Big Picture Advertising

Now addictive is up and running most of my posting is around mobile and will be on the addictive blog.

I will be cross posting most of that here and I'll continue to blog about non mobile stuff here too.

So I'd recommend you subscribe to the addictive feed too - and take a look at the site too.

More Mary Meeker Mobile Magic

We've just added the must read deck from Morgan Stanley's guru Mary Meeker ( the keynote at the Google event earlier this week) to the addictive blog

It covers all things digital but has a heavy bias to mobile.

Real Time - Exchanges

It's clear to me that any digital media ( PC or Mobile) will move to exchanges - it's just not possible to unlock the value of digital targeting through the age old media model of people talking to people.

Given the size of the PC world media market and its consequent sloth, I think mobile is most likely to drive this area.

One of the best thinkers on this space is Darren Herman and his latest post is well worth reading - as well as this white paper that Darren points to.

So far we have seen lots of action the sell side of mobile and we expect to see similar activity on the buy side - probably around the exchanges idea. We're very interested to people making movies in this space - please get in touch 

Also posted on addictive

Mobile Fix - March 4

The new Mobile Fix is now up on the addictive blog.

Mobile World Congress

We're covering some of the bigger stories out of Barcelona on the addictive blog. As the mobile industry gather there for the big event - around 50000 delegates - we're seeing all the big players staking out there territory

In our view mobile is coagulating around a small number of key platforms that will dominate the next decade - on both mobile and on the PC web. In our opinion those platforms are Apple, Google/Android, Nokia and Microsoft - and the health and wealth of all the other players will depend on their relationship with these platforms. Which is why the operators and the other handset manufacturers are so keen to retain their current place in the pecking order.

For example Adobe Flash are really keen to be the write once run anywhere development platform - but until they sort a way of working with Apple they will struggle.

Facebook will continue to be a key player but with 100 million mobile users we expect them to start to flex their muscles before too long; they will remain platform agnostic but could we see them do an Apple/ Google and launch their own handset?

The operators are seeing their ondeck audience evaporate and are really keen to develop their relationships with their customers to prevent them morphing into dumb pipes - and it may be that their role in facilitating mobile advertising and content can prevent this?

Read our coverage here

100 million mobile Facebook users

So how big is Facebook on mobile? We saw last week from the GSMA data that 5 million people in the UK use Facebook on mobile and now Facebook share this staggering fact with us.

Mobile Fix

The new mobile fix is up on the addictive blog.

Highlights include a car launched with an iphone app, thoughts on SMS as a dialogue tool and a look forward to next weeks Mobile World Congress.

And you can now sign up to get the Fix by email or by RSS feed.

Mobile Fix - February 5

New research sensation

Over 400 people turned out in London yesterday to see Comscore and the GSMA launch Mobile Media Metrics  - research that users operators data to see what people really do on mobile. We see this as a huge step forward for mobile – which is now the best researched medium in the UK – and the research will roll out around the world in coming months.

Our favourite quote – “Whilst smartphone users represent just 29 per cent of the UK total mