U.S. is Key Android Market at the Moment

Worldwide mobile advertising requests from Android devices increased 97 percent from October to December 2009 and the big change since October is that Motorola devices have shown the greatest growth, undoubtedly because of Verizon's Droid launch late in the year.

AdMob says that in October, 98 percent of requests came from HTC devices.  In December, just 56 percent of requests were from HTC devices, 39 percent from Motorola devices, and five percent from Samsung units.

Increased device diversity: In December, seven devices generated more than three percent of requests each: the Motorola Droid, HTC Dream, HTC Magic, HTC Hero, Motorola CLIQ, HTC Droid Eris, and the Samsung Moment.

This is up from only three devices in October (HTC Dream, HTC Magic, and HTC Hero).

 The Motorola Droid is already the leading Android handset in the AdMob network and generated 30 percent of requests in December.

The U.S. market also, at least for the moment, the most-important global Android market. About 90 percent of Android traffic was generated in the United States in December, up from 84 percent  in October. The United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Canada were the other countries with some significant traffic.

App Store Software Sales $30 Billion in 2013, Advertising Nearly $8 Billion

Advertising-sponsored mobile applications will generate almost 25 per cent of mobile application store revenue by 2013, amounting to nearly $8 billion in revenue.

Consumers will spend $6.2 billion in 2010 in mobile application stores while advertising revenue is expected to generate $0.6 billion worldwide, according to Gartner analysts.

Mobile application stores will exceed 4.5 billion downloads in 2010, eight out of ten of which will be free to end users.

Gartner forecasts worldwide downloads in mobile application stores to surpass 21.6 billion by 2013. Free downloads will account for 82 per cent of all downloads in 2010, and will account for 87 per cent of downloads in 2013.

“Games remain the number one application," says Stephanie Baghdassarian, research director at Gartner.

"No incremental cost" applications will use other revenue models, she says. Developers will charge for additional functionality, sales of products and services or advertising.

Worldwide mobile application stores’ download revenue exceeded $4.2 billion in 2009 and will grow to $29.5 billion by the end of 2013.

Android Becoming a Factor in U.S. Mobile Ad Market

Android smartphones are becoming a bigger factor in the U.S. mobile advertising market, with ad requests growing 97 percent in just two months between October 2009 and December 2009, according to AdMob.

Of those one billion ad requests tracked by AdMob, 90 percent were from U.S.-based devices.AdMob tracks handset and operator data from every ad request in its advertising network of more than 15,000 mobile web sites and applications.

Much of the growth was driven by the release of the Motorola Droid. Before the Droid’s launch, HTC devices accounted for 98 percent of Android requests. In December, that fell to 56 percent, with 39 percent from Motorola (which also offers the CLIQ) and five percent from Samsung.

The Motorola Droid already is the leading Android handset in the AdMob network and generated 30 percent of requests in December.

Marketers Sell to Mobile Users, Not Subs

There are times when counting things one way, compared to a slightly different way, yield results that largely are the same. But for mobile marketers, counting mobile "subscribers" and "mobile users" will produce distinct results that do matter. 

The differences are that "subscriptions" are not equal to "users" because some users have multiple subscriptions. If you usse a mobile broadband card or dongle, plus two cell phones, you have three mobile subscriptions, for example. 

Mobile marketers want to reach people, not devices or subscriptions, so the method of counting makes a difference. In Europe, for example, many studies show mobile penetration to be at or in excess of 100 percent, but that is because many users have multiple subscriber information modules, each of which has a phone number, and counts as a subscription, even when only one SIM is in active use at any time. 

For marketers, the number of mobile users is a more useful figure because it more accurately describes the audience, and thus potential reach.

So how big is the actual U.S. mobile audience? Reserchers at eMarketer estimate that mobile penetration of users is 76.5 percent in 2009, or 235 million people,  rising gradually to 255.4 million in 2013, or 80 percent penetration.

