Mobile

As mobile increasingly becomes a keystone in the holiday campaigns of brand marketers, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and its Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence, in partnership with Prosper Mobile Insights, released its second annual “Mobile Shoppers” study.

In the US, mass ownership of smartphones has made the mobile internet a normal part of life for a large chunk of the population, and when on the go, one key activity for many consumers is a basic biological one: finding the next meal.

One in three cell phone owners (31%) have used their phone to look for health information. In a comparable, national survey conducted two years ago, 17% of cell phone owners had used their phones to look for health advice.

National brands’ investment in local digital marketing is on the rise. According to local-marketing automation company Balihoo’s September survey of marketers in North America, 35.9% planned to boost their local digital dollars in 2013; just 6.8% planned to decrease spending.

Shoppers are checking their phones in ever-greater numbers while they browse brick-and-mortar stores, and marketers are targeting them with offers and information to help encourage purchase at the last mile. But according to research from branding solutions provider G2 USA and Savitz Research, consumers do not appreciate when those mobile in-store technology offerings don’t work, and are likely to fault the brand for the inconvenience—a situation that does not bode well for sales.

The mobile ad market is headed up fast, and marketers and publishers alike are paying attention. Ad sellers are offering more inventory than ever, and potential buyers are knocking at the gates.

The shift to mobile is on. According to eMarketer estimates, time spent using mobile devices for activities such as internet and app use, gaming, music and others has more than doubled in the past two years.

The medium is still maturing. There currently is a lack of proven brand case studies, and as a result there are more direct-response advertisers driving CPC or CPA ad models than there are CPM-driven brand advertisers. The ad formats are still in flux, and the growth rate for consumer use is so steep that standard metrics for success are almost obsolete by the time they are published.

A new analysis of information from the Hispanic InsightCenter by BIGinsight identifies an increase in viewing news on a mobile device along with a decrease of regular newspaper readership among Hispanics. Although newspapers are down, they are certainly not out. This traditional print media is still influential on Hispanics’ purchase decisions, but there is a growing opportunity for mobile advertising among this more tech-savvy group.

According to a new eMarketer report, “The Mobile-Social Mom: Speeding the Trend Toward ‘Mobile First’,” if you want to know who is moving over to mobile social media, look no further than mom. eMarketer estimates that as many as half of all moms with children under 18 in the household will use mobile devices to access social networks in 2012.

In an age when almost everyone has a smart phone, 87 percent of car shoppers are already using or planning to use a mobile device in their search for the right car, according to a new study conducted by Briabe Mobile, the go-to resource for mobile marketing trends.

Smartphones are steadily creeping into moviegoers’ research and decision-making processes, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) report, “Mobile and the Movies,” conducted with InMobi. The study, which surveyed US mobile data users in Q3 2012, found that mobile devices played key roles for many moviegoers, from helping them research films to letting them watch movie trailers.

Advertising revenues, which already make up the bulk of US mobile music revenues, will gain an even greater share in the coming years, eMarketer forecasts, and by 2016 will account for more than 86% of all such revenues.

Half of all U.S. adults now have a mobile connection to the web through either a smartphone or tablet, significantly more than a year ago, and this has major implications for how news will be consumed and paid for, according to a detailed new survey of news use on mobile devices by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) in collaboration with The Economist Group.

I was quite impressed when Max Kilger, Chief Behavioral Scientist for Experian Simmons, talked to my graduate Hispanic Marketing Communication class about new data findings regarding mobile technology use by Latinos. I was particularly impressed because the sample that Experian Simmons uses yielded similar results to the ones I have been obtaining with the sample provided to Florida State University by Research Now. Cross-validation of results is reassuring. Basically, Hispanics are eager users of mobile technology. By Felipe Korzenny, Ph.D.