Dao Nguyen, BuzzFeed's publisher
To understand what makes BuzzFeed tick, you need to know how Dao Nguyen thinks about data.
Read article : http://www.fastcompany.com/3055894/most-innovative-companies/what-buzzfeeds-dao-nguyen-knows-about-data-intuition-and-the-futur?
Twitter Ads can help you amplify your messages and offerings — and we see that the most successful advertisers are those who first establish a strong organic presence on Twitter. After all, Promoted Tweets are simply organic Tweets that are targeted to a specific audience.
Starting today, you’ll have a new tool in your arsenal: we’re rolling out an enhanced Tweet activity dashboard to provide measurable insights into how your organic Tweets perform.
For the first time, advertisers will be able to see how many times users have viewed and engaged with organic Tweets, so that they can more effectively optimize their content strategy. The Tweet activity dashboard is now available to all advertisers, Twitter Card publishers, and verified users around the world.
With the new dashboard, you can:
New insights from additional research
On Twitter, nothing comes between your Tweets and your followers. The Tweet activity dashboard can help you create content that resonates most with these followers, who have the ability to amplify your brand’s message even further through actions like a Retweet, mention or reply.
In addition to the data included in the new Tweet activity dashboard, which focuses on impressions and total engagements, we recently analyzed organic Tweets and the reach of those Tweets (reach = unique logged-in users served one or more impressions) for 200 active brand advertisers. The data below identifies a few insights and best practices for brands when developing their own content strategy on Twitter. These advertisers spanned multiple verticals and ranged from Fortune 500 companies to SMBs.
First, we saw that brands that tweet two to three times per day can typically reach an audience size that’s equal to 30% of their follower base during a given week. This indicates that Tweet consistency is a key factor when it comes to maximizing your organic reach on Twitter.
When brands pair consistent tweeting with engaging content, there’s potential for even higher organic reach. In fact, Wheat Thins (@WheatThins) achieved organic reach equal to 95% of their follower base by tweeting 2x a day per week, while Trident (@TridentGum) saw organic reach that was 5x greater than their follower base by tweeting 3x per day.
“It’s incredibly powerful for our brands to gain insights into their organic impressions on Twitter. We gain a massive amount of value in understanding how our Tweets resonate with our followers,” said Bonin Bough, VP of Global Media and Consumer Engagement at Mondelēz International. “There’s no filter between our brands and our followers on Twitter, and this new dashboard shines a light on how our brand’s voice helps drive our organic activity. In turn, this will help influence how we can be smarter around our decisions related to paid campaigns.”
Of the 200 brands, those that drove the highest organic reach utilized one or more of these tactics when it was relevant to their marketing goals:
Tweet activity dashboard best practices
The revamped Tweet activity dashboard can help you quickly identify which Tweets drive the highest engagement and impressions. Here are a few ways to use the dashboard to improve your content strategy today:
Our goal is to provide the insights you need to maximize your business presence on Twitter. Get started with the new Tweet activity dashboard — and if you’re not yet advertising on Twitter, sign up today.
All images used with permission of @Buzzfeed.
source : https://blog.twitter.com/2014/introducing-organic-tweet-analytics
Committee Mission Statement
The Mission of IAB Europe’s Brand Advertising Committee is to drive brand investment into digital by providing Brand Advertisers with a reliable and trusted Brand Advertising Framework for the converging digital and traditional media environment. This Framework is a set of initiatives which includes the establishment of recommendations for Ad Formats, Metrics and KPIs across Europe and which are compatible with other initiatives around the globe. The Brand Advertising Committee is a multi-stakeholder group with global, regional and local input.
Ad Formats Stream
The Ad Formats stream aims to provide a new and attractive branding environment to advertisers including powerful ad formats for maximum impact within online branding campaigns.
In order to understand the current advertising formats landscape and diversity of the European market IAB Europe conducted a Brand Advertising Formats Survey which gathered the opinion of over 300 senior publishers, agencies and networks across Europe. The survey highlighted both currently popular formats and those predicted to have a bright future. It also identified formats being sought out by the demand side in contrast to those available from the supply side. This insight has enabled IAB Europe to create a best-of-breed suite of advertising formats – the Brand Builders.