By way of comparison, subscriber fgures from CTIA – The Wireless Association show there aer 276.61 million mobile subscriptions in service as of June 2009. That would work out to about 90 percent penetration of people. 

That 13-percent difference might not make a great deal of practical difference, except that the difference in estimates means the potential reach of any mobile marketing campaign might potentially reach 41.6 million fewer people. 

In the context of a mobile campaign that might not be so crucial, especially when marketers target one specific device or one specific carrier. But the difference in potential reach could be quite large for any campaign that tries to reach most users, and will certainly be reflected in the cost of any campaign. 

Twitter Stats Still a Puzzle

Twitter continues to be a bit of a puzzle, for reasons beyond its search for a viable business model. It has enthusiastic users, but also high apparent levels of abandonment. And some studies might lead to the conclusion that Twitter growth is slowing sharply, while other social sites such as Facebook might be accelerating.

Data from hitwise, for examples, shows a peak in Twitter in July 2009, with declines since then. The caveat is that many Twitter users appear to use third party sites to access the service, so the actual Twitter.com visits do not fully capture actual Twitter use.

The hitwise data also might suggest that user engagement with Facebook, a larger and more-established social networking site, is growing much faster than Twitter seems to be growing.

One fact seems clear enough, though, and that is the increased amount of mobile use of the social tool. Although 60 percent of Twitter users say they only use their computers to access the service, about 40 percent say they do so using their mobiles, according to a study of Twitter use during August 2009, Crowd Science.

Crowd Science reports that in August 2009, although only 27 percent of Twitter users posted daily, 46 percent checked for updates every day.

Impulse Purchases Key for Mobile Marketing Messages

A significant number of American consumers are interested in receiving opt-in marketing messages, according to a new survey by Harris Interactive. It also appears impulse purchases are prime candidates for mobile marketing messages.

The survey of 2,029 mobile phone users, ages 18 and older shows 42 percent of users between the ages of 18 and 34 and 33 percent of those between 35 to 44 are at least somewhat interested in receiving alerts about sales on their cell phones from their favorite establishments.

Men are more interested than women. About 51 percent of men ages 18 to 34, and 34 percent of women of the same age range are at least somewhat interested in receiving opt-in shopping alerts on their cell phones.

Only one percent of cell phone owners currently receive alerts about sales at their favorite establishments on their phones, yet 26 percent would be at least somewhat interested in receiving such alerts, assuming they were permission-based.

Of those interested in receiving alerts, 53 percent would be at least somewhat interested in being notified about restaurant specials around them.

About 43 percent say they would be interested in getting information about movie or event tickets. About 39 percent are interested in getting weather information, while 37 percent indicated interest in information about clearance sales.

Sizable percentages expressed interest in specific products such as pizza, clothes, fast food, electronics, music, happy hour specials or bar and night club offers.

Impulse purchases seem particularly germane. The survey found that about 90 percent of U.S. adults have made an impulse purchase when they were out shopping in a store, based on a sale or special offer going on around where they were.

Nearly a quarter of adults owning cell phones (22 percent) make this type of impulse purchase at least once per week or more often.

Mobile Social Networking Doubles

About 10 percent of social network interactions now occur on mobile devices, compared to five percent 12 months ago, Forrester Research notes.

Interestingly, that is just about the same percentage of U.S. consumers who use mobile devices to interact with their email. According to a study by Epsilon, about nine percent of North American users do so.

Both of those trends have implications, bearing directly on how much people can substitute mobile access for fixed PC access to applications.

That in turn has implications for the design of Web services and applications that can be optimized for mobile use.

36% Mobile Marketing Growth in 2009

The U.S. market for mobile advertising will grow 36 percent, increasing from $169 million in 2008 to $229 million in 2009, according to a new forecast by Interpublic's Magna.

That's a downward revision from the company's previous forecast for mobile ad growth in 2009, primarily due to the brutal economy.

