As the image above shows, 79% smartphone numbers would consider themselves to be a “smartphone shopper” and use their device to influence their in-store decisions with a degree of regularity. 8 out of 10 consumers use their device to aid their purchases, with 82% using mobile search as opposed to apps and mobile sites. This enables them to make more informed decisions, as they discover more detailed product information and rely on the reviews of fellow customers. This leads to frequent smartphone shoppers spending 25% more in-store, as there is less risk involved.

As you can see from the image above, users also rely on their smartphone in their pre-shopping trip research and this reiterates the importance of mobile advertising and optimisation. Although once they reach your store you have more time to impress, as consumers typically spend 15 minutes using their phone at this point.

If you are competitive on price then mobile research will really work in your favour, as 53% of respondents revealed that they make price comparisons on their smartphone. This form of research is the most commonly carried out by smartphone shoppers, across all product categories.

As the image above shows, this can certainly lead to greater spend in-store and it is also important to remember that consumers will defect if the price difference is significant.

As mentioned previously, consumers rely on mobile search engines during their in-store research and it is therefore vital that mobile SEO and PPC are carried out. It is also vital that your businesses are listed accurately on services such as Google Maps, in order to improve the user/customer experience. Also ensure that contact details and opening hours are up-to-date.

Implications for businesses

This research highlights the need to ensure that a mobile campaign is a key part of your overall strategy, as it can help drive customers to your store, keep them there and cause them to spend greater sums on your products. Integrate mobile use to your in-store strategy and find a way to use it to your advantage, such as mobile in store guides, use of QR codes and mobile promotions. You could perhaps even offer free Wi-Fi to consumers in-store, facilitating the research that they are likely to conduct.

Smartphone shoppers behave differently, depending on the product category and this will influence your strategy. You can find this information in the full study, which can be found here.

Accompanying this email was a PDF that explained the policy in more detail, which you can find here. It explains that each image used in a promoted post is scanned by a “grid-based text detection tool”, which determines the amount of text used in an image.

Text can only appear in a maximum of 5 squares and surely this will mean that a vast number of promoted posts will be disapproved, with many brands suffering as a result of this. Considering the success of visual posts on the social networking site, surely Facebook are shooting themselves in the foot and it is likely to drive advertising brands to find alternatives, of which there are plenty.

What are your views on this?

Creating effective social media strategies is often a difficult task and there are many factors to be considered, including the identity of the brand, the preferences of the target audience and the idiosyncrasies of each social networking site. This is why we’ve compiled this list of 10 great tips for social media success, from experts who work with social campaigns day in day out.

10 – Tap into your existing networks and maximise the value of communication channels that are already open

Jonha Revesencio, Freelance Online Community Manager, worked on the strategy that won the Diageo #PlanWBoost Twitter contest. She says that “Each member of the team reached out to key social media influencers and Twitter Powerhouses (top influencers) whom [they] were already connected with”.

This approach enabled them to get a peak total of 600 tweets per day. The hashtag #PlanWAthena, which they used for the competition, appeared on 4.18 million people’s timelines. And to sweeten their success, they won!

9 – Supplement your social strategy with traditional marketing

John Leo Weber, of Geek Powered Studios, believes that using press releases and other traditional advertising methods can boost the message of your social campaigns. Weber states that “People view social media as an independent marketing tool – it’s own magical universe. Social media should instead be looked at as a small piece of the large marketing puzzle. “

He also provides this example scenario: Let’s pretend your company is about to launch a new product, and you want to hop on Facebook to announce it:

• Option one is that you write up a brief message with a link to your website’s new product page and post it. Your “fans” may follow the link to your website and check out the product.
• Now for option two let’s add some “traditional” media into the mix and see what happens. Write up a standard press release or hire a publicist to write one for you. In the press release talk about the new product, get quotes from some experts or users of your product and send it out using a service like PR Web. The press release will go out to various blogs and news outlets that will post it on their own websites. Now, choose the best website that posted your press release and write up a Facebook message that links to that story. Now, your fans see other websites talking about your product, adding huge value to your product.

Simply by adding a press release to your social campaign you’ve made your product launch much more expansive. You should see new fans coming to your social media page, and increased sales coming into your website.

8 – Use social media to create exposure

Senior Digital Marketing Specialist at PrintRunner, Carol Abedania, also believes that offline efforts should be used in tandem with social media. Abedania states that “Social media campaigns are very important for getting exposure online. To create a strong campaign, we always tie-up our projects with social campaigns in Facebook and Twitter.”

7 – Build the brand and communicate the right messages

According to Christopher Sardone, a Marketing Analyst at the the TeliApp Corporation, “A successful social media marketing campaign is one that yields increased revenue and a loyal client base. A business would be wise to cultivate an image through social media platforms and provide a detailed background and explanation about what the business does in its profile.”

A key consideration for brands should be the information customers would expect to be able to obtain from your social profiles and whether you can incentivise visiting them, through offers or exclusive content.

6 – Self-promotion levels should depend on the brand

Keeping brand building in mind, Julianne Coyne of Fahrenheit Marketing states that it is important to “find the right balance between self-promotion and creating a lifestyle community” and this should depend entirely on the brand and the goals it has.

Coyne adds that “This balance is different for every company: Some companies, like Virgin America can make almost every post about themselves and their services because they offer an engaging enough service. A small carpet cleaning company might need to focus more on lifestyle posts with an occasional self-promotional post.”

Knowing your audience can help you find this balance.

5 – Make use of social media automation tools

How can you build your brand if the optimum time to engage with your target audience is outside of office hours?

The answer is to use scheduling and post automation tools, such as Hootsuite and TweetDeck. Kristen Pagán, Co-Founder & CMO of SeamBliss, says, “these tools allow you to schedule tweets, Facebook posts, etc. ahead of time. While it’s not a good idea to automate ALL of your social media interactions, scheduling some of your posts in advance will save you time and stress”

4 – Follow the 1/3 rule

Bonnie Joy Dewkett, of The Joyful Organizer, recommends using the 1/3 rule. She creates “original content 1/3 of the time. This content is NOT advertising, it is original to the topic associated with the brand [they] are developing. Another 1/3 is advertising, promotions and engaging the customers. Ask questions of them – you WANT to know what they want to hear about”, which helps you to develop valuable content.

The other third of this rule is to share enriching content from other sources, related to the brand and adding value to the user experience.

3 – Engage your users visually

Julianne Coyne also advises that “for networks such as Facebook and Pinterest, focus on visuals first and let the accompanying copy flow from the visual.” The reason for this is that people share engaging visuals at a much higher rate than they do text-only social media posts.

2 – Respond to social media engagement from your fans and followers

“I often see fans comment on Facebook and the brand doesn’t reply. A simple response keeps the conversation going and encourages others to post too. This will help your brand reach more people and show that your brand actually cares about its fans, followers, and customers.” This tip comes from Mike Wolfe, President of WAM Enterprises.

1 – Create an editorial calendar

This will help you to structure your content, which is key in building relevancy and breeding familiarity.

Kristen Pagán of SeamBliss uses a content calendar for all social media platforms and encourages others to do so. Structuring your content enables you to “keep track of social media marketing efforts and will make it easier to come up with ideas of what to post. For example, you might decide that your company’s Facebook posts will relate to current industry trends on Mondays, and to customer tips on Tuesdays.”

That concludes our list of the top 10 social media marketing tips, straight from experts in the industry. Follow these and you will be well on the way for social success!

This brings us nicely to the rumours surrounding Google Babble/Babel, which has been referred to by both names in recent media coverage. If the rumours are to be believed then this app will unify Google’s numerous communication offerings, including Hangout, Talk and Drive Chat, and make them accessible from one location. The app is currently being tested and many believe that it will be revealed at May’s I/O conference, with full details expected to be confirmed at this event.

Babble/Babel, we will also have to wait for an official announcement before we know the exact name of the application, would create a hub for Google’s communications tools and create seamless integration across them, vastly improving the user experience. Conversations would no longer be confined to one application, but would instead take place across Google services and file sharing would become much simpler.

How do you think this will effect the likes of BlackBerry and Facebook, who offer Messenger and Chat respectively? Or do doubt that this latest project will be a success? Comment and let us know!

Hirschle stated that “we’re constantly evaluating our products to ensure that we’re focused on the services that will have the biggest impact for our advertisers and publishers” and the decision to shut down the network shows that it has not been effective enough, in terms of driving business for their customers.

Instead, Google will use the resources to improve CPA orientated tools,  such as remarketing, product listings and the conversion optimiser.

Emails have already been sent out to publishers and advertisers in the USA and UK, informing them about the closure of the network. A number of competing networks have also jumped in to seize the opportunity and try to win some of the fallout business.

