveal key advertising trends with a sharp focus on mobile manufacturers, devices, operating systems and connected devices.

Each Mobile Mix also hones in on hot mobile developments and data, and this time the focus is on the rise (and rise) of tablet devices. Millennial Media reports the Apple iPad has been the number one tablet on its mobile advertising platform since its debut in early 2010, with Samsung Galaxy coming in second place with around half the impression share of the Apple iPad.

In addition, a review of global developer quick stats and mobile advertising best practices provide an essential read to companies serious about monetizing their apps. ranked by impressions.

Gaming moved up a notch to lead the Top 10 Mobile Application Categories, growing 16 percent year-over-year. Significantly, this also jives with other reports, such as Flurry, that show we spend most of our time interacting with gaming apps.

However, the real opportunity may lie in new categories such as Health & Fitness that have come out of nowhere to place in the Top 10. Millennial tells us the category Health & Fitness more than tripled (!) its impression share year-over-year. Moreover, Exercise and Diet applications experienced the highest growth within the category in 2011.

Clearly, apps related to our personal mobile lifestyle and perfectly aligned with our natural interest in tracking what we eat and how much we exercise are gaining serious traction and reaching a greater audience than ever before. This trend is further confirmed by the buzz at CES and again at Mobile World Congress, events that showcased a slew of apps and services that provide us advice and assistance via our mobile devices on all things related to our health and wellness.

Key device data & trends

It was a banner year (pun intended) for Android impressions, with Millennial Media reporting a whopping 504 percent increase in Android impressions year-over-year.

In 2011, Android led the pack with 47 percent of the impressions, a 57 percent increase year-over-year. In fact, Android was the fastest growing operating system on Millennial Media’s advertising platform in 2011, overtaking Apple’s iOS as the leading operating system at the end of 2010. Overall, Apple’s iOS was the second largest operating system on the platform with 33 percent of the impression share in 2011.

Significantly, the Mobile Mix also picks up on a “significant decline in Feature Phones year-over-year,” as consumers upgraded their devices and moved in mass to smartphones and other connected devices.

The impressive growth in connected devices also resulted in an increase in the number of impressions linked to devices accessing mobile advertising via Wi-Fi. In total Wi-Fi grew 21 percent year-over-year, a trend we would expect given the advance of connected devices and our own increasing appetite for streaming movies and music.

My take:

As usual the Mobile Mix report series delivers insights and data points that go a long way toward exposing and explaining key advertising trends as they relate to the mobile — and increasingly connected devices — landscape. From top devices and operating systems, to top apps categories and carrier data, this comprehensive report covers all the bases. But the report is more than required reading for developers and advertisers; it also sheds light on developments sure to define mobile in 2012 and beyond. I’m thinking here of the rise of tablets, the surprise popularity of health and wellness apps and our heightened interest in rich-media content (and advertising) confirmed by a steady rise in the percentage of impressions delivered by devices via Wi-Fi. Clearly, the landscape is becoming more complex. Developers/advertisers will have to think Big(ger) Picture (and develop a cohesive mobile strategy) to keep pace with the massive changes ahead.

Check out Episode #8 of m-pulse here.

Next week we continue our focus on developers with WIP’s Caroline Lewko. Check out untetherTV for the inside story – and I’ll provide additional analysis in a companion post here at MobileGroove.

If you have a good company or a great story, then submit it for consideration (peggy@mobilegroove.com). It may be that we include YOU in an upcoming segment of the show.

Disclaimer: News and analysis of developments impacting mobile advertising and the business ecosystem is sponsored by Millennial Media.

Related articles

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• Finance Sector Makes Mega-Investments In Mobile Advertising (mobilegroove.com)
• Kindle Fire To Heat Up European Tablet Market; What Can Advertisers Expect? (mobilegroove.com)

Twitter’s “news’” comes nearly two years after the company introduced the concept of Promoted Tweets. The approach effectively introduces advertising into tweet feeds, an experience that we mostly know from online.

To understand the importance of this week’s announcement, Twitter reminds us that Promoted Products have already been a part of our mobile experience. In fact, Promoted Trends and Promoted Tweets in search have been available on Twitter for iPhone, Twitter for Android and the mobile web (m.twitter.com) for some time. Additionally, Promoted Accounts and Promoted Tweets in the timeline have been available on the mobile Web for several months.

According to Twitter’s blog post, Promoted Accounts are now in Twitter for iPhone and Twitter for Android. But this step is just one part of a much larger strategy we’ll see unfold soon. As Twitter puts it: “We’ll begin introducing Promoted Tweets in the timeline on these mobile apps. Initially, a small number of users may see Promoted Tweets near the top of their timelines from brands they already follow. This will help ensure that people see important Tweets from the brands they care about.”

The end-game for Twitter is all about striving to “create products that put users first, and continue to enrich your Twitter experience.”

Not to be outdone, Facebook announced a new product called Offers and new placements for premium advertising and Sponsored Stories.

In practice, premium ads can now be seen on the log-out page and Sponsored Stories can be seen in News Feed on mobile devices. By way of background, Sponsored Stories are posts from friends or Pages on Facebook that a business, organization or individual has paid to highlight. The logic here is that this visual impact increases the likelihood that people will see and read them.

