Category Archives: Trends

Mobile Fix – January 27

Posted by Simon Andrews on January 27, 2012 None comments

Amazing Apple

Apple reported their figures for Q4 of 2012 and blew analysts forecasts away – with a staggering performance. They sold more iPhones in 2011 than they sold in 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010 – combined!

They made more profit in Q4 ($13.1bn) than Google made revenue over the same period ($10.6bn) – and the Apple revenue in Q4 was $46bn

They have $97bn in cash – and consider that Facebook hope to be a company that is valued at $100bn when they do their IPO.

The full details are here. There are some charts here that help put them in perspective. If you still want more read the TechCrunch article – that was originally called Boom, Boom, Boom

And they still have plenty of opportunity for growth – Apple CEO Tim Cook says demand in China is staggering and off the chart and a Chinese Business School professor is quoted as saying;

 “The desire for this brand has already broadened out from the trendy urban demographic to just about everyone,”

The rumours about iPhone 5 are starting to flow with suggestions it’s coming this summer and will have a much bigger screen – maybe as large as 4 inches.

Google change the way they use data

As they come under some criticism over the way they have implemented social search – using Google + to improve search results but ignoring/unable to use data from Facebook and Twitter  – Google are making changes to they way the collect and use data. Instead of over 60 separate privacy notices there will now be one. This means Google can use all the data they have on someone to improve their services – and to better target advertising.

Online display advertising is forecast to boom in the coming years and Google want to ensure they have maximum firepower to see off Facebook ambitions in this space.

Everyone in GAFA is collecting data on what we do online and intends to use that to make more money. Google is keen to extend their supremacy in search advertising into display and everyone else wants to stop them. New research suggests that they continue to do really well in mobile – at the expense of Apple – largely because they are so dominant in mobile search.

Privacy

But of course, one mans data insight is another’s privacy concern.

O2 learnt this week just how quickly people jump onto something that seems like a privacy issue. A smart developer noticed that O2 was passing on a users phone number amongst the info shared when a mobile users visits a website. This news spread quickly and O2 was almost as quick to change their policy and stop this practice. But this fuss has highlighted the issue that mobile is different to online and we all need to remember this.

More on NewTV 

As Netflix talk up their UK launch and report great sales in the US, the FT pulls evidence together that whilst the topline data suggests TV is doing well, when you look beyond the marquee shows ( top drama, reality shows and sport) fragmentation is having a corrosive effect.

Quick reads

We talked about how mobile is perfect for Branded Utility last week and this is  a good summary of the better examples

Marin research on their customers activity in search shows that 12% of UK search is mobile – but only around 7% of search budgets are being spent on mobile. That spells opportunity for smart brands.

This Fix is being written in breaks at the excellent Mobile Retail Conference in London, where I’m chairing the afternoon session. Many of the talks are around how retailers deal with people using their mobile to check prices and reviews etc. US retailer Target is asking their suppliers to help them counter this showrooming, by providing exclusive products and better pricing.

There is a UK answer to Square launching soon – called Mpowa.

Probably not a surprise to Fix readers but new data shows that Mobile is now around 40% of VC investments in Tech

With over 500 million apps everyone agrees that the Apple appstore is broken – and this is some smart thinking on how it might evolve.

Not that quick but still worth reading; Really good interview with the head of design for Android from Wired – long but gets into some good detail on where Google are going with mobile

US clients want their agencies to give them strategic thinking – but only 9% believe their trad agencies get digital. We think it’s probably similar over here – which is why we’re helping a couple of smart agencies get match fit for mobile. We’re always happy to help others.

As Apple stock hit new heights Facebook have suspended secondary market trading in their stock for a week – suggesting they may be about to announce their IPO

Finally

….In the week when Deloitte release a study suggesting that Facebook adds £2bn to the UK economy, and supports 35k jobs, a new study facilitated by Google seeks to measure the contribution of the Internet on society. This pulls together various sources and puts figures against the contribution to each European country. For the UK the figure is £100 billion, with the potential to be 50% higher by 2015.

These studies underline the fact that digital is key to the economy and that many businesses revolve around the internet. Quite why some people still struggle to accept the huge influence digital can and does have on marketing, remains a mystery.

As Mary Meeker says of mobile, some companies will win big, whilst many will wonder what just happened.

Mobile Fix – January 20

Posted by Simon Andrews on January 19, 2012 None comments

Apple education

Apple made their much anticipated move into education today with iBooks2  which pushes the iPad as a tool for students. This new service enables publishers to easily convert textbooks into iPad friendly ebooks and also allows anyone to create a book for free – with lots of interactive features possible.

Apple already do a lot in education and with their discounts for students and now lower cost of e-textbooks they’ll be hoping this reduces the attractiveness of the lower priced Kindle Fire for students (and parents). Of course the books ‘converted’ using Apple tools are incompatible with the Kindle or any other non Apple device.

One of the key Apple products for education is the excellent iTunesU, which has courses from 1000 universities – and has had over 700 million downloads.  One of the things that makes the iPad so interesting is that it’s a device for reading textbooks and for watching video – so we expect to see innovation in education, building on the great work that the Khan Academy does with educational video.

It’s also worth remembering Chris Andersons seminal Ted talk where he demonstrates how video is driving innovation as people learn from others around the world.

The other Apple “news” this week is that the iPad3 is expected to launch in March

Amazon 

Jason Calacanis has a great article on the power of Amazon Prime – their service where an annual fee gets you free delivery and – increasingly – other benefits; US Prime customers also get free movie downloads.