The sheer number of mobile devices in use, about 270 million at the end of 2008, according to the CTIA, is one driver. The  mobile Web is the other driver. In January, 22 million individuals accessed the mobile Web daily and 63 million monthly, up from 11 million and 37 million for each frequency during January 2008, Magna says.

The report found that smart phones are key to growth. About 32 percent of AT&T Wireless contract subscribers owning such a device at the end of the first quarter of 2009, more than double that of the previous year, for example.

Starbucks Gets 60% Redemption Rate for SMS Coupons

Starbucks Coffee Co. is running a loyalty program based on bar-code coupons stored on mobile phones, in Guadalajara and San Luis Potosi, Mexico and has gotten a 60-percent redemption rate.

Starbucks created postcards being handed out in malls, universities and retail outlets. Consumers to text the keyword STARBUCKS to short code 80080 to download a "buy-one-get-one-free" coupon.

Separately, customers can text the keyword VENTI to short code 80080 to receive various discounts and offers that change each time the coupon is scanned.

http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/database-crm/3085.html

Glad the Term "Year of Mobile Marketing" Wasn't Used

Still, location is a powerful new capability for anybody with marketing or sales responsibilities. Who you are, what you like to do, and where you are, right now, are powerful attributes we ultimately will figure out how to use.

There's one clear historical footnote: everytime somebody declares any year "the year of...", it isn't.

http://www.adotas.com/2009/04/mobile-marketing-has-arrived-for-real-this-time-–-are-you-prepared/

Building an Ad-Supported Text Messaging Business

Many observers think communication service providers have got to create new revenue streams in partnership with business partners, rather than basing 100 percent of revenue on end users who pay for communication capabilities.

As always is the case for a developing business based on partnerships, partners will differ about the relative values they are bringing to the relationships, as well as relative revenue splits. Ad-supported text messaging campaigns are no different.

“For advertising-supported SMS, the net revenue per message is $0.004, and the carriers dispute this, but that’s the reality of the business,” says David Oberholzer, Limbo VP. “The model isn’t completely solid, and it’s unrealistic to think the CPMs (cost per thousand) we’ll be able to charge will go up dramatically, so it’s unrealistic for carriers trying to impose these types of per-message fees.

“Even relatively small carrier fees will drive out innovation to other platforms, and that’s already happening—look at all the advertising in iPhone apps,” he says. “If carriers raise costs, then that will be exacerbated.”

All of this will get worked out over time, but the issue illustrates the problem: a new and somewhat experimental new business requires nurturing and some degree of give and take between ecosystem partners.

Nokia Launches Mobile Ad Network

Nokia today announced the launch of the Nokia Media Network, a premium advertising network including over 70 properties including AccuWeather, Discovery, Hearst, Reuters, and Sprint.

Nokia touts the venture as the first global mobile ad network of top tier publishers. There is no doubt a story here: First, that advertising is becoming part of the revenue model for the mobile business. Second, that handset providers are carving out new space for themselves in the value chain. Third, that mobile handset manufacturers and service providers now are in the media business.

Google isn't going to have this market to itself.

iPhone Drives Learning About Contextual Search

If engineers, analysts and marketers at Google are smart, and we would agree they are smart, lots of really important data is being gathered about what it is that mobile Web users do on their mobile browsers. The reason is that the preliminary data suggests that iPhone users are much more heavy browser users than users of other makes and models of mobile devices.

That sort of information is going to be really important as software designers at Google and elsewhere try to unravel the secrets of mobile search. So far, everybody seems to think there are contextual factors to mobile search that make it different from desktop PC search. In other words, people probably are going to be asking different questions and trying to do different things when initiating a mobile Web search. Directions have to be right at the top.

My own usage tends to be "what's the address of the place I am going to" and "where can I find the closest book store." Another favorite: "where can I find good Thai food close to where I am?"