Facebook bills Offers as a free new way for businesses to share discounts and promotions directly from their Facebook Page. These “ads” can be distributed through the News Feed or promoted as Sponsored Stories. People who read the Offers can then redeem them via email or their mobile device.

How I See It: It’s a risky game, but it could play out for Facebook and Twitter IF they follow the rules. But that IF is what will decide it this all fails or flies. Assume that Facebook and Twitter get it right by providing non-intrusive, relevant ads that do not invade a mobile subscriber’s privacy. If they do this, then mobile advertising takes a huge leap. But if they don’t deliver on that promise ­­—and you can bet the whole world will be watching to see if they keep their word—then large numbers of mobile users everywhere on the globe will sour to the idea of having ads display on their personal devices. And this FAIL would  be a much greater (and more serious) setback for mobile advertising overall.

Nokia’s big breakthrough

If mobile products sold on buzz alone, then Nokia’s 41-megapixel 808 PureView cameraphone would be the consumer choice coming out of the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona.

But there’s more to this picture.

On Monday, Nokia unveiled the PureView, a device that has reportedly been in development for five years. By the end of the MWC, the device had been named the show’s top new handset— which is quite an accomplishment given the massive number of new devices on display.

To put the 41 megapixel total into context: the iPhone 4S has 8 megapixels and is considered to be a state-of-the-art device. Or shall I say it was considered to be a breakthrough product until this week?

Is there really a market for such an advanced cameraphone? We’ll see. In the case of PureView the answer is even tougher since the device runs on the Symbian operating system, a platform that has its share of issues.

It’s easier to answer the question if we examine what people really want. Do mobile device owners look to employ their devices for picture taking? Some global mobile pundits weighed in with views that we should consider carefully before we give this device a thumbs up or thumbs down.

Global mobile guru Tomi Ahonen said on Twitter that 4.2 billion cameraphones are in use – or three times the number of television sets being watched and 3.5 times the number of PCs of any kind being booted up.

Ina Fried over at AllThings Digital agrees that we use cameraphones but wonders what it will take for this phone to take off. As she sees it: “Part of the challenge now will be explaining to the consumer why anyone needs that many megapixels.” Fried, who reviewed the device, reported that a sharp image remains after a user zooms in three or four times.

So far, Nokia has not revealed the retail price tag (we can count on it being expensive). And don’t look for it at your local shop just yet since the 800 PureView isn’t slated for immediate worldwide distribution.

How I See It: Every new device has to prove itself. But rather than focus on the unknown variables (will it succeed and when), I prefer to marvel at Nokia for giving us a clear view of what is possible. It shows there is plenty of spunk (and vision) left in a company that in many ways lost its spot on center stage to the likes of Apple, Google and others. And maybe we are so used to expecting innovation from the usual suspects that we somehow can’t fully appreciate what Nokia has produced. After all, buzz does count for something. Just imagine how many would be standing up on seats applauding if it was Apple that had introduced the first 41-megapixel iPhone? It surely would’ve further cemented Apple’s place as the leading innovator.

In other segments we discuss some new numbers from Xyologic, a company tracking app downloads to provide us a more European perspective on the rise of Android and the increasing importance of local content and context. And this time my co-host Rob Woodbridge raises his goblet of rock to an innovation (and a mad genius) that redefines what we mean by ‘awesome.’ (Words alone don’t do it justice, so you’ll have to tune into m-pulse and check out the video teaser Rob has inserted into this week’s vodcast.)

Nuance goes for deeper integration

Our series of interviews has talked about the evolution of mobile voice, a technology that has been around for decades and catapulted to the top of our radar by Apple’s Siri, the smart assistant that cleverly leverages speech recognition and natural language understanding. It’s also no secret that the technology at the core was licensed from Nuance.

However, Kenn stresses that Nuance itself is thinking far beyond the technology. It is focused on the impact voice will have when it is “the ubiquitous technology across all the touch points in our lives.” Against this backdrop, Siri is just a starting point. The real action kicks in when “we’re able to take [speech] technology and greatly simplify how people use a mobile phone, a tablet, a TV and their car.”

But the real game changer comes when speech simplifies how we interact with the Web. As Kenn puts it: “People are looking for a piece of information on the go; they don’t want to browse the Web. And that’s how we’ve used natural language understanding to greatly reduce the distance between what someone wants to find [on the Web] and the end result.”

Building the pervasive ecosystem

Apple has clearly hit the mark with its approach to mobile voice on a mobile phone (in this case the iPhone 4S). But Kenn argues that the real opportunity is around combining  voice, gesture and touch – and more.

To get there from here there has to deep integration and collaboration, which is why Nuance “integrates some of its core capabilities in collaboration with handset manufacturer customers” and has stepped up activities in its NDEV developer community. By way of background, Nuance launched NDEV last year, providing developers across North America, Europe, Asia and Australia tools and support to develop and bring-to-market innovative Dragon-powered apps.

In practice, Nuance “exposes its dictation technology, its search technology and its text-to-speech technology so that developers can take advantage of [integrating] speech inside their own applications.” According to Kenn, the program is just part of Nuance Mobile’s strategy to “create a truly pervasive ecosystem” that in turn creates the experiences (not just services) that enable us to choose when and how we want to use voice. “Across our platform and application efforts we want to collect a lot of data so we can make these systems more intelligent.”

