According to Vogue UK, a new survey shows that over 82% of their readers actively pay attention to ads on their sites, and many value ads as much as the content!

As reported in Digiday, here are some of the key findings in the report:

So perhaps the panic about ad-blocking is overblown, especially for premium ads, and especially for mobile. A recent JP Morgan study reported that ad blocking was only half as prevalent on mobile as on desktop. And they concluded, “Blockers remove low-quality ad clutter.”

Katie MacLennan, Digital Business Director at Manning Gottlieb OMD was quoted in Digiday saying that “with the continued emergence of greater user choice, personalization and dynamic ads, advertisers should present a compelling story which invites users to engage, rather than imposing content upon them.”

Now, Twitter has announced new features and renamed their service to broaden the appeal to an even wider base of advertisers.

The mobile advertising service is now called Twitter Audience Platform, and it reaches over 700 million people globally.

The Twitter Publisher Network was launched so advertisers could run ads not only on the Twitter website and app, but also with the publishers working sintomasdelsida.org with Mopub, the ad platform that Twitter had acquired.
(see: A new way to promote Mobile Apps on Twitter)

The first big change that Twitter Audience Platform brings is that it has expanded beyond simply pushing app installs. Now advertisers can also drive two additional objectives: Tweet engagements and video views. Both are now available for the first time in beta to all managed clients globally.

The second major change is the addition of new creative formats to help advertisers better engage with their in-app audience.

According to Twitter: “On the Twitter Audience Platform, we transform your Promoted Tweets into one of our immersive ad formats including video, native ads, banners, and interstitials.”

For example:

The Twitter Audience Platform is now available globally to all managed clients driving Tweet engagements and video views. To get started, reach out to your Twitter account team. To create a Twitter Ads account, visit ads.twitter.com/getstarted.

In its last quarterly report, Facebook reported almost 1.5 billion monthly users, generating over $4 billion in revenue!

The amazing fact is that most of that revenue growth results from mobile advertising.

In the three years since the IPO, revenues from desktop advertising and payments have stayed almost exactly level. The the massive growth from $1.2 billion to $4 billion has been entirely due to the growth of mobile advertising, which now represents over $2.9 billion per quarter!

If there has been any doubt about Facebook’s primary business, this chart should clear up those doubts immediately.

Some other very interesting facts about Facebook from their quarterly report:

Also about Facebook:

• Facebook Uses Beacons To Enable Local Content Delivery

• Facebook “Retargeting” study: Mobile Ads not only work better, they are cheaper too!

• Mobile App Marketing: Facebook and the Heavyweights

And it turns out that these two new technologies are already being adopted and having an influence on the digital marketing activities of many companies.

If you aren’t yet using these in your business – or at least familiar with the trends – perhaps it is time to get started.

2nd Watch helps enterprises make the shift to public cloud infrastructure, and as such are in a good position to see how new technologies are being adopted.

Recently they surveyed of 500 IT and marketing professionals in medium and large companies to understand their use of big data, Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud-based technologies to support digital marketing.

According to 2nd Watch, “the results indicate growing confidence in the use of these technologies and success deploying them…massive data volumes, sourced from websites, apps and machines, enable marketers to develop highly targeted digital campaigns and promotions.”

The study found that IoT and Big Data are already very much in use or in the planning for many companies.

Some of the other key findings from the study:
(an infographic is below, click to enlarge)

Here is an infographic with the full study results, click to enlarge

Now it appears that a major milestone has been passed – with two thirds of all emails being opened on mobile devices, a strong majority.

The paper from Moveable Ink also found that roughly half of all conversions happen on mobile, and offers a few key pointers to help companies best use this channel.

Of the 2/3 that were on a mobile device, iPhone had the major share at 42%, and Android was just about 10%.

The study also measured Conversions, and found that desktops still represent just over half of all conversions from email. And proportionally, iPhone has many fewer conversions than Android devices.