Everything beyond that remains to be discovered.

Mobile to Lead Japan Online Ad Growth

Online advertising in the Japanese market is lower than in other markets, but growing at a faster rate.

Japan’s leading advertising agency, Dentsu Group, says search spending accounted for 27 percent of Japan’s online ad marketing in 2007, a figure significantly lower than in the United States (40 percent) and the United Kingdom (60 percent), eMarketer notes. By 2010, Dentsu predicts search will reach just 30 percent of Japanese online ad spending.

Dentsu also estimates that Japan’s mobile ad market grew by 42.5 percent in 2007. Mobile advertising is expected to remain the fastest-growing segment through 2010. Dentsu forecasts double-digit growth for the entire Japanese online ad industry to 2011, when growth is expected to slow to 9.6 percent.

Yahoo, America Movil 143 Million Sub Mobile Search Deal

Yahoo and Latin America's top mobile phone company America Movil said on Thursday they have struck a deal to provide mobile Web services to 16 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Yahoo's oneSearch service will be the default on America Movil's wireless carriers' portals. Yahoo plans to offer localized versions of oneSearch for each region, and said other Yahoo services may be added in coming months.

The partnership is the largest of the 21 search deals Yahoo has announced this year with mobile phone operators, the Sunnyvale, California company said.

Mexico City-based America Movil has 143 million wireless subscribers. Yahoo's broadest previous deal was with Spain's Telefonica SA, covering up to 100 million subscribers in several European and Latin American markets.

Personal Navigation: Quiet but a Big Deal

Garmin and TomTom will both ship over 10 million personal navigation devices this year, recent forecasts suggest. Total production in 2007 for just those two manufacturers is something on the order of 22 million units.

To put that in perspective, that's about half of the 55 million iPod music players Apple probably will sell in calendar 2007.

Location-based services seem to catching on very rapidly in the consumer space, after a long gestation in the commercial markets. Is it any wonder Google is so hot on location-based services, or the advertising and marketing opportunities that seem destined to come along with location awareness?

Big Future for Location-Based Services?

Location-based services might not be a big mass market business yet, but it seems almost inevitable that they will be. You don't get the likes of Nokia and Google placing such big bets on location-based services without something developing.

ABI Research expects personal navigation devices (PNDs) will grow to a global sales volume of more than 100 million units by 2011. While dedicated PNDs will remain the preferred form-factor for use in cars, GPS will increasingly be an expected ingredient in handsets, portable media players (PMPs), ultra-mobile PCs (UMPCs), and other mobile devices, ABI forecasts.

Handset-based GPS will grow strongly in North America, reaching a sales volume of 21 million units by 2012, ABI Research forecasts.

In-Stat reaches very similar overall conclusions, though it adds digital cameras and even handheld games to the mix of devices expected to include GPS. In-Stat predicts that sales of mobile devices with integrated GPS will grow from 180 million units in 2007 to 720 million units in 2011.

In fact, mapping-related and location-related Web apps might be more commercially attractive than entertainment was expected to be. For starters, mobile Web advertising revenues in 2011 are expected to be dominated by Web and search. In fact, Strategy Analytics estimates that about 76 percent of all mobile advertising will be generated either by Web apps or search.

All of that dovetails with Google’s thinking about the advertising potential of the mobile Web. And the point is that if consumers find location-based Web apps attractive, and there is a robust advertising support model, carriers are bound to see big increases in broadband service plans, even if they don’t see similarly robust demand for walled-garden enhanced services.

Conflicting Regulatory Silos Keep Popping Up

One of the problems everybody faces as we move increasingly to a world of IP-enabled communications, information and entertainment is that a growing clash is occurring, piecemeal, between historically-distinct regulatory silos. Whether we can stumble forward forever, without acknowledging the end of regulatory silos, as well as technology or industry silos, remains open to question.