The formats within the Brand Builders suite are blank canvases, the only prescriptive detail is the pixel dimension and the rest is to be decided on by the advertiser/ creative agency. Similar sized formats with more prescriptive detail such as the IAB Rising Stars and the BVDW Premium Ad Package can be accommodated within IAB Europe Brand Advertising Framework.
A key feature of the suite is that it offers a 16:9 TV compatible dimension (x410) with the aim of making brand advertising across TV and digital easier. By providing a 16:9 TV compatible dimension the suite is able to support in-page video advertising, which is particularly important at a time of exponential increase in digital video consumption and as video increasingly acts as a major draw for brand advertisers. By fuelling the increase of high value, high quality inventory for large scale brand advertisers, IAB Europe also envisages an increase in programmatic trading of premium digital advertising.
The Ad Formats Task Force’s next steps will focus on mobile in-page advertising formats and in-stream formats.
Metrics and KPIs stream
The Metrics and KPIs stream aims to establish what measurements would help drive more long-term brand advertising investment in digital media by better understanding the needs and thoughts of all key stakeholders in the European industry. This first step will be followed by publishing a measurement blueprint for the rich and varied European digital ecosystem.
The Metrics and KPIs stream is starting with a Europe-wide survey devised with the help of a broad group of stakeholders from the Brand Advertising Committee - Brand Advertisers, Agencies, Publishers, Ad Networks, Measurement/ Data Suppliers and vendors of inventory across Europe.
The survey aims to establish and covers the following:
• Audience metrics: how important are measures already used for other media channels, namely net reach, exposure frequency, OTS and GRPs. These would make audiences delivered by digital channels more compatible with TV or Print, hitherto staple channels for most brand/image advertising.
• Platform focus: within digital channels how important is it that audience metrics provide separate metrics for each platform (online, tablet, mobile phone) as well as a measure of net unduplicated reach across platforms
• Cross media evaluation: whenever possible should online surveys be structured so they can easily be integrated with other media or product purchase studies to create multi-media evaluation tools?
• Contact quality: in the US it has become a key issue to distinguish between served and viewed impressions – how important is this issue for the European industry? The survey aims to establish the importance of viewability and how to define what constitutes a ‘viewed’ advertising message.
• Qualitative measures: does the strength of a media brand or the editorial/visual environment have a measurable impact on the effectiveness of advertising messages? Is user engagement a key factor – if so, what is it, how important is it, and can it be measured?
• Effectiveness measures/ROI: can such measures ever be part of syndicated surveys (and if so, how granular should the results be), or will true ROI measures always be limited to proprietary studies
The survey launched in February 2014 and its results will be presented at Interact 2014. The blueprint will be produced in H2 2014.
A key objective is to ensure that we gauge the importance of these metrics and obtain the opinion of all relevant stakeholders, both the corporates mentioned above and including relevant executives in industry associations, measurement bodies and auditing companies.
http://www.iabeurope.eu/committee/view/13
For more information about the Brand Advertising Committee or to get involved please contact Marie-Clare Puffett
YouTube
has started adjusting the ranking of videos in YouTube search to reward
engaging videos that keep viewers watching. In other words, “watch
time” has replaced “view count” in the YouTube algorithm.
If you missed the news, it wasn’t announced on the Official YouTube Blog. Instead, it was announced on the Official YouTube Partners and Creators Blog.
This latest change is a continuation of ongoing efforts by YouTube to focus its video discovery features on watch time, and follows changes YouTube made to Suggested Videos in March as well as more recent changes to YouTube Analytics.
Eric Meyerson, YouTube’s head of creator marketing communications, explained why YouTube had started to focus on watch time back in August.
“YouTube viewers watch a lot of video -- over 4 billion hours a month at last count. But the average household also watches several hours of video per day on their TVs. So for YouTube to become the most important media in more people's lives, we've got a lot of growing to do,” he said. “Over the past few months we have made some changes to YouTube to encourage people to spend more time watching, interacting, and sharing with the community. To support this, we’ve updated what we call video discovery features, meaning how our viewers find videos to watch via search and suggested videos. These changes better surface the videos that viewers actually watch, over those that they click on and then abandon.”
YouTube’s video discovery features were previously designed to drive views. This rewarded videos that were successful at attracting clicks, rather than the videos that actually kept viewers engaged. (This short-sighted focus led some video marketers to use “cleavage thumbnails” to attract clicks.)