And as a reminder of the power of Amazon to disrupt analyst RBC Capital estimate that Amazon loses $2 on every Kindle Fire sale, they make an additional $136 in sales to each Kindle Fire customer.

NewTV

The Observer had a good round up of the challenges facing traditional TV, which builds on our piece last week about the new economics of newTV. A good round up of CES emphasizes how focused everyone is on making connected TV work. And a very interesting article in Fact Company tells how lots of hardware brands are keen to build Shazam into their products. If you missed our take on how significant this all is you can read it here.

Branded Utility

Anyone remember Branded Utility? The idea that brands would do something useful for their customers as a way of getting their attention. Whilst it’s no longer such a buzzword, the thinking drives some of the more interesting brand work we see. But the original example that got people excited was Nike + – a branded service that solved a real problem, made lots of money and build the Nike brand.

Well now they seem to have done it again; Nike Fuel is a band you wear that measures your movement and energy. If you watch the promotional video we’re sure you’ll want one too.

This is a great example of brands using technology to create converged services. The next generation of digital isn’t about single purpose apps but instead sophisticated services that really harness the power of technology. One fun example is the connected toothbrush – one that knows how long you have really brushed for and can give badges to kids who look after their teeth well.  Sounds like a joke? We expect to see it in stores this year.

Online advertising

Online advertising isn’t flavour of the month right now; too many people write it off as banners and buttons and focus on earned and owned media rather than paid media. But new research suggests brands are starting to invest – with 64% of brand marketers planning to spend more.

The basic plumbing still needs work though. As well as the clutter on most web pages, we now see that almost a third of all display ads never get seen; many are at the bottom of web pages where people never scroll down. And a high proportion of campaigns had ads running next to content deemed ‘not brand safe’.

Smart agencies know how to make online display work well, but clearly there are a lot of people wasting their clients money. On mobile it’s crucial that we don’t import these failings from desktop – and new research shows that good old fashioned context has a very positive effect on campaign results in mobile.

Facebook

As Timeline rolls out, Facebook have announced 60 lifestyle apps that bring to life the verbs that Facebook is building Timeline around. As well as Spotify for listened and the Guardian for read, new apps include hot start ups like Foodily (ate) and Zeebox (watched). The full list is here.

Brands are going to need to think through the verbs they can harness if they want to be part of peoples timelines – and we believe the marketers addiction to the Like will soon start to wane.

At this months Facebook Developers Garage, hearing of the latest changes to the platform emphasised just how complicated an ecosytem Facebook is. And this excellent infographic summarises all the changes over the past             years.

But despite being complicated, marketers are investing in Facebook and they now pay 23% more per impression that they did a year ago. The full research report is worth a look.

Google

It looks like our friends at Google may be in for a tough time soon. The bureaucrats in Brussels seem to be moving very quickly in putting together their report on Google, with an announcement expected in the next few weeks. A well informed journalist tells us that Brussels moving quickly generally means bad news.

This isn’t a huge surprise for Google – we met Eric Schmidt a few years back and were told that if Google were to have issues with regulators, it would almost certainly be in Europe rather than in the US or Asia.

Maybe we’ll all be told we have to use the EU funded search engine Quaero instead of Google?

SOPA

As parts of the web went dark this week to protest against SOPA we thought we’d point you to two great explanations of just how stupid – and dangerous  – this legislation is.

Seth Godin nails it when he points out that Kodak could have been protected by banning cameraphones. And this video by Clay Shirkey puts SOPA in a historical context  – well worth watching.

Quick reads

Latest hotstart up Pinterest has a great approach to signing up members –well worth learning from.

eBay expects to make $8bn in mobile sales this year and their subsidiary PayPal should do $7bn in mobile payments

A former HuffingtonPost Mobile exec makes a great case for using HTML5

There are some great tools for listening to social and this deck covers most of them.

Finally

this article makes the argument that agencies need to get mobile if they are to be taken seriously by their clients. We agree.

Mobile Fix – January 13

Posted by Simon Andrews on January 13, 2012 2 comments

The ‘unlucky for some’ issue

NewTV + new advertising economics

This week Las Vegas is full of people gambling on what new tech products are likely to take off. The Consumer Electronics Show is now the tech trade show and most of the big players – other than Apple – are there.

But the hot area this year isn’t mobile, although Nokia have made a big impression with the Lumia there.. It’s all about connected (or Smart) TV, with Samsung, LG and Sony pushing new hardware and coming out as Google TV partners.

As background to the emergence of newTV – connected TV, 2screen and TV delivered over mobile devices – some new research heralds the decline of traditional broadcast TV.

Research from Accenture suggests that less than half the population watch broadcast TV on a TV– down from 72% in 2009. Instead people are watching TV on other devices – 33% on PCs and 10% on smartphones.

And new Neilsen data shows that 145 million people watch video online in the US, compared to to about 290 million who watch traditional TV. Of course much much more time is spent watching on traditional TV but Netflix is getting 10 hours a month and YouTube almost 3 – which is only going to grow.

Of course there is a way to go here – some data suggests that 25 million US households have internet connected TVs – but only around half are actually connected.

But around a third of the people who watched Downton Abbey, ITVs most popular show over Christmas, did so on timeshift – using Sky+ of ITV Player. And as we reported last week people are being weaned off cable subscriptions to find content online.

