The Impact of Display Advertising

One mistake easy, in fact, almost impossible to avoid when evaluating the return on investment of display advertising is to attribute buying actions to the "last channel" a customer uses when making a purchase.

By that logic, the best channel a retailer has is a cash register at a store or the ordering function of a website. That's the "channel" we can measure as registering a sale. What is difficult, nearly impossible to measure is all the other influences that have lead up to a purchase. Those influences are, by definition, indirect in the sense that all of them, or some of them, have had a rule in moving a particular buyer to purchase activity.

Some will argue that channels play different roles, at different parts of a buying cycle. Display advertising, word of mouth, recommendations and online content do the "heavy lifting" early in the consumer decision-making process of driving awareness and consideration.

The argument is that prospects often have initial exposure in the research phase that later produces a "buyer." A late-stage visit often gets credited to search marketing, when a user already has made a decision, and is looking for the actual sales channel.

So the temptation is to credit the entire sale to the search channel. That's a mistake of attribution. It can be unknowable how any particular prospect became a buyer, but it likely is the case that multiple information or advertising and promotion channels played a role.

The Impact of Display on Search | ClickZ

"GrouponLive" to Sell Event Tickets

Groupon and Live Nation have a formed a joint venture to develop a new online ticketing deals channel called "GrouponLive."

GrouponLive will serve as a local resource for Live Nation events and clients of its global ticketing business, Ticketmaster.

The site is intended to help consumers to find high-value tickets to concerts, sports, theater, arts and other live events, while serving as a timely and effective way for merchants to sell more tickets.

The new effort will launch in time for the summer concert season, the companies say. One way to look at Groupon is that although it provides a promotional vehicle for retailers, it also is becoming a retail channel in the ticketing business.

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Bandwidth and Revenue: What Does History Suggest?

Service provider executives often worry about a restricted future role in the Internet ecosystem, largely captured by the phrase "dumb pipe." Somewhat oddly, you sometimes hear people complain that the phrase exists at all, as though anything at all would be different did the phrase not exist.

Left unsaid is the truth behind the existence of the phrase. Bandwidth is not the only product that has experienced dramatic effective cost reductions, with large societal and economic benefits, as troublesome as those price changes might have been for producers in the businesses that experienced the changes.

The so-called "robber barons" of the late 19th century generally made their fortunes by drastically changing the price curve for new technologies, grabbing market share by undercutting rivals.

Cornelius Vanderbilt cut the price of rail freight 90 percent, Andrew Carnegie slashed steel prices 75 percent and John D. Rockefeller cut oil prices 80 percent between 1870 and 1900.

Malcom McLean, Sam Walton and Michael Dell did roughly the same for container shipping, discount retailing and home computing a century later. Such radical changes often are unwelcome by the producing community, though the consuming public benefits.

Something of that same process is likely to play out in the bandwidth business as well, no matter what one thinks about the term "dumb pipe."

Cheapening Technology WSJ.com (subscription required)

Groupon, Living Social Skew Urban

Demography might not be destiny, but it is close. The places there are lots of people are the same places there are lots of small businesses, lots of mobile phone users, lots of everything, in fact.

As is the case for just about anything else related to people and business, the places there are dense concentrations of buyers are the places there are equally-dense concentrations of suppliers.

For that reason, the typical Groupon and Living Social user, in fact, is about 13 percent more likely to live in a metropolitan area with a population of more than 400,000 people, according to Nielsen Co. data, and about 10 percent more likely to live in a city with more than three million people.

Those aren't huge disparities, or even surprising. Where are the places it will make most sense for a local retailer to pitch offers at people? Where are there enough retailers to support a business offering coupons and offers?

Groupon, Living Social Are Skewing Urban

16 Million Mobile LTE Subscribers by End of 2012

Currently 12 countries have commercial Long Term Evolution fourth generation services, and according to ABI Research VP of Forecasting Jake Saunders, by the end of the year there will be some 16 million subscribers using LTE mobile devices, globally.

But there might be 264 million LTE subscribers on frequency-division LTE networks by 2015, and another 158 million time-division network customers by 2015, according to Heavy Reading.

16 Million Mobile LTE Subscribers by Year’s End

17% of Smart Phone Users Checking In

About 17 percent of mobile users appear to use social location-based apps such as Foursquare or Facebook Places, according to a study commissioned by digital agency Beyond.

More than half of mobile users who do use checkin apps (54 percent) said they are motivated to share their location when discounts are involved. About 21 percent said the ability to earn badges and status rewards were enough motivation for them to check in.

About 48 percent of respondents who say they do not use mobile check-in apps indicate privacy is their primary reason for not doing so.

About half of respondents were unable to do so because they do not have a smart phone.