What are the reasons for this apparent drop-off in mobile conversions? Movable Ink suggests it may indicate that marketers have not yet adequately addressed the full user journey: “We believe it to be an indicator of the click-through experience. It’s not enough to build mobile-friendly emails. You must have a mobile-friendly site to complete the experience.”

The full report details many other interesting factors about the state of mobile and desktop email, including the time spent reading emails per device, email open by time of day by device, open rates by vertical market.

download location for full report

http://info.movableink.com/device-report-q2-2015

Themed around open innovation and the future of digital with creative insights on the connected consumer, creativity of communications and the internet of everything, the two day innovation festival connects brands and global corporations with disruptive technology to fuel innovation and growth.

This is the place where entrepreneurs, influencers and corporate leaders from US, Europe and Asia meet.

The festival will discuss and showcase the latest trends in global innovation through panel discussions, keynote speeches and a series of satellite events including: Meet the Leaders, Urban Experience, Retail Innovation Forum, Cyber Security Roundtable, VC & Accelerator Forum, Health Forum, IOT Zone and Gadget & Technology Expo. The audience will consist of 2,500 entrepreneurs, growth stage companies, corporate & brand executives, media influencers, investors and start-ups from leading digital ecosystems around the world.

www.unbounddigital.co

The ways in which mobile advertising is purchased is also changing radically. A new study from the IAB shows that programmatic mobile ad sales are surging, a trend that is likely to continue.

Over the past year, nearly half (45%) of the £2.1 billion spent on digital display ads in the UK (both internet and mobile) were traded programmatically. This is up sharply from 28% the year before.

Direct sales of display ads between buyers and publishers has remained roughly stable at about 50%. However the bigger loser is ad sales through networks, which have dropped sharply from 22% in 2013 to down to only 6% in 2014.

And the numbers are even striking for mobile. Given the more fragmented state of the mobile ad market, programmatic has an even stronger effect. In 2014, nearly 2/3 of all mobile ads were traded though programmatic. This was essentially double the 37% seen in 2013.

One other interesting trend is the growth of programmatic selling of video ads.

Many people originally felt that programmatic would be primarily a tool for direct response advertising. However, video advertising – which is often more of a branding exercise – is also increasingly being sold through programmatic. In 2014, almost one fifth (18%) of video ads were traded programmatically.

These two trends – mobile ad spend and video – are likely to continue to propel the growth of programmatic.

Tim Elkington, Chief Strategy Officer at the UK’s Internet Advertising Bureau sums it up: “due to the rise in mobile and video ad spend, we estimate around 70-80% of all digital spend will be programmatic by 2018.”

(see Mobiad article Programmatic Advertising: What is it and Where is it going?)

Mobile apps are no longer really optional for leading retailers, having a mobile app is now virtually a necessity. But a new study shows that it’s not enough to have just any sort of app – today a consumer’s overall view of a retailer is determined by their app experience.

AppDynamics is an application performance management company that recently survedy 4,000 smartphone and tablet users in US, UK, Germany, and France to understand more about the linkage between mobile apps, brand credibility, customer satisfaction, and loyalty.

The group of consumers who participated in this study are strong supporters of e-commerce. In fact, just over a third said that they make more than half their purchases online. So clearly this channel is critical to their overall spending pattern.

The survey found a strong connection between the app and brand credibility, with almost three fourths saying that the performance of an app would impact their perception of the retailer.

More importantly, over two thirds of the respondents said that a negative experience with an app or website would deter them from engaging with the retailer in the future.

But what makes an app good? These days it has to be more than just a mirror of the existing online site or a simple product catalog. Today’s consumers expect a variety of advanced features to increase convenience and improve the shopping experience.

