Tag Archive for: App

InMobi Global Study: Mobile media consumption outpacing TV, mobile ads drive sales

In prepapration of the first dmexco Night Talks moderation in Hamburg on “Mobile: The new first screen: reach, engage, measure, monetize”, sometimes studies fly into my mailbox which are reaching me just at the right time.

InMobi released their second wave research report on Mobile Media Consumption at Mobile World Congress. It covers some on-going overview on 14 countries on how we consume mobile content these days, and it obviously underlines the rapid growth of mobile media and the benefits of mobile advertising around the globe.

From a global perspective, mobile has reached the sweet spot in media consumption. It will generate its growth in the coming year predominantly via social media, search/download apps and search activities. In the 14 countries, humans spent from 7 hour media consumption (apart from other channels)…
1. Mobile 1,8 hours
2. PC 1,6 hours
3. TV 1,5 hours

The research piece shows that 50% of the average global mobile web users primarily use their mobiles now to go online. The average mobile web person uses 6.5 apps throughout a 30-day period.

But what does this mean for marketers?

The study states that globally, 54% of users discover mobile ads via apps, 40% on a search engine, 27% on a retailer website and 23% on a video website. It also makes clear that mobile is the touchpoint for finding new products and services. 3 out of 4 say mobile advertising has opened doors to something new. Almost every second say mobile ads have influenced them to buy mobile (46%) and almost the same amout (45%) say that mobile has mobile ads have influenced their purchase decision.

When seeing mobile ads, it is not that users don’t take any actions. It is actually the other way round. Mobile ads let users downloaded an app (80%), visit the advertiser’s website (67%), visit the store/retailer/business for additional information (52%), locate an advertiser on map (45%), or even take an immediate phone call (37%).

Mobile Media Consumption InMobi 2013

Spot On!
While I still have some marketers from media houses and brands in my ears, saying that apps and mobile ads don’t seem to be the right marketing approach, it seems they just did not find the right content approach to their users. The mobile commerce world is growing at speed of light and innovative retailers and brands should be well-prepared for it – and ideally have at least a click-to-call solution on their mobile website. It is not surprising that in these 14 countries 80% retailers say they plan to get the right approach to mobile in 2013.

How about you? Are you prepared for the mobile sales and marketing development? What experiences do you have so far with mobile ads?

PS: If you are interested in attending the dmexco discussion in Hamburg, please book your seat here.

Innovation study: Is culture or strategy the key to success?

Obviously, the headline question is not easy to answer. Both elements have their impact on business success. At this years IBM JamCamp, we could hear many presentations why “culture eats strategy for breakfast”, and how to turn your business into a social business (i.e. Sandy Carter’s speech) that will drive innovation to new dimensions (and here is some hint how companies might get huge investments for social business realization).

A new study by Strategy& also shows that spending more on R&D won’t drive results. The results from the study illustrate that the most crucial factors are strategic alignment and a culture that supports innovation. The study surveyed almost 600 innovation leaders in companies around the world, large and small, in every major industry sector.

So what makes a truly innovative company? For sure, a focused innovation strategy, a compelling business strategy, deep customer insight, intelligent networking, as well as a splendid set of bright tactics. These are all elements that help giving your company an innovation boost. Still, the study states that corporate culture ties everything together — the organization’s self-sustaining patterns of behaving, feeling, thinking, and believing.

Still, the results of this year’s Global Innovation 1000 study make clear that only about half of all companies say their corporate culture robustly supports their innovation strategy. Moreover, about the same proportion say their innovation strategy is inadequately aligned with their overall corporate strategy. And although entire industries, such as pharmaceuticals, continue to devote relatively large shares of their resources to innovation, the results are much less successful than they and their stakeholders might hope for.

What I like about this study is that it supports my assumptions and thoughts of the Community Centric Strategy model. Across the board respondents identified “superior product performance” and “superior product quality” as their top strategic goals. And their two most important cultural attributes were “strong identification with the consumer/customer experience” and a “passion/pride in products”.

Statements like the following from the study could be taken as a proof for the future development towards a more cultural business attitude that puts the consumer in the middle of your innovation efforts…

“Our goal is to include the voice of the customer at the basic research level and throughout the product development cycle, to enable our technical people to actually see how their technologies work in various market conditions.” Fred Palensky, Executive Vice President of R&D and CTO, 3M Company

In my presentation at the IBM JamCamp 2011 I made clear that companies and brands need to close the perception gap between consumer’s demand and company goals. If companies don’t respect the 5 C engines of the Community Centric Strategy these two expectations cannot be aligned. We will continue to talk of target-groups instead of consumers that are grouping together in “community centers”. This is more of a cultural development companies need to go through than definable strategic capabillities by companies to drive innovations. By closing both the strategic alignment and culture gaps, companies and brands will better realize their goals and attributes.