“Now when we suggest videos, we focus on those that increase the amount of time that the viewer will spend watching videos on YouTube, not only on the next view, but also successive views thereafter,” Meyerson said. “If viewers are watching more YouTube, it signals to us that they’re happier with the content they’ve found. It means that creators are attracting more engaged audiences. It also opens up more opportunities to generate revenue for our partners.”
The experimental results of these earlier changes were positive – less clicking, more watching. So, YouTube expects the amount of time viewers spend watching videos from search and across the site to increase.
What does this mean for video marketers?
This should benefit your channel if your videos drive more viewing time across YouTube. However, if your videos were only focused on attracting clicks, then you could drop in the rankings as even “PSY - GANGNAM STYLE (강남스타일) M/V” has reportedly done.
The best thing video marketers can do to be successful on YouTube is make videos that people want to watch. It’s that simple. Unfortunately, many of the old tactics that some video marketers may have used to optimize videos for YouTube will now backfire.
For example, some marketers intentionally made their videos shorter in an attempt to get a higher retention rate. Unfortunately, this won’t help. While high retention on your videos is a good indication of engagement, YouTube is actually optimizing for how a video contributes to a longer viewing session on YouTube. So, your video isn’t more likely to be seen just because it’s shorter.
Conversely, other marketers intentionally made their videos longer, assuming that longer videos lead to more watch time. This also isn’t necessarily true, because it can be more challenging to keep viewers engaged through a longer video. (Imagine a speech by your CEO that drags on... just... a little... too long.)
As a result, YouTube’s primary recommendation is to make great videos that your audience will love and share, and stay away from questionable optimization strategies.
The day before it announced its algorithm change, YouTube added new Time Watched reporting to YouTube Analytics, providing video marketers with more tools to evaluate the performance of their videos and channel.
If video marketers watch YouTube Analytics like a hawk, they can use this data to better understand what your audience wants to watch. More time watching content means a more engaged audience and more ad revenue. That’s what YouTube’s focus on watch time is all about.
It's time for Bing's big headline. Today Microsoft takes the wrapper off the new Bing, for which the cleaned-up redesign a couple weeks ago was just a preview. For signed-in Facebook users, Bing now has a social search component that should send Google back to the drawing board. It's called Sidebar.
Sidebar is the most novel component of the new Bing. It's a mellow, gray sidebar that is closed by default. It shows a thumbnail of your picture and two control icons, and that's it. There's a hint arrow to expand it. When you open Sidebar, it shows you stuff from social networks that's relevant to your search.
If you have Facebook friends who might have an answer to your search query, they'll be listed there. It also shows you "people who know" about the subject from all over the Web, not just from Facebook, but from Twitter, LinkedIn, Quora, Foursquare and, yes, Google+. You hear that, Google? Microsoft's social search bar searches all our social networks.
Sidebar also shows an activity feed for Bing-related Facebook news. So if your friends are helping you find hotels in Atlanta, for example, your Sidebar will show those conversations for reference.
There's also a Facebook share box right in the Sidebar, which will allow you to share your searches as a Facebook post if you want. So if you really need help looking for something and want to enlist your Facebook friends, you'll be able to share the search with them. A potential upcoming feature called Broadcast mode would share all your Bing searches on Facebook automatically, if you're into that sort of thing. Bing hasn't decided whether to ship that feature yet.
Coming Up Next: Snapshot
The next big feature coming to Bing Search is called Snapshot. It was there for a while in the demo, and I wish it was live now, but you'll get to see it soon. Snapshot will complete the clean-up of Bing's search results that started a couple weeks ago.
Snapshot will be the best demonstration of Microsoft's "entity engine" called Satori, the technology that lets Bing identify and describe things by mapping things on the Web that refer to them. It pulls together all kinds of information about the thing you're searching for, including images, maps, products to by and so on.
Google was the first search engine to start rolling multimedia stuff right into the search results. Google's Universal Search displays images, videos, maps, ticket info and all kinds of other information mixed in with the Web links. When Bing launches Snapshot, it will move all that stuff into a second column, so the first column is nothing but nice, clean Web links, just like we used to have.