We continue to believe that traditional TV is losing the war for attention – and that mobile devices are capturing that attention. And the interesting thing about this theory is economics – as the attention shifts from one device to another does the money follow?

This week Sky made a big investment in 2Screen pioneer ZeeBox.  As well as adding social functionality to their already impressive range of mobile services Zeebox gives Sky a lever to disrupt the TV ad market in the UK. Right now advertising is a relatively small part of Sky revenues – they make most of their money from subscriptions – and as most of the audience is watching channels other than Sky, they only get ad revenue for a small portion of their customers viewing.

But now they can go to big advertisers and offer what they call Synchronised Ad Inventory– which means that when the ad appears in the middle break of X Factor on ITV, Zeebox will know which ad is on (by using the soundtrack to identify it) and can offer advertisers a way to offer additional content – a response mechanism or a part 2 to that ad. And that deal doesn’t involve ITV at all.

Sound a little futuristic? Shazam is already offering a similar service in the US where their app (now on around 175 million smartphones) recognises the ad from the soundtrack and serves up related content. Around a third of all the ads in the Superbowl are expected to use this service.

Our key prediction for 2012 is that smart brands will use mobile to deliver participation opportunities, where TV ads act as the invitation to participate.

New economics for Mobile Network Operators?

A business in France has launched a new service that is being lauded as the future for operators. Having ran a successful broadband business, Free combines 3G, WiFi, Femtocells and it’s own fibre network to deliver a fast mobile service at a very competitive price. One very smart feature is that each of the 5 million set top boxes in customers homes share a proportion of their bandwidth with other Free customers over WiFI – meaning they have one of the biggest WiFi clouds covering Paris and Lyon etc. Ewan Macleod has looked at Free too, calling it the most exciting announcement since Steve Jobs launched the iPhone

And a good article on Twilio also suggests that innovation from new players will disrupt the operators business model.

So as operators prepare to bid for the 4G Spectrum, in the UK – with the auction rules published today – they have to factor in how tech players are going to change their business. And the auction rules Ofcom have published are a little surprising as they don’t feature the expected guarantees for Three and Everything EveryWhere

Managing Social

Some of the smartest thinkers on Social work for Altimeter and one of their people has shared a good report on how to manage the proliferation of social media.

Still on social Booz & Co have produced a new metric for measuring the success of social – likes per $million of revenue.  Whilst the industry desperately needs some smart thinking around the real value of social, we’re not sure this makes much sense. The data would probably be more interesting if they used number of customers rather than the revenue.

GAFA

John Battelle has produced a very interesting chart looking at how the GAFA companies (and Microsoft) compare across product categories.

Quick Reads

As the UK waits for the Kindle Fire, in the US people are starting to develop apps for it. We were invited to a developer event at CES focused on how to sell apps on the Kindle and US bank Wells Fargo have launched Kindle apps.

Clay Shirky has some typically clever thinking on newspapers and paywalls.

Analytics guru Avinash Kaushik has some good thinking on why companies are not getting real value from analytics.

We’ve had a number of conversations with clients about how email marketing needs rethinking given how many people are now reading emails on their smartphone. This data puts some numbers against this – a rise of 20 million in the US

The new edition of the Google Think Quarterly is out – well worth reading.

Finally

We’re on the board of the MMA and wanted to tell you about the next event. It’s taking place between 8.30 and 11 on February 1st  in Central London and features speakers from Groupon, Nielsen and Evans Cycles.

If you work for a brand we can get you a free ticket – just let us know.

Mobile Fix – January 6

Posted by HugoT on January 6, 2012 None comments

All they wanted for Christmas was a mobile company

The news that Walmart has bought a mobile agency this week has been widely reported, as has the news that the Financial Timeshas bought the firm that developed their highly successful HTML5 webapp. But we also see that the Mirror Newspaper has bought a mobile focused agency and Deloitte have bought a Seattle app development firm called Ubermind too.

People who get really mobile (and can develop smart thinking and doing) continue to be the exception rather than the rule and smart companies are recognizing the competitive advantages that can be gained through the strategic use of mobile.

The FT and Mirror news confirms the trend we are seeing for marketing services offered by people other than traditional agencies. US publisher Meredith bought mobile agency HyperFactory a while back and Adobe bought search firm Efficient Frontier late last year.

Mobile payments solving the wrong problem?

Being in startup bootstrapping mode we don’t get taxis that often, but the other day we found ourselves in one of the Vodafone enabled Black cabs where you can pay with your mobile. But when we asked the driver if anyone had paid with their mobile he said no.

Paying for taxis isn’t a problem. But often finding a cab is. Why doesn’t Vodafone solve the real problem by launching a version of Uber or Hailo? Knowing that your operator can help you get a cab would be a great service and could perhaps drive loyalty better than the chance to win tickets to events. This type of service provides a context for mobile payments by solving a real problem.

And the news that Brits can now pay for coffee with the Starbucks app prompts a similar thought. The problem with getting a coffee at Starbucks isn’t paying for it – it’s ordering the coffee and waiting for it. In New York Starbucks employ people to work the queue asking what you want and shouting the order to the barista. Of course it doesn’t quite work and it’s really annoying.

So why doesn’t mobile solve the real problem – recognize you’ve entered the store, asking whether you want your usual and transmitting that to the counter. Quick, efficient and pretty easy to do.

Solving the real problem creates the context for the mobile payment. And is much more likely to drive usage.