Spot On!
The study results show that companies and brands should rethink the way they drive their innovation strategy. It suggests that the ways R&D managers and corporate decision makers think about their new products and services are critical for success. This includes all aspects how they feel about intangibles such as risk, creativity, openness, and collaboration. When nearly 20% of companies said they didn’t have a well-defined innovation strategy at all, it offers the chance to start anew and with the right approach. The Community Centric Strategy might be one solution for companies to evaluate culture as one of the main drivers to achieve your strategic goals in a modern way of doing business.

The Virtual Handshake

Marko Greitschus / pixelio.de

When I was a kid, my grandparents had a little pub. Nothing special. Nothing glamorous. Just a comfortable meeting point for friends or business partners to catch up for a drink. The best day always was the “market day”. Merchants were setting up their booths at the marketplace in the little village my grandparents were living in, early in the morning when most people were still snoring in their beds. When their job was done, they popped up at the pub around 7am when their wives took over to sell their goods.

The guests in the pub did not expect very much. A drink was their desire. A tasty sandwich was luxury to them. Competition amoung pubs was tough, even in this little village a long time ago. There were many pubs around in that coal distrinct north of Germany. The owners of the other pubs in the village changed more or less every year, some even earlier. My grandparents’ business stayed for over a decade, until they decided it was time to stop working. The guests loved their attitude, their individual touch, their personalized way of talking to them. My grandparents’ business was successful.

What was the key to their success story?

Before I answer this question, let me ask you something… When did you shake hands last time with a friend, or a business partner? Do you remember? Did you ever think about why we are shaking hands with people? Have you ever not returned a handshake? It is a common habit of introducing ourselves and of saying Goodbye. We just do it. Well, let’s say in the offline world we do it…

Those days, whenever somebody came into my grandparents’ pub, my grandma and granddad gave them a personal handshake, embedded in some small talk about the weather or last nights sports results. The conversation made people feel good, feel wanted, not just being anonymous guests. They created a living room. People started talking with them about their personal hopes, fears, issues. The handshake had broken the ice…

In our social web world of today, customer relationship management and social networking become an increasingly important factor to be maintain a successful business within a more and more challenging and competitive world.

Many relationships today begin with a virtual handshake. So you may ask: What is a virtual handshake? Today, it comes in the format of a comment on a blog post, a LIKE on a status update on a Fanpage, an introduction mail inside a social network, or an invitation to join a community (Facebook or LinkedIn or a company specific).

In the offline world, nobody would turn away and not return the handshake. However, in the online world individuals put effort in terms of writing, talking and engaging with companies and brands, making their brand passion transparent, or just opening their minds to “business” (or privat?) conversations. All of that often before having received a virtual handshake with those companies that are reaching out to them via their -often anonymous- social hubs.

By participating in a community or engaging in conversations, customers take the initiative, they state a case and describe an act of will. Companies tend to forget that this is a virtual handshake. “Hello! Here I am! Look what I am telling you…”.

Many companies and brands do not answer. They don’t reply on social networks. They don’t value the hand that is right in front of them waiting. The hand which feeds them and their business. The free opportunity to connect, collaborate, or convert. Lack of time and resources is the killer of many of their social web activities.

My grandparents never forgot to shake hands with people that came to visit their pub. This was their success story. So simple, right…?

Think about it next time you set up a group, start a community or approach someone on a social network (be it via InMail on LinkedIn or a status update on Facebook). Relationships start with a handshake – whether real or virtual. There just needs to be somebody that returns the handshake. For some this might be a change management process, for some it is just natural attitude towards customers…

dmexco 2010 – Flashback in Tweets & Quotes

The main message of the dmexco 2010 can be concluded as follows…

Marketers have to face the fast dynamics of a changing advertising industry. The new topics they will be tackling in the future are predictive behavioral targeting, multiscreen targeting, augmented reality as well as mobile device advertising and … of course Social Media.

Facing the social web challenge, this means marketers have to look for conversation with their clients, whilst still being authentic, honest, human, friendly, open, conversational, responsive. Business relevant topics are not meant to cross their minds such as contact management and generation, quantitative ROI measurement or sales-driven aspects – and I am not even talking of lead nurturing. At least from a social media user-perspective…

Respect to all marketeers who can make this challenge happen in the future!