The real question is why the program failed, considering the resources that Google injected into it. A reluctance to work with those currently using other affiliate programs, despite permitting this in their terms and conditions, could have driven key advertisers and publishers away. Or perhaps it was the fact that a minimum commitment of 6 months was required, despite the network having had limited proven success in the past. What are your thoughts?

The decision, in my opinion, posed a simple question, would this effect the desire of people to attend the event and would many decide that they preferred to watch from the comfort of their own home? After all this would eliminated the problem of spending 3 or 4 nights camping in the blazing heat of the desert sun and would certainly be more cost effective.

However it appeared that the live streaming of the 2011 festival had the opposite effect and instead portrayed the festival, its atmosphere and line-up in an extremely appealing manner. It was so effective that a record number of attendees was reached at the following event in 2012, with the total number of participants rising by 10,000. Unsurprisingly the festival organisers have decided to stream the concert once again, yet this time they will share the entire opening weekend with digital festival-goers. This increase in coverage is not only likely to drive more attendees to the subsequent event, it also offers new opportunities in terms of advertising, so lets take a look at these.

Firstly it offers the opportunity to advertise on the Coachella YouTube channel during specific acts that are more likely to appeal to your target audience, for example indie-rock bands and artists offer the perfect opportunity for the likes of Topman and NME to undertake some valuable brand building. Alternatively similar bands or bands from within the same genre may choose to advertise their latest single or album during a related artist. For both brands and music artists there may also be the opportunity for YouTube takeover of the channel during a band that their target audience are likely to watching.

Streaming the entirety of the opening weekend will also see the interest in offline advertising at the event and sponsorship of it rise, as this will offer a vast amount of exposure. What are your views on streaming music event and what opportunities do you feel it offers advertisers?

View the live stream at: www.youtube.com/coachella

The first problem with tablets overtaking laptops is that this blurs the lines of location targeting even further, as as user is likely to use their tablet throughout the day. This means that it will become even more difficult to determine which devices are being used at home and which are used on the move. Google also recently announced that desktops and tablets will be grouped together in enhanced campaigns, however surely this will need to change considering the rising tablet usage?

Another issue surrounds website development and whether businesses should begin creating a more tablet and touch screen friendly experience for this users? There will also be implications in terms of site and landing page speed and tablet load times will need to become equally as quick as those of their laptop and desktop counterparts.

Finally, what implications will this have for ad text and keywords? Typing takes longer on tablet devices and therefore we could see a fall in the popularity of long tails keywords, driving CPC’s for short phrases. In terms of ad text, if a consumer interacts differently with brands on their tablet then ad text may have to be altered. What are your thoughts?

A recent post on Google’s product forum, from a BBC representative, revealed that the broadcaster has received a “notice of detected unnatural links”. There can be only question to ask here and it is does Google really believe that the BBC are conducting link building and that they even need to try to procure links?

A fellow forum member reassured the BBC representative that it was simply a case of the algorithm being over-sensitive, yet surely Google must find a way to factor this into their algorithm and prevent similar issues in the future. Otherwise credible sites will be punished for the simple fact that they produce high quality content and this could alter their willingness for others to share their content.

Despite the fact that a Google representative stated that these unnatural links were related to a single article on the site and not effecting other parts of the site, it is unlikely to have left those at the BBC impressed by Google’s actions. What are your views on this?

Another bone of contention is how users pay for content on their mobile devices and Juniper Research pose the question of “how do the players’ monetise the content and services that can be delivered over the mobile network to handset and tablets?”. This is an excellent question and one that centres on the billing options available on Mobile devices. As opposed to listing those that are likely to be ineffective, lets simply take a look at the most effective mobile billing option.

Carrier Billing, or billing that you are directly charged for on your mobile device, is without doubt the most effective payment method on mobile devices and those looking to monetise their content should take note. The reason for this is quite simply the convenience of it, as it allows payment without the time consuming task of entering card details. Subsequently this means that consumers have less time to consider their purchase and approach it less rationally, often purchasing instantly via the touch of a button. This means a higher conversion rate, as consumers make a higher number of impulse purchases. One final thought is that carrier billing also makes your offerings available to audiences without credit or debit cards, namely the youth demographic.

These factors will all contribute to the rising expenditure via carrier billing and will also encourage more brands to monetise their content in this manner, hence why expenditure is expected to grow rapidly over the next 4 years.

Social media usage has grown rapidly in recent years and now accounts for 18% of the time that we spend online. On average we use social networks for 6.9 hours each month and this is more than we have ever done in the past, so this begs the question of how much do social networks actually enrich our lives?

One of the greatest things about the Internet is also one of its biggest problems, as there is no filter or quality control and this also applies to social networks. People can post whatever they like and often chose to, which means valuable, life improving updates are hard to come across.

Considering this I decided to undertake a little research into the content posted by the most followed profiles on Twitter, Facebook and Google+ and analyse how much useful content is posted through them. This idea stems from a recent incident where Philosopher Alain de Botton slated One Direction’s Harry Styles and stated that he should be using his influence to educate our youth. The result, Styles began tweeting about Socrates and Greek philosophy.

Have other social influencers taken similar responsibility?

Let’s take a look.

For each social network I have placed updates into 3 categories: Generic updates, such as photos or general news, Promotion of their own material and worthwhile content, which includes charity work and messages of thanks to fans. I have analysed the latest 20 updates from each profile, providing a total of 200 posts for each network.

Twitter:

(Image:Twitter Counter)

It surprised me find that worthwhile content was most commonly shared on Twitter by the top 10 most followed users. Considering that these messages must be condensed to just 140 characters, unlike the other networks studied.

Although some of these were simply thank you messages to fans, there were motivational tweets, educational facts and charity work within the 200 tweets analysed. Shakira tweeted 7 valuable messages, with 3 of these discussing Barack Obama’s policies and 4 promoting charities working against poverty and aids.

Justin Bieber spends most of his time promoting his music on his Twitter profile but he did take the time to post the above message to his followers. Although the incorrect spelling does make the argument that it is worthwhile content slightly redundant.

Google+:

(Image:Circle Count)

I was also surprised by the nature of posts on Google+, especially considering that the top 10 includes the likes of Myspace founder Tom Anderson and Larry Page, co-founder of Google. This would lead you to believe that more worthwhile content would be shared here, but alas this is not the case.

Facebook and Twitter are arguably far more interactive then Google’s social network, so it is hard to believe that it is the most commonly used for promotion and the least used for pushing worthwhile content.

Astonishingly 19 of David Beckham’s last 20 posts have been used to promote his recent venture with H&M and transfer to PSG. This is even more surprising considering the work that he does with charity, although the remaining 1 post was a link to a UNICEF initiative.

Facebook:

A list of the top 15 most followed Facebook profiles can be found here, although only the top 10 have been taken into account. It is surprising that US actor/comedian Dane Cook has the most followed profile on the social networking site and there are other surprising inclusions in top 10.

The results for Facebook did not surprise me and it would appear that the most followed celebrities on this network use it in a similar way to the average user, sharing photos, links and articles of interest to their friends or followers.

Although there were 64 posts promoting products and other ventures, it is worth noting that 31 of these came from Mike Tyson and Chelsea Handler, desperately plugging their tour and TV show respectively.

Conclusion

Unfortunately the top influencers on each social network are more concerned with uploading pictures of themselves and promoting their latest venture than posting life-enriching content. Although many will argue that the purpose of such profiles is to connect with their fans, Alain de Botton makes a valid argument that their huge influence should be used for more educational purposes. Maybe they could all start with one post per day, it wouldn’t be so difficult would it? What are your views?

You might be thinking that your products are not appropriate Valentine’s gifts, but it is worth remembering that many women will not appreciate clichés and convention and this will force men to think outside the box. In fact you may even be able to use this to your advantage, by incorporating criticism of these ‘boring’ gifts into your ad text. For example your first description line could read “what’s better than flowers?” or “better Valentine’s gifts than Chocolate” and this may make your offerings more appealing than the usual suspects.

Another consideration for your ads should be to make converting as convenient as possible for a potential customer and this should include the use of appropriate sitelinks, the most relevant landing page and making it clear that the gift can still be ordered in time for Valentine’s Day. But it is also worth considering how many people will be purchasing their gifts for the weekend, when many are likely to be seeing their dates and extending your Valentine’s campaign could be an excellent opportunity.

Prior to this you should also undertake thorough keyword research, ensuring that you do not make presumptions when creating your keyword list. For example it would probably surprise you to find out that “whens valentines day” is in the top 10 keywords searched during the build up, so you should certainly do your homework. Finally, you should consider bidding more competitively as we approach the 14th and this could be particularly important for those selling services. This is due to the fact that the products do not need to be delivered and can therefore be ordered up until the very last minute, with many even choosing to purchase such gifts on the day itself.

However it would seem that Lady Gaga’s popularity has been falling recently, as her latest album has sold 4 million less copies than her début and internet search trends support this.