Precision search & much more

As I have written in a number of reports and commentaries, any approach to mobile search that is a retrofit of Web search we know from the PC (universal and keyword-based) is fatally flawed. In recognition of this Nuance is sharply (and correctly) focused on increasing the precision, accuracy and transparency of mobile search powered by speech recognition and natural language understanding.

The one to watch is Dragon Go!, the Nuance app that leverages both speech recognition and natural language understanding to get us information on the move. However, it’s the notion of a carousel that heralds a new phase in mobile search innovation and monetization.

The Dragon Carousel allows people to find and experience mobile content via destinations and sources dedicated to providing just that. This, Nuance remarks in this press release, is very different from search services that “provide searchers a list of preferential properties owned and controlled by one company.” The result is “open direct access to streamed movies and shows, more music, more social networks, and the ability to ask a question and quickly have it answered.”

To this end the Dragon Go! App gives direct access to relevant results from nearly 200 content providers, including AccuWeather, Bing, ESPN, Facebook, Fandango, iTunes, Last.fm, LiveNation, Milo.com, OpenTable, Pandora internet radio, Rotten Tomatoes, Twitter, Wikipedia, Yelp, YouTube, Yahoo! The community of content destinations has recently expanded to include Spotify, Wolfram|Alpha, Ask.com, Dictionary.com and Google+.

If you want to see this service in action, then check out the video below.

But it’s not just about delivering a great search experience; it’s also about increasing transparency of the experience.  In his interview Kenn pointed out why we – empowered consumers – increasingly demand search that presents us with valuable, personal and relevant results, not pages that are optimized for the search engine in question.

Leveraging intent

Following the m-pulse segment Kenn and I caught up again to deep-dive into the Dragon Carousel and the model it represents.

In theory, it’s easy to imagine how a company could use the carousel to effectively confine us to the community of partners/destinations. But Nuance’s strategy if not to be a gatekeeper. It’s focused on taking the heavy-lifting out of finding what we want and performing the tasks that will get us there.

As Kenn puts it:  It’s not about limiting our access to the wider Internet; it’s about “leveraging our intent” to determine which destination to display in the Dragon Carousel, or if the best content/answer of all isn’t simply the content we have stored on the device (in our personal stockpile of music, images, contacts and other digital stuff). If it’s neither then we can always access the wider Web.

What are the plans to monetize this new kind of precision mobile search? Surely more hits than misses would mean more revenues to someone in this emerging business ecosystem…

Kenn tells me Nuance Mobile is taking its time to get the experience right. “Throwing up ads is a bad experience,” so online display advertising is not the blueprint that Nuance wants to follow.

My take:

Nuance has its own IP and its own strategy. It will be a while before we know just how the company plans to monetize its precision search (enabled by a comprehensive carousel of content sites). But the point is: Nuance has a model it can monetize because the Dragon Go! experience is built from the ground up to provide us convenience and choice. And Nuance isn’t only thinking voice. The recent acquisition of Swype – the technology allows users to trace their words out by “swyping” their fingers between the letters on a keyboard instead of typing – is a huge step in a much wider strategy that could move search to a new level. Connect the dots, and Nuance is building the capabilities mix to deliver us a more comprehensive experience and – more important — a  choice of when we want to use voice and when we would rather use another input (such as gesture, touch or swype).

Check out Episode #7 of m-pulse here.

Next week we kick off a month-long look at app development, beginning with the results of a milestone cross-platform tools survey/report from VisionMobile. The report, slated to be released this week, is full of insights and surprises, so check out untetherTV for the inside story – and I’ll provide additional analysis in a companion post here at MobileGroove.

I’ve watched company after company cross the line and have patiently waited for a tipping point where the harm done creates a wave of public protest that forces meaningful change.

I’m still waiting.

In case you missed it, Google has once again pushed the limits of what we should be willing to take. (And my point here is that you are not alone if the news failed to catch your attention.)

Google reportedly breached the privacy of millions of Apple Safari users by fooling the Web browser into accepting tracking cookies it normally wouldn’t take. According to PC World, Google does have regrets. For the record PC World reports that “Google… says this is an unhappy accident.” Moreover, “Google never intended to track its users in this manner.”

It’s good to acknowledge a wrong, but it doesn’t make it right. Google’s violation not only breaks the “contract” between Apple and its Safari users; it blows to pieces the promises Google made to the United States’ Federal Trade Commission that “bars the company from future privacy misrepresentations.”

How might the government entity punish Google? The Los Angeles Times suggests some severe measures to take. “If Google is found to have violated its agreement with the FTC, the company could face fines of up to $16,000 per day for each violation.”

Wow, $16,000 should get Google’s attention. The Web giant likely pays more than that for daily lunches in its cafeteria.

Now back to the question of whether Web users care about their privacy.  I, for one, use Safari on multiple devices, and I do feel “violated.” But will I change browsers because of this, or operate under the assumption that the next browser I use will invade my space as well?

That’s a hard decision and one that each of us — myself included— will have to make.

In my upcoming book titled Mobilized Marketing, I speak with Thom Kennon, senior vice president and director of strategy at Y&R, who tells me flat out that “privacy is delusional.”