So if you search for "Kiss tickets" on the new Bing (once Snapshot launches), all the websites will show up in an orderly list of links on the left, venue maps and ticket prices will fill in a separate column on the right, and all the way on the right edge of the screen, you'll be able to check if your friends are going.
Snapshot will also be amazing for people search. Google wants to solve searches for people by showing you Google+ profiles, but that's just another identity to maintain. Today, Bing uses your Facebook profile as a hub for its Linked Pages. Eventually, Snapshot will be able to pull all those pages together as its own kind of search result. No profile necessary.
Taking Google to UX School
The new Bing works in exactly the right way. It disentangles the many kinds of information we get from search instead of mashing them all together. There's no awkward toggle switch between "social" and "global," even though Google's idea of "global" is still personalized. Bing has one set of Web links, one set of related results, and social info lives in the sidebar.
Bing Search Director Stefan Weitz made sure to point out that it's not just called "Sidebar" because that's the Web design term for it. It's a sidebar like in a courtroom, a private counsel with your Facebook friends, with conversations from the whole social Web admitted as evidence.
There are so many ways in which Google's Search Plus Your World gets that wrong. The most obvious is the way Google privileges posts on its own social network inside main search results. It has every right to do that, but Bing's cross-network results are much better. But social search results also belong on the side, with the straight-up Web as the main event.
This new Bing is just better organized than Google, and that will help it expand naturally to all devices, "including the Xbox eventually," Weitz says.
When two very different industries like traditional broadcast television and digital collide, it’s difficult to ignore the implications on both sides.
While analysts predict that 60% of households will be watching internet TV by 2014 and many companies are trying to capitalise on shifting viewing habits, the connected TV market is still in a nascent stage.
To coincide with the recent release of Econsultancy’s Connected TV Smart Pack, we’ve identified five key elements of this emerging ecosystem that any marketer needs to be aware of.
These are what we call the five Cs of connected TV...
This emerging, hybrid ecosystem is primarily based on the convergence of online and broadcast entertainment on a television screen.
This convergence is generically termed 'connected TV' and most often refers to a wide range of connected devices that provide an internet connection and deliver web content to TV sets, such as set-top boxes, games consoles, media streaming boxes and Blu-ray players.
According to Informa, there will be more than 1.8bn devices with inbuilt internet connectivity in use in over 570m homes by end-2016.
While providing access to online content on television sets is not an entirely new concept, alternative content delivery systems, second screen apps and social network interactions make it one of the major developments that will shape the future of television this decade.
Traditionally, watching TV has been a lean-back, passive experience that involved a limited programming choice and casual channel surfing.
Although consumers are now faced with a multitude of options and have more avenues through which they consume content than ever before, they still spend most of their time watching a small bundle of TV channels or shows.
As consumers’ choices only continue to increase and content availability and penetration of mobile devices reach all-time highs, focus is shifting from challenges in content availability and delivery to difficulties in driving and managing consumption. Challenges may no longer lie in having enough choice, but rather in keeping so much choice from becoming a burden for consumers.
The TV industry is gradually moving from a push to a pull model: consumers now expect advanced personalisation (choice of content and length), customisation (setup and delivery options), seamless content discovery and interactive social experiences around their favourite TV shows.
Research has showed that around half of consumers are now using another device while watching TV at home and most of them typically discover content on personal devices such as smartphones and tablets (often accidentally), but want to watch it on their TVs.
While many companies have started to make inroads in linking content discovery and consumption devices, the logistics behind seamless discovery and delivery are complex.
Switching between online, TV and stored content has proven to be a frustrating experience for users and the market is still far away from offering a single intuitive search and navigation interface that is tightly interwoven with a powerful recommendation engine.
As social media activity has started to disrupt TV watching, many startups are capitalising on the increasing convergence of the two by launching companion apps with interactive social media features to drive engagement and TV ratings.
Apps have become an important part of the holistic TV experience, as they recreate the water cooler effect and give viewers a reason to interact and engage.
In the UK alone, over a quarter (26%) of consumers surveyed say they have commented on a programme on a second screen, with young adults (46% of those aged under 25) being the most likely to chatterbox.
Chatterboxing: Watching a programme on the television (colloquially known as 'the box') whilst talking to others about that programme online, normally via a social media platform.
Pay TV operators have also been looking at ways to incorporate social TV recommendations into their IPGs or to include social media elements in their shows such as live-tweeting, showing curated tweets or launching Facebook apps for live voting.
