Mobile Marketing" Upstream of a Coupon, Downstream of Yellow Pages

“Weather is not the only category that is seeing a significant amount of the audience preferring the mobile channel, but if you are selling an over-the-counter flu medication, and you traditionally buy weather sites online– mobile now must be a big part of your digital spend,” says Paul Palmieri, president/CEO of Millennial Media.

He said that American mobile consumers are seeking and finding an explosion of content experiences across a range of devices, are receptive to advertising messages and are in many cases in close proximity to making a purchase decision.

One way of thinking about the value of mobile messages is that they arrive when a user is "downstream of the yellow pages and upstream of a coupon,” Palmieri says. In other words, after a user has identified a need for something and just before moving to take action on that need.

MoMA | Marketing & Advertising agencies who are just “Testing”

Small business paid search spending up 43% in third quarter

U.S. small businesses spent about 43 percent more on paid search advertising in the third quarter of 2010 than they did in the same quarter of 2009.

The average spend on paid search advertising was $2,327 in the third quarter of 2010, according to WebVisible. Some might note that the rate of growth is slower than it had been in the second quarter, when spending grew 159 percent.

Perhaps that indicates firms are becoming better marketers as they gain experience. More ominously, it might mean the economic slowdown that happened in the third quarter already has affected small business ad spending again.

Paid search ad spending growth continues, but slows - Search Marketing - BizReport

Marketing On Social Networks? Add Mobile

One of the reasons marketing on social networks is so popular is that the consumers a brand can reach are largely active, vocal and willing to connect, with each other and with their favorite brands, says Forrester Research analyst Melissa Parrish.

But social networking and social media are fast becoming mobile venues as well. About 22 percent of U.S. online adults with mobile phones access their social networks via mobile at least monthly.

Already Marketing On Social Networks? Then You're Already Marketing On Mobile | Forrester Blogs

How Mature Is Your Mobile Strategy?

Only a third of 200 enterprise respondents surveyed by Forrester Research have had a mobile strategy in place for more than a year.

Online companies, media companies and financial institutions are often more advanced than firms in other industries.

Forty-five percent of respondents are just waking up to the mobile opportunity and thinking about integrating mobile into their overall corporate strategy, just like they did a decade ago with the emerging online channel.

For the majority of respondents, mobile is mainly seen as a way to increase customer engagement, satisfaction, and loyalty.

Many respondents who think it is too early to focus on mobile tend to claim that they first need to fix the basics regarding their overall digital and social initiatives. While that makes a lot of sense, mobile quickly is becoming a key enabler for social networking and social media behavior.

Facebook’s mobile global monthly audiences skyrocketed from 65 million users in September 2009 to 150 million users in July 2010.

Sixteen percent of Twitter users now start with mobile, versus five percent in April 2010. Over the same time frame, the number of mobile Twitter users has increased by 62 percent. It is becoming increasingly difficult, in other words, to conduct social media initiatives without considering the mobility angle.

How Mature Is Your Mobile Strategy? | Forrester Blogs

In Five Years, Social Network Connections Will Be Dial Tone

“In five years, everybody will always be connected to each other, instead of the web,” says Mark Pincus, Zynga CEO. It's the sort of thing you might expect a CEO of a fast-growing social network to say.

How right does Pincus have to be to create a new dynamic for services built around what we used to call "dial tone?" Probably not completely, or even mostly right.

Most people communicate mostly with a relatively small number of people, in their roles as individuals, family members, friends or members of various social groups. Even for most people in their roles as workers, the number of people one communicates with is relatively small.

So what is a social network, especially one with "presence" features? A way of creating the equivalent of "dial tone, the ability to initiate a communication.

Pincus says he often thinks of today’s social companies as providing the equivalent of “dial tone." It's an interesting comparison.

You might think non-real-time messages are not "communications" in the same way dial tone was. But even voice communications began to change with the advent of voice mail. Where once only synchronous communications were possible (a calling party reaches a called party), with voice mail non-synchronous communications began to be possible.

Since the advent of voice mail, other non-synchronous modes also have become important, including email, text and instant messaging, which can be non-synchronous, synchronous or nearly-synchronous.