(Source: Google Trends)

The above graph charts search volumes for Lady Gaga from 2004 to the present day and it makes sense for us to start from the beginning.

Between 2004 and 2007 Lady Gaga barely existed online, yet when she released her début singles and album in 2008 this all changed. Traffic began to rise following the release of Just Dance as a single in April 2008 and this continued to increase, until The Fame album hit stores that August. Several other tracks were released as singles and the last of these was Paparazzi, which came out in July 2009.

The release of The Fame Monster EP in November 2009 and the commencement of the Monster Ball tour the following month saw her internet popularity reach new heights. This was also sparked by her appearance on the cover of Flare magazine, an interview in Vogue and her meeting with the Queen and following these events her search volumes reached their peak.

However as the tour went on, traffic began to fall and only picked up briefly as the tour ended in May 2011 and this coincided with the release of the Born This Way album. Yet the difference in the number of searches at this point, compared to the release of the Fame Monster and the start of the tour, is staggering and a fall in popularity is evident. Since May 2011 her popularity has fallen almost continuously each month and shows little sign of recovery.

Signs of waning adoration began to appear earlier than this and a great example is when Lady Gaga donned her infamous meat dress at the 2010 VMA’s. Although people enjoyed Lady Gaga’s outrageous fashion sense during the early stages of her career, it would appear that she began pushing the boundaries too far and this incident failed to greatly improve her internet popularity. This theory is supported by the minimal increase in traffic when she chose to use the meat dress once again, in May 2012.

When we consider how busy Lady Gaga has been over the course of 2012, her fall in online popularity is astonishing and even more so if we consider the influence of the internet in launching her career. In April 2012 she commenced the Born This Way Ball and then in August she launched her own fragrance, appearing in cities across the globe to promote this. She also lost and gained weight controversially, after admitting to suffering from an eating disorder, openly discussed her use of drugs and appeared at London Fashion Week.

The declining number of searches, which is lingering dangerously close to the level it was when she burst onto the scene in 2008, indicates that we are all a little bored with Lady Gaga’s antics!

Another reason that mobile marketing has become so important is its involvement in the consumer purchase process, with mobile’s often being the first point of contact or heavily used in the research stage. Therefore mobile is rapidly becoming the core of marketing activities for many businesses and this is only likely to increase.

Juniper Research have recently published a study on “Retail mCommerce” and in this they state that marketers use mobile marketing for 4 purposes:

1) Initial consumer discovery and engagement
2) Relationship building
3) Product purchase (remote)
4) Product purchase (point of sale)

If we consider that these 4 points incorporate branding, relationship management and the actual purchase, we can see how important mobile marketing is becoming.

Mobile coupons will also become more prevalent over the coming years, as brands will harness their power to cement relationships with consumers. Which will in turn allow them to offer even more personalised mobile offers.

Juniper classify mobile advertising by 2 types and together they make it an extremely attractive proposition. Firstly there is transactional advertising, which drives immediate purchases at the point of sale or with location based offers. The other type is brand advertising, which seeks to raise awareness and create positive feelings towards the brand.

The combination of the above factors will see mobile advertising spend soar, rising from $18 billion in 2012 to a staggering $55 billion globally by 2015. It’s time to rethink your mobile approach!

Jet2holidays – Bad example

This remarketing ad is not personalised in the slightest and is simply providing me with information that I have already been exposed to, during my first visit to the site.

Teletext Holidays – Good example

This remarketing ad from Teletext holidays is an excellent example of an insightful campaign. The ad includes holidays that I searched for on my first visit and gives the option to discover more information on these, whilst also offering a link to hot offers in case my preferences have changed.

EasyJet – Good example

EasyJet’s remarketing campaign is another excellent example of how to maximise its capabilities. The headline of ‘still want to fly from…’ is a nice touch and data from my first visit has been used to offer personalisation, down to the departure location and date.

The difference in quality between the 1st ad and the other 2 remarketing ads is huge and it is obvious which of these approaches would be more successful in prompting potential customers to convert. I hope this have given you some food for thought and you can use this in your future remarketing efforts.

This has created a situation where a vast percentage of the global population are confident to conduct their banking activities via their mobile device and, after all, this is a great time saver. According to Juniper Research, a total of 590 million people currently conduct banking activities via their mobile and this number is expected to rise rapidly over the next 5 years, surpassing 1 billion by the end of 2017.

It is not until we stop and consider the significance of mobile banking, that we realise it’s importance and how vital it is to all mobile commerce. Mobile banking facilitates financial organisation from anywhere and at any time, which greatly aids consumers who can make mobile purchases in the same manner. If a mobile consumer can check their balance before they commit to a purchase or transfer funds between accounts, then they are more likely to complete their purchase.

In many ways this has led to less fear over using banking apps and sites on mobile and therefore has been a catalyst to a banking revolution, where users are confident to make transfers, payments and organise savings from their device. This is reinforced by the rising popularity of contactless payment via mobile, which is only really beginning to blossom.

Unsurprisingly in Juniper’s forecast, the US is expected to posses the greatest of smartphone users banking via their mobile. Although it is quite surprising to see the share of this that will be occupied by the Far East & China and African & Middle Eastern nations.

One of the principle reasons is a steep increase in the number of tablets and smartphones activated over the Christmas period. This led to a record breaking number of app downloads between the 25th and 31st of Decemeber, as a total of 1.7 billion apps were downloaded in this period. This provides digital marketers with a greater mobile audience and also a greater platform to communicate their messages. The rising number of apps makes it easier to more effectively reach your target audience, if you select your apps carefully.

Whilst recently using a guitar tuner app that I had downloaded, I was confronted by an ad for online shopping with Asda. The last thing on my mind at this time was buying my weekly shop and I obviously ignored the ad. However if I had been greeted by an ad for concert tickets, then there might have been a different outcome.

Another reason that you should be analysing your current mobile strategy is that the number of searches and purchases made via mobile is steadily rising. Therefore you should be implementing a mobile ad strategy to ensure that you are not missing the opportunity to drive mobile conversions. With this in mind it may be worthwhile developing a series of mobile offers and coupons, depending on your products and services.

Finally, once again depending on your products, services and goals, it may be time to consider combining your offline and mobile efforts. The reason for this is that there has been a huge increase in the amount of multi screening and in particular, TV viewing and mobile or tablet usage. Personally I think there is room to combine TV, mobile and social networks in what would be highly innovative ads. For example, a TV ad for new DVD release could state the the first 1000 people to tweet with a specific hashtag will receive a code for a signed copy, when they make a purchase.

These are simply my opinions, please share yours with me.

If we currently conduct a search for “last minute Christmas gifts”, it is surprising to see the number of companies still advertising their services, despite the fact that they will have to ordered, processed and shipped in just a matter of days. Only the Virgin Experience Days fall into the category discussed above, but it is likely that this will increase once the deadline for shipping passes at the weekend.

One of the reasons that could be preventing more companies from advertising their services during the Christmas period is the information on searches by Google. If you search for last minute Christmas gifts in the Keyword tool, then it will tell you that less than 4,000 global searches will be made this month. This is obviously inaccurate and perhaps in the future, Google could offer a tool for seasonal data. 

More impressively, this type of site sits at the top of the perch in an astonishing 23 nations and shows the importance of mobile devices in receiving instant news updates. However some countries are more news obsessed than others and it would seem that Croatian and Norwegian residents are infatuated with current affairs, as their top 10 domains consist of a staggering 8 news sites. 

The result that I found most surprising is that the UK are not top in terms of visiting sports sites on their mobile, as Cyprus’ top 10 contains 5 sporting sites and this is more impressive than the 2 featured in the UK’s most visited domains. Another fun fact is that Finland and Bulgaria have the most baby advice sites in their top 10 and we need to decide whether or not this implies anything about their parenting ability.

The findings also revealed that Greeks frequently search regarding the weather, which is surprising, and this has meant that a forecasting site sites at position 3 in their top 10. I thought it was only us Brits that were obsessed with the weather and it is surprising that a country with more consistent weather spends more time researching it, at least via their smartphones anyway. One final finding is that Germany is the only country with a recipe site in their top 10 and this begs the question of whether this is caused by inferior culinary skills or greater enthusiasm in the kitchen and less reliance on junk food.

With mobile once again predicted to take off in 2013, is it time that marketers began using research such as this as the basis for their mobile advertising. For example, if you are selling baby products across Europe, then would it make more sense to focus a greater amount of your mobile marketing resources in Finland and Bulgaria? Or if you are looking to conducting mobile advertising for your Europe-wide food products, then could Germany be the ideal place to launch an effective mobile campaign. What are your views?