As Twitter's UK general manager Tony Wong said: "Broadcasters are not the ones to choose whether to have social TV. It happens whether they like it or not. But they have a choice about how to harness that social TV energy".
You have probably heard this phrase multiple times this year. For those who haven’t, cord-cutting is the act of cancelling cable and satellite TV subscriptions, often used in the same context as cord-shaving (spending progressively less on TV packages as more content becomes available online) or cord-swapping (switching from one multichannel service provider to another for a better deal on high-speed internet and cable TV).
But how real is this threat and how are pay TV operators responding?
Informa forecasts that globally, 16.1m homes (only 2% of the global pay TV subscriber base) will have 'cut the cord' with their pay TV provider by the end of 2015.
Under a fifth (16%) of the consumers surveyed by Chadwick Martin Bailey said they are 'highly likely' to cut back on cable next year, while more than half (57%) are 'unlikely' to do it.
Driven by the increasing demand for access to premium content everywhere and consumption of long-form content on mobile devices, broadcasters and pay TV operators have responded by extending existing TV services to different devices.
They are trying to explore different business models, such as either tying them to higher-tier offerings that include multi-screen services or offering standalone subscriptions for mobile or online access to content.
While TV Everywhere might be the answer to the cord-cutting threat, TV networks and cable operators are on a collision course due to content licensing disputes. The challenge for TV operators is two-fold: channels are increasingly making shows available through their own apps to have more control over viewer data and become less dependent on cable operators, and content owners seek new distribution methods and additional revenues for unlimited access.
News Corp. and Disney, for example, will only agree to license content to TV Everywhere if subscribers can also watch it through their joint-venture, Hulu.
The connected TV market is set for explosive growth in the coming months and competition has already intensified. The convergence of online and broadcast entertainment is also creating a new breed of service providers trying to build market share.
For example, technology giants such as Google and Apple are utilising their hardware and service platforms to offer a potential replacement for traditional Pay TV. And then there are the big consumer electronics (CE) manufacturers building content portals and working with developers based on a revenue-share model.
As shown in the chart below, a recent survey conducted by Informa revealed that CE manufacturers stand to gain the most from connected devices, while traditional operators will lose ground overall.
While pricing and content rights will be key, the connected TV market will not reach its true potential unless all stakeholders collaborate to achieve DRM interoperability and standardisation in measurement instead of battling over profit margins.
Partnerships can enable a better user experience for the consumer and win-win business models for all companies in the value chain. In other words, key players need more than a piece of software that runs – content discovery and engagement will be the most significant challenges moving forward.
The Connected TV Smart Pack provides a snapshot of the fast-paced connected TV ecosystem. The 80-page report includes sections on:
Monica Savut is a Senior Research Analyst at Econsultancy. Follow her on Twitter or connect via LinkedIn or Google+.
As the world’s largest dream experiment—and probably borrowing from Japanese design firm Technology Miraiworks’ Yumemiru dream-crafting app—UK-based Professor Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire has created an English-version of the dream app for non-Japanese speaking/reading users to create their perfect dream.
Called ‘Dream:ON’, the app monitors your movement while you’re asleep, and plays ‘soundscapes’ designed to help you create your desired dream while you’re in Rapid-Eye Movement (REM) sleep.
All users have to do before they go to bed is: choose one of the soundscapes available; decide what time they wish to wake up and their alarm tone; plug in their iPhone to charge; press ‘start’; and place their phone face-down on the bed next to them.
The app waits till you’re especially still and in dream-mode (about 20 minutes before you want to wake up) and gently plays the soundscape that will influence your subconscious, and will get incorporated into your dream.
Users can also log what they’ve dreamt about and share it on Twitter or Facebook, to prove whether or not you can actually influence your dreams.
To be part of the experiment, users can purchase the starter pack of the app—which comes with two free songs and a fully-functional smart-alarm—on iTunes for free.
