Archive for June, 2009

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Mobile App Remains Silent

Thursday, June 11th, 2009

If you’re an adult, you won’t be able to use a recently-launched mobile application. But for teenager’s, that’s the draw.

Fanta, a soft drink brand of the The Coca Cola Company, recently teamed up with Ogilvy Advertising to create the Fanta Stealth Sound System. The mobile application allows teenagers to talk in secret without adults being able to know they’re even communicating.

The application works by using technology that incorporates very high pitched sounds that are audible to teenagers but unidentifiable to adults. This is the same technology that was previously used to prevent teenagers from gathering in public places.

The application plays a series of sounds, which users can choose from a pre-set menu. The sounds all have pre-defined meanings, allowing teenagers to secretly communicate. The application allows for quick response and doesn’t require data charges.

The product will play to Fanta’s brand message, of which teenagers are an important part, by conveying its playful imagination.

“Mobile advertising is all about using the unique elements of the wireless device as opposed to borrowing inventory from previous media channels,” Scott Seaborn, head of mobile technologies at Ogilvy Group UK, said. “Mobile phones are communication tools. This fact was not forgotten in our creative work for Fanta on mobile.”

Sander Munsterman, CEO of XS2TheWorld, which served as Ogilvy’s technical partner on the project, said the application took only two weeks to create.

“The most important thing was the app had to look flashy and had to work on the broadest range of handsets,” he said. “The development process went very smooth as Ogilvy provided us with all the right material.”

The application has been distributed free of charge from the Fanta mobile site, which also offers games, ringtones, wallpapers and 3D downloads. The mobile site’s URL also was placed on 60 million cans throughout the United Kingdom. Ogilvy also created a humorous video about the application. The application has been downloaded more than 320,000 times during the past month alone.

“We felt this was a perfect way of engaging with our core target group of teenages in a way we hadn’t done before,” Prinz Pinakatt, group interactive marketing manager at Coca Cola Europe, said. “It helped us to become part of a community – the community is teenagers. It’s brilliant.”

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Local Mobile to Increase

Tuesday, June 9th, 2009

Those who are taking advantage of the power of mobile should start to focus on the local element.

Some reports are revealing that local mobile advertising will soon be a big trend, with local mobile search at the top of the list. If you’re using mobile methods to attract job candidates – whether through text messaging campaigns or setting up a mobile-friendly Web site – you should know that focusing on local can benefit your company and job seekers.

Using local mobile advertising or local mobile search can allow a job seeker to pinpoint companies that are hiring and see open positions within their local market.

In “Going Mobile: The Mobile Local Media Opportunity,” The Kelsey Group states that local mobile ad revenue will reach $3.1 billion in 2013, an increase from $160 million last year. At the same time, mobile search will reach $2.3 billion. During 2008, local searches made up 27.8 percent of all searches, but that number is expected to reach 35.1 percent by 2013. The report further states that about 15 percent of all Apple iPhone applications are local.

“As mobile data consumption rises, we expect local marketing to be a big winner,” Michael Boland, program director for mobile local media at The Kelsey Group, said. “There is a strong correlation between local search and the mobile use case, which will cause a good portion of the ongoing mobile application boom to focus on local.”

In the “U.S. Local Media Annual Forecast (2008-2013)” report, The Kelsey Group predicts that local advertising revenues will decrease from $155.3 billion in 2008 to $144.4 billion in 2013, a negative 1.4 percent compound annual growth rate.

Throughout that time period, only the local interactive segment will show growth, but all other local media will see marginal to rapid declines during the next 18 to 36 months. Only a small amount of traditional media will rebound, thanks to a revived economy beginning in 2011, but most traditional media will continue to decline.

The interactive share of local ad spending will go from 9 percent in 2008 to 22.2 percent in 2013. The local interactive segment will increase from $14 billion in 2008 to $32.1 billion in 2013, while the traditional segment will decrease from $141.3 billion in 2008 to $112.4 billion in 2013.

“Within the local advertising sector, there will be a real share shift, and the players most ready to leverage and adopt interactive models will achieve greater success going forward,” Kelsey Group CEO Neal Polachek said. “The share shift we expect could actually be more pronounced if the major traditional media are not able to integrate new interactive products into their bundle.”