Apple to bid against Sky for Premiership rights?

As the speculation about Apple making a big play in TV builds there are rumours that they will bid for the TV rights for the Premiership. As Sky have proven, making big investments in very attractive content can pay off and the additional opportunities to use the content on mobile and digital makes the investment even more attractive to people like Apple. Especially as Sky are already seeing some success with sport on mobile. And we have seen YouTube provide live coverage of the IPL cricket with considerable success.

Could they also drive some new business models? There is a lot of thinking around the idea that (some) clubs would make more money by selling to fans direct. Could Apple use their learnings from iTunes etc to facilitate this?

The availability of must see content on digital drives the decline in cable that Deloitte report in the US – with 11% saying they are considering cancelling a paid for TV service because most/all there favourite shows are available online – and 9% already have. Smartphones and tablets are a small but growing part of this.

New York VC Fred Wilson has started to use the hashtag #screwcable to reflect his frustration with old media thinking being made redundant through digital.

And Sky say that they think 2012 is the year of the tablet so we can expect more developments in this area.

Apple to relaunch iAds?

With a new guy running the iAds team and a mysterious event announced for later this month we may be seeing a rethink on iAds from Apple. Could they open up the format to other people to sell? Or even extend the service to non iOS devices? Would the data they’d get on Android etc (plus the revenue) make that worthwhile for Apple?

Quick reads

John Battelle has some good thinking on how Facebook could monetise their reach across the web by launching an ad network. His other predictions are worth reading too.

Forbes have a great article on Amazon – hailing them as the best strategic player in tech.

This is a good summary of stats on US mcommerce over the holiday period. We’re looking for similar data for the UK so if you have anything let us know.

The Consumer Electronic show opens in Las Vegas next week and these are some of the hot devices expected to be launched.

Lots of people are doing predictions at the moment and two of the best are the JWT deck and one from our friends at Carat. Of course a key topic is mobile.

Finally

we spent Christmas in Sri Lanka and got some first hand experience on how mobile is impacting emerging markets. The guy who ran the surf shop is also a fisherman and told us that when someone spots a large shoal of fish they now ring their friends and tell them to launch their boats. The President sent a New Year message to all the population by SMS. And smartphones are being pushed hard too – at the coolest new restaurant in Colombo the waiter takes the order on an iPhone.

We also saw that FourSquare has amazing coverage – everywhere we went was on their database, with mayors and tips; they are a truly global business now. And we used Path a lot to document the holiday and share with friends – and without the use of the FourSquare API the service just wouldn’t work.

Back in London, we have some spare desks at the moment in our very cool offices on Clerkenwell Green. If you’re interested get in touch.

Mobile Fix – December 16

Posted by Simon Andrews on December 16, 2011 None comments

It’s almost the end of the year and still the pace of change is relentless.

Facebook have just announced that timeline is now available on mobile. Over the coming months we’re going to see lots of developments in how Facebook use mobile and that’s going to have a big impact on the whole ecology.

And Amazon have broken with their usual secrecy to release sales figures for their Kindle. In the US they are selling over a million Kindle devices each week with the new Fire the topseller. UK data is less specific but Amazon tell us they sold over 3 million items on just one day (December 5 – Cyber Monday) with the Kindle the top seller.

Facebook are rumoured to be ready to jump into mobile advertising early next year and given the wealth of targeting data they have access to they should do very well.

And this week we heard that Apple are struggling with their iAds product – dropping the minimum buy to just $400k (down from $1million at launch) and allowing a cap on the cost per click they charge in addition to the cost per thousand for the campaign reach. As George in Seinfeld was told, Double Dipping isn’t popular.

Still on mobile advertising, new data from a good Ofcom study showed that the UK is doing pretty well in mobile advertising compared to some – but there is still a way to go. Looking at mobile ad spend per head of population, the UK is at £1.33 compared to the US at £1.25. But Japan shows the potential with £6.52.

And eMarketer gives us a clue why we are lagging; whilst mobile gets around 10% of peoples time in the US, it only gets 1% of adspend. The UK figures are probably similar. As Mary Meeker points out there is a $50 billion opportunity as this gap between time spent with digital and adspend closes. All the data and charts are on our blog.

Money always follows audience and we will eventually see mobile take its deserved share of adspend – specially as brands start to be able to close the loop between ad exposure on mobile and actual transactions.

We’re not that far away from campaign measurement that links exposure on the mobile device with someone checking in at a retail store, redeeming a mobile coupon and buying the product with their mobile wallet. When this happens we’ll see huge shifts in budget.

But one issue that needs work is understanding how mobile advertising works. Right now mobile is hampered by the disdain for banners and buttons that plagues online advertising. Whilst mobile is unlikely to emulate the clutter that mars online we need some thinking about how and why digital advertising works.

Ignoring clickthrough for a moment we see some advertisers like P&G buying mobile and online ads for reach. Studies from all the research companies show that online can and does affect brand metrics. But we need to understand how it works and we think its time to think about how low involvement processing works in digital. This theory from Robert Heath is well respected amongst marketers and is accepted as one of the ways that TV advertising works. The basic thought is that whilst we don’t consciously pay attention to a message, our sub conscious processes it with low involvement from our brain.

We suspect that’s how digital banners work and we’re keen to explore if we can prove this in mobile. Years ago we invented a brand (YesSirNoSir) and advertised it online, to see what the effect of pure digital was. One of our plans for 2012 is to replicate this on mobile and we’ll be looking for partners; if you would like to get involved get in touch.