My flashback…?
Doing the co-moderation of the conference program was a very exhiting and interesting job. It gave me the opportunity to talk to great marketers (Sidney Mock, Spil Games and Manish Mehta, Dell Inc.), real thought-leaders of the Internet industry (Russell Buckley, AdMob Inc. and Tom Bedecarrè, AKQA) and just fabulous web personalities (Harry Huj, Pepsico Investment and Dean Donaldson, Mediamind).

As there was not much time to look around the halls and the booths, I would like to summarize the event with the 10 tweets and quotes that represent the value, the mood and the atmosphere of dmexco from my perspective.

Future
1. dmexco 2010: The vision of the leaders http://bit.ly/bRyrlQ via @MkDirecto

Augmented Reality
2. Never heard of “augmented reality”? Check out the Museum of London case study http://bit.ly/aucZ4Y via Kaizenadv

iPad
3. Study #iPad Effects: “80 per cent use the iPad predominantly at home” #dmexco #research (translated) via tomorrowfocus

Gaming
4. Sidney Mock, Spil Games, counts 650 million online gamers worldwide via dmexco (More gamers than Facebook users…).

China
5. Harry Hui (Pepsico): “Los consumidores chinos se mueven a otro ritmo”. http://bit.ly/czFA8x via lpittol85

Social Media
6. Great interview with @ManishatDell (my boss) about the value of social media for #dell from the dmexco conf. http://bit.ly/9pjxaF via DennisMSmith

Facebook
7. Joanna Shields: “Marketing develops from a one night stand towards constant connection and ongoing conversations.” #dmexco #Facebook via dmexco

Mobility
8. Dean Donaldson shows the relativity of the mobile progress, reading out a SMS he received during the Mobile Debate. It tells him how expensive roaming is and explains how ISPs limit mobile opportunities like in the AOL age some years ago.

Future Media
9. The future of the media is mobile. Shame *none* of the world’s design/PR agencies have realised: http://cot.ag/dolCIO via Adam Westbrook

Summary
10. Tom Bedecarré, #AKQA, is excited about #dmexco: “What a high energy event with so many people!” via dmexco

Spot On!
After sharing my view, I would appreciate to get your ideas and thoughts. What did you think of dmexco 2010? How did you like the conference program or the debate hall concept? What was positive and negative? Did any of you use the blogger lounge? If so, what did you like or miss? Looking forward to your feedback…

PS: Next dmexco?: Cologne, September, 21. and 22, 2011 !

Foto Credits: Horizont

Are contextual social media creatives a good idea?

Today, an agency friend of mine (who is not on Twitter or Facebook) send me a link to a contextual ad campaign she found at the Eyeblaster Creative Zone. The ad is from Vodafone Italy and promoting their 360 degrees campaign. It is an experiment which reminds me of this year’s Volkswagen attempt.

So, what is happening in this campaign?

Interaction 1: Once you click the banner, the ad expands and you can connect to Twitter or Facebook inside the banner…

Social Media Creative 1

Interaction 2: The banner app takes out your surname and creates a nice picture of it by using all your Twitter friend pictures.

Social Media Creative 2

Interaction 3: With a mouse-over, you can see the latest Tweets of a specific followers.

Social Media Creative 3

The final click leads you NOT to your friends account but to the landing page of the Vodafone 360 campaign. That’s it…

Spot On!
Now, we could discuss about the creative idea, or the stickiness value or “clickiness” factor. Or we could talk about the fact of the staying time and branding factor… and who “wins” customers with such banners in the end – apart from amusing them for a while.
When I saw this campaign for the first time I was disappointed as I thought I will be coming straight to the follower’s page – but had to realize that this is a campaign and follows some different purpose. It’s marketing, it’s a campaign and the old commercial approach. No conversation – limited engagement.

And now I am asking myself where the benefit in such creative campaigns is – for the user and the advertising company.

What do you think?

PS: If you want to test the interactive banner, please visit the Eyeblaster Creative Zone.

News Update – Best of the Day

– Da sind wir Web 2.0 Menschen ja beruhigt: Dieter Rappold, Chef des Blog-Anbieters twoday.net, glaubt, dass die Strömungen des Web 2.0 nicht wieder verschwinden werden. “Web 2.0 ist ein kulturelles, soziologisches Phänomen. Wenn Unternehmen das ernst nehmen, wird uns das in den nächsten 5 bis 10 Jahren sehr intensiv beschäftigen”, sagt Dieter Rappold im Interview mit dem Branchenfernsehen turi2.tv bei den Münchner Medientagen.