We have already mentioned 2 of the key factors and this is to ensure that your infographic adds value in an instant and visual manner, as this will increase likelihood of a user sharing your content. The best way to ensure that your infographic is interesting and of value to readers, is to use substantial and useful data as the basis for it. An excellent idea can be to look at trends in your own data, as this will be completely original data and can be extremely effective, especially if you can give insight into sales trends within the industry. Another key factor will be the design of your infographic and finding the balance between ensuring it is not bland or too overcomplicated can be tricky. If you do not have the resources to do this in house, then you should consider outsourcing the task to a professional.

But it is worth remembering that infographics can go wrong and can also be the target of spammers, who use them to create poor quality links. Another factor impacting on the success of infographics is actually the influence that they have had, as this has caused many others to jump on the bandwagon and this over-saturation is now beginning to take it’s toll, with effectiveness falling. Therefore you should always consider whether or not your infographic will add value and if not, then you are probably just creating it for the sake of creating it.

Below is an example of a recent infographic that we have created and you can click here or here for more examples.

Amethon’s research reveals a number of apps that pose a threat and the most worrying fact is that many of these apps are used by millions of people every day, especially when we consider that the average user now has 41 apps on their phone. Before we name and shame these apps, it is important to understand what constitutes as a threat and how this malicious behaviour occurs via mobile apps. Malicious apps are those that send high cost texts from a users phone, cause a charge for free apps and steal sensitive information, whereas the largest threat comes from apps that use a high amount of data and place a strain on mobile networks. These apps effectively waste mobile data and this leads to higher costs for both networks and individual users, with those causing continuous data transfers, without users realising, leading to a huge amount of mobile data being used. According to Amethon’s research, T Mobile have seen signalling rise by more than 1000% as a result of malicious apps and O2 have complained of severe network congestion, preventing the streaming of live data.

So the time has come to look at which apps pose the greatest threat and the result will surprise you, as the Facebook app for iPhone is one of the biggest culprits. This is because it continually sends and receives mobile data, for hours on end and the graph below depicts the amount of information sent and received by the iPhone Facebook app during a 5 hour period. Across these 5 hours the apps caused a staggering 170,000 data transactions and this led to the unnecessary consumption of 50mb of data. Other apps that you may use everyday, which lead to similar data usage, include Yahoo’s Android Messenger and even a typical Android media player.

These apps lead to higher mobile bills for consumers and in turn cause dissatisfaction with their network provider, which causes them to incur further costs in terms of customer service. So the question is how you can identify and nullify the threat of these potentially harmful apps? Mobile networks need to make a greater effort to identify such apps before they lead to data outages and there are a number of tools available to make this possible, with any information gained being passed onto customers and increasing awareness. Similarly there are tools that prevent any data usage from defective apps and it is advisable to use these and finally it may be a good idea to contact the developers of the app, who may wish to make changes in light your advice.

In this post are some of the key points that I picked up from each talk and the advice that I will try to implement in the future. The day began with Phillip Sheldrake’s views on influence and how you can harness the power of it, in order to create powerful content. His key advice was to consider who has which level of influence when determining how and where to publish your content, which is also a factor is delivering a piece that will create conversation between the brand and the desired audience. He also touched on the fact that you cannot force how much influence your content has or whether or not it goes viral, as this often depends on the delivery of it and the activities of the competition. Following this talk, Lauren Pope delivered her views on “Agile Content Strategy” and advised that you should follow the process of publishing your content, measuring the success of it and then make the improvements necessary to release it again, as a far more successful piece, before repeating the process.Lauren also recommend that we follow the below process in developing our content, as it gives us a goal & makes it far easier for us to measure our success.

Fill in the blanks:
1) As a _________
2) I want to ________
3) In order to ________

Ian Humprheys, who is the head of content at Caliber, then delivered a talk on how content should ideally be a narrative and this is because it provides a structure that the audience are comfortable with. He also provided the recipe for creating amazing campaigns, which is a combination of great narrative and using the techniques of content marketing to drive conversations. The point that I found most interesting was Ian’s description that you need find the overlap between the brand’s and customer’s stories and then provide a platform for the user to share their experiences, which I feel is an excellent way to develop an affinity with the brand. His exact words were “tell your great story and let others tell theirs” and I believe that this is the perfect way to generate interaction with your content.

The next talk was more informative that its title, “How to win at Pooh sticks”, let on and Tom Ewing provided an excellent analogy of how the internet and content have changed. Feed and streams of content are continuously coming toward us and this means that we now have less control of the content that we are exposed to online, as these streams are typically fast, fluid and chaotic. He also discussed how our feeds are filled with ‘stock and flow’, which are the durable, long lasting pieces of content and the daily updates respectively. Before moving on to the influence that brands have and whether they will act as ringmaster, providing the audience with a task, or patron, by making the audience’s activities more fun for them. Which reinforced the idea of providing your audience with the platform to share their own amazing stories.

Anthony Mayfield then discussed how to scale stories and his most valuable piece of advice was to combine all the information available to you in order to create “big data”, which can lead to stories of the same proportion and this may involve the collaboration of databases and staff across departments. Mila Mclean then gave her perspective as a “content rookie” and reinforced the importance of understanding as much as you can about your client and their goals before shaping your content. Following this we were given some insight into the world of content from a journalist, as Desire Athow informed us that it is best to contact journalists and editors via e-mail and Twitter before you pick up the phone.

Following this was my favourite talk of the day and this was not simply because it introduced me the Zombie Battle experience offered by Wish, which I am now itching to try! Steve Pavlovich, the co-founder of Wish, delivered his 4 pillars of successful PR and brought them to life through a number of his personal experiences. So if you are looking to create brilliant content it should certainly be:

1) Topical
2) Sexual (where possible)
3) Controversial
4) Involve celebrities (where possible)

Steve also gave some other excellent pieces of advice, notably that you should consider which influencers will give you credibility and then leverage this in order to garner further credibility.

Following the lunch break Chelsea Blacker reminded us that we should audit all our existing content, as there will certainly be something of use in there and then we can use this to develop something exciting new posts. Steve Leighton then explained to us his love of coffee and detailed his strategy, but didn’t really give any insight into how exactly he achieved his success. After this we were given a talk by Jochen Mebus on how good briefs are they key to good content, however this was tailored more towards agencies creating content briefs and not for an SEO or PPC agency writing content in house.

The remaining talks of the afternoon were far more valuable from my perspective, as Andy Keech discussed how to monitor your social media activity and use it to determine when your conversations happen over time. You should then use this to ensure that you release your content at the optimum moment, increasing the likelihood of interaction. Simon Penson then informed us of how we could create great content by stealing the techniques used by magazine publications, an industry that he worked in for many years. The most useful advice he gave was to consider your on-site typography and how it could aid conversions, whilst also considering your content flow over time. Finally Matt Roberts discussed how to ensure that your content resonates with influencers, citing the setting and measurement of realistic goals as a key factor in this. Another key is to be realistic and think about which influencers you can target with success and how you will resonate with them.

Overall there were some great insights offered up by a great variety and the first ever Content Marketing Show was certainly a success.

With the holiday season approaching, product reviews will become more important and this is because, when purchasing a product as a present for someone else, you are likely to spend a great deal of time determining whether or not it is the ideal gift. This involves a large amount of research and it is likely that one of the first places that a user will turn is to the product reviews. Don’t believe me? Well, Google recently stated that 67% of online consumers read reviews before committing to a purchase and this could be the motivation behind the latest improvements to Google Shopping. In a recent post on the Google Commerce blog, the company announced that they have implemented a new customer review system to their shopping feature and this should improve the customer experience.

Google is now tapping into Google+ in order to give you the best possible experience and this means that, when searching for a product, you will be shown reviews from your friends on the social network, where possible. The reviews from your Google+ acquaintances will appear above all other reviews and it is likely that this step will see the influence of reviews rise much higher than 67% mentioned above. Similarly you can now also submit reviews on Google shopping, when signed into your Google+ account and this will also provide you with the opportunity to offer advice to others. However, it is important to remember that negative reviews can be greatly exaggerated and you should take everything with a pinch of salt.

The sector is expected to achieve even higher growth in the coming years, with revenue projected to rise from just $800 million this year to a staggering £1.5 billion by 2014. This growth will be driven by the introduction of the next generation of wearable devices and we can already see the plans for a number of these devices shaping up, namely Google’s Project Glass which offers a level of augmented reality that has never been experienced before. As the title of the report indicates, the rapid rise of wearable devices will be largely caused by interest in fitness, healthcare, entertainment and enterprise and products like the Google Glass could be extremely successful as they offer users high quality experiences in a number of these areas.