Early adopters are more likely to check in at locations that sell food or drinks. The top places are restaurants (53 percent), coffee shops (40 percent), hotels (38 percent) and bars (36 percent).

Mass consumers check in most frequently at the homes of friends and family (35 percent) and restaurants (33 percent)

Why Mobile Users Aren't Checking In

Can You Measure Social Media ROI?

There's nothing wrong with trying to quantify the return on any investment, including social media, even if the analysis is relatively difficult to assess. The danger might come from trying to be too quantitative.

For one thing, the measures are proximate, not direct. It would be very difficult, most likely impossible, to quantify the volume or number of sales or revenue that social channels directly convert. We can track web traffic, click through rates, and follower/following ratio. But none of that explains real "influence."

Social media isn't the only channel with those sorts of issues. It is difficult to assess the actual value of trade show events, as well, since "sales" tend to come some time after a contact at a trade show.

The methodological dangers are fairly clear, as well. "If you utilize offline social events as advertising channels, two things happen," argues Joe Hall at Marketing Pilgrim. "You don’t make any friends" and "you don’t create any customers."

"This happens because instead of coming across as the cool girl or guy that everyone wants to do business with, you come across as the annoying jerk passing out postcard adverts."

There will always be management pressure to justify the effectiveness of campaigns and channels. When using social media, the great temptation is to rely on proxy measures too heavily. What you are after is "influence." That can be tough to measure.

Social Media ROI?

Local Mobile Marketing Spend to Grow 2.5X by 2015

Total U.S mobile promotional spend in 2010 shows a pronounced focus on national., rather than local, campaigns, according to Mobitrove. Almost $2.9 billion of $3 billion worth of "promotions" spending was for national promotions, or about 97 percent of mobile promotional dollars spent in 2010.

One suspects that is going to change over the next several years, as social shopping capabilities and focus starts to grow. The changes might be quite gradual for the first four to five years, as typically is the case when a new business segment gets traction.

After five years, growth is likely to be substantial, as retailers learn how to use local promotions with location services and social networking.

Mobile Marketing Spend to Sextuple 2010-2015:

Over the Air Updates: Ecosystem Implications

Just about everything in the mobile ecosystem seems to have business model implications. Consider the way mobile devices get updated.

Apple has used the iTunes to push updates to its iOS mobile devices. When a new software update is available, users have to tether to a PC to load the update onto their mobiles.

When an update to Google’s Android operating system or HP/Palm’s webOS is released, users are provided an update notification and can update the software right on their phone.

You might argue that the "tether to PC" model was forced by the relatively primitive nature of the iPod, which established the practice. On the other hand, lots of people have noticed the curiosity of the need to connect an iPad to a PC to configure the tablet.

Oddly, Apple has been saying the iPad "is not a PC." Requiring a PC to activate every tablet might illustrate that in a sort of negtive way: the tablet update strategy isn't smart enough to allow a natively mobile device to update over the air.

But Apple appears to be readying over-the-air iOS updates, starting in the fall of 2011, for updates to iOS 5 devices.

The business model implications of the over-the-air updating are that it appears Apple has to come to agreement Verizon Wireless and AT&T about how to support the wireless updates.

That points out the subtle, but real gatekeeper functions mobile service providers continue to possess in the mobile ecosystem.

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Visa Says Mobile Payments Unveiling is Coming Next Week | Tricia Duryee | eMoney | AllThingsD

Visa is planning to provide details next week about its mobile payments strategy. In recent months Visa has invested in Square, which provides an accessory allowing an iPhone to accept credit card payments.

Earlier in 2011 Visa acquired PlaySpan, which handles transactions for virtual goods in online games, digital media and social networks.

Visa also recently has launched a partnership with Gap, which is using Visa’s platform to alert customers by text message to discounts on jeans and other apparel when they are in the vicinity of a store. Visa is also opening up that platform to other retailers.

All of those elements suggest a strategy that includes the ability to send discount offers based on location, support smaller and independent retailers and also support online payments for virtual goods.

Those elements alone suggest support for small business retail payments, online digital goods as well as location-based advertising and promotion.

Visa Says Mobile Payments Unveiling is Coming Next Week

Dish Network to launch wireline broadband in Colorado

Dish Network Corp. is about a month away from starting to offer its own wireline broadband in service bundles sold in Colorado.

The Douglas County-based satellite broadcaster said Friday it will start making broadband services available in the state next month, five months after it bought Denver-based Liberty Bell telecom to start experimenting with a triple-play video, voice and Internet bundle.