[via Los Angeles Times]
Wherever there are creatives, there will be finders.
http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1008779&ecid=a6506033675d47f881651943c21c5ed4
Norm Johnston
Global Digital Leader
Mindshare Worldwide
Mindshare Worldwide, an advertising and marketing services agency that is part of Group M and the larger WPP company, was one of the first global, full-service media companies. Norm Johnston, Mindshare’s global digital leader, is responsible for overseeing and expanding the agency’s digital capabilities and strategy. He also works the front lines, advising clients on digital campaigns and media plans. Johnston spoke with eMarketer’s Lauren Fisher about the importance of looking beyond media devices and advertising channels when crafting a multichannel campaign.
eMarketer: How does Mindshare Worldwide approach building a multichannel advertising campaign strategy?
Norm Johnston: We do a lot of our analysis based on the consumer journey of trying to sense where the consumer is going based on the brand objective, or based on the data.
It’s not so much just about the channels or devices where we can reach consumers, it’s more about the understanding of the dynamics between paid and earned media. How consumers are using devices is quite interesting, and that has had an impact on how we approach and build campaigns, but I think if you build your approach around devices, you’re gradually going to drive yourself crazy. The goal should be making sure that on any device, people can find what they want to find.
For example, rather than separating mobile out, we embed a mobility mentality into everything we’re doing. So when we look at paid, owned and earned media, there’s a mobile aspect to each of those things. Sometimes, it’s simply an extension of what we’re already doing—paid search is one example where that’s true. We need to get past this concept that mobile’s something separate, because it’s not. If people can’t see your brand on a mobile phone or a tablet, you’ve got an issue.
eMarketer: What benefit does looking at multichannel marketing through the lens of a paid, owned and earned media strategy offer?
Johnston: There are all these correlations between paid, owned and earned that are quite fascinating. When we’re helping clients build campaigns that mix these media, it’s important to make sure campaigns are fluid and not set in stone.
For example, if you see paid media activity generating significant amounts of earned media, then you should be able to recalibrate your focus and energy to be able to achieve greater incremental reach that leverages this observed relationship. We refer to this as “adaptive planning,” and it’s almost like a trading scenario, where you look at the data in real time and adjust things on a continued basis.
eMarketer: Do approaches to cross-channel advertising differ based on branding versus direct-response objectives?
Johnston: On the direct side, marketers have always been very good with digital, but there’s an arguable blurring that is happening between branding and direct response as more assets become interactive and response-oriented, which is inherently digital.
It’s no longer just about the qualitative boost to brand sentiment when interacting with a particular asset. Marketers now have to decide whether they want their creative to be shared or liked or clicked on to direct consumers to a catalog or retail space. The branding and direct-response worlds are beginning to blur more than they have in the past.
eMarketer: When thinking about incorporating elements of paid, owned and earned media into your overall multichannel advertising and marketing strategy, is there any one of the three that is most critical?
Johnston: You cannot underestimate the impact of word-of-mouth on the earned side. If you look at Apple, for example, they don’t spend a lot of money on media, and they spend very little on creative. But because they have a strong attitude and such strong word-of-mouth, it does wonders for the brand.
There’s a premium and a value to earned media, and it is especially important in product and vertical categories where you have a lot of commoditization—it’s the only thing that’s going to give a brand the ability to get a higher profit margin.
But I will say, from the data we’ve seen from Facebook and others, it’s hard to generate earned media without some level of paid media. And, you have to have something owned, even in the simplest terms, a Facebook fan page or a brand page—some place people can discover the brand.
Still, you can spend a lot of money in paid media and develop a wonderful website, but if there is poor sentiment, you’re in trouble. No amount of paid media is going to make up for a large amount of bad, earned media.
A longer version of this interview is available to eMarketer Total Access clients only. If you’d like to learn more about becoming a Total Access client, click here.
Check out today’s other article, “Kindle Fire Adds Fuel to Tablet Market Growth.”
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"MTV introduced WatchWith for Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPhone, touting a second-screen mobile experience designed to complement conventional television viewing. According to MTV, the free WatchWith app curates Facebook and Twitter conversations around the network's flagship programs, filtering the best and most "liked" comments in real time while simultaneously pushing content from the user's own friends and followers to the top of the feed. WatchWith also showcases comments and re-tweets from the stars of MTV series like Jersey Shore, Teen Wolf and Awkward. MTV previously launched WatchWith for the desktop and iPad tablets.