– Wie man die Web 2.0 Blubble Explosion überlebt? – Ganz einfach: Diesen Artikel von Scott Raynovich genießen und … teilweise nachmachen. Dann kann nichts schiefgehen…!

– IBM schaut mal wieder in die Zukunft und sieht unter anderem das ‘Talking Web’. ReadWriteWeb schreibt über die 5 Zukunftvisionen des großen blauen Riesen.

IBM's Beyond Advertising Studie: Going Digital

Jetzt ist es also raus… Laut der jüngsten IBM Studie ‘Beyond Advertising: Going Digital’ akzeptieren und nehmen die User neue Formate im Web an – aber nur, wenn die Unternehmen sich an die Regeln halten. Moment: Regeln, welche Regeln? Im Internet? OK, Spass beiseite…

Die Grundregel lautet: ein zielgruppengerechter Gegenwert muss her! Mehr als 60% der Befragten geben persönliche Daten wie Alter, Geschlecht, Lebensstil und Kommunikationsinteressen preis, wenn sie dafür etwas Zählbares (Incentives und Mehrwert!) danach in den Händen halten – jüngere Menschen sind dabei generell zugängiger als ältere. Die direkte Marketingkommunikation zur Einzelperson wird gewünscht, solange nicht mit der Gießkanne Informationen vom Unternehmen auf die Person gegossen werden.

Es tut sich was im Web: Die diesjährige Studie verdeutlicht, dass die Annahme von digitalen Content Services sich im Vergleich zum letzten Jahr verdoppelt hat, wobei Social Networking und mobile Nutzung sich mehr und mehr weltweit durchsetzen, ja sogar erwünscht sind. 45% geben an, sich Online-Videos bereits auf mobilen Geräten angesehen zu haben (76% auf PC’s!).

Fragwürdig bleibt weiterhin die Monetarisierung, denn anzeigen-finanzierte Modelle werden den paid-content Angeboten immernoch bevorzugt. Und am liebsten würden die User natürlich vor oder nach dem Videokonsum die Anzeigen aufnehmen – vermutlich eher danach, da es sich besser ‘wegzappen’ lässt. Während des Videos stößt Werbung auf schärfste Kritik. Ja, der Online-Video User muss erst an diverse Sachen gewöhnt werden, die im TV nie am Pranger standen…

Spot On!
Die weltweite Studie verdeutlicht, dass es noch viele Möglichkeiten gibt für Marketiers und Werbekunden, wenn sie angemessen mit der Zielgruppe kommunizieren. Kommunikation ist eben der Schlüssel zum Kunden. Was Marketiers noch lernen müssen, ist dass Online-Video im Internet nicht traditionellem Fernsehen entspricht – auch wenn es on-demand (Mehrwert!) und zeitunabhängig (Mehrwert!) ist, das Gleiche bietet und grundsätzlich nur auf einem anderen Gerät abläuft. Schwer zu verstehen, ist aber so…

Basis: Die Studie wurde unter 2.800 Teilnehmern wurde in sechs Ländern im Bezug auf digitale Medien und Unterhaltungsgewohnheiten durchgeführt.

News Update – Best of the Day

– Als Weinhändler mit Widgets Käse verkaufen: Die auf Social Commerce Mainzer Internet Agentur Netz 98 hat einige Profitipps zusammengestellt, wie Shopping-Widgets aussehen müssen, damit die Käufer auch anbeißen: 1. Freundeskreis adressieren, 2. Selbstdarstellung bieten, 3. Aus Applikationsmasse hervorstechen, 4. Zielgruppenorientiert denken, 5. Markenbekanntheit und Reichweite steigern. –> eine Mischung aus Web 2.0 und Marketing eben!

– Dass Layer Ads nicht gerade förderlich in der Bannerwerbung sind, predigt das silicon.de Salesteam seit Jahren. Manchmal wurde man erhört, manchmal auch nicht. Jetzt liefert eine Goldmedia Studie die Bestätigung, dass wir immer recht hatten.

– Dass wir uns im Zeitalter der Generation Doof befinden, wissen wir schon und haben auch hier schon kommentiert. Ob nun Web 2.0 daran Schuld ist, oder nicht, muss sich jeder selbst fragen – nachdem man den Artikel von Werner Pluta “Macht Web 2.0 dumm?” gelesen hat.