As he sees it (and I recount in the book): “I don’t think for the last 70 or 80 years of consumerism have we enjoyed this Pollyannaish view of what privacy and data protection we were going to have. I don’t believe even aspirationally that it’s attainable.”

How I See It: This privacy issue will go on long after you have read Kennon’s full comments. And you can read his provocative views on our personal privacy on May 1, when my book is released. Peggy adds: Thanks for the preview of your upcoming book, Jeff, and I look forward to featuring excerpts (and more) here on MobileGroove.

Samsung’s statement

Samsung introduced its new Galaxy Note device — complete with a stylus — via a with a bold Super Bowl TV advertisement and accompanied be even bolder talk of consumer demand for a smartphone/tablet hybrid.

Is this the device consumers were waiting for? It’s a tough one to call, and I’m sure we can expect more discussion about user device interest next week when the industry meets to debate hot trends and developments at Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Spain.

You may recall that Steve Jobs famously dissed focus groups, claiming that consumers are not savvy enough to know what they want or need. Of course, there are also other companies that build products (and their own business prowess) based on the feedback and insights they get after talking to consumers. In this sense, speaking with those who may buy – or not buy – something new and different can serve as a kind of reality check.

As for the hybrid, I haven’t personally dreamt of the day when my smartphone and tablet would become one. And I also haven’t met anyone who desires such a combination smartphone/tablet device.

That doesn’t stop Samsung from being bullish about its newest 5.3 inch device. It markets the Note as “the ultimate on-the-go device which consolidates core benefits of diverse mobile devices while maintaining smartphone portability.”

And Samsung tells us this is the device we have been waiting for. Its consumer research indicates that “people always want to do more tasks much better, even on the go, whether it is web browsing, email, games, or viewing photos and videos.”

To do all this, Samsung observes, consumers “carry multiple devices, because each device has unique benefits that work best in a particular situation. Therefore, consumers constantly switch devices to use the right device at the right time.”

What’s more, our multi-tasking opens up new opportunities for the stylus. As Samsung sees it: “Even for consumers with multiple smart devices, they still carry around a notepad for writing down ideas.” Connect the dots, and “there is an emerging desire for a primary device for on-the-go use that could consolidate the core tasks of multiple devices as well as recreate the ease and simplicity of using a pen and paper.”

How I See It: I get the logic, but I can’t say I agree with how Samsung has interpreted this in its newest device. There are hundreds or thousands of smartphone and tablet applications that were built to take down our notes. The Siri voice assistant on the iPhone 4S does this effectively using speech recognition and natural language understanding. Personally, I’m happy to leave my stylus days in the past. But I’m also happy to concede that one form factor won’t win the game. Choice is good. By the end of the MWC, there will undoubtedly be many more choices.

In other segments we discuss the wider issue of personal privacy,  following the news that social app Path has been uploading user data to its servers without our consent. Rob Woodbridge, UNTETHER.tv founder and my co-host at m-pulse, recounts a checklist of things to consider when building privacy into your minimum viable product. And we both find a perfect fit with a brilliant presentation— whose time has come (again) — from Jonathan MacDonald, a thought-leader and entrepreneur in digital media perhaps best known for his passionate views on the 3Ps (Permission: people will decide what brand messages they interact with; Privacy: people will decide where their data is collected and how it is used; and Preference: people will decide what content they find relevant). More about that further down in this post.

I also highlight some recent Lightspeed Research that provides insights into the increasing requirement of U.K. consumers for instant gratification and information access. Finally, I raise my Goblet of Rock to salute two cool companies I met during the M-Days in Frankfurt: AppZapp, a sophisticated app search engine that shows us bargains (based on tracking price drops),  and Apprupt, an ad network focused on major German publishers that also pioneered the call to action click-to-calendar. What an effective way for brands to insert themselves into my daily routine!

What is speech really good for?

Voice has been around for decades, and Roberto — who has been in the industry for 25+ years — uses our interview to recount some of the milestones. But it’s the combination of speech recognition technology and natural language understanding that is moving voice into the mainstream. As Roberto sees it: Natural language is a “powerful tool” that finally allows us to express complicated requests and ideas. The way is clear for personal search and assistance — and the writing is on the wall for companies that stick to key word search.

But the intelligence of search services like Siri can’t hide the fact that the industry still has to solve issues around background noise, accents and the sheer complexity of our spoken language. “Siri is extremely beautiful work and engineering,” Roberto observes. “But try to say something complex and Siri won’t understand it.” This is why Roberto’s work as Director of the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI) is about building more sophisticated models that unleash the true power of voice.

Summer of speech recognition

We’re all talking about Siri, but there’s a real danger that we could come to expect too much too soon. Right now, Roberto tells us there is “a new energy in speech research,” with everyone wanting to build a Siri-like app. Siri is fun, and the star of popular culture and comedy skits, but our admiration of voice enabled service could fuel market hype. If future voice services fail to entertain and deliver, then we could see the advance of “another winter of voice recognition,” when we should all be enjoying a great summer.

Roberto is ready for the beach. He is optimistic that voice will replace our remote controls. “It will be speech, not keyboards” across all the platforms and devices that define our lives (phones, PCs, tablets, TVs, cars — everything).

Roberto is also convinced that the advance of speech will force players to agree on standards, not fight over them. After all, standards are the first step to creating a market, and making money, in every industry.

Sure, it’s tough for companies to turn off the natural urge to compete and command, but Roberto leaves us with a vision of the not-so-distant future opportunities that makes business sense.

Once we have standards the way will be clear for companies to choose where they want to play (and win). Voice is complex and we’ll want apps tailored to deliver us what we need. Watch a movie and want to ‘ask’ the TV who the actor is — and use that as a jumping off point for an entertainment focused search/assistance experience. Yes — there WILL have to be an app for that.

Path & our personal privacy

Rob deep dives into the public blowout around Path, reminding us that the future of the industry will not be decided by technology. It will be determined by our very human requirements for simple, transparent services we can trust — and the companies that respect the integrity of our personal data.

To drive home this point Rob walks us through a checklist and a post by Jeff Bacon, Director of Mobile Strategy at bitHeads Inc. It outlines how companies need to conduct themselves (and their business) if they want to win our trust.

Why do companies need our trust? Because companies that want us to buy need our buy-in. As I have written in the Netsize Guide by Gemalto, only a relationship built on trust will provide companies the access to the customer insights and information that will allow them to develop and deliver the applications, devices, services and infrastructure that will allow them to stay relevant, competitive and profitable.

Our discussion of privacy is a perfect fit with a 2008 presentation from Jonathan MacDonald (that is even more pertinent today). By way of background, Jonathan, is also co-founder of this fluid world, a boutique consultancy that achieves strategic and commercial results for clients by offering services based on broad horizontal thinking and deep vertical understanding.

Quite simply, Jonathan sums it up best.

I encourage you to check out the complete presentation here.

U.K. consumers want instant access…

Regular viewers will know I look at the people side of the equation and the data points that provide us insight into how mobile is impacting our lives at all levels. This time I connected with Ralph Risk, esteemed colleague and Managing Director EMEA of Lightspeed Research, a research firm delivering data to help clients make informed business decisions.

Rob and I discuss the takeaways of two recent Lightspeed consumer surveys and reports. Social media and news draws from a survey of 1,000 U.K. consumer to explore how people prefer their first news of the day, and their willingness to interact with these media companies via social media.

The report shows how people fulfill the need for instant news (and information gratification) and confirms our hunch that mobile is moving up the list as the device of choice for 16 percent of respondents, taking third place behind laptop (46 percent) and PC (29 percent).

Interestingly, just under one quarter of respondents ‘like’ or ‘follow’ news channels or programs in social networks. Predictably, 18-34 age group is the most likely to interact with media companies on a social network. The same group would also welcome more personalized content.

Ralph tells me this confirms a wider trend that people want instant gratification when it comes to information. The growth of mobile is significant and its impact is profound.

But are confused by 2D barcodes

Another must-read report from Lightspeed delves into how people use/accept 2D barcodes.

The good news: the majority (87 percent) of respondents who have used QR codes think they are useful tools, and 86 percent of this group would like to see more of them (!) The bad news: many respondents are still confused about how to scan codes and what they can expect after the click. Significantly, 16 percent of people who used codes reported problems trying to scan the codes, noting that the app failed to launch properly or simply didn’t detect the code.

Among those respondents that have not used a QR code, lack of interest was the main reason for not bothering to scan barcodes with their mobile phones. In fact, half of the respondents thought that scanning a 2D code would just take them to where they could get more information about a product. And, of course, 2D codes can do much, much more.

My take: Connect the dots in the data, and marketers have yet to make the benefits to consumers clear. Yes, part of it is about navigating the Web in a new and convenient way thanks to the ‘short cuts’ 2D codes provide us. (Scanning a 2D code on a package to access more nutritional information, for example.) But companies have a lot of consumer education to do if they want to impress us with the breadth of what 2D codes can really deliver. Thinking here of the role of 2D codes in marketing campaigns to reward us with coupons, encourage brand interaction, trigger a mobile video, enable an app download — the works!

Check out Episode #6 of m-pulse here.

Our look at mobile voice wraps up this week with Nuance Mobile and an inside track on the company’s clever strategy to deliver a 360 degree transparent search experience. Look for the vodcast every Friday at UNTETHER.tv,  with deep analysis in a companion post here at MobileGroove.

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Businesses need to stay in step with Digital Natives. Yet it can be a struggle to choreograph an elegant dance when Millennials don’t lead or follow in the “traditional” way.

A poll of American workers, conducted by Workplace Options, shows a shared sentiment across age groups that Millennials have a lackadaisical attitude toward workplace responsibility. Sixty-eight percent of respondents feel that Millennials are less motivated to take on responsibility and produce quality work.

Interestingly, among the Millennial respondents themselves, 59 percent agreed they have a different attitude toward workplace responsibility than their peers and more than half acknowledged that workers of their generation are generally less motivated to take on more responsibility.

But is this observation on the mark?  Not if we consider that it’s our definition of work (and its value) that could be out of sync with the reality of what work has become. In his post Leading the “Lazy” Generation Ty Kissel makes some excellent counter points to the perception that young people entering the workforce today are unilaterally lazy. In Kissel’s view, “it’s easy for us grey-hairs to misinterpret their desire to avoid what they consider ‘busy work’ as being lazy, but I’m convinced this is not the case.”

He attributes this, in part, to the fact that this is a generation taught not to accept everything they are told simply because it comes from someone in authority. He also points out how highly collaborative this generation is.