WatchWith is the second significant smartphone app issued by MTV this month. A week ago, the network rolled out Live and Local, a free location-based concert finder app optimized for the iOS and Android platforms. Developed in association with concertgoer virtual community SuperGlued, Live and Local pinpoints nearby live music experiences spanning across multiple genres--users can create calendar schedules of all dates they plan to attend, purchase tickets from authorized vendors and access maps and venue information prior to showtime. In addition, Live and Local scrubs users' iTunes playlists to suggest personalized concert recommendations.
A consumer survey conducted by MTV earlier this year revealed that 83 percent of self-reported daily mobile application users feel they're "addicted" to apps, with one respondent even stating "Apps are like Xanax in a phone." Ninety-one percent of daily users say apps expose them to new things, 87 percent say apps let them have fun no matter where they are or what they're doing, 77 percent rely on apps as their personal assistant and 70 percent believe apps make the rest of life better. MTV adds that 53 percent of survey respondents cite personal recommendations as a decisive factor behind which apps they download, while 52 percent rely on user reviews and 42 percent credit seeing a friend use a particular app."
An international showcase to spotlight the best of digital entertainment: TV, Music, Games, Apps
A multi track conference program featuring the latest digital entertainment trends to engage with audiences
Attend UbiQ with a stand will position your company at the center of the European digital arena.
The advisory board is constituted of personalities from digital media, content creation and advertising industries.
Become partner of UbiQ to position your company as a digital entertainment innovation leader
Launch of UbiQ2012 18-19 June 2012, In Paris France http://t.co/lxwcWLs 22 days ago · reply · retweet · favorite
The best party will be #UbiQ in Paris, 18 June 2012 http://t.co/lxwcWLs 22 days ago · reply · retweet · favorite
Recently, I attended the Brandhackers meetup on the Deal-a-Day model pioneered by Woot and made famous by Groupon. The clamor around Groupon-ing has reached a crescendo, not least based on the crowded meetup room and the web chatter generated by Groupon’s Super Bowl commercial. Yet merchants remain unclear on whether to Groupon or not. They are right to be wary, as the following stats demonstrate*:
In light of these rather sobering stats, here’s a checklist every merchant should consider before talking to a daily deal or group coupon service.
While group coupon services position deals as “free” for merchants, consider the hidden costs above. My last bit of advice to merchants and small business owners? Consider daily deals as just another advertising cost – it’s possible you’ll turn a profit but if you don’t at least your marketing budget will cover the shortfall.
If you’ve worked your way through this checklist already and have some experiences to share – we’d love to hear from you!
* Source: Survey conducted by Rice University
** As shared by daily deal sites Scoop St and ScoutMob at the Brandhackers meetup
Originally written for the Seedwalker blog
March 14 (Bloomberg) -- Facebook Inc. plans to test a Groupon-inspired service that will sell discount offers, an effort to use its 500 million-plus members to capitalize on the surging online-deal market.
The service will get started in San Francisco, San Diego, Dallas, Atlanta, and Austin, Texas, the company said last week in a statement. It will be part of Facebook’s existing Deals program, which lets businesses offer specials to users. With the new feature, Facebook’s staff will work with local businesses to spotlight deals and encourage users to share them with friends.
“Local businesses will be able to sign up to use this feature soon, and people will be able to find Deals in the coming weeks,” the Palo Alto, California-based company said in the statement.
Facebook, the most visited U.S. website, is playing host to a growing array of features, such as movie rentals and location- based services, to keep users focused on its pages -- and the ads that make up most of its revenue. The foray into the deals market could put pressure on Groupon Inc. and LivingSocial, which lead the nascent industry but have a fraction of Facebook’s users.
Daily-deal services, which often target local businesses, will generate $3.93 billion by 2015, up from $873 million last year, according to BIA/Kelsey, a Chantilly, Virginia-based consulting firm.
‘Last Frontier’
“Local is the last frontier that the Internet has not conquered, and everyone is going after it with a vengeance,” said Lou Kerner, an analyst with Wedbush Securities Inc. in New York. “This news is just kind of an evolutionary moment in Facebook’s drive to be a major player in local.”
In addition to offering its own deals, Facebook will let users get discount offers from partner services, including ReachLocal, Gilt City, Tippr, HomeRun.com, PopSugar City, KGB Deals, Plum District and Zozi.
