Mobile

Consumers around the world are rushing into the embrace of the smartphone market, according to new figures from eMarketer on mobile usage worldwide. By the end of 2014, we expect 1.76 billion people to own and use smartphones monthly, up more than 25% over 2013.

Mike Sievert – Chief Marketing Officer /  T-Mobile

This week, the 2014 FIFA World Cup kicks off in Brazil, and we’re helping to bring this awesome global spectacle to your living room – and your phone – in typical Un-carrier style.

The World Cup is an amazing, incredible quadrennial event, and T-Mobile’s Simple Choice plan is hands-down the best option for the hundreds of thousands of Americans travelling to the games – with unlimited data and texting and low-cost calls while in Brazil.

The new mobile medium represents an appealing opportunity for brand marketers—enabling them to reach a pool of consumers that is growing by the day anytime and anywhere. Because of mobile’s relative youth, however, there is still confusion over how best to engage in mobile advertising. Differences in technology mean that marketers can’t always employ the same best practices in mobile that they use for television or online advertising.

Querying sports enthusiasts from 11 markets – Australia, Brazil, China, Colombia, France, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico and the United Kingdom, as well as the United States – who have smartphones and plan to follow the tournament, the survey reveals that 48 percent overall plan to use their phones to follow the World Cup, second only to TV (63%) when it comes to media channels for keeping up with the game.

JWT’s third annual report on trends in the mobile sphere spotlights key themes and builds on trends spotlighted in previous reports. The report covers significant drivers and manifestations of these developments, and their implications for brands. “10 Mobile Trends for 2014 and Beyond” is based around on-the-ground research at the MWC in Barcelona and SXSW in Austin, as well as desk research and insights gleaned from interviews with several mobile experts and influencers.

Los Angeles-based multicultural mobile marketing solutions company BRIABE Mobile launched its “ROAD TO RIO” platform, a curated mobile soccer content platform. The platform offers unique and exclusive content in both English and Spanish targeted to the more than 50% of U.S. Hispanics following the 2014 FIFA World Cup.

NBCUniversal recently announced that it will create original digital video across all of its entities. Scott Schiller, executive vice president of digital advertising sales at NBCUniversal, spoke with eMarketer’s Rimma Kats about how the recent initiatives will help advertisers reach consumers.

The 2014 FIFA World Cup soccer tournament may not kick off in Brazil until next month, but viewers are already planning on how they’re going to watch the matches. And based on polling conducted by Instant.ly for YuMe, digital devices are reshaping game viewing.

Amid the squeeze on drug companies due to patent expirations on blockbuster drugs, Novartis and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) announced in April an asset-swapping/joint venture deal, which includes Novartis picking up GSK’s cancer drugs and the two companies forming a joint venture on their respective nonprescription drug consumer units. The venture, GSK Consumer Healthcare, will combine the businesses of Novartis brands including Excedrin and Prevacid with GSK brands including Nicorette, TUMS and Aquafresh. Cheryl Policastro, director of shopper marketing and insights at Novartis Consumer Health, spoke with eMarketer’s Christine Bittar about selling over-the-counter medications and some of the differences between marketing prescription and nonprescription drugs.

The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), the leading global trade association for the mobile industry, today announced the revealing results of the first-ever Mobile Video Benchmark Study. The study, commissioned by the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) and its Mobile Video Committee, sought to provide mobile video performance insights to advertisers, agencies, publishers and third party video servers.

Mobile may be winning when it comes to its growing share of time spent with media, but advertising dollars are following behind slower than one may expect, according to eMarketer’s latest forecast of time spent with media by US adults.

In 2013, time spent with digital media among US adults surpassed time spent with TV for the first time—with mobile driving the shift. This year, that trend will continue, according to new figures from eMarketer, as time spent with mobile devices continues to grow much faster than usage of all other media.

Chris Brandt, CMO at Taco Bell, is calling the quick-service restaurant’s (QSR’s) new breakfast items “innovation with a twist on the familiar.” That’s his plan in marketing too, by using Instagram and soon rolling out a mobile ordering app.

Mobile search may be the future, but desktop search remains a heavyweight for marketers. Thanks to a sizable advantage in conversion metrics, the desktop promises to be a key player throughout this decade, according to a new eMarketer report, “Desktop Search 2014: Marketers Find a Balance with Mobile.”

Marketers concentrate so much on consumer behavior, but what part does the behavior of brand marketers play when they attempt to connect with existing and potential customers?

Digital omnivores – those consumers who own a trio of tablets, smartphones and laptops – continue to grow, driven by the proliferation of new platforms and increased device adoption.  Deloitte’s eighth edition of the “Digital Democracy Survey” (formerly the “State of the Media Democracy” survey) reveals that over one third (37 percent) of U.S. consumers are now digital omnivores, a 42 percent growth over the previous year. This growth is primarily driven by continued tablet adoption (33 percent increase) and, to a lesser extent, smartphone ownership (18 percent increase).  Moreover, women, who made up over one-third (35 percent) of omnivores two years ago, now account for 45 percent of this group.

When it comes to getting your brand messaging across to the typical smartphone user, you’ve got about 90 minutes of their day to make an impact. How many of those minutes are penetrated by your brand?

For eMarketer’s CMO One-to-One series, Yahoo CMO Kathy Savitt discusses the company’s refocus on users’ daily habits as well as innovating the platform to accommodate ads as amenable to a mobile-first sensibility.

Push notifications are no longer just about breaking news, weather, or traffic alerts. The newest–and arguably fastest-growing–channel for directly reaching customers has the potential to benefit both consumers and marketers. In this October 2013 report, Forrester Research, Inc. says push notifications are the ideal tool, combining the unique benefits of mobile marketing: intimacy, immediacy and context. Push messaging enables marketers to offer more-relevant and personalized benefits to consumers while helping marketers reach their own goals through increased traffic, optimized app usage, and increased conversions.

The best way to describe the state of mobile ad targeting is to say it’s a work in progress, according to a new eMarketer report, “Mobile Ad Targeting: After Years of ‘Spray and Pray,’ Signs of Sophistication Appear.”