Mobile is fastest growing segment of social advertising

 

Facebook mobile use will drive social ad revenues

Mobile social ad revenues will grow at a faster pace than desktop social ad revenues to reach $1.47 billion by 2016, according to a new report from BIA/Kelsey.

The fall update to BIA/Kelsey’s U.S. Local Media Forecast reveals that, although mobile social advertising is expected to grow quickly, it will still struggle to capture full revenue share because of several limitations. This is the first time BIA/Kelsey has broken out mobile numbers within its social advertising forecast.

“Right now, mobile social ad revenue is a fraction of desktop spend and it remains a fraction of desktop spend for the life of this forecast,” said Jed Williams, program director for social local media at BIA/Kelsey, Chantilly, VA. “But if you look at the overall growth of mobile social advertising, it has the most explosive or volatile growth of all of the various components of social advertising.

“If you think about where consumers are from a platform perspective, they are on mobile increasingly,” he said. “And, if you think about what they are doing on mobile, increasingly a large share of that is social networking.

“So if you tie those together, wherever you fit in the business marketplace, you have to think about the nexus of those two ideas. You have to reach consumers on mobile devices and you have to reach them in effective ways where they are utilizing those mobile devices.”

CONTACT US TO GET MOBILE TYOMORROW:  www.beachbumsmarketing.com

The Mobile Marketing Trends That Are Changing Ecommerce

Today is Black Friday.  It was interesting that one merchant 'hid' their Black Friday sales and only notified potential buyers that had downloaded their mobile app.  Does your business have a mobile app? 

You may wonder, "how do you know that?"  Well...the person I was with did not have the mobile app for this business and when I got the notificaiton of the "huge sale" they did not get this message.  So, I wonder...how many potential customers may you be using when you don't offer a mobile app for your website?

With a saturation of smartphones on the market more and more businesses are using a mobile marketing strategy for new innovative ways to reach customers. Smartphones have the high-end advanced functions required for mobile marketing. Smartphones can run third-party applications including merchant applications and GPS location applications. Combining smart new applications like QR Codes, mobile coupons with location-based applications are allowing the consumer to research, retrieve texts from businesses and receive local discount offers.

One of the popular mobile marketing trends is the use of QR Codes. QR Codes are an instantly recognizable code which when scanned with a smart mobile takes the user to a website which can provide videos, coupons, promotions and reviews on a particular product or merchant. Many smart mobiles like the Apple iPhone, Google's Android and the RIM BlackBerry, have the capacity to download a QR Code application which allows accessibility to the information stored in the QR Code.  Beach Bums Marketing will get you set up with a QR Code quickly. 

Through the use of loyalty programs, merchants can send interested users mobile coupons, texts of last-minute deals, promotions and weekly ads. In a recent mobile marketing strategy merchants keep many deals under wraps until after loyalty customers have been texted the information first.

Location based services on smart mobiles allow users to receive local discount offers along with local merchant information close to the area of the user. Smartphones have GPS navigation units and also feature many GPS location applications. This was the last piece of the puzzle required for location marketing as the user shares this information.

More mobile users than ever before are texting and sharing photos through smartphone applications. First only used by business executives now smartphones have reached a younger audience which are introducing an older generation to the benefits of smartphone use. Smartphones have opened new venues for consumers. They are also reviewing and buying products, checking out coupons and group deals through their mobiles by using an enhanced shopping experience and taking advantage of mobile marketing trends. Worldwide more than half of all mobile users are smart mobile users and in the US approximately forty-three percent of all mobile users have a smartphone. There is a growing dependence on the smartphone due to its capability to perform office tasks, check email, mobile banking, make purchases, along with countless online web services and third-party applications. Along with the increased use of smartphones mobile marketing trends are continuing to be developed for smartphone users.

Contact us NOW for a free mobile strategy consultation.....stop losing potential customers to your business!

www.beachbumsmarketing.com

Are you ready for couch commerce?

This holiday season, PayPal predicts that couch commerce will explode even further.

The term was coined by eBay and PayPal, and last year, both companies predicted that Thanksgiving Day 2011 would be a day when consumers went from their dinner table to their couch to start their holiday day shopping on Thanksgiving Day on their mobile devices.

Both companies saw a 511 percent increase in global mobile payment activity than on Thanksgiving Day 2010.

“Retail has fundamentally changed,” said Anuj Nayar, director of communications for PayPal, San Jose, CA. “We expect to see some of the phenomenon, massive spike in shopping on Thanksgiving Day and couch commerce to explode.

“We also expect to see a percentage of shopping from mobile devices to rise.”

According to Mr. Nayar, although many marketers tend to differentiate mobile and online shopping, the two are similar in many ways. Mobile shopping, however, is done on a smaller device.
“From our point-of-view, mobile is popular,” Mr. Nayar said. “People shop on their smartphones during the day and their tablets at night.

According to the executive, PayPal sees shopping from their mobile devices during the hours of noon to 1p.m. and users turning to their tablets from 6-7 p.m.

“The way that people shop from their devices is different,” Mr. Nayar said. “It just varies at each device.

The shopping paradigm is changing and mobile is changing that,” he said. “I think the key point that we’re seeing as a company, is that consumers are using technology in new ways to find the best deals and they’re fundamentally changing what retail means and how people shop.

“The mobile device, more than anything else, has bridged the lines between online and in-store commerce. It’s changing the ways that consumers shop. Retailers have to react to catch up to what consumers are doing.”

“Consumers are exercising their mobile shopping skills, with more than two-fifths – 41 percent – pre-shopping online versus only 27 percent in 2011,” he said. “”Consumers have increased their use of smartphones inside stores and are leveraging their devices to the frustration of retailers.”

Contact us TODAY so that you are ready for the couch consumer!  It's never too late to get your website mobile friendly!

www.beachbumsmarketing.com