Tag Archives: mobile

Mobile Devices are really “Mobile Home”

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girl-couch-using-mobile-phone-10815076A new Nielsen study puts to rest the common theme that mobile use is typically “on the go,” particularly with regards to shopping behavior.

A whopping 95% of tablet shoppers and 72% of smartphone shoppers who actually use their devices for purchasing do it on devices in their home.  Some other uses of smart phones in the home:

  •  86% of writing product reviews on a smartphone is in the home
  • 71% of posting comments on a product to a social network on a smartphone is in the home
  • 62% of reading product reviews on a smartphone is in the home.

What shopping behaviors on smartphones are done on the go?

  • 50% of price-checking on a smartphone is on the go
  • 56% of store locator usage on a smartphone is on the go

So, as pointed out in Mediapost, mobile is not mobile:

“Home is where the device is most of the time and where people have the time and inclination to drill deep. They also remind us that devices have become the go-to point of entry for online information, replacing the most uncomfortable way yet devised for consuming content — the desktop PC.  But most of all, they remind us how much of shopping is an iterative, multi-screen process that occurs over time.”

Image - couch potatoAny couch potatoes out there?  What is easier when reclining, browsing on your mobile device or tapping on your laptop?

StarcomMediaVest: The Agency Customer View of GeoTargeting

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Derek Thompson is global managing director of mobile practice at ad agency StarcomMediaVest’s (SMG).  He was interviewed by Steven Jacob of Street Fight, and here are a few excerpts.  The full story is here.  In his words, somewhat condensed:

starcom

  • Broad appeal. Across Starcom MediaVest’s portfolio, I cannot think of one client that is not interested in this space. You have consumer-packaged-goods…auto manufacturers…travel companies.  Across the board, brands are curious about location.
  • KFS:  Integration with ad serving, real time optimization, scale vs objective.  The ability to integrate third party ad-serving is a critical component. And the ability to manage and optimize accounts in real time in real time in terms of delivery, execution and results is also extremely important…the minimum requirements to get going. The other one across this space is to have access to the right inventory…if you cannot get distribution of that great idea because your first-party publisher partners are not there or you’re only working with a certain segmentsof applications, then you’re going to be limited. 
  • Location trumps third-party reporting: To identify where a consumer is at a special time and message them based on that information. to help us understand audience based on where that device has been seen.  We can try to do it through third-party reporting, likes, and content but that’s often misleading.
  • Complexity.  The space is so fragmented, there are so many different offerings, or alleged offers, for brands, that they need help understanding it, they need reasons to get behind it…to test and learn.
  • In April, SMG announced a partnership with PlaceIQ to build out a new KPI.

 

The Pitfalls of Mobile

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The push for mobile-first makes good sense, but the mobile landscape is fraught with difficulties, as highlighted by Semil Shah in TechCrunch.

Mobile has low barriers to entry, particularly in apps, and a proliferation of aspiring players in most every mobile category.   Reaching scale in mobile is elusive, and many startups might wind up as profitable ongoing ventures, without a huge exit, disappointing investors.

As Shah points out, citing VC Andy Weissman: investors in mobile services and apps may “wait and see” which services are scaling best.

You can read Shah’s full piece here, also crediting Albert Wenger from Union Square Ventures.

Retailers Hop to Get Connected

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A couple of items today reinforce how shopping behavior is increasingly integrated on- and off-line. Warby Parker co-founder Dave Gilboa explains why he considers retail stores so important, even though they account for less than 10% of sales, in this interview with Gigaom.

“The future of our business and all retail is going to have some mix of online and offline. The economics make a lot more sense to do as much online as possible but we are that seeing customers who are coming into the showroom and interacting with us initially in the offline world, when they buy again their second, third, fourth glasses, they’re doing so directly through the web site,” Gilboa said.

Michael Carney in Pando Daily argues that bricks and mortar retailers need a strategy to win shoppers who arm themselves with mobile phones while they shop in-store.

“Ideally, retailers would flip the script on their e-commerce brethren, not only agreeing to price match or discount against the catalogs of Amazon and others – an admittedly dangerous game – but also allowing users to immediately locate items within a store using their GPS enabled device. Also, stores should generously reward consumers for installing their apps (if they even have one), checking into their physical locations, and sharing items and promotions on social networks. The idea is to have consumers associate shopping in store with the convenience, serendipity, and connectedness common to online commerce.”

 

Mobile Alone Won’t Cut It

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E-commerce solutions which enable better consumer discovery, make shopping fun and worthwhile, and improve return on marketing investment for brands or retailers, are poised for growth.  I believe that the best solutions will take an integrated view to web and mobile, i.e., standalone mobile apps won’t cut it.  Here are some points to remember that emerge from Google’s new research study “The New Multi-screen World: Understanding Cross-Platform Consumer Behavior:”

  • 67% of shopping online is done multi-screen
  • 60% of smartphone use is at home
  • 79% of tablet use is at home
  • Only 30% of shopping on a smartphone is driven by search.  Hence an opening for an new approach to preempt Google from building a dominant approach to smartphone shopping.

Click here for a 34 page pdf of the full study.

Big Data and the Local Mobile Promise

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Local content and ad delivery continue to get smarter with more context around people, places and how they’re connected, says Michael Boland of BIA/Kelsey.

With smartphone penetration breaking the 50 percent barrier, there is an explosion in geo-data, and various alternatives are emerging to make sense of it.

One approach getting traction is to combine location data with “Big Data” on users (demographic, behaviorial, historical) and contextual data to help marketers extract more useful information.  Examples are Localeze, Sense Networks, PlaceIQ, Placed, Locu, Factual, Urban Mapping, and mobile local ad networks xAd, WHEREads, JiWire.

Read more here.  Are there other approaches possible?  A topic for another day…

October 22 update:  Mike Boland provides an update on the some of the players here.

 

All Geotargeting Methods are Not Created Equal

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IP targeting can place a user within about 1,000 feet, but more advanced tactics are needed to get a more precise location: Cell tower location, wi-fi  triangulation, cookies, GPS, location-based proximity networks, and of course user-supplied.  This post by Rob Friedman at Streetfight surveys the options.