Groupon makes money by selling discount deals to consumers -- say, $10 for $20 worth of pizza -- and then taking a commission on the sale. Julie Mossler, a spokeswoman for the Chicago-based company, declined to comment on Facebook’s project.
The effort follows a plan by Warner Bros. last week to let Facebook members watch the studio’s films. Users click a “rent” icon to see movies and pay the equivalent of $3 with Facebook Credits, the company’s online currency. Facebook gets a slice of sales when credits are used.
Skype Discussions
Facebook also is holding talks with Skype Technologies SA about offering Web video calls to its users, two people familiar with the discussions said earlier this month.
Facebook announced in January that it raised $1.5 billion from investors led by Goldman Sachs Group Inc., placing a $50 billion valuation on the closely held business. Facebook has seen revenue soar as its user base grows and it attracts advertisers such as Starbucks Corp. and JetBlue Airways Corp. The company may have reached $2 billion in sales last year, three people familiar with the matter said in December.
Facebook, founded in 2004, passed Google Inc. last year to become the most visited website in the U.S., according to Experian Hitwise, an Internet-tracking firm in New York.
--Editors: Stephen West, Nick Turner
http://blogs.forrester.com/thomas_husson/11-01-25-2011_mobile_trends
In a recent post, my colleague Julie Ask and I examined what happened in the mobile space in 2010. In a new report, we are highlighting what we expect the key trends to be in 2011. While we believe that most of the trends identified last year will continue throughout the year ahead, here’s a snapshot of more specific trends that will shape the market in 2011.
• The mobile/social/local combo will explode in usage but generate little revenue.
• 2011 will be the year of the “dumb” smartphone user. Thanks to handset subsidies, smartphones will be available to the masses. Expect new smartphone users to be less engaged and active than the first cohorts of Android and iPhone early adopters. The good news is that thanks to customer education and the convenience that these devices offer, even “dumb” smartphone users will consume more mobile media than ever before and will have incremental usage of mobile data!
• The mobile fragmentation problem will continue in 2011. Prioritizing mobile developments will still be a challenge, and cross-platform development has not yet been achieved successfully.
• The apps versus mobile Internet debate will continue — and remain irrelevant. This isn’t a question of either/or — but both.
• Mobile marketing spend will grow significantly and surpass $1 billion in the US as consumers spend billions via mobile. For more information, Forrester clients should read our US mobile marketing predictions.
• Mobile will increasingly prompt consumers to interact with their physical environment. Technologies such as QR codes and mobile augmented reality are already helping bridge the real and digital worlds via mobile devices. 2011 is — finally — the year that Near Field Communication (NFC) begins to matter. The market will finally move away from the trial stage in regions where NFC infrastructure is in place.
• The attention paid to 4G will vastly outweigh the impact of these new networks. Despite the current buzz about US carriers’ efforts, the service will primarily, if not exclusively, be available on USB keys; few LTE devices will be available for consumers before the end of the year.
• Companies will invest first in convenient services for customers; acquisition will come second. In the hierarchy of benefits that mobile offers — revenue generation, cost savings, and convenience — convenience will reign for the next year. However, for some industries, particularly in the retail space, we expect more and more companies to reach seven figures in direct mobile transactions.
• Casual gaming will continue to lead the mobile charge for content companies. Forrester has already highlighted how media companies have some of the most advanced mobile strategies. Several news publishers that Forrester spoke with expect mobile to represent more than 20% of their total online audience. While they don’t expect advertisers to follow consumers that quickly, they will need to generate new revenue streams. Expect new business models based on subscriptions, microtransactions, and in-application billing to expand from gaming to other content categories, such as news and music.
• The term “mobile” will mean a lot more than mobile phones. Consumers are connecting more and more devices wirelessly to the Internet. The recent CES show in Las Vegas showed that competitors’ answers to the first Apple iPad are now available and that tablets will emerge as category of their own in the years to come. Forrester clients can read recent analysis from our colleague Sarah Rotman Epps on why tablets will grow as quickly as MP3 players. However, only mobile phones will sell in the hundreds of millions and are truly “pocketable,” providing anywhere, anytime connectivity.
The path of mobile innovation is accelerating like never before; there are, of course, other areas where we expect to see lots of news and improvements — in particular around mobile measurement and mobile analytics. If you want to react to these trends or share your take, feel free to comment below or to join our discussion on the CPS community.
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