Mobile Behavior: an Omnicom Group Company

A new report from Juniper forecasts that in developed regions more than one subscriber in ten will be using mobile coupons by 2014.

The report also suggests that "smart posters" with embedded NFC tags will bring to life static billboards, creating immediate interaction between potential customers and their prospective purchases. By simply passing their device close to the tag, users can take away a coupon or obtain product information that can result in purchase decisions. They forecast that ARPU from NFC coupons and smart posters will exceed ARPU from NFC payment transactions.

This concept of interactive media through real-world "hyperlinks" is something we think will become a lot more pervasive in 2010. Every brand should be thinking of their "mobile path," whether its through NFC, Bluetooth,ME QR code, or simply a short code on all their media.

HipCricket just released their  second annual Mobile Marketing Survey that highlights the continued influence of mobile communications, as well as the significant room for growth.

Here are some of the findings...

On Mobile Marketing

• While 37 percent of consumers would be interested in participating in a mobile customer loyalty program from a brand they trust, 83 percent say their favorite brand has yet to market to them via their most personal device, their mobile phone.

• Of those consumers who have received mobile marketing offers, 47 percent have brand recall and 94 percent of those remember the specific call to action.

On SMS

• Aside from phone calls, 73 percent of people said they use their mobile device most for texting friends
• 34 percent have received a marketing offer on their cell phone via text message (up from 28 percent in 2008)

On Mobile Web

• 85 percent of respondents agree that the mobile Web is a valuable source for information that interests them
• 21 percent of respondents access the mobile Web at least once per day and 37 percent access it at least once per week
• 41 percent of respondents have visited a retailer's mobile website.
  The most popular reasons include:
  - To find store locations (70 percent)
  - To find store hours (51 percent)
  - To get directions (39 percent)
  - To look for coupons/promotions (29 percent)

• Spotify Partners with Swedish ISP for Opt-In Music Service on PC, Mobile, and Television | Wired News
  Sweden's Telia is partnering with Spotify to put the popular free music service on televisions. It was also recently announced that INQ is to build Spotify branded phones.

• New iPhone App Connects Fans to Band & Brand Promotions | Mobile Marketing Watch
  A new iPhone application by Mozes aims to connect music fans to over 15,000 exclusive promotions from their favorite bands, artists, and sports teams.

• Speech-to-Text SMS (Text) Messaging Using Microsoft Tellme on a Samsung Intrepid | mediabistro
  By using Microsot's voice recognition software, Tellme with the Samsung Intrepid, users can get around physically typing a text message.

• REPS: Just Like Wii Fit, Only on the iPhone | Mashable
  REPS is a new app for the iPhone that makes a slick hybrid between the physical interactivity of the Nintendo Wii and the many fitness applications available on Apple's phone.

• Dell plans first U.S. smartphone with AT&T | Reuters
  Dell has plans to add its first mobile phone to the already cut-throat U.S. market. The device is said to run on AT&T and use Google's Android.

• Pill bottle caps to call you via AT&T and remind you to take your medication | Unwired View
  For those who have a tendency to forget taking their pills, AT&T and Vitality Inc. are bringing a new technology that alerts users via call or SMS when a bottle cap is not opened in time.

• Ads On a Plane: (Maybe) Free Wi-Fi Coming to Airlines | Mashable
  With 76% of business travelers picking an airline based on Wi-Fi, it's only natural that companies JiWire and Row 44 collaborate to provide in-flight Wi-Fi advertising.

• WOW: 4.1 Billion SMS Messages Are Sent Daily | Mashable
  The latest semi-annual wireless survey by CTIA presents some shocking numbers: Over 740 billion text messages were sent over in the US during the first half of 2009. That's 4.1 billion SMS messages being sent daily, which is also nearly twice as many as sent during the same time period last year.

• FCC Chair Cites 'Spectrum Crisis' | InformationWeek
  A "looming spectrum crisis" are the words FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski used to describe the anticipated thirty-fold jump in wireless traffic.

• Mobile Advertising Is Shaping Up To Be All Search | Techcrunch
  With the rise of Web phones like the iPhone, Android, Blackberry, and Palm, mobile advertising promises to be a huge growth area. The Kelsey Group projects that the mobile advertising market will balloon from $160 million in 2008 to $3.1 billion in 2013.

