Are you gearing up for your first mobile advertising initiative? Don’t be too concerned - mobile is simply another medium to add to your arsenal to target the right audience. 

In basic terms, it’s about finding the right places to connect your client with the right audience to deliver the right message.  

To help us get it right, Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has created a detailed Mobile Buyers Guide to help us plan and gather basic information that is vital to any successful advertising campaign.  

Since mobile is a distinctive platform, this step can be overlooked due to the misconception that the basic rules of advertising do not apply. 

The Guide will give you the necessary background information as well as provide an overview of the marketplace, definitions as well as practical examples to gain a greater understanding of mobile as an advertising platform.  

According to the Guide: “The best campaigns keep the user experience in mind. For consumers, mobile offers convenient information, entertainment, and exclusivity. Tailoring campaigns that deliver marketing messages that are also convenient, entertaining and offer exclusive content or discounts is the key to success.” 

The Power of Mobile: 

Gartner: Mobile Advertising To Grow 74% In 2009 by MediaPost

Report: Mobile Users Responding to Mobile Advertising by Wireless Week

Mobile Advertising – The Next Big Thing by The Economist

Best

Denice MacDonald

fring is a free mobile application that lets users communicate with friends on popular networks over their mobile phone's internet connection.

fring users make free mobile calls, video calls, live chat & more, from their mobile phone with all their friends on fring & other internet services like Skype®, MSN Messenger®, GoogleTalk™, AIM®, ICQ® , Facebook® and Twitter, all through one central, integrated phone book. 

           See the full feature list here.

fring is completely free. It's free to download and free to use to make calls, video calls, instant messages and more, all via your mobile phone's internet connection (over 'IP').

fring has millions of users on 1000s of supported mobile devices across approximately 200 countries, and is growing exponentially – adding more than half a million new users every month. Start fringing today!

Download fring free now.

Best,

Denice MacDonald

Because of its portability, mobile phones are now the personal connection to a rapidly transitioning digital world. 

Mobile technology has become ‘front and center’ relative to advertising, brand messaging and raw effectiveness in campaigns and initiatives. To get our arms around this growing technology, let’s review some of the features and great resources: 

Messaging (SMS, MMS) – often referred to as ‘short messaging’ is just what it is - short text messages to a recipients mobile phone.  Similar to text e-mails, SMS allows businesses to alert, inform or engage mobile users.  Text messaging is permission-granted and therefore is communication that mobile users want/expect. For more insight into SMS gateway/provider services, consult MobileCrunch.   

WAP (Web Sites, Search and Banner Ads) – also known as wireless application protocol is technology designed to format and filter content for use in mobile devices. Basically, WAP technology brings the Internet to mobile users.  Users can search, browse and access mobile web sites and view creative advertising. For great examples, view the Top Ten Mobile Websites for 2010. 

Downloadable Applications (Games, Video, Music) – mobile technology allows you to download all types of applications including games, video, music and podcasts.  Mobile technology now combines voice, data and entertainment into one device.

Check out this great web site for game downloads or Google/YouTube to access millions of videos.

More Resources:

Mobile Technology Weblog – convergence of gadgets, trends, communities and mobile services.

Mobile Magazine – covering news and reviews on the latest mobile technology.

TechWeb – mobile and wireless resources, white papers and articles.

MobileCrunch – a companion site to TechCrunch dedicated to Mobile Technology.

Best,

Denice MacDonald

With the latest entre of Google’s Nexus One and Droid by Motorola, there’s been a lot of buzz around the next generation of smartphones powered by Android technology herein referred to as superphones. 

Open Source Operating System and Software Platform - Why the hoopla? The Android was developed with one simple idea: Open up mobile devices to enable greater innovation that will benefit users everywhere – through open source collaboration. 

Technical Attributes - Android is a mobile operating system running on the Linux kernel. It was initially developed by Android Inc., a firm later purchased by Google, and lately by the Open Handset Alliance.  It allows developers to write managed code in the Java language, controlling the device via Google-developed Java libraries. 

Market Share Predictions - In the Fall of 2009, Gartner Inc. predicted that by 2012, Android would become the world's second most popular smartphone platform, behind only the Symbian OS which powers Nokia phones. Also predicted: BlackBerry will fall from 2nd to 5th place, iPhone would remain in 3rd place, and Microsoft's Windows Mobile would remain in 4th place¹. 