Quick reads

Booz Allen have looked at which brands are getting organised for social

Our friends at Infectious are nailing the emerging space of exchanges and have shared a great case study showing that this approach works for brands as well as response advertisers

The smart people at WeAreSocial point out an interesting new opportunity for brands in Facebook – Private Messages.

Amazon have upset some people with their aggressive push on mobile price checking – whilst Google point out that retailers need to improve how they use mobile instore.

Google+ is building out the features and now has facial recognition. Maybe we’re being slow but couldn’t you hack this security with a photo of the person?

And the Google answer to FlipBoard has launched in the US. The skunkworks name was Propeller but its launch name is Currants. Reaction is generally good but its lack of social features seem to be an issue.

The Adobe Investor presentation is – as you might imagine – a little dry . But it’s worth reading as what they offer sounds very like what a digital agency might offer.

Finally

its Christmas and we’re out of here.

Rather than cards we thought we’d share some of our collection of soulful Christmas music we’ve been building over the years. In the past this has been a CD and a YouTube playlist. This year it’s a Spotify playlist.

This will be the soundtrack as we enjoy Turkey and Pinot Noir on the beach in Sri Lanka. However you spend your Christmas we hope you enjoy listening and that you have a great time.

By the way if you still haven’t sorted New Year, our place in St Ives is available.

Mobile Advertising – UK doing OK but has a way to go

Posted by Simon Andrews on December 14, 2011 None comments

An excellent new report from Ofcom covers mobile in some depth.

We were fascinated by this chart

Looking at mobile ad spend per head of population it shows the UK at £1.33 which compares well to the US at £1.25. But look at the figures for Japan – where the equivalent figure is £6.52.

Which might have something to do with this

Despite gettting 10% of peoples time mobile is only getting 1% of ad spend.

So what is everyone waiting for?

Mobile Fix – December 9

Posted by Simon Andrews on December 9, 2011 None comments

Mobile Payments, Google delivers, User Interface, eBooks & more

The Balkanisation of Mobile Payments

We’ve been looking at payments again for a client project – and there is a huge amount going on. It’s clear that a key part of the GAFA vertical stack is likely to be payments – Google are there already with Apple expected next. But this hunger to get involved in mobile money is starting to run into problems.

This week we have seen Google asked by Verizon not to include their NFC enabled wallet on their new flagship phone; the Galaxy Nexus. Everyone is quick to say that this is not blocking – which would be illegal – but it highlights a problem we see growing next year. As operators push their own wallets will this effect device manufacturers plays? Does the JV between Orange, O2, Vodafone and TMobilepreclude Nokia launching an enhanced Money service in the UK?

And the other side of the coin is how people can use these various wallets. Google have partnered with various US retailers to have them install NFC readers. Will Google allow these to work with iPhone NFC wallet expected for iPhone 5? Or the Isus wallet from the US operators?

As Amex customers know, it can be frustrating to find your credit card isn’t accepted everywhere. So how will people react to finding that the wallet on their Nexus can’t be used somewhere , but an iPhone one can?

We’ve said for some time we can’t see the business model that will drive wide installation of NFC readers; the chip and pin system was funded because it transferred responsibility for credit card fraud from the banks to their customers – so it was a good investment for the banks. For someone like Tesco to invest in NFC readers they need to know that a high proportion of their customers will use them. If you need a different one for each wallet then it is never going to happen.

Obviously at some point people will have to collaborate and standards will emerge. We think this will take some time and will hold back NFC ( we are already seeing big brands choose to develop mobile payment services that don’t use NFC). The smart people at NMA venture that NFC could be a Betamax technology.

But we believe that people will keep trying to be successful in this space. Why? Data.

Knowing what people buy is hugely valuable data. As well as closing the loop on ad effectiveness (linking up purchase with ad exposure remains the holy grail) it also allows you to target offers much more accurately.

Right now Amazon make their recommendations based just on my Amazon purchases – how much more powerful would they be if they included the music I buy from specialists? Facebook credits are evolving quickly and that could turn into a means of paying. So far we haven’t seen any moves by Amazon to extend their payments system but we expect them to evolve their Webstore product to enable customers to buy, using their Amazon account, on the Amazon smartphone and the Kindle Fire.

Payment is a key layer in the vertical stack.

Google delivers?

Another step in the GAFA battle this week with rumours that Google are trialling a delivery service. This seems a fairly natural extension of their core search business, that would drive new revenue and, again, provide valuable data.

This is another example of business models trailed unsuccessfully in the dotcom boom being reinvented to take advantage of the much bigger numbers now online. Kozmowas a delivery service in major cities in the late 90s. Groupon is, essentially, a new version of LetsBuyIt.com. And ASOS is not unlike boo.com – but without the extravagence – or the Gurkhas.

Facebook acquires GoWalla

Last week we pointed out that Facebook didn’t have too much time to get mobile right if they were to keep ahead of the competition . This week they bought mobile start up Gowalla. Maybe it’s a coincidence?

Whilst all the stories say they are shuttering the Gowalla location focused service, the product experience of the team will be just as useful as their design skills.

It’s also worth taking a few minutes to watch this interview with Facebooks Sheryl Sandberg and see how she deftly avoids denying the Facebook phone rumours.