Based on the current success of wearable fitness devices, it is likely that they will be a catalyst of the aforementioned growth and achieve even greater success. Such devices can greatly enhance your fitness experience and make it easier to set, measure and achieve your health goals and to gain a greater understanding of how and why, it is a good idea to analyse the efforts of Nike in this area. Nike have a number of apps and wearable fitness devices that connect wirelessly to mobile phones or upload results directly to an online profile and these have been extremely successful. The Nike+ range offers the ability to track the distance you have covered, calculate the number of calories you have burned, map your runs, time your workouts and many other functions, which has proved popular amongst those aiming to measure their fitness goals more effectively. The range includes wearable devices in a number of formats, but most impressive are the Nike+ Sportband and the Nike+ Training and the benefits of these can be seen below.

Call extensions allow you to include your telephone number in your ads and this works excellently on the mobile platform, as click to call occurs and you are charged per call in the same way that you are normally charged for clicks. This can also involve the use of a forwarding number, for a small fee, which connects users to the direct telephone number and, more importantly, enable companies to track telephone calls that have resulted from their efforts in Google Adwords. The combination of these factors provides you with excellent insight into how many offline conversions your PPC efforts cause, as ‘Call Reporting’ provides you with information regarding the call itself and the subsequent cost of this.

However one problem is that the aforementioned forwarding numbers are 0800 or 0845, which may be free from landlines but can be costly to mobile users. Similarly, if a mobile user sees a dialling code that they are unsure of the cost to call, then the likelihood of them making the call is lowered significantly. Considering how effective click to call can be on mobile, this a serious threat to businesses and this was addressed at Google Engage’s recent Agency Day, which some of us were fortunate enough to attend.

One attendee at the event stated that the actual and perceived costs of calling these types of number from mobile were preventing conversions, however Google’s Brian Brady stated that a recent development by the company presents a solution to this. Google has begun, and will continue to roll out on a larger scale, using phone icons as opposed to phone numbers in their mobile ads and many agencies have already announced an increase in conversions from their click to call efforts.

First of all, it is vital to understand the consumer decision making process and most importantly when and where they make their decisions. Unsurprisingly Saturday is the busiest day in terms of high street footfall, but many consumers have stopped making impulse decisions on these trips and now, according to Google’s research, Sunday is the day when they begin conducting online research into the products they have seen the previous day. This combination of physical and online research over the weekend has meant that Mondays have become a key day for purchasing gifts, with a number of “Mega Mondays” taking place each week in December prior to Christmas. Then of course the sales begin on Boxing Day and the sheer volume of online traffic make this day they busiest of the year, which is a key consideration when determining the length of your festive strategy.

Christmas is an extremely competitive period and this has become even more apparent with the rise in internet shopping, with retail search growing consecutively over the past 3 years. Therefore it is vital that your ads and landing pages are both relevant and accurate, as it has never been easier for potential customers to defect.

So the key question is how you can use this insight to create a better strategy on your affiliate network this Christmas, also considering how to improve your overall strategy to improve results. Google’s research revealed that 48% of consumers would not have made a purchase if they didn’t have a voucher, whilst 47% would have defected if free delivery had not been offer. Therefore it is vital that you develop some form of money-saving promotion for the festive season, as value is obviously a key influencer in purchase decisions. This may also help you to attract late shoppers, who begin searching during the week prior to Christmas and search for terms such as “deals” and “gift cards”. Other areas that will see the effectiveness of your seasonal strategy increase are raising your budget for this period, being creative and seasonal in your ads and working closely with your top 10 publishers.

A recent study by comScore and Facebook has given insight into how brands can use social networks to connect with and influence consumers, using the case studies of a number of retail brands and their marketing efforts on the social networking site.

The research, titled “The Power of Like Europe”, provides insight into how a number of European retail brands successfully harnessed the power of liking and sharing, explaining how to use Facebook to build brand awareness, create an online presence and, most importantly, drive consumers to take the desired action. Engagement on social networks and the time spent on them is much higher in Europe, where residents account for a greater proportion of time spent on social networks than any other continent on the planet and this explains why Europe is the ideal place to conduct such a study.

The reason that European Facebook users represent such an attractive proposition, is that they spend 32% of their total social networking time on Facebook’s news feed and this is the optimum location for branding to occur. Advertising on the news feed, sponsored posts and the sharing of brand posts by friends are an excellent way to reach a relevant and engaged audience, which is ideal for developing a brand presence – hence the power of the like.

One of the key drivers of the success of retail brands on Facebook is that users like/share posts and therefore expand the reach of brand messages, which subsequently appear on the news feeds of their friends. The study revealed that, in the case of ASOS, fans were 3.6% more likely to visit the site and make a purchase than non fans, whilst friends of fans were 2.7% more likely to take the desired action. ASOS also saw a staggering 130% rise in purchases made, after using paid Facebook advertising to drive traffic to their site.

Ultimately, Facebook has given brands the opportunity to interact with engaged consumers in a more social environment, which has arguably enabled them to be more creative and create better interaction with their desired audiences. Likes and shares have given them the ability to harness the power of influencers and use peer influence to more effectively deliver their messages, which is an excellent tool for developing relationships and driving conversions.

Facebook’s success has led to much greater usage and this has sent more advertisers to the site, with 1 in every 4 UK display ad impressions now occurring on social sites and this is only likely to increase. Similarly, such is the power of Facebook, brands are now using their ads to drive users to their Facebook page, as opposed to their website and this reinforces the concept that Facebook is an excellent tool for building relationships with consumers.

Using mobiles abroad has become increasingly more popular and also more vital, especially for those conducting business abroad and as a result the price of mobile roaming has fallen quite significantly. It is likely that this trend will continue, with the ever growing reliance on mobile roaming causing multinational operators to lower prices even further and this greater usage should see profits rocket. However much of the ability to use mobile roaming depends on whether multinational operators can agree deals with smaller international networks across the globe, allowing users to connect to these networks when they are travelling abroad. Yet with the use of mobile phones abroad rising, these smaller, and often domestic, service providers would be stupid to turn down the business of these multinational corporations.

As the graph above shows, data usage will become much more profitable and a greater proportion of total revenue will be generated by mobile data roaming in 2017. Many operators currently offer a capped price on data usage, which limits the amount spent on roaming abroad and ultimately reduces expenditure and the cost of mobile phone bills. This has largely been a driver of the rising use of international data roaming and it is likely that all mobile operators will have adopted this approach by 2017, although this will reduce the spend in a sense, it will also encourage more people to use mobile roaming and act as a catalyst for the growth discussed in the aforementioned research.

As mentioned in the video, one of the most effective projects involves 54 hours hacking events across weekends and during the conclusion of these, those involved turn their ideas into start ups and begin shaping their companies with Google’s help. Similarly in Google for Entrepreneurs head office, located in Tel-Aviv, they have seen a great number of innovators approaching them with concepts involving the use of technology, which they then offer them support in shaping and developing. The key concept is to provide opportunities for networking and ensure that budding entrepreneurs have the support of trained professionals, with years of industry experience and Mary Grove summed this up in a recent statement, in which she spoke of the project as a way “to empower the next generation of entrepreneurs and start ups”. The “Campus London” initiative epitomises this, as start ups are given the opportunity to use office space in a 7 floor building and are given mentoring from knowledgable specialists, who help them implement their ideas.

The program focuses on 3 specific areas, the first of which is developing partnerships with organisations. throughout the world, who aid local entrepreneurs and helping them to increase their resources. Secondly Google also aim to create their own initiatives, which they then manage themselves, and through these they can provide them with the tools to get their projects started, which is the third aspect of their approach. Of course Google are not doing this simply as a gesture of goodwill, although it is certainly admirable that they are committed to aiding new businesses, as through the initiative they are ensuring that their products are used from the very inception of the project and therefore become ingrained in the culture of the company.

Following this, Martin Belam gave a talk on “How to make friends and influence robots” and he largely drew on his experience working for the BBC and the Guardian in order to convey his messages. The key point that he made was that your site needs to be easy to navigate for both robots and human users, offering the unconventional advice of letting your users design the layout of your website. He also discussed several issues concerning content and mentioned that only useful information should be used on the site, if it’s not going to enhance the user experience then it should not be used.

Rebecca Weeks then gave a speech on “chasing the algorithm”, in which she used a previous experience with a client as a case study and discussed the task that she had been set, of improving the positions of 52 keywords within 7 months. She made the excellent point that she didn’t have time to carry out best practice SEO, so she didn’t and you should do the same if you are in a similar position. This meant using a vast quantity of links over quality links, however the Google Panda updates rendered this useless and they were forced to alter their approach. Similarly when the Penguin update occurred it meant that those with poor site quality were penalised and therefore they had to make changes to their strategy once again. Despite the fact that they maintained the original positions of 13 keywords, hit the target for 23 and improved on the projected position for 7, they decided to stop working with this client and Rebecca stated that this was due to the fact that without quality content, you can only ever close the gap on your competitors.

Following this was a talk titled “API! WTF?” created by Tom Anthony, who couldn’t make the event and his work was presented by a colleague, which discussed how Application Programming Interfaces (API’s) consist of a computer talking to another computer to give you the answers you need. He used Siri as an example and spoke of how applications like this may eventually replace the need for actual websites, which is an interesting theory and we were given ample time to consider it as lunch directly followed this talk.