And increasingly thishat involves features that bridge the gap between multiple shopping channels. Some examples of this include:,

As Marco Blankenzee, Manager of Mobiquity Europe puts it: “Digital technologies have empowered consumers. They are sharing their retail
experiences with peers and comparing prices, products and delivery options more than ever before. Consumer expectations of retailers are set sky-high by innovative, digitally native brands. Everyone else in the market is expected to keep pace. This is widely known as the ‘expectation economy‘ whereby consumers know what the best-of-the-best looks like and want all retailers to deliver on this, now.”

But although users clearly love apps, it is getting harder and harder for app marketers to get noticed in this highly competitive market.

In order to understand more about the dynamics of app discovery and engagement, Google ran a very interesting study on consumer app acquisition and usage behavior.

The latest reports of consumer app usage are quite impressive:

To delve into this more deeply, Google and Ipsos MediaCT ran a survey where over 8,000 respondents filled in an online survey. To be included in the survey, the consumer had to be a smartphone user and had to have used an app within the past 7 days.

A download link for the full study is at the bottom of this article, but here are a few of the interesting results.

App Discovery

People may assume that the main place for consumers to find out about new apps is the app store. However, quite surprisingly, most app discovery goes on outside the app store.

Ads for Apps

Mobile advertising is another strong way to influence the download of apps. According to the study, there is no overwhelming favorite type of ad for downloads, in fact many forms of mobile advertising perform just about equally.

Frequent App Engagement

Clearly the second major objective – once a marketer has convinced a consumer to download an app – is to have them continue to use the app frequently. This can be difficult, especially for retail apps where up to half of those downloading an app to make a purchase said they are likely to remove the app once the transaction is complete.

The key is to make the value of the app clear to the user. For example, “making my life easier” was an attribute that almost 2/3 of the respondents identified in the apps they use.

In addition, app users may need an extra incentive to reengage with an app that they have abandoned. The most popular incentives are seen to be discounts & coupons, as well as access to exclusive content.

The full study includes much more information including consumer views on app pricing, use of apps for making purchases, as well as some sector specific detail.

As with any new marketing-focused technology, the key question is always “what is the reach?”

A new release from beacon platform company inMarket shows that beacons seem to be reaching a critical mass of addressable consumers.

Beacons
Beacons are small, BLE (Bluetooth low energy) devices that are able to connect with specific, partnered mobile apps when the smartphone comes in proximity. The beacon and the app communicate even if the app is closed and the phone is in the user’s pocket.

When the app receives a beacon signal, the app then wakes up and can provide a location-based mobile experience. This might be, for example, a welcome message when entering a store, a coupon, or a targeted mobile ad such as the examples shown below.

Millennials
Millennials are rapidly becoming the prime marketing target for many companies in the US. Although there doesn’t seem to be any consistently defined age span for Millennials, in general the group is defined as those people born between 1982 and roughly 2000.

Millennials now represent the largest generation segment of the population, having recently passed the “Baby Boomer” group. There are approximately 83 million millennials in the US, of which 41 million are women.

This 15 to 32 year old demographic is very desirable for many marketers as they both have a lot of purchasing power in their own right (and it will be increasing), but they also tend to be the trendsetters which influence the other generational segments.

Millennial Moms and Beacons
Mothers tend to be one of the preferred segments of the millennial generation.

According to Todd Dipaola, CEO and founder of inMarket, “Millennial moms have become the most coveted part of the 18-34 demo due to their leadership role in family spending. Brands know they need to reach these mobile natives on the medium they use most intimately.”

The latest study from inMarket shows that 38% of millennial moms are currently using mobile apps and “are reachable via beacon proximity engagements in stores every month.”

For all the women in the millennial generation, the reach of beacon technology is about 20%, significantly less than for mothers.

38% is quite an impressive figure given the newness of beacons, and it may be a good predictor of future potential. However, there are still some open questions as reach does not necessarily guarantee that these millennial moms are actually buying more as a result. Some case studies have shown strong increases in factors such as purchase intent or brand awareness which are very encouraging, though we will keep watching for reports of effects on actual sales.