In fact, blog posts have been said to be a form of non-synchronous communication very similar to Christmas letters, newsletters or traditional media, where point-to-multipoint messages are sent.

In that sense, social connections and networks do provide features and value quite similar to dial tone.

In Five Years, Connections Will Be To Each Other, Not The Web; We’ll Be Dial Tones

Native or Web Apps?

You might not be surprised if, at the end of the day, experts conclude that there are some apps that are suited to "native" or "Web" format and some that are suitable for specially-designed mobile apps. Still, there are some guidelines, Luke Wroblewski suggests, after hearing a presentation by Jason Grigsby.

Native mobile apps and mobile Web apps are both apps. Where performance is needed, native apps will always have better access to platform and resources. URLS don’t open applications, so mobile apps are better when a specific app needs to auto-run to provide the best experience.

The mobile Web is one area where most small businesses can benefit more from a native or Web app than a mobile app, Grigsby said.

The mobile Web also is more open, with few entry costs. Developers can hope to keep 100 percent of any revenue they can generate and can do instantaneous releases.

read more here

Orange Says Europeans Prefer Mobile Web to Apps

Mobile users in the United Kingdom, France, Spain and Poland surveyed on behalf of Orange say they prefer to use the mobile web rather than mobile apps. About 70 percent of Britons prefer the mobile web to mobile apps, for example.

In France, 68 percent of users favor the browser over 60 per cent who prefer apps.  In less mature mobile media markets, there is apparently more receptiveness to app use. In  Spain 42 per cent see, to prefer apps, while 45 percent of Polish users favor mobile apps and 39 percent favor the mobile web.

In large part, those opinions might be driven by the increasing use of mobiles as an end point supporting many of the same applications people use on their PCs. Some 58 percent of U.K. users want to find the same things on their mobile as on a PC, as do 55 percent of French users, 58 percent in Spain and 72 percent in Poland.

The study also suggests that mobile use is cannibalizing some amount of traditional media use as well. Some 16 percent of mobile media users in the United Kingdom say they read fewer magazines and 14 percent say they read fewer newspapers.

Mobile Internet use does not seem to be cannibalizing either television or fixed-line PC use, however.

PC browsing increased for 25 percent of respondents and television viewing increased for 14 percent of respondents.

About 40 percent of European mobile media users surveyed also say they quickly check information on their mobiles and then spend more time with content when they are back in front of a PC.

In the United Kingdom mobile media is accessed by 74 percent of users when they are out and about. On the other hand, when at home 59 percent use their mobiles to search the Internet as well.

Fully 70 percent of respondents say they use their mobile browsers when users are on the move. In the United Kingdom, Spain and Poland, respondents browse for longer on the Internet when they are outside rather than at home.

read more here

Networks Block Google TV Access to Their Programming

ABC, CBS and NBC are blocking TV programming on their websites from being viewable on Google's new Web-TV service, illustrating the problem with all efforts to create alternative ways of viewing TV programming.

Full-length episodes of shows like NBC's 'The Office,' CBS's 'CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,' and ABC's 'Modern Family' can't be viewed on Google TV, a service that allows people to access the Internet and search for Web videos on their television screens, as well as to search live TV listings, the Wall Street Journal reports.

As always has been the case, content owners will block any effort to disrupt their existing revenue models by denying legal access to the programming people want to watch, until some tipping point where content owners believe the results are at least revenue neutral, with further upside going forward.

42% of All Mobile Users Say They Have Downloaded Apps

About 42 percent of all mobile consumers have downloaded apps onto their mobile phone, the Mobile Marketing Association reports. About 25 percent of apps are used daily, and eight percent do not get used in a 12-month period.

Some 60 percent said their “most used” app provides entertainment, while 47 percent called their most-used app something “useful when on the go.”

Twice as many expect to increase (22 percent) as decrease (10 percent) their app downloads next year, while 40 percent expect no change.

Next year, respondents who plan to add apps say they will seek apps focusing on entertainment; restaurants; banking; and travel.