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Mobile Advertising to Stay Strong

Thursday, June 4th, 2009

Advertising budgets for mobile channels are expected to go against the downward trend and exhibit strong growth during the next five years.

A new report from Juniper Research found that constraints on budgets, which were imposed because of the economic recession, have resulted in an increasing migration of adspend from above the line to below the line channels. The need for engagement with the consumer and a quantifiable ROI mean that mobile is increasingly being perceived as an important medium to pursue this strategy.

However, the report found that even though the results are encouraging, the level of growth that mobile advertising is experiencing is still stagnant when put into context. It’s predicted that by 2014, mobile advertising will account for only up to 1.5 percent of global adspend.

On top of that, while some major brands have made investments in mobile, many advertisers have not yet been fully convinced.

“These investments still form only a small proportion of a brand’s total advertising budget,” Dr. Windsor Holden, author of the report, said. “Regardless of mobile’s advantages – its personal nature, the facility for highly targeted advertising – advertisers will not commit more budget until they perceive that the audience for their advertisements has reached a critical mass.”

The report further found that mobile Internet will become the most popular mobile delivery channel for advertisers during 2009 and will attract the largest proportion of mobile adspend; mobile cost per clickthrough and cost per mille rates have decreased during the past year because of the economic recession and mobile advertising response rates have remained higher than those in other media.

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Smartphones Will Continue to Grow

Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009

Ovum, a technology consulting and research firm, is predicting that smartphone shipments will increase by almost 19 percent this year, even though the mobile phone market as a whole is facing a decline.

During Q1 of this year, smartphone sales exceeded 36.4 million units, a 12.7 percent increase from last year. According to data from Gartner, there was an 8.6 percent decrease in overall mobile phone sales.

According to MediaPost, the firm said that the economic recession is helping smartphone sales by forcing mobile operators and other companies to focus on creating devices for low and high-end segments. That means mobile users are able to replace their 2G phones with 3G models.

Ovum said that the success of Apple’s iPhone and the App Store has helped competitors focus on creating devices that allow developers to bring a variety of new applications and services to mobile devices. Examples of this include recent creations by Research In Motion, Google and Microsoft.

During the next five years, smartphones will see an average annual growth of 19.5 percent and shipments will reach 406.7 million by 2014. By that time, smartphones will account for 29 percent of the total mobile phone market. Ovum thinks that over time, phones that run on Symbian, including most Nokia models, will lose market share to competing platforms like Google’s Android.

By 2014, the firm says, Symbian will decrease from 58 percent to 43 percent of the market, while Android will overtake Windows Mobile and account for 18 percent of market share, shipping 72 million handsets in five years. The key, Ovum says, will be the distinction between “managed” and “unmanaged” smartphones.

“(Managed device platforms) deliver a tightly integrated end-to-end service proposition including content and applications directly to consumers pioneered by Apple and Google, the company said, adding that the adoption of this model by Nokia, Microsoft and Sony will drive sales of smartphones tied to their systems.

“Unmanaged smartphones will still have a place in the market,” the company added. “However, they will appeal mainly to users who do not wish to be tied to a particular vendor’s offering or are content with a more basic service package.”

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Android to Power Netbooks

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009

The rumors that Google’s Android is expanding beyond mobile phones finally have some clout.

Acer Inc. has announced that it will release the Aspire One netbook, a low-cost notebook featuring Android, during Q3. The Android model will be less expensive than the Windows XP model, even though the two have the same electronic compartments. Asustek Computer Inc., which created the netbook, also has developed a model that runs on Android.

These developments show that the Android software is powerful enough to replace Windows, which currently runs about 90 percent of the world’s personal computers. Calvin Huang, an analyst at Daiwa Securities Group Inc., told Bloomberg that this puts Google in a position to compete with Microsoft, which is preparing to introduce Windows 7.

“This is a negative and may force Microsoft to lower the price of Windows 7,” he said. “More and more vendors are adopting Android and non-Windows in their products, so this is a very good chance for Android to penetrate the PC market.”

Officials in the marketplace think the competition will be good and will allow users a choice as to what’s best for them.

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