Climbing a flat ladder

Certainly, a generation reared in crowdsourced, socially networked environments will have a much flatter view of corporate culture than those steeped in hierarchies and corporate ladder climbing.

This not only affects their relationship with authority figures, which they will freely question. It also impacts the ways in which they will be motivated to achieve. So while some employers might write younger workers off as “lazy” because they aren’t living for a paycheck, effective managers will tap into what does motivate them to get the most out of them as employees and to take advantage of what their open, crowdsourcing mentality can offer organizations.

Millennials are anytime, anyplace workers. However the fact that they aren’t at their desks 9-5 could easily be misconstrued by more traditional supervisors. Yet flexibility is key not only to attracting and retaining younger workers, but to getting the most out of them.

While workers of all ages increasingly seek workplace flexibility, the 18-34 age group is up to three times more likely than older workers to give up more than 10 percent of their salary for more flexibility at work according to a Harris Interactive survey undertaken on behalf of Mom Corps.

Connect them to connect with them

Organizations that recognize and accept the time-shifted nature of younger workers will certainly do better in retaining them. Beyond that, those that enable and empower this tendency through cloud based collaboration environments, for example, will also get much more out of them in terms of productivity – any place and any time inspiration strikes.

Certainly, the socially-mediated, open, collaborative work style of this generation will make some managers uncomfortable, particularly those who’ve put in hard years climbing the rungs of the corporate ladder the old fashioned way.

Interestingly, though, another thing younger workers seek out in their work and esteem even more than money is mentorship.

According to PricewaterhouseCoopers’ 14th Annual Global CEO Survey , 98 percent of Millennials believe that working with a mentor is a necessary component in their professional development. In fact, they rank training and development three times higher than cash bonuses as their first choice in benefits.

So while this may not be a generation willing to blindly follow a boss’ lead in pursuit of a paycheck, this is certainly one that values wise leadership. And if they are empowered to engage collaboratively by enlightened managers, a mutual mentorship may unfold that will enable both to better achieve.

The holiday numbers are in, the mobile user surveys are done, and the implications for brands, retailers and marketers are profound. Mobile has become an integral part of the shopping routine, with the vast majority of consumers admitting to using their mobile phones to search and purchase gifts. John Stevens examines this mobile megatrend and shares eight tips for creating and executing a successful mobile strategy.

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Shopping will never be the same. A number of reports show that people rely on mobile every step of the consumer journey. Equally mobile search continues to play a huge part in our lives. A recent Performics survey of 502 U.S, residents who use mobile phones to search the web at least once a week revealed that a whopping 75 percent of consumers report mobile search makes their lives easier. Specifically, 63 percent said access to mobile search has changed the way they gather information, and 32 percent said they use search more on their mobile devices than they do on their personal computers.

Clearly, the advance of smartphones and the increasing popularity of tablets and connected devices like the Amazon Kindle raise the bar when it comes to all experiences — including search. As a result, shoppers expect the companies and brands they interact with to deliver mobile-enabled services that meet their needs, regardless of whether they are connecting via a smartphone, tablet or feature phone handset.

Under pressure

Against this backdrop, there is intense pressure on traditional bricks-and-mortar stores to align with the times and take advantage of the growth in the number of consumers using mobile devices to research and purchase products. Mobile-readiness begins with a mobile-optimized site or experience. But it also lays the groundwork for strategies that enable brands (and retailers) to build up an opt-in customer database, an interaction they can cultivate by offering coupons and SMS alerts to consumers who genuinely want to hear what the brand has to say.

An approach built on opt-in databases is particularly useful when it comes to more specialized consumer targeting and tracking. Tracking consumer purchase patterns on the move, along with the ability to separate data into specifically targeted user groups and demographic patterns, gives brands an effective, expedient way of reaching prospective customers, and securing their long-term loyalty.

The bottom line: mobile retail is a fact, not a fad.

InsightExpress reports that mobile retail purchase intent is eight times higher than online retail purchase intent. How you choose to market your brand now will be critical for future customer acquisition and loyalty.

To help you with this task, I have identified eight tips to guide you as you develop a mobile strategy.

1. No guesswork. Understand your customers’ behavior first. Until you know how your customers want to interact with your company or brand via mobile, you won’t be in a position to develop a strategy that meets your business objectives. A common mistake businesses make is to start with the technology first and then wrestle it into a solution for the business. Although a shiny, new mobile app might feel like a good idea for your business, you need to look beyond the technology. Make the effort to truly understand how your customers use their mobile devices, and you will generally find that the best way to engage effectively is to offer them a mix of propositions across different platforms (mobile-optimized website, app, text). And don’t forget that your mobile presence could clinch the deal. Market research firm Foresee reports that shoppers who are highly satisfied with a mobile experience are 32 percent more likely to buy from that retailer online and 31 percent more likely to buy offline.

2. Make it easy. Foresee research also points out that one-third (32 percent) of shoppers already use their phone to access retail websites. Brands need to capitalize on this behavior by mobilizing their websites and offers. Ask yourself: how does your site look on a mobile device as we speak? If it’s not easy to read and browse, then you could be losing out on revenue. At 2ergo, we conducted some research in association with YouGov, questioning over 2,000 adults in the UK about their attitude to mobile purchases. The results show that nearly half (49 percent) of the sample didn’t feel comfortable making a purchase on their smartphone because of the difficulties they have viewing the content. The time it takes websites to load is a deterrent for 34 percent of mobile users surveyed.