The afternoon’s session began with a talk from Tony King on SEO deliverance, with a key message of do your homework and make sure you know all your stats, competitors, goals, site and audience. Following this was perhaps the most interesting talk of the day, despite the fact that it probably had the least relevance to SEO, as Lynne Murphy, a linguist from the University of Sussex, delivered her views on language. She discussed our obsession with, and misconceptions of, how the Americans use the English language, highlighting the need for research and to ensure that we don’t presume that our way is the right way. Jame Little of Top Cashback then provided a humorous view of his 10 years in affiliate marketing, however he openly admitted that his talk would have little educational value and he was right.

Simon Penson of Zazzle Media then gave some interesting advice on delivering your content and stated that your content strategy should have peaks and dips, with peaks being your attention grabbing ideas and dips being more mundane posts. Following this were Aleyda Solis’ 7 things you should know about mobile SEO, which included how your site performs on mobile devices, your audiences behaviour on mobile and creating localised offers on mobile. Yousef Sekander then spoke about the importance of analysing the activity of your competitors and learning from their success and mistakes, before Berion Reed delivered a talk with a similar message.

Sion O’connor then gave some insight into what clients expect of SEO agencies, before Danielle Fudge delivered her views on the importance of Pinterest in getting quality links and shares. In conclusion, the conference offered a range of opinions on many areas of SEO and they were all delivered by industry professionals, which meant that there was much to be learnt and drawing of their own experiences certainly made the discussions more entertaining.

A step-by-step walkthrough of the comparison service can be seen in the screenshots below.

You start by identifying your car either via the registration number or make and model.

Google then gets you to confirm the exact specifications of that model. Note that you can retrieve a previously store quote at any point in the process.

Once you’ve pinpointed the car spec, you then have to give details about usage and how long you’ve owned the car.

They even have a handy mileage calculator

Next, you decide what levels of cover you need for your car.

And then you provide your own personal details, which include history of past convictions, driving incidents and similar details for any other named drivers.

Google then generates a number of quotes that you can view one-by-one in summary and can click to buy or call the insurer.

You can also select a few insurers and compare their quotes.

When the user click the “Buy” button or “Click to call”, they get presented with the screen shown above that gives them the option to either buy online, from the provider’s site, or call an 0800 (toll free) number quoting a reference.

Smart move by Google. Will this anger other comparison services that currently spend a lot of money advertising on Google? Surely. Will they stop advertising on Google, though?

FBX uses cookie based targeting, enabling advertisers to use their consumer insight data to more effectively target their desired audiences on the social networking site. The key advantage is that an advertising agency can deliver more timely and relevant messages to their users and this will increase direct response on Facebook, heightening the chances of conversion.

Another appealing aspect of FBX is that it is set to provide advertisers with a greater ROI, as it will generate 4 times the amount of revenue made on other real time bidding platforms. This claim comes from Triggit Inc, who have created software for FBX and other partners have also been quick to predict great ROI and success for the system. AdRoll, who are also working with Facebook on the Exchange, have stated that advertisers who are used to receiving $10 for every $1 spent can expect to receive $16 for ever $1 they spend on the FBX.

Scott Shapiro, who is a product marketing manager at Facebook, believes that the platform will prove to be highly successful, as it enables advertisers to effectively market and re-market to valuable audiences on the social network. He also hinted that those in the retail, travel and financial sectors can expect to benefit from Facebook’s real time bidding offering, which will allow them to deliver more specific and targeted messages to a highly engaged audience.

The release of this information and the excitement that it has caused has finally given a boost to the social network’s ailing share prices and concerning performance on the stock exchange. Facebook’s share price has risen to it’s highest level in over a month, with details of the FBX sparking a 6.2% rise and this saw the share price hit $22, which is it’s highest figure since July 30.

Several posts discussing the initiative were made via the Bing Ads blog, which was formerly known as the Microsoft Advertising  blog, however they were removed shortly after they were published. In one post, Microsoft stated that the move sought to reflect the combined commitment of Microsoft and Yahoo to “bring you a broad, high value and engaged audience” and increase the effectiveness of ad campaigns for businesses involved in the network. The statement also highlighted the reach of the network, which has 151 million unique US users and indicated that this audience was superior to those available through other systems.

Interestingly, Microsoft also used this post to take a swipe at Google, despite Adwords being vastly more popular than the adCenter/Bing Ads. Of their 151 million user audience, they state that they are likely to spend 24% more than the average user and 5% more than Google searchers and this could have been one of the reasons that the post was swiftly removed.

The key question is what effect these changes will have on the average PPC agency and the answer is that they will have a minimal impact.With the format and interface of the network remaining largely the same, using Bing Ads will not be a hugely different experience from Microsoft adCenter and the network will continue to be overshadowed by Google Adwords.

Considering this data and the fact that PPC is the most popular form of mobile advertising, marketers must pay great attention to their clicks and try to identify those coming from credible sources, as well as deceitful data. There are a number of ways to identify worthless clicks and these can also help safeguard your mobile campaigns from accidental and fraudulent clicks. Firstly it is important to recognise where fraudulent clicks emanate from and of the 18% identified by Trademob, the 8% comes from server side fraud and the other 10% originates from sophisticated, client side fraud.

Accidental clicks are largely caused by 3 factors, slips of the finger caused by small screen size, confusing banner ads and poor placement of ads. Therefore you should review all of your mobile ads to ensure that they are specifically tailored to mobile devices and provide accurate, easy to interpret information to minimise accidental clicks. Similarly, if you are suffering from low conversion rates and believe that you may be a victim of accidental clicks, you should consider managing the placement of your ads manually, increasing your control over ad placement. You should also try to identify the sources of worthless clicks and remove/block these publishers, however this does involve the analysis of pre and post click information.

Click fraud is often caused by shady publishers, who find loopholes in policies and exploit them to arrange fake clicks on mobile PPC ads. This  means that mobile marketers are charged for ineffective ads, with lower conversion and ultimately considerably lower revenue. This is a serious problem, especially when you consider the growing investment in mobile advertising and the global spend of $5.3 billion by businesses in 2011. The key way to determine when server side fraud, or plain fraud, is occurring is to study the origin of clicks, as fraudulent clicks will be coming from similar IP addresses’ and will therefore leave the same ‘fingerprint’. Sophisticated fraud is more difficult to identify and prevent, as publishers distribute clicks between IP addresses and lower the chances of the same fingerprints appearing. However using ad verification platforms will reveal click-peaks at unexpected times, which is an indication of sophisticated fraud.

However there is one tell-tale sign of sophisticated fraud and this is certainly something you should study, in order to identify to source of worthless clicks. Shady publishers cannot determine the campaign settings for your mobile efforts and, as a result, they drive clicks from outside your target areas. For example you may have targeted your campaign by a geographic area, however fraudulent clicks are likely to be driven from outside this region. There is a similar issue with the devices you are targeting, as you may be advertising to iPhone users and shady publishers may be sending traffic from android devices.

Previously the overlaying of data onto the real world was largely triggered with information on location, which made it extremely popular amongst travel companies, including Lonely Planet and TripAdvisor who used it within their apps.

Experts stated that the reason that they were able to successfully harness the power of mobile AR is the fact that we have the least knowledge when we are placed in completely new environments, which enabled the aforementioned companies to flourish by offering interactive data. For example, TripAdvisor’s AR mobile app enables users to take a photo of their surroundings, which is then used to make a number of suggestions for nearby attractions and restaurants in a map format.

However, as mentioned above, there has been a diversification within mobile AR and it is now largely used in other industries, with less dependency on location and this has created a bright future for augmented reality apps. The latest mobile AR report from Juniper Research, who have published 2 previous versions, predicts growth for mobile AR and has also determined the key opportunities within the market. The industry as a whole is expected to grow to a total revenue of $5.2 billion between now and 2017, as other areas begin to achieve similar success to location based augmented reality.

Social networking and games are predicted to grow rapidly over the next 5 years and this could lead to a far more engaging experience for users, whilst the increasing use of mobile AR within healthcare could also aid industry expansion. Developments in these areas are likely to increase exposure and awareness, which has been a key barrier to the widespread success of mobile AR and this should see more rapid growth.

One key issue must be addressed in order for mobile AR to become more successful and this is the quality and usability of apps, as a failure to meet user expectations is often the key reason that many companies AR strategies fail.

One of the principle  barriers to widespread usage has been an insufficient number of technologies that are compatible with mobile AR, however more powerful mobile phones and tablet devices are improving the consistency of augmented reality applications.