• What Do All These Phone Apps Do? Mostly Marketing | NYTimes.com
  This article compares apps to websites in the early days of the web. Says one expert: “It’s starting to get to this point that if you don’t have an app, it’s a little silly; you are behind the times.” Advertising apps are now evolving from novelties to utilities, but the biggest challenge for apps as ads for now is that they are best suited to niche markets.
• Muzu.tv Launches | WebTVWire
  Music videos are a big part of the online video sector. They’re hugely popular on YouTube, and there’s a new YouTube-backed music video site called Vevo launching soon. But Muzu.tv has beaten Vevo to the punch and launched while our backs were turned.
• The ‘Twitter Feed, Netflix Faves’ Mating Game | Bits Blog/NYTimes.com
  A new online dating service called Gelato is based on the notion that your lifestream could be the way to find love online. Rather than relying on static profiles that people post, Gelato taps into your Facebook, Twitter, Hulu or Netflix accounts to provide a running list of your interests.
• Two New Apps Superimpose Wikipedia Over Your iPhone Camera View of the World | ReadWriteWeb
  Wikitude and Cyclopedia, now in the iTunes store, let you view Wikipedia entries about physical locations you look at through your iPhone camera.
• Avatar toys go augmented-reality, courtesy of Mattel and Total Immersion | CrunchGear
  Mattel's new toys for James Cameron's Avatar movie includes a little card that is scannable via webcam and creates an on-screen augmented reality robot or character. Check out the demos at AvatarItag.com.
• Zattikka Announces Atomico Ventures as Lead Institutional Investor | Press Release
  The new online and smartphone gaming network announced today that Atomico Ventures, founded by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis of Skype and Joost, participated in its oversubscribed seed round. On September 10th Zattikka announced its first acquisition, the highly regarded flash gaming site, Gimme5games.
• Half of Americans Sleep with Cellphone | Marketing Charts
  More than four in 10 Americans say they “can’t live” without their mobile phone and and nearly half sleep with it nearby, according to a global mobile-phone survey from Synovate, which found that cellphones are increasingly becoming consumers’ “remote controls for life.”
• You Aren’t Alone If You Hate Voicemail; Witness The ‘Rebirth’ Occurring Now | mocoNews
  Voicemails are becoming a dying breed as new technologies transcribe voice to text and email, Twitter and text messages become an easier and more instant way to communicate.
• Women Rule the Social Web | Mashable
  When it comes to sites like Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, MySpace, and Bebo, women outnumber men. There’s only one major holdout for men on the social web: social news site Digg, where 64% of users are male.

Great visual display of results from AdMob's latest app survey via ismashphone.

Some interesting points from the report:

• Users most often discover apps by browsing the Market/Store
  and searching directly, about half do so on their device
• iPod Touch users download twice as many free apps as iPhone and Android users, which could signal a younger/lower-income user base
• Free-to-paid upgrade is the most important driver of paid app sale across platforms, lending support to the "freemium" model
• Android apps aren’t that far behind iPhone apps  in terms of monthly download frequency
• Android and iPhone users spend ~80-90 minutes/day using
  apps; iPod touch users spend a half hour more

Get AdMob's full report here.