Dish Network to launch wireline broadband soon | Denver Business Journal:

European Mobile Customers Are Willing to Pay for New Services

Among the fears communication service provider executives sometimes have is that customers will not pay for better service or new features. A new survey of 2,500 mobile subscribers by Amdocs, including mobile consumers in five European nations suggests subscribers are willing to pay for an improved customer experience and new services.

Fully 90 percent of Russian subscribers indicated they are willing to pay higher premiums to receive the products and services they want.

Only 30 percent of subscribers from all of the surveyed countries said they would be unwilling to pay for additional services.

Connectivity and the ability to make mobile payments were cited by European consumers as the top reasons they would increase their mobile usage. Subscribers also expressed a willingness to pay a
premium for the ability to consume all services from any device and for a single data bundle option.

Forty-three percent of respondents from all five European countries viewed connectivity as the most important industry development of the next decade.

Fifty-two percent of surveyed Russians and more than half of the Germans felt connectivity and synchronization between all devices would be the most important development of the next 10 years, and
almost 50 percent of German end users felt that the connected world would encourage them to increase their mobile usage.

In the U.K., more than 70 percent of respondents cited connection to other devices as the first or second most influential factor in increasing their mobile consumption.

European respondents chose improved network quality as the service they would be most likely to pay a premium for and 46 percent said this is the aspect they would most like to change or improve about their current mobile reality.

Users in the United Kingdom are most likely to pay a premium for increased network quality (39 percent) and 50 percent of surveyed consumers in the United Kingdom cited network improvements as their top concern, reflecting a growing reliance on access to mobile communication and information wherever they are.

The survey also included subscribers in France, Germany and Sweden.

As with all such surveys, there often is a difference between what consumers ay they will do, and the ways they actually behave.

Still, as with any product, the notion that customers will not buy new features, products or applications can be wrong. Whether they will, or will not, depends on the value of the innovations and the cost of using those new innovations.

Nobody seems to think "paying" is an issue with iPhones, iPads or virtual goods used in online games. What service providers must do is what all suppliers must do: create more compelling products.

read more here

Google's Local Strategy: Social and Location are Key

Tablet Usage Affecting Other Devices

Around half of all tablet owners reported being the only ones in their household using their particular tablet, while 43 percent said they shared the tablet with others, according to Nielsen. Eight percent said that while they own a tablet used by other household members, they do not use it themselves.

When asked whether they used other connected devices more often or less often since purchasing a tablet, 35 percent of tablet owners who also owned a desktop computer reported using their desktop less often or not at all, while 32 percent of those who also owned laptops, said they used their laptop less often or never since acquiring a tablet, Nielsen says.

Twenty-seven percent of those who also own eReaders said they use their eReader less often or not at all, the same percentage as those who also own portable media players. One-in-four tablet owners who own portable games consoles are using those devices less often, if at all, since purchasing a tablet.

Are New Tablets Taking a Bite out of Apple's iPad? Not Yet

Mobile as a New Medium

I don't know of an instance where a new medium was not initially seen through the lens of the old. Among the perhaps obvious examples is the tendency of early movies to be "filmed stage performances." So to the extent that the "mobile web" is a new medium, and not merely a small-screen version of a PC, one would expect that the medium still is developing, and that we do not yet realize the potential.

For that reason, some speculate that the mobile web will ultimately become a different medium from the PC web.

"Where we are headed (or should be headed), I think, in developing a mobile web that is actually distinct from the web as we have known it," says Steve Smith, Digital Media Editor at Media Industry Newsletter.

If you want to know why mobile payments, mobile banking, local mobile advertising, social shopping and location services are getting so much attention, the reason is that the particularly unique "mobile media" is seen as converging or extending digital and offline experiences, so that both parts of a new experience.

In many cases, that means melding things people do in the offline "real" world with mobile capabilities. Consider shopping, which is driving much interest in mobile advertising, social shopping and location-based and "real time" offers.

But the notion that the mobile phone can be a digital extension of product - that a phone can complement the actual utility of a physical object a marketer offers - is where we get mobile closer to its ultimate promise. But some would argue we will start to approach the medium in its unique form when we start to see mobiles as a digital activation of physical world activities.

In that view, mobile does not extend the web, or offer a mobile marketing opportunity, in a narrow sense. In other words, we will understand the specific attributes of the medium as we learn to make the mobile-provided digital experience an actual extension of physical goods, services and products. It is a digital activation of the physical world.

Think of it as an extension of the notion that much of the value of any physical product is the software associated with it. PCs are nothing but platforms for software, for example. Music is a part of the MP-3 player product, or the Apple App Store as a key part of the iPhone experience.

In other cases, Amazon's service, support and recommendations are an intrinsic part of the product, which is the shopping experience, not so much the specific items purchased by the consumer.

Mobile is Not Your Older Brother's World Wide Web