MMA-Luth Sept 2010 US Mobile Consumer Briefing -- Mobile Apps | Mobile Marketing Association:

StatFlash - Ethernet Exchange Market to Hit $674M by 2014

The market opportunity for Ethernet Exchange services is sized at $674 million worldwide in 2014, according to Vertical Systems Group. That includes carrier and enterprise payments for seller and buyer ports, virtual connections and service fees.

StatFlash - Ethernet Exchange Market to Hit $674M by 2014

Why Twitter Is a Big Win for Small Businesses

Not every small business will find these results, but Chanel Huston, owner of Boutique de Bandeaux, an Etsy shop selling handmade couture-inspired hair accessories for thick, curly and kinky natural hair, says her business has tripled since she started using Twitter to find customers and promote her business.

"I noticed that between the four-month period before I started using Twitter and the four-month period after I started using it, my sales tripled," Huston says.

"I was on a message board for natural hair first, called Black Hair Media, and it turned out that a lot of the girls were on Twitter," Huston says. "Once I got on Twitter, I found out that there was a big natural hair community that would meet and give tips and secrets to each other.”

"Twitter helps me find the people who are actually going to be interested in my products, who have the disposable income to spend on them and have the hair type that’s going to be appropriate for my products," she says.

“Finding people on Twitter is actually easy, if tedious at the start, she says. "I started by making announcements on the message board that I frequented to let everybody know that they could now follow me on Twitter. After that, she went looking for Twitter users that have a target audience similar to hers and become a "follower."

Now she says she has a little over 3,000 followers, and for the most part, she responds personally to all incoming tweets.

There’s a lot of temptation to follow everyone, but avoid the temptation, she says. If you sell children’s clothes, for example, add people who are following parenting magazines or are in parenting groups.

Why Twitter Is a Big Win for Small Businesses

Mobile Websites Grow 2000% Between 2008 and 2010

Mobile-optimized websites have grown 2000 percent since 2008, a new study shows.

In 2008 Netcraft identified 150,000 mobile-ready websites, while the 2010 study showed approximately 3.01 million sites, representing two-year growth of more than 2,000 percent.

Web analysts Netcraft found that, between 1996 and 1998, the size of the desktop Web grew from 150,000 sites to 2.0 million sites, a growth rate of only 1,333 percent compared to the mobile Web's 2,000 percent growth in the equivalent timeframe.

2010 Study of Mobile Web Trends Shows Continued Explosion of Mobile-Friendly Content - Yahoo! Finance

Future of TV: One Investor's View

At some point, "over the top" video distribution is going to be a bigger financial force in the television business, but it won't happen as fast as many believe, simply because the amounts of business revenue at stake are so enormous. As hard as attackers will try, access to quality content still will be a key issue, as content owners will not be in a hurry to jeopardize their current revenue streams.

"Over the top" options will continue to proliferate, and device manufacturers will attempt to create ecosystems around their products to entice content owners to buy in. But it will take time to create the scale content owners will want to see before making adjustments in content relationships.

Also, existing distributors, such as cable companies, know exactly what is at stake and will work furiously to enable online video in ways that complement, rather than compete with, their current offerings.

Virtually all the contestants in the ecosystem will be looking at ways to "move up the stack" in terms of providing more value. Many of those attempts will fail.

Software and applications are not core competencies for many of the ecosystem providers, and that ultimately will limit the success of "up the stack" efforts.

Almost by definition, the real combat will take place over second and tertiary screens, rather than the large TV screen. Tablet PCs and smartphones will provide key examples, even though game consoles and other devices using the TV display also will fight for attention.

Perhaps the key issue is the future of content bundling. Nearly all the technology developments will create alternatives to the multichannel TV subscription. Perhaps an analogy can be glimpsed in the music business, where the "bundled" album or CD lost favor compared to purchases of discrete songs.

Also, the trend in video entertainment over the past several decades has been a shift away from linear formats and towards on-demand consumption. Digital methods are only the latest examples of a trend that began with the videocassette recorder.