New paradigm in user interface

Following our focus on SoLoMoPho last week we’ve spent a lot of time on Path and we’re hugely impressed by the user interface. And then the iPhone version of everyones favourite iPad app arrived. Flipboard, again, has a beautiful interface that’s a delight to use.

This focus on design is going to be a huge factor in the coming year – and as theNokia demo of the Windows Phone interface illustrates – you can do a lot with CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and JavaScript – enabling fantastic design and functionality across mobile devices.

On HTML5 new data confusingly suggests that I billion HTML5 capable phones will be sold in 2013. As the comments discuss, the full version of HTML5 is a little way away which is why we are now using the term HTML5 lite to describe CSS driven work.

MECommerce*

Tesco is rolling our WiFi in every store. We spend a lot of time watching Tesco as they are being very smart around mobile – and have been testing the implications of wifi since last year. This is a much more mature approach to retail than people like BestBuy covering up barcodes in the hope people won’t indulge in MECommerce

* Mobile Enhanced Commerce, where people use their phones to read reviews and check prices etc, will be worth around $110 billion in Europe in 2011.

eReaders and eBooks

Our session at the excellent Futurebook conference this week focused on how people are changing the way they consume content with mobile devices. Since we did a big strategy project for Anobii last year, we hadn’t looked too closely at the ereaders and ebooks market and our prep for this talk was very illuminating. The ereaders market is really interesting with Kobo and Nook taking the fight to Amazon. Whilst Amazon don’t release any figures on Kindle sales we found that the Nook is a $220m business for Barnes & Noble.

Quick Reads

John Battele argues that GAFA should be the Big5, to accommodate Microsoft. We think they need to make a success of Windows Phone first.

The Economist has a good piece on the iPad, with some interesting speculation on on the iPad 3.

Shazam is being used by smart brands to drive a second screen experience.

Business Insider have a good collection of stats on the future of media.

A good infographic looking at 5 brands who are using social well.

Finally…

McKinsey have a great interview with P&Gs CEO on their digital revolution. A must read.

Mobile Fix – December 2

Posted by Simon Andrews on December 2, 2011 None comments

SoLoMo Photo

Just as Facebook used photos as the key element of their timeline so the legion of photo apps are trying to be more social. Everyone is focusing on SoLoMo – Social Local Mobile – and we’d add photo to that too.

Instagram has probably been the most successful so far – for a number of reasons – with 13 million users – with a team of just 7 people!

Path launched to great acclaim but struggled to get traction but their new update is really good. Partly because it looks pretty much like a Facebook timeline. Designed for sharing with close friends rather than a crowd, one new feature causing comment is the option to automatically share your activities instead of you having to post updates.

They now have over a million users and we expect this new version to drive some rapid growth.

Location is also a core ingredient for these apps, bringing them closer to FourSquare – whose new Radar feature alerts you to things you might be interested around you. And we had a glimpse of a cool new Photo/Social service called Pulse that is still in the Nokia labs.

This space is getting crowded and we expect one company to eventually win big. Obviously the smart money would be on Facebook – but some are pointing out that Path and Instagram are making Facebook look uninventive.

One of the key people on the mobile team at Facebook has recently been lured to work on the Google mobile team and he has been quite scathing about the slow pace of mobile at Facebook.

One illustration of their opportunity though is an anecdote from our friends at GroupM search – on Black Friday in St Louis no-one was using FourSquare so the offers from Walmart and others took ages to be claimed.

We think it will take Facebook to make checking in mainstream. If/when Facebook get mobile right they have an opportunity to own this space. But they can’t take too long.

More vertical stacks

We’re talking at a fascinating conference on Monday called Futurebook and one area we’re going to cover is the vertical stacks that GAFA are developing – integrating storage, access devices, purchasing, payment and social.

The apparent risk of letting a rival control one element of their business drives this need to invest in new competences. And we are now seeing this behaviour emerge in marketing services. Media owners like Meredith are investing in marketing companies, with mobile firm Hyperfactory the latest, allowing them to offer a wider range of skills, often direct to clients.

And now Adobe have made some big steps towards a vertical stack, buying Efficient Frontier – probably the leading independent search & digital agency. Long courted by the Agency holding companies, Adobe seems an unexpected buyer. But they have expanded from their software roots; they recently bought measurement analytics giant Omniture, their Business Catalyst product is the platform for many SME web presence and they are the dominant player in ebooks.

The demise of mobile Flash seems less of a blow now

We’re also seeing this vertical stacking in other sectors – think about Tesco who can offer their huge customer base mobile and banking – and they will soon offer on demand movies. Oh and they sell a lot of Kindles too. What sort of products will they weave from this stack? How about when you buy the physical DVD you immediately get digital access to the same film on your PC, xBox connected TV and – soon – your ipad. Sound futuristic? It was announced yesterday.

Cyber Monday

According to IBM mobile played a key part in US commerce last Monday

On Cyber Monday, 10.8 percent of people used a mobile device to visit a retailer’s site, up from 3.9 percent in 2010. Additionally, mobile sales grew dramatically, reaching 6.6 percent on Cyber Monday versus 2.3 percent in 2010.

There is a good overview of Cyber Monday, including its history, here.

Comscore estimate that over $800 was spent online on Black Friday – with Amazon the most visited site. That sounds like a lot of Kindles being sold.

And eBay report that their Black Friday mobile sales were up 250% year on year. Paypal transactions were up over 500%

Content is still king

This week we learnt a couple of staggering stats from a great interview with the commercial head of the Economist

Economist’s own research reveals that 28% of its readers already own a tablet, with a further 23% expecting to own one within a year.