The current system utilises a specific form of image search ad, which combines a thumbnail with text and largely resembles a pay per click advert, in appearance. However it would seem that Google are eager to ditch this bulky format, in a favour of a smaller design that looks less out of place among the search results. The latest test format integrates the ad alongside the search results and therefore the thumbnail alone is seen, with the word ad and a link to the site layered onto the image. This format is certainly more aesthetically pleasing, however it is difficult to determine whether it not it would be successful and there is a serious risk that many users could bypass an ad, without even realising it’s an ad.

The Evolution Of Google Image Search

When Google announced that they would be introducing ads to the Google Image Search, there was much speculation about how the company would implement these in their efforts to monetise the image search system. This took place in 2008 and in the 4 years that have passed since, the Google Image Search ads have undergone a number of changes.

The first incarnation of ads on Image Search were fairly simple and the minimal banners featured only text and a link. Although fairly unexciting, it was predicted that monetising Google Image Search would raise an additional $200 million for the search engine. Considering this it is easy to understand why Google were so eager to launch ads in image search results and this could explain the simplicity of the original version.

Two years after they introduced ads to Google Image Search, the search engine made the decision to affix display ads to an an unimpressive and alarmingly simple format. This vast improvement meant that a thumbnail appeared alongside the text and the majority of advertisers reported positive results from the revamped format. Another improvement involved the relevancy of ads, as the previous system relied simply on text and not the images within the search results. This improved targeting was well received by both advertisers and consumers, who reported more relevant results from the more effective system. The format was then dramatically altered to the latest edition, discussed above, and it would appear that Google wish to make even greater strides in improving their offerings on Image Search.

This will mean that, on average, 1 in every 10 people will own a tablet device by the end of this time period and this is likely to shape the future of digital and social marketing. Matthew Mckee, an expert with Strategy Analytics, stated that whilst many households remain tablet-less in 2012, the release of lower priced tablets, such as the Nexus and Kindle Fire, will see unprecedented growth.

Another key factor in the rise of the tablet device will be the Asian market, as Strategy Analytics predict that this region will account for approximately a quarter of the total number of tablets purchased globally. This will see Asia surpass North America as the most tablet reliant region, with China, India and Japan set to account for 76% of total Asian tablets by the end of the aforementioned 4 year period. This will prompt a shift in where companies like Apple and Google direct their marketing and manufacturing focus, which could have a huge impact on the technology industry.

This growing tablet usage will certainly effect website development and advert configuration, however mobile marketers have 4 years to perfect the art and there will be no room for excuses come 2016.

This represents a growth of more than seven times the projected estimates for 2012!

Expectedly the major share of this market will be contributed by regions such as North America, Western Europe and Far East & China. These areas are estimated to be generating 90% of the revenue of this sector.

NFC payments received a major boost during 2011, due to the arrival of new technology and infrastructure. Many mobile operators and financial institutions decided to join this stream. Several handset manufacturers introduced NFC enabled smartphones. Google launched Wallet in the U.S. and this was a major contributor to the growth of NFC services.

The Juniper report however, warns that there are still several hurdles to be crossed before the NFC market reaches its full potential. In particular retailers and small and medium businesses will have to be convinced about the potential of this service, so that they would be willing to invest in the contactless infrastructure required for this service.

Report co-author Dr Windsor Holden says: “This is a critical time for the NFC retail payments market. Despite the significant progress being made today, the full potential of the market can only be fulfilled if all ecosystem players are equally committed and mobile wallet consortia remain in place. Our report analyses the various consortia models being formed today and which types are expected to endure.”

The report ends on a positive note by predicting that 1 in 4 mobile users in the U.S. and Western Europe will use NFC by 2017.

Another form of advert that could soon make it’s way onto Facebook, is sponsored search results and this could mean advertising appearing alongside organic results when you conduct searches. The social networking site have tested the concept, however they are yet to announce whether or not this form of advertising will be rolled out and in which countries it will be available. A spokesperson for the company stated that “We are currently testing a feature that surfaces sponsored results along with the organic results when people are looking for things on Facebook”, but refused to elaborate further.

One thing that it for sure is that concept is based on a cost per click format, in a similar fashion to Google Adwords, however unlike pay per click campaigns, sponsored results will only appear when users search for specific pages/places and not for certain keywords. Another known aspect of the concept is that sponsored stories will only appear within the search bar itself and not in the search results pages, however only time will as to whether this form of Facebook advertising becomes widely used.

It has been estimated that the mobile search and discovery market will grow nearly 3 times its current estimated size over the next five years. That is to say that by the year 2017, the value of the search and discovery market will be $15 billion.

The search and discovery market can be divided into web search, local search, augmented reality search and discovery apps. The click through and cost-per-click rates of these sectors are very high, as the users of this market can be accurately targeted by advertisers.

Major search engine service providers such as Google and Microsoft feel that a large percentage of mobile searches are localized, but according to the Juniper report, local search apps are a good set up for advertisers as they allow easy targeting of users, with relevant results being available through them.

Mobile search apps such as Appsfire, DuckDuckGo, Mobile Commerce, mxData, Poynt, Qype, Yelp, Wikitude help to improve the understanding of the mobile search and discovery industry.

At the same time search engines like Google, which holds the major share of the search market, are also expected to do well in this sector.

A similar service was launched in the U.S. in 2010, and now the Bicycle Route Maps functionality has been launched in beta for U.K. users. This is an addition to the public transport, walking and driving maps that are already available.

A lot of the cycling routes that have been given seem to follow the same paths that cyclists normally prefer to use, such as quiet and pleasant roads that avoid major crowded motorways. Surprisingly, however, the cycle path recommended by Google between Barnet and Hertford follows major arterial roads instead of the more scenic National Cycle Route 12.

Google Maps bicycle route to AccuraCast’s offices

Other cycle route planners such as CycleStreets have been available in the U.K. for some time, but the most popular one, CycleStreets for Android, tends to drain out the mobile battery very soon. Google’s own app should be much more mobile friendly.

The cycle maps feature is currently accessible on iPhones but will be discontinued once Apple starts its own mapping service.

While companies spend a very large amount of money advertising on Facebook, the BBC study suggests that the gains from it are not much.

It is believed that a large number of profiles on Facebook are fake, and are created by spammers to spread spam.

If a company advertising on Facebook, receives ‘Like’s from these fake profiles, it is not going to generate much revenue from the ad campaign.

Facebook has confirmed that about 5-6 percent of their users may be using fake profiles. However, according to them, this is not a substantial number and should not adversely affect advertisers. A Facebook spokesperson said, “We don’t see evidence of a ‘wave of likes’ coming from fake users or ‘obsessive clickers’.”

However, Graham Cluley of the security firm Sophos said that this was a major problem that was being downplayed by Facebook, as that was in their best interest.

Michael Tinmouth, a social media marketing consultant, who has been running ad campaigns for several small businesses says, that though the results looked encouraging at first, the majority of ‘Like’s came from places like Egypt and Philippines though the ads were targeted at audiences all over the world. Also, the profile history of several users seemed unbelievable.

Facebook has responded by saying that “Mr Tinmouth appeared to have sent out scattergun advertising to a global audience without specifying a target group.”

A possible explanation is that users in developing countries are more likely to ‘Like’ brands than users in Europe and the USA.

Alternatively, these advertisers and the Facebook Pages that were surveyed by the BBC also might have bought into services that sell Facebook Likes. Most places that sell Likes outright should be looked at carefully.

Facebook Likes for sale on uSocial.net

Costs per click on Facebook often range between £0.30 to £0.75. This means, that a business would have to pay £3,000 just to drive 10,000 visitors to their Facebook Page. Even if 100% of those visitors converted into fans – which in itself is impossible! – the cost of such a campaign would still be three times or more than the price advertised by networks selling Likes.

Anyone considering giving up on social media advertising based on this piece of news should keep in mind that:

• Social commerce revenue could reach $30 billion by 2015, say analysts fromSocialMediadd.
• Ad recall increases on average by 55 percent for social ads compared to non-social ads, according to a Nielsen study.
• Advertisers will spend $7.72 billion on social networks – with nearly half of that money coming from the U.S., led by Facebook, which will take in about 70 percent of all social networking spend in the U.S, according to AdAge.

Advertisers that target their campaigns sensibly will often find that users who ‘Like’ their pages are much more willing to engage with their brand and are interested in what they’re offering.

The emerging market for app-enabled devices is growing in popularity and is expected to affect different aspects of our day-to-day life.

Some of the areas in which this sector is already active includes consumer electronics, payment processing, fitness and healthcare.

Tablet wireless accessories are also growing in popularity. According to the study, app enabled devices will cross 100 million units by 2017. Only about 10 million units are expected to be sold by the end of 2012.

It will be possible to make mobile payments through a smartphone payment reader, instead of the more bulky POS devices currently being used.

In the same way monitoring of ones health parameters such as measurement of blood glucose levels and other such readings will be possible through the use of app-enabled hardware.

