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AD BUYING IS TRENDING UPWARD, says a regular tracking report of the "advertising confidence" of media buyers and marketers, from Advertiser Perceptions Inc. The report says that in every medium except local newspapers, advertisers are looking to increase their spending, potentially signaling that the ad market has already bottomed out and is beginning to recover. Additionally, the report says that mobile is the sector about which those surveyed are the most optimistic, followed closely by online. Source The Bottom Line: As the economy begins to recover, so too will advertising. But that doesn't mean that things will go back to the same state they were in a year or two ago. The recession and subsequent drop off in ad spending may prove to be an inflection point where marketers shift their spending away from old-media outlets like newspapers, in favor of newer channels like mobile. *** MOBILE USABILITY IS AN OXYMORON, according to a study of mobile web sites from well-known usability consultants Nielsen Norman Group. The company says that the results remind them of their first study of desktop PC sites in 1994, and that user had much lower success rates at completing tasks than on desktop sites. The group tested 36 web sites, asking users to attempt particular tasks on each one, such as trying to find information about wine on a wine site, or flight information on an airline's mobile site. They also tested "web-wide tasks" where users could utilize any site they wanted. The average success rate on mobile was 59 percent, compared to 80 percent on PCs, while they also found that users of mobile-specific sites were successful 64 percent of the time, compared to 53 percent when trying to use a full desktop site on a mobile device. Source

QUARTER OF GLOBAL USERS ACCESS MOBILE INTERNET VIA NOVARRA PLATFORM. Novarra announced its Mobile Internet Experience Update with the news that two thirds of U.S. mobile phone users and one quarter of all global users have access to some form of mobile Internet service via the Novarra platform today. A benchmark report gives a broad overview of how consumers access and use the internet via mobile phones with Novarra's Vision browser and mobile Internet platform. Among the overall findings:

• Devices don't' matter (much): Users with standard feature phones will use the Web as much or even more than a smartphone user if the mobile Internet experience is good
• There is a 'long tail' in the mobile Internet: The top website typically accounts for 5 percent of total mobile page views. The number two site accounts for less than 1 percent of traffic. And the top 500 sites account for only 25-30 percent of all page views
• Sessions vary: 40 percent of mobile internet sessions are under five minutes and 40 percent are over 15 minutes

The report further groups mobile users into 'tribes' based on their distinctive user profiles. These are:

• The Business Pro - Dependent on their mobile to be more productive and to handle all their communications
• The Mobile Millennial - Early adopters and young adults with disposable income
• The Connected Kid - Children and teenagers who have grown up with technology from a young age
• Frugal Fanatics utilise handset customisation services more than twice as much as any other group
• Connected Kids have far more page views relative to sessions than any other group, indicating they tend to surf more for entertainment purposes
• Source