Television originally was designed for a mass audience in a single country. But global content and its ability to develop a “niche” global audience now is a new trend. Think of about the rise of Japanese Anime, Spanish Novelas, Korean Drama or the rise of Bollywood entertainment from India. It’s not a mass, mainstream audience but I would argue that it’s “global torso” content that will be meaningful at scale. Websites like ViiKii, which have been launched to create realtime translations of shows by fan-subbers, have huge followings already. And I’m sure that this is what popularized the SlingBox in the first place. British, India & Pakistani ex-pats on a global scale want to watch cricket.

NetFlix might be winning the battle for distribution of movie content online. Linear television remains much more fluid. One app to watch is YouTube, which might graduate from user-generated video to a distribution mechanism for "linear" professionally-created video as well. Potential audience size always matters, and YouTube is aggregating an enormous potential audience.

That same argument goes for gaming consoles, which now represent an installed base of U.S. devices numbering about 60 million terminals. The issue is not simply the game console's ability to deliver online video, but the role gaming might ultimately play in building audiences for gaming-plus-TV experiences.

Content discovery will be important as well. In a universe of content, it is hard to find "the good stuff." In part, that is why some believe "social TV" is a growth area. People talk about video and movies they like. That will help with the "discovery" problem.

Another unknown is the way narratives are crafted. Hollywood is the master of the long-form story.Whether that will be the only, or even dominant narrative in the future is open to question.

What happens when content production & distribution is easy to professionally produce and distribute at mass low-cost scale? Will we still have predictable story lines? Or can we develop more fragmented content to meet the needs of fragmented audiences and interest groups?

What happens in a world where content producers have a direct relationship with the audience and can involve the audience directly in story creation? Or maybe even as wacky as involving the audience in the story itself?

read more here

Carrier Ethernet Demand Strong in Several Verticals

Carrier Ethernet services are best suited today for organizations with less-dynamic networking environments and very-high port bandwidth (dynamic bandwidth allocation), a very dumb edge and very low latency—essentially emulating LAN operating characteristics.

That tends to mean carrier Ethernet service ideal for connecting advanced, distributed data centers and converged cloud-based applications globally.

Companies that will drive Ethernet WAN services growth post-2010 will be heavily dependent on transporting huge amounts of data and converged traffic including real-time/live high-definition video, and/or will be computing-intensive businesses using a less dynamic or “fixed” network architecture. These companies typically fall into specific industy verticals.

Higher education, including universities, university research centers, online education/distance learning and vocational training, is among the lead candidates.

Media and entertainment companies have been lead adopters as well.

Health care also is an area where increasing use of telepresence and telemedicine has the potential to drive exponential bandwidth growth and carrier Ethernet purchases.
.
Finally, the U.S. federal government tends to have needs for telepresence, collaboration, high-performance computing and data center access as well. These include the need to link numerous national (or international) sites, small communities, and eventually even geographically remote sites (and mobile and remote workers) while maintaining secure network connections.

Those verticals will not be the only logical candidates for further adoption of carrier Ethernet services, but will disproportionately represent top prospects.

read more here

AT&T lays out SIP peering architecture

AT&T now is talking about its architecture and business plans for its SIP peering exchanges. While a company spokesperson wouldn’t discuss how far along the company was in discussions with other tier-one carriers, HD Voice News believes AT&T is much further along than the firm has indicated in public.

The peering capability is potentially important because it represents a chance to create new revenue and business relationships between carriers using the exchanges.

Some think that "peering" necessarily means "settlement-free" peering, but that is not always the case. For tier-one carriers, peering replaces the existing interconnection methods and possibly could enable new business relationships.

Among the obvious potential changes are "settlement-free" arrangements between some carriers with equivalent originating and terminating traffic, as well as "transit" style arrangements for carriers with smaller amounts of terminating traffic.

The SIP exchanges would enable high-definition and multimedia services as well. Aside from new revenue opportunities created by the ability to interconnect end-to-end IP services, the exchanges should reduce the costs of interconnection.

Smaller carriers will note the use of an "IP" interconnection business model. Big carriers will peer, possibly on a settlement-free basis, while smaller carriers might pay the equivalent of IP transit fees to interconnect.

http://hdvoicenews.com/2010/10/18/from-iit-voip-conference-expo-att-sip-transport-powerpoint-slides/

AT&T lays out SIP peering architecture – HD Voice News