Global fitness brands such as Nike have also entered the market with fitness smart wireless accessories.

In the U.S. smart wireless accessories are already being made available in retail stores.

New entrants into the payments market such as Square and iZettle are also making headway through this new system.

The report also points out how different players in the field can best monetize themselves to be more successful in the business.

A study was recently conducted by Salford Business School at the University of Salford, for the charity Anxiety UK.

According to the findings of this study about 53% of those interviewed said that social networks had affected their lives. Of these about 51% respondents said that the effect had been negative.

The most common reason for the feeling of anxiety or depression that was generated through the social networks, was due to comparisons between the achievements of friends with ones own achievements.

Two thirds of the respondents reported having difficulty in relaxing or sleeping after using the network.

About a quarter of those interviewed also said that they were facing difficulties in personal relationships or at the workplace due to a more confrontational attitude that developed from the use of social networks.

55% of the respondents said that they felt ‘worried or uncomfortable’ when they were unable to access their social network accounts for any reason. And 60% reported that they felt compelled to switch off their devices in order to get a break from the social media.

While these findings do indicate some negative effects, one must keep in mind the fact that the sample surveyed was 298 people which is an extremely small sample considering the fact that the social networks are used by hundreds of millions on a regular basis.

It is also possible that the respondents who have reported the negative feelings could be of anxious and pessimistic nature to begin with. Hence one needs to be careful before labeling the social networks as causing anxiety and depression.

Platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook, are used for real time interaction with other spectators and viewers of sporting events and this trend is likely to continue through the London 2012 Olympic Games, which are expected to see the highest amount social media interaction in the events history. Technological developments since the previous Games, held in Beijing in 2008, are likely to be the key reason for rising social media usage during the 2012 event, with more intelligent smartphones released since 2008 and the advent of consumer tablets coming after the Beijing games.

The rapid growth of social media and the alterations to media consumption, that mean a vast amount of print and video media are now consumed online via pc’s, tablets and mobiles, will see record social usage during the event as the infographic below reveals. With all events set to be streamed online for the first time it is even more likely that social interaction will occur, as many will be watching the action unfold on a pc or tablet device as opposed to via television. One thing that is for sure is that it will certainly be interesting to see how viewers use social media platforms during the 2012 Games and whether the events will break more records than viewers will online.

Tech Social Olympics Infographic

Just last week Google announced that they would be shutting down several of their products such as iGoogle, Google Mini, Google Talk Chatback and several others in due course of time.

The reason given for this decision is that these products are no longer very popular and have been overshadowed by other products that are more state of the art, and which provide better service to users.

However the decision to do away with the old products has not been received too happily by all users. There has been a lot of criticism from users who are regular users of those products.

Some of them have gone so far as to say that the older products are being discontinued in order to give a push to the new services being provided by Google.

Some comments from disgruntled users were as follows:

• “I’ve tolerated a lot of google changes. And not all have been bad. Overall, I think I’ve been pretty accepting of change, but this goes way too far.”
• “really bad move google. i will never have a smart phone, so your blithe expectation of me to use apps to replace igoogle is misplaced at best.”
• “Incredibly bad move. Have used iGoogle for years. Will now try to find an alternative to all google products as soon as I can….”
• “In order to defend their decision Google says, “All of your personal data stored in other Google products will continue to be available via those products, including Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Finance, Google Docs (now Google Drive), Google Bookmarks, and Google Tasks,” says Google. “Other gadgets, like the to-do list, allow you to export your data – look for the ‘Download all’ option under the drop-down menu tied to the title of your list. Most iGoogle gadgets are created and maintained by third-party developers. If you’d like to export your data, you should contact the gadget creator directly.””

Co-founder Larry Page who took over as CEO last April has decided that they should shut down several of their products that are no longer very popular or have become redundant, due to the arrival of newer more sophisticated products.

Over 30 products have been shortlisted for the exercise. Among them the better known ones are iGoogle, Google Mini, Google Talk Chatback and Google Video.

Google Mini, which was launched in 2005, will be discontinued from 31st July. Google will however, continue to provide technical support to Mini customers for the duration of their contracts and they will be provided with more details soon.

Google Talk Chatback will also be discontinued and users are being advised to use Meebo bar instead.

Google Video has already stopped taking uploads since mid 2009. Users can download or migrate their content by August 20 after which it will be automatically transferred to YouTube.

iGoogle, will be shut down on 1st November 2013, giving users 16 months “to adjust or export their data.”

The Symbian Search App will also be discontinued shortly.

It has been estimated that the amount spent on In-app mobile advertising this year will be $2.4 billion. The study also estimated that the amount spent on In-app mobile advertising will triple by the year 2017.

A large part of this increase will be due to the increased use of rich media in ads allied to greater app usage.

Brands are already experimenting with apps like Shazam, which increase the engagement of the user, and increased engagement is likely to lead to a higher click through rate.

Marketers must ensure that their ad campaigns are well suited to the mobile format to increase the engagement of the users. Several brands are yet to adapt their campaigns to this form of advertising, and the sooner they do so, the better their click through rates will be.

North America and the Western European countries will be the leaders as far as In-app mobile ad spending is concerned and are expected to generate 60% of the revenue.

From the looks of it, Facebook is in the early stages of developing a ‘Want’ button.

For some time now, there has been speculation that Facebook is in the process of developing more buttons. Now Facebook developer Tom Waddington has come across a short tag — ” < fb:wants > “ in the Facebook code which suggests that the social network could be preparing a new plugin which will help users to let their Friends know what they ‘want’.

So far Facebook has refused to confirm or deny the development of such a button. A spokeswoman for Facebook said, “we’re always testing new Platform features, however we have nothing new to announce.”

If this button is actually introduced, it could be a great advantage to marketers and advertisers of Facebook, as they will be able to judge what it is that their users want and thus target the audience accordingly.

This in turn could help Facebook to generate more revenue from advertising, thus making it a ‘Win–Win’ situation for all concerned.

The user can find what he wants, probably at a discounted rate, the advertiser makes more sales and Facebook generates more revenue.

This idea is reinforced by the social interaction that took place during February’s NFL Superbowl, the event created such a vast amount of tweeting that it led to an unprecedented number of tweets per second. During the match between the New York Giants and the New England Patriots, a staggering 12,233 tweets were made per second and even Madonna’s half time show managed to generate in excess of 10,000 tweets each second.

This year’s UEFA European Championships, which concluded on Sunday of last week, are an excellent example of how sporting events can lead to greater interaction on social platforms and this predominantly takes place on Twitter. The tournament, which takes place once every four years and creates a great deal of excitement and anticipation, achieved a total of approximately 11,900,000 tweets between the opening and closing ceremonies. Spain won the tournament in convincing fashion with a 4-0 win over Italy in the final and understandably the Mediterranean nation received the most mentions, with a total of 873,000 Spain related tweets during the competition. Surprisingly England were the nation with the second highest number of tweets, despite the fact that they exited the tournament at the quarter-finals stage. Media expectations and the shock of finishing top of a difficult group led to great optimism about England’s chances for the rest of the tournament and the national team received a total of 849,000 tweets.

Several individual players received a monumental amount of tweets during the competition for the Henri Delaunay Trophy, Cristiano Ronaldo and Italy’s eccentric striker Mario Balotelli led the way with 267,715 and 213,127 mentions respectively. Despite only playing for 188 minutes in the entirety of the tournament, Spain’s Fernando Torres received in excess of 188,000 tweets as his 88th minute goal in the final ensured that he won the Golden Boot for Euro 2012. With a number of fine goals being scored during the tournament, it is no surprise that goals were the key talking point of the tournament on Twitter and by the end of the tournament there was a total of 457,605 tweets on the goals scored. It is likely that the London 2012 Olympic Games will receive a similar amount of discussion via social media and it will be extremely interesting to see where this interaction happens and the topics that will be discussed.

The service is expected to be available in the U.K. from July 2012. It will be the first time that Google TV will be available anywhere other than in the U.S.

Google has had a tie up with Sony, who will be launching the product the NSZ-GS7 next month in the U.K. It is expected to cost around £200. Apple TV, which is already available in the U.K. is priced at £99.

Sony has said that Google TV will also be made available in Canada, Australia, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Brazil and Mexico in the near future.

Gildas Pelliet, Sony’s European head of marketing says, “Entertainment content is available through so many channels and sites, and Google TV helps consumers easily find what they want to watch, listen to or play with the freedom of the internet and using the familiar Chrome search engine technology,”

The Google TV device will be controlled by a smartphone or a dual-sided remote control with a full QWERTY keyboard.

It is also expected that a Blu-ray version will be launched later in the year and will cost around £300.

A spokesperson of Sony U.K. has said that Google TV will enable users to access thousands of Android apps including 150 apps that have been specially optimised for television.