A survey among its US subscribers asked those aged over 40 how they read the Economist – more than 95% said they read it in print. But when asked how they expect to read it in two years’ time, the number expecting to do so in print fell to 35%
Is this exceptional? Well maybe. But remember how well the FT is doing with its HTML5 webapp– over 1 million users. And another great example of the power of combining print with innovate digital tools is the Guardian success with Facebook. They have reported over 1 million page views a day.
When we were talking with the Guardian a few weeks ago they were delighted by the success of the Facebook integration but slightly bemused by the ‘shape’ of the traffic. Most of the stories attracting big numbers on Facebook are very different from those doing well on their mobile or websites. Some of the stories are old ones, revived by people sharing links. It is fascinating learning for them and – as they managed to get the rights to sell the ads within their content – very lucrative.

And on a different type of content EMI are reporting that their experimenting with apps seems to be paying off – albeit modestly. We mentioned a while back they are providing content for developers to play with and it looks like there may be some light at the end of this tunnel for the music business. This video is a good take on where the opportunities are.

Quick reads

Sky are bringing on demand movies to their mobile service for subscribers to their TV packages.

In some great marketing Nokia allow people to demo their new Windows Phone on your existing smartphone.

Mobile views on YouTube are now at 400 million a day – double that reported in January.

Google + gets a cool new feature – free phone calls within the US and Canada so people can join hangouts.

Finally …

We’re out and about next week; speaking at the Futurebook conference on Monday and taking part in a panel at Mobile Advertising World on Thursday. We’ve also been invited to the Guardian Mobile Business Summit on Tuesday. If you are at any of these events, do come and say hello.

Mobile Fix – November 25th

Posted by Simon Andrews on November 25, 2011 None comments

The market is tough. The consumer is spooked. – Philip Green

Today is Black Friday. The day when US retailers traditionally open very early and offer big discounts to lure people into stores on the day after Thanksgiving. Many of the big ecommerce players are using mobile to try and disrupt this tradition.

Some retailers like BestBuy are trying to fight the tide of mobile savvy shoppers by not displaying manufacturers barcodes on products, so people can’t scan them to read reviews or check online prices. But they do have QR codes that lead to Best Buy mobile pages

Others like department store Nordstrom are offering free wifi;

“The shopping landscape is changing very rapidly, and so we want to evolve with our customers,”

IBM are keeping a close eye on US retailers and have just released this data;

* Early results for Thanksgiving 2011 indicate that it is going to be a strong online shopping day.
* Thanksgiving 2011 sales are up 20 percent over Thanksgiving 2010 for the same time period.
* Mobile shopping is also off to a very strong start:
- Mobile Traffic: The number of consumers using a mobile device to visit a retailer’s site reached 15.8 percent.
- Mobile Shopping: The number of consumers using their mobile device to make a purchase reached 10.1 percent.

Here in the UK the news that Philip Green is to close over 260 shops supports our thinking that retail is going to get shaken up with mobile and this Christmas is going to be the first Mobile Christmas. And with data suggesting people are getting more comfortable buying more expensive items on their phone, it won’t just be the stocking fillers that get bought on mobile.

But with around 80% of sites effectively shuttered for mobile buyers some retailers are going to miss out. A review of 22 retailers shows that most have lots to do to maximize sales from mobile shoppers.

Amazon – any phone for 1 cent

If you were thinking of launching a phone in a years time how would you try and prepare for that? How about you offer such an amazing deal you get loads of people to buy from you now, in the hope you can sell your new phone to them when their deal is up for renewal?

Amazon.com is selling most of the best smartphones for 1 cent in a promotion with AT&T. Just as rumours about their own phone surface. Coincidence?

Oddly Amazon.com don’t sell smartphones on their mobile site?

And as if not wanting to be left out, there are more rumours about a Facebook phone.

NewTV

Googles Tom Uglow has produced some smart thinking about modern marketing.

One key thought is a build on the Jacob Neilson 1-9-90 theory of social – that whilst 1% of people produce content, 9% share it around and the other 90%.

Tom expands this to;

Engaged user // community // spectator // passive consumer (at a ratio of 1 . 10 . 100 . 1000?)

This feels a bit like how TV works when done smartly. Rather than chase passive consumers, brands like YeoValley are choosing to focus on those places where the spectators are, in an attempt to build community and engagement.Of course great TV ads are very powerful – as part of the team that brought you Howard from the Halifax we know just how effective TV can be. But even back then, we were looking for a way of having a Part 2 to the TV ad, just as the YeoVally ads drive people to Facebook

Various conversations with smart agencies and smart brands over the past few weeks have reminded us that marketers are looking for engagement rather than merely reach. So the big question is how do you use TV to drive your community to a deeper more engaging experience?

In a must read article Shiv Singh of Pepsi argues that TV ads have to become trailers;

When TV ads become teasers for digital experiences, the ROI on the investment will improve significantly as the digital experience will stretch out the brand experiences beyond the 30 second clip.

Our clever friends at Collaborate talk eloquently about how connected TV is about to disrupt the cosy world of trad TV. And point to interesting thinking on how video is finally becoming professionalised.

In this new world, it feels like mobile has a huge role to play. People are using their devices whilst watching TV so it’s the natural place to try and build the digital experience. But we’re convinced that the mobile/digital expertise needs to be involved at the start of the thinking, rather than bolted on at the end.