3. Aim to influence. When shoppers go online with their mobile devices to research or purchase products, they have made some— but not all —, key decisions. Again, Foresee research shows that 47 percent of shoppers use their mobile phone to compare prices on the fly. Brands and retailers are therefore well advised to develop marketing and promotional strategies that give potential customers the right combination of information and offers. Baking this into your mobile strategy will ensure that your customers make a decision that plays in your favor (such as making a purchase or agreeing to an ongoing brand interaction).

4. Make use of mobile advertising. Mobile advertising — which Efficient Frontier tells us is 60 percent cheaper in terms of cost per click that desktop advertising — has fantastic reach. It can be seen by anyone with a mobile phone — and that’s over five billion people. Efficient Frontier also tells us that as a result, mobile advertising sees 2.7 times larger click-through rates than desktops adverts, an interaction that also delivers businesses that spend on mobile marketing a significant ROI. But don’t just jump into mobile advertising. Make sure mobile targeting plays a center role in your strategy, regardless of whether you choose to run simple display banner campaigns or campaigns that point people to a specific offer. And timing is a must. Think about the best time to target people, and remember that many mobile searches and sessions take place in evenings and weekends, as people surf from their sofas.

5. Seek a balance. A smartphone user surfing on a fast connection will likely expect more rich media, than a user relying on edge connectivity on a feature phone. Don’t go in for features that require the fastest connections and the most advanced devices. Make your mobile site light to load, but add enough functionality to ensure mobile shoppers can access the information they need. Also, pay attention to page design. Our experience has taught us that shoppers rely heavily on three kinds of content: product details, peer reviews and personalized ratings and recommendations. Retailers need to cover all three and make sure their content is timely, accurate and relevant.

6. Bridge the consumer gap. Use mobile vouchers and coupons to reach people where (and when) it counts. Supermarkets are leading the way here. They have harnessed targeted mobile marketing that is also responsive to changes in consumer behavior. For example, regular customers who stop shopping at their usual store for an extended period of time receive a mobile coupon to encourage them to come back and check out what’s on offer. But it’s not just for supermarkets. Major operators have long embraced this approach to connect with their pay-as-you go mobile customers via personalized and targeted messages they deliver to the user’s phone once spend ceases or drops below a certain level.

7. Use location to your advantage. Location-aware marketing is gaining serious traction. The blogosphere is full of excellent case studies and examples that show how brands and retailers are communicating and engaging with customers based on their location. Most handsets and smartphones also allow integration with GPS from within a mobile site, bringing even more benefits to smart brands that harness location to deliver relevant marketing messages.

8. Track the results. The most important thing is to capture and analyze everything you gather. Mobile marketing campaigns provide an abundance of raw data. Taking the time to make sense of it will pay dividends in the long run.

Many brands are already mobile but not in the true sense of the word. They have fractured strategies that don’t fully utilize all of the assets available to them. In the competitive mobile space, it’s tough for brands to make an small impact, let alone make a real impact on consumer behavior. Therefore, the real opportunity moving forward will be for brands who are prepared to take a step or leap up to true mobile engagement. They will be the ones who achieve real long-term success.

About John:

John Stevens joined 2ergo in January 2010 from DSGI Business where he was Sales and Marketing Director. He has more than 25 years commercial experience in retail and B2B sectors, including three years as Marketing Director at PC World Business, and various board positions including eCommerce Director and Multi-Channel Marketing Director. John is currently Group Managing Director at2ergo, a mobile marketing specialist and is responsible for sales, marketing, product development and new business ventures. Follow 2ergo on Twitter (@2ergo).

Editor’s note: MobileGroove regularly features guest columns from industry executives and influencers. If you’d like to suggest a topic, then email a brief summary to peggy@mobilegroove.com, and we’ll get back to you within 48 hours.

Our topic is at m-pulse this month is mobile voice, and we examine from a variety of perspectives, beginning with Bill Meisel, the industry go-to guy for all things voice.

By way of background, Bill is the founder of TMA Associates, an independent consultancy providing insights and supporting companies that want to incorporate speech technologies into their offer, or improve their own enterprise efficiency. Bill has also teamed up with the Applied Voice Input Output Society (AVIOS) to organize the Mobile Voice Conference, March 12-14 in San Francisco. With this must-attend just around the corner my co-host Rob Woodbridge and I dedicate this month to mobile voice and celebrate the ‘Year of the Ear’ — to borrow an observation from Mary Meeker’s invaluable trends presentation.

In other segments Rob and I also discuss his pick of hot mobile news. I focus on a new quarterly report from Madvertise, a German mobile ad network present in Germany, Spain and the U.K., and the top trends it sees based on its 1.4 billion page views per month. A key finding: BlackBerry is stronger than we think. The report also draws from data from AppZapp to reveal the best selling app categories for the iPhone and iPad.

Voice reaches the tipping point

Voice may have overpromised for over a decade, but Bill tells us it has arrived full force thanks to increases in computing behavior, a shift in our behavior and — most important — the popularity of Siri on the iPhone 4S.