The problem is simply that different sorts of activities and businesses are governed by distinctly-different frameworks. Magazines and newspapers, for example, operate under First Amendment "free speech" rules and have virtually no "common carrier" obligations.

TV and radio broadcasters operate under different rules, with more limited "free speech" rights (broadcasters do not enjoy unrestricted rights to transmit any sort of content). Cable TV regulation is more akin to broadcasting than telecom regulation, but there are some tax and local franchising rules that are more akin to common carrier businesses.

Telecom companies operate under the most-restrictive rules, with legal requirements to interconnect with other telecom service providers and deliver their traffic. Data services and content generally have been immune from these rules, though. That's why the Web, and Web content, have developed essentially as a zone of freedom.

Of course, in the U.S. market there is more talk about "network neutrality", a troublesome issue not because of the immediate implications some attribute to it, but because it is just one more examples of how the old "silos" of regulation are breaking down, and becoming intellecutually incoherent in a world where media, TV, radio, music, talk, testing, Web surfing and data communications all occur over one physical pipe.

Should that not require some harmonization or revamping of the fundamental regulatory regimes each of the media types up to this point has enjoyed? And here's the crux of the matter: how does one square first amendment, "zone of freedom" rules historically applied to newspapers, magazines, data services and the Web, with common carrier rules applied to telcos, or the quasi-regulated broadcasting industry?

The fact that delivery modes change does not alter the zone of freedom newspapers, magazines and other media, even "Web media" are supposed to have. And the U.S. courts have ruled that corporations do possess rights of free speech as well. So the issue is whether the zone of freedom is expanded or contracted as multiple media types are delivered over IP pipes.

So it is that some consumer and public advocacy groups are urging the Federal Communications Commission to declare that "short code" text messages deserve the same nondiscriminatory treatment by telephone carriers as email and voice messages.

So are "short codes" advertising, a direct response mechanism, or are they "speech." And whose "speech" rights are supposed to be protected? Those of the speaker, as the early founders seemed to think, or the rights of the "listener," as jurists increasingly have argued over the past 50 years or so?

The issue is more complicated than sometimes positioned. Text messaging services might include a "zone of freedom" in terms of what is said. But note that the freedom is for the speaker. But who is the "speaker" whenever we are looking at media?

The Washington Post might not accept advertising from its competitor, the Wall Street Journal. Verizon Wireless might not accept ads from Sprint or T-Mobile. Cable companies don't take ads from telephone companies marketing competing services. In those cases, rights of speech are exercised by a "speaker." A TV, cable or radio network has the right not to allow speech (advertising also is speech) to be paid for and transmitted.

The fundamental problem is that as IP pipes carry virtually all communications, information and entertainment, we are going to see more disjointed efforts to regulate "unlike" things in "like" ways. That will be the corollary to regulating "like" things in "unlike" ways.

Why Google Will Be a Mobile Force

Google is poised to charge the mobile Web applications for a very simple reason. Mobile advertising is an ad-supported medium it hasn't yet begun to dominate. Second, Google dominates Web applications, period, according to Net Applications.

And if you believe the mobile Web will be THE Web for billions of users, and an increasingly useful adjunct to PC-based Web apps for billions more, Google has to play.

Nokia Navteq: a Service Provider?

Nokia is acquiring Navteq, a leading provider of digital map information for navigation systems and devices, Internet-based mapping applications, and government and business solutions. Navteq also owns Traffic.com, a Web service that provides traffic information and content to consumers. Navteq had 2006 revenues of $582 million and has approximately 3,000 employees located in 168 offices in 30 countries. Nokia is paying $8.1 billion.

By acquiring Navteq, Nokia will strengthen its location-based services and take a step away form being a device manufacturer and becoming an applications provider, at least in part. And why not? More and more of the value of any product are provided by the services wrapped around the device.

Nokia says it plans to use location capabilities to expand into areas such as entertainment and communities. In Japan, location services already are a fairly significantly used feature.