And Seth Godin reminds us that reach isn’t always a good thing – and that long term engagement is what’s really valuable – if you can turn it into permission.

Quick reads

Apple are to start publishing weekly charts of their best selling apps. This is slightly different to the list within the appstore and seems to be a way for Apple to try and own the space. Given how disorganised the Android stores still are, there seems to be little chance of a meaningful Android version.

Perfect proof that there is life outside the app store – the FT have announced a million users for their HTML5 app. They have produced a good infographic with all the data.

Good thinking about GAFA – and Microsoft.

Google new iPad app is very interesting.

Still on the iPad some good data showing how conversion tends to be higher than on the desktop.

John Battelle has written a good piece pointing out some of the problems with mobile advertising. Even Martin Sorrell is disappointed by the slow take off of mobile.
@sienneveit: Very disappointed in take up of mobile : 0.5% of budgets but 8% of our time #ebg (Martin Sorrell)

Last nights London Standard had 9 ads featuring QR codes. NFC is never coming to press and whilst Google Goggles is cool, we’re convinced that QR codes are here to stay.The challenge is to make them work really well.

Finally…

two videos you must watch;

Whilst everyone must have has seen Fenton by now , it’s turning into a meme.

And the new ad from Samsung is a much watch.

I could never get a Samsung, I’m creative.
Dude, you’re a barista.

Mobile Fix – November 18

Posted by Simon Andrews on November 18, 2011 None comments

Amazon – new phone?

Some very interesting speculation from analysts has got everyone buzzing around Amazon producing their own smartphone. Based on conversations with component suppliers the thinking is that they would launch in Q4 next year – just in time for Christmas.

With the Kindle Fire now available – in the US anyway – and with generally good reaction, there is a lot of logic in Amazon extending their hardware range. Whilst tablets may be the device of choice to consume all that content that Amazon sells, most people use a smartphone so Amazon need to play there to maximize their chance of being the vendor of this content. And its worth remembering that Amazon have some record of working with operators – for the GPS Kindle they negotiated data deals with over 120 operators to provide free global coverage so users can downloads wherever they are.

Whilst the Kindle Fire has already been hacked, there are some great apps available and we expect to see lots more.

We’re big fans of Amazon and always have been – and we’re proud to have handled all the digital marketing for the .co.uk launch in a former life. This lengthy interview with CEO Jeff Bezos is fascinating – well worth reading in full for both the insight into digital but also how to run a business. By the way if you had bought $100 in Amazon shares the day they IPOd that stake would now be worth $12397.

Google

All of GAFA are focused on music and the Google cloud based music store is finally open for business. It’s hard not to see this as a me too, with the free access seemingly the key differentiator. But Google are using their other assets like YouTube which should help – YouTube is probably the number one music site; when people want to share music on Facebook they always add the YouTube clip. (Does anyone have any data on this?).They also have a integration with Google +.

One area that could be interesting is their play for unsigned artists (of which there are more and more) where they will sell artists music and take just 30%.

Talking of YouTube all the very successful ad formats on the desktop are now available on the YouTube mobile service – pre rolls, roadblock and brand channels. With YouTube doing over 200 million views a day on mobile this opens up a lot of inventory and it will be interesting to see which advertisers step up.

And it turns out that Google have a secret lab dreaming up new stuff – we imagine something like Qs lair in James Bond movie but probably with less emphasis on killing people.

First Mobile Christmas

We are more and more convinced that this Christmas is going to be huge for mobile and the big players are gearing up.

IBM analytics firm Coremetrics has released data suggesting mobile traffic for retailers will be much higher than last year.

Of course as we pointed out a couple of weeks ago many stores are still not optimised for mobile and risk missing out.

Money

iZettle – the Swedish Square – has raised more money for international expansion. And Square investor (and the man behind Virgin mobile) Richard Branson has now bought UK bank Northern Rock, so we should expect to see some high street disruption early in 2012.

Speaking at a very interesting Platforum event talk yesterday, with a financial services audience, we talked about the amazing success of mPesa. And today we saw new figures showing just how big they are – they move more money in a month in Kenya than Western Union does globally in a year.

These new business models demonstrate how disruptive mobile can be – and we expect Virgin and Tesco to leverage their knowledge of mobile to drive some real innovation in banking.

Quick Reads

Facebook now have a great demo of mobile Facebook apps. The news about how Facebook will fully embrace mobile is emerging bit by bit. Meeting with Amsterdam’s smartest agency this week, we all agreed that the merger of mobile and social with this evolution by Facebook is the most exciting opportunity for brands right now.

MediaWeek did a good round up of how UK agencies see mobile, where we shared some of our thoughts

This is an interesting look at how HTML5 is changing the web

And this is a very cool idea – start your own wifi network on the subway – we expect to see this in Europe soon.

The buzz around the new Nokia Luma – their first Windows phone – is building. Lots of good reviews and stories about high pre orders. And their next device has been leaked – along with stories of a tablet. Are they back?

Given the resurgence in email due to mobile getting email marketing to work on mobile can no longer be a low priority – this is a good summary of what is needed.

New research from Flurry shows the big problem with mobile today – that whilst getting apps downloaded is hard, most apps just aren’t used much once they are downloaded. On all our projects we try to solve a problem for people – because is you’re not solving a real problem then you are not going to get used.

Finally

The Muppets are back. This is a great demonstration of how branded content can be brilliant.