View this YouTube video to get a full grasp of Android capabilities.

Best

Denice MacDonald

[¹Source: Android to grab No. 2 spot by 2012, says Gartner from ComputerWorld October, 2009]

Twitter creator Jack Dorsey recently gave the first public demonstration of his hotly-anticipated latest venture “Square” – a device that allows its users to make credit card payments through their cell phones.

Square is a card reader about one inch in length that attaches to the headphone socket of most cell phones. 

The device contains a magnetic strip reader that allows a user to swipe a card, which will then coordinate online with card issuers and banks through a mobile application on the user’s cell phone. 

Basically, the Square works very similarly to card swipers that you see in most retail stores.

The device is scheduled to be available for iPods and iPhones in March 2010. 

View the latest "Square" YouTube video from TechCrunch    

Sources: 

After Twitter, Comes Square - By Richard Neil Ilagan, The News Chronicle

Creator Reveals Square Mobile-pay Device - By Barry Neild, CNN

Best

Denice MacDonald

With iPhones flying off shelves around the globe, can you afford to not have your site optimized? Check out Intersquash.com.

Enter your website's RSS feed, name it and click a button. That's it. You can also add a 57x57 thumbnail image - good if your website visitors want to add your site to their iPhone home screen.

The results are effective, but not elegant. It seems that this is best suited for those sites with frequently updated content.

If your site is fairly static, or changes or new blog posts are written only periodically, this may not be for you. The fact is, the iPhone is pretty good at rendering just about any website in its entirety.

The problem for users is the need to zoom in and scroll when there is a lot of content - which Intersquash helps solve. Check out Intersquash.com for more info and a brief demo.

(Source/Credit: Michael Phillips, Website Magazine, Nov 12, 2008)

.   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .    .   .   .  

Additional Resources:

Creating iPhone Microsites

Embracing Mobile Technology

Best,

Denice MacDonald

A new eMarketer report analyzes the opportunities and challenges presented by mobile social networks. 

In summary, the report forecasts that mobile social networking will grow from 82 million users in 2007 to over 800 million worldwide by 2012.

Click here for article (you may need to register but worth the time!)

There's a lot happening in the mobile web arena.

And, as it turns out, Bango is a company that tracks this kind of stuff. Which is one reason why their "five predictions for the new year" are interesting: 

More and more people will be accessing the Internet on mobile phones. There are lots more mobile phones than there are PCs today. Over 50% of the world's population now have mobile phones, amounting to 3 billion mobile phones, while estimates peg 1.1 billion PCs (stats readily available at Pew and E-marketer). As the majority of new phones come with Internet access as standard, Bango expects that by Q3 2009, more people will access the Internet on mobiles than through a PC. (Coincidentally, ESPN announced its mobile site is seeing more visitors than its PC-Internet site and today I see that MSNBC is getting the bulk of political surfers through mobile ‘day of/morning alerts’).

Mobile advertising will surge. Get ready for ads on your phone. Mobile advertising has the potential to generate more than $10 billion in annual revenues by 2010. (Video banners anyone???)

We'll see a shift from messaging to Internet for data usage on mobile phones. Bango is already seeing more web browsing as operators introduced flat-rate charging in 2007 and moved from a portal model to a more open search-based model. The new model encourages search by including the search box prominently on the portal home page. Mobile search will become more like the PC-Internet experience but the quality of mobile search index needs to improve dramatically to achieve mass market adoption. During 2008, more brands and content providers will use the Internet instead of messaging for service delivery.

Mobile commerce of physical goods will come of age. Buying consumables via the mobile web has been common in Japan and Korea; this will soon move to the U.S. and Europe. This is possible in the Far East because the operator payout rates to content providers approach that of a credit card so people are paying for physical goods on their phone bill. For now, payout rates in Europe and the U.S. are too low but as they begin to increase so will the purchase of physical goods. Mobile commerce coupled with strategic promotions in shipping will be a big hit in 2008.

The PC and mobile will become closely linked. The two separate worlds of the PC and the mobile phone will come together. People will connect their PC life with their mobile life more easily. Anyone on Myspace, Facebook or Twitter, for example, will be able to share content and information with mobile phone users. On the B2B side, mobile technology will make it easier for remote sales staff and/or any other compliant need to communicate to leadership (hmm…..internal communication leaps daily?).