• Texts From Last Night to Be Made Into a TV Show | GeekSugar
  Texts From Last Night, which lets you submit, well, your texts from last night, not only has its own Blackberry app but now is getting its own show in Fox. Primarily, the show will focus on post-college twenty-somethings that are trying to figure out their lives, with texting and crazy events from the night before taking center stage.
• Julia Allison Shills For Sony | FishbowlNY
  In an effort to help itself to tech-savvy, style-conscious young women, Sony has enlisted infamous lifecaster Julia Allison to appear in its ad campaign as a brand ambassador (along with Justin Timberlake, Amy Sedaris, and Peyton Manning.)
• Why Palm's Pixi Is The Perfect Price Point For Youth | Ypulse
  Palm setting the price of the Pixi under $100 ($99) might finally bring us to the tipping point where teens awareness/desire for smartphones turns into actual adoption.
• Beloit College Mindset List
  Beloit College has released their Mindset List, a look at the cultural touchstones that shape the lives of students entering college. Some insights: " The migration of once independent media-radio, TV, videos and CDs-to the computer has never amazed them. They have grown up in a politically correct universe in which multi-culturalism has been a given. It is a world organized around globalization, with McDonald's everywhere on the planet. Carter and Reagan are as distant to them as Truman and Eisenhower were to their parents. Tattoos, once thought "lower class," are, to them, quite chic. Everybody knows the news before the evening news comes on."
• Twitter's New Terms of Service | Twitter Blog
  Twitter has made revisions to its terms of service to "reflect the nature of Twitter and convey key issues such as ownership."  Highlights include:
  Advertising—In the Terms, we leave the door open for advertising. We'd like to keep our options open as we've said before.
  Ownership—Twitter is allowed to "use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute" your tweets because that's what we do. However, they are your tweets and they belong to you.
  APIs—The apps that have grown around the Twitter platform are flourishing and adding value to the ecosystem. You authorize us to make content available via our APIs. We're also working on guidelines for use of the API.
• Mobile Offers: Impulse Buys Work Best | MediaPost Publications
  According to Compete's quarterly "Smartphone Intelligence" survey, nearly one-third of all smartphone owners are comfortable or very comfortable receiving targeted marketing on their device. Of them, nearly half are receptive to location-based offers at restaurants (or other offers to pursue at their leisure) and 45% would use mobile grocery coupons.
• Fox’s Fringe “Twitter on TV” Experiment Irks Fans | Mashable
  Fox's “tweet-peats” was a major fail. The premise was to combine reruns of Fringe and Glee with producers and members of the cast tweeting commentary as the episodes rolled. However the tweets obscured much of the screen, making the shows unwatchable.
• Mobilize: The Dawn of Location-Aware Mobile Ads | GigaOm
  Panelists at the Moblize 09 conference say we should expect to see location-aware ads on the iPhone in the next six months, and perhaps even location will be on every phone by the end of year.
• Mobilize: The Mobile Startups LaunchPad | GigaOm
  GigaOm also gathered 10 of the coolest new startups in the mobile space that launched at Mobilize. Making their list were Pageonce, Metaio, Waze, Line2, Glympse, Ondeego, Locle, Distimo.
• Google Plans Tools to Help News Media Charge for Content | Bits Blog - NYTimes.com
  Google is planning to roll out a system of micropayments within the next year and hopes that newspapers will use it as they look for new ways to charge users for their content. The system will be an extension of Google Checkout, a payment system that Google rolled out in 2006 as a PayPal competitor.
• Mobile service searches for files back home | CNET
  MyCopernic on the Go lets you remotely search for and access files on your home or office PC. By subscribing to the $9.95-per-year service, you can find and view files on your PC from any remote device--desktops, laptops, or smartphones including Apple's iPhone, Palm's Pre, or BlackBerrys.
• Facebook @Mentions: Five Ways They Could Impact Twitter | Mashable
  Facebook announced that they will be supporting @mentions, popularized by Twitter, in status updates. The feature, which Facebook calls "tagging," allows you to not only reference friends, but groups, pages, and events. This is on top of other recent moves by FB to halt Twitter, including real-time search and their FriendFeed acquisition. Here Mashable outlines some potential implications for users, developers, and brands.
• Kickin’ It Old School: Facebook Lite Launches In The U.S. And India | Techcrunch
  Facebook has released "Facebook Lite"--a more stripped down version of the site--for U.S. users to test out. Originally intended to be used in countries where high speed Internet connections are sparse or non-existent, apparently Facebook has realized there’s a real desire among all its users to have a simpler version of the service.
• Wikitude Breaks From the Pack; Releases Augmented Reality Browser API
  Austrian AR browser maker Wikitude released an API to power AR browsers on any other application, hoping to drive adoption of AR apps and become the standard for developers who want to create their own.
• What's next in mobile user experience? Augmented Reality | Demystifying Usability
  Good overview of AR's potential from a UX perspective: "Augmented Reality is set to revolutionize the mobile user experience as did gesture and touch (multi-modal interaction) in mobile phones. This will redefine the mobile user experience for the next generation making mobile search invisible and reduce search effort for users."

• Media Morph: The Hidden Park | Advertising Age
  The Hidden Park is an AR app that brings our natural inclination toward narrative entertainment to the iPhone. The app uses all the advanced features of the phone to let the connected family take a fantasyland jaunt through real-life parks.
• Video - Mobile startup Foursquare attracts buzz, money | WSJ.com The hot location-based social app just closed a seed round of $1.35 million, announced Friday. Check out this video interview with founder Dennis Crowley (and here's our own video interview with the foursquare founders from SXSW earlier this year).
• Asia's mobile phone habits revealed | Media Asia
  A new study by Synovate that surveyed respondents across 11 Asian markets found that 75% leave home without their phones. Managing director of Synovate Taiwan Jenny Chang explains that mobiles “partly act as a remote control, and partly as a security blanket”.
• Spotify Goes Mobile, Now Its Business May Begin | mocoNews
  Apple has approved the app from Spotify, the "it" music streaming site based in Europe, for the app store in the UK, Sweden, Spain, France, Norway and Finland.
• Loopt Launches First Always-On, Location-Aware iPhone App - Hopefully Others Will Follow Soon | RWW
  Loopt announced that it will become the first third-party iPhone app that will be able to offer an always-on location service on the iPhone. Normally, apps can't run in the background on the iPhone, and this hack (and the fact that AT&T is allowing it) is significant for both developers and advertisers.
• Design Your Dorm lets students virtually decorate their rooms | Los Angeles Times
  Design Your Dorm's software helps college students figure out a good look for their rooms before hitting Target and hauling everything down to campus.
• User-Generated Advertising Comes to the iPhone | Advertising Age 20th Century Fox is working with Tapulous to run what it says is the first user-generated-content campaign on the iPhone. To plug the horror flick "Jennifer's Body," the campaign asks people to come up with the best visual theme for "Tap Tap Revenge" using images from the movie (which stars the hot young actress Megan Fox).