But Siri is more than just voice recognition software (licensed from Nuance). Siri will be a super-tough act to follow because it has combined speech recognition and natural language processing and tightly integrated this with key features on the device (calendar and address book, for example).

As Bill sees it: “This personal assistant model is a paradigm shift.” It’s not about trying to inject human intelligence into a service. It’s about human-like services that harness computer intelligence to do our tasks for us  — better and faster — by tapping into the “strengths computing technology has (and always will) in memory and the ability to process a lot of information and do terrific searches.” All the better if they —like Siri—remain robot-like with a good sense of humor.

Are call centers next?

Siri and the fun jokes it tells are just one part of what has us hooked on services that cleverly recognize speech and process using natural language. Bill warns that our familiarity with Siri is will likely whet our appetite for Siri-like services that take the heavy-lifting out of dealing with customer service issues. “A lot of enterprises are going to realize they need a smart personal assistant — and that people are going to expect that.”

Bill shares some examples (such as American Airlines running on Microsoft technology) that show how a voice assistant on our personal devices can improve service (the first big step to boosting customer loyalty).

The upshot: pressure on lots of companies to create these applications so that we can use our mobile devices to streamline our customer service requests. Imagine an Amazon assistant that can take book order, track shipping — the works. “That’s going to be expected,” Bill says.

And that’s where the problems start.

Call centers, marketing, IT, advertising, CRM — all of these departments and tasks currently exist in silos. It will take resource and a rethink to get companies thinking about offering personal assistants that are smart, task-oriented and consistent with the brand. It helps that platforms such as Android and vendors such as Nuance enable developers to integrate voice recognition into apps. But, in my view, it’s the ability to tightly integrate this with phone functions that will distinguish the leaders from the also-rans.

Voice battle heats up

So, who are the ones to watch? Apple is a given, but Google, Microsoft and Nuance are making great gains. He is particularly bullish about Nuance, which has made some ‘smart’ acquisitions (pun intended) and also sharpened it’s focus on solutions that bring mobile and call center services together to enhance customer service.

Still, it’s too early to call this one, so Bill suggests we strap in for an exciting time ahead. As he sees it: “There’s going to be a battle to own the customer and smart voice assistants are going to be a big part of it. We’re talking about a lot of money here, guys.”

Why so much disruption and competition? Because voice search integrated with the Web effectively bypasses Google, getting us to the answers without exposing us to the results and ads that have made Google an advertising company first and a search company second (Let’s not forget that advertising accounts for the lion’s share of Google revenues and the 4Q2011 decline in click prices was enough to disappoint investors.)

At the other end of the spectrum, Bill reminds us that the massive opportunities in in-car and home entertainment have also created a new battleground in consumer tech. Instead of searching what is on TV, we’ll ask our smart assistants. No wonder companies are jockeying for position to voice-enable our TVs. From Samsung’s strong showing at CES to Nuance’s clever acquisition of Vlingo, companies are pulling together an arsenal of capabilities to fight it out.

Madvertise European trends

Meantime, I recounts some highlights from M-Days in Frankfurt, a show that gave me a chance to meet with some cool companies and innovators. Top of my list: catching up with Marcus Hamacher and Jan-Hendrik Seyfahrt over at Apprupt, an ad network focused on major German publishers that also pioneered the call to action click-to-calendar., and connecting with Sascha Brenk, who heads up AppZapp —a combination bargain guide/mobile app search service that delivers excellent insights into mobile apps and what people everywhere are looking for.

AppZapp also feeds data into the new Madvertise quarterly report I present in this vodcast.  The report zeroes in on U.K. and providing some insights into the devices and the rise of apps. One point of interest for marketers who think they can dismiss BlackBerry. Based on what Madvertise sees across its network BlackBerry held a leading position in 2011.

This dovetails with an increase in BlackBerry sales in the U.K. reported by Gizmodo. The blog stated that “based on BlackBerry and sales data compiled by analyst firm GfK, phones running the BlackBerry OS took 26.3 percent of the UK smartphone market during December of 2011, with the company saying it also managed an average market share of 27.7 per cent per month throughout 2011.”

The report also provides some insights into the ad spending growth across verticals in Europe and the top five app categories for the iPhone and iPad. Interestingly, education and lifestyle apps are stealing the lead — no doubt because of these platforms bring learning alive. I encourage you to download the report here (PDF), and share your thoughts with all of us over at UNTETHER.tv.

And finally…

We raise our ‘Goblet of Rock’ (a toast to those who rock)to Deckster, an Ottawa-based company that has created probably finest iPod nano timepiece available. The Deckster hand-crafted design allows you to easily insert or remove of your iPod nano. Talk about a fashion statement!

Check out our interview with Bill Meisel on m-pulse

Next week we catch up with Roberto Pieraccini, Director and President at ICSI (the International Computer Science Institute) and author of The Voice and the Machine, slated for publication next month.

Look for m-pulse for your weekly dose of what matters most in mobile every Friday. I pick up every Monday here at MobileGroove with analysis and a summary of key takeaways.

Thanks for your positive feedback, shout outs and RTs. Don’t hesitate to get in touch with me (peggy@mobilegroove.com) or my co-host Rob Woodbridge, founder and owner of UNTETHER.tv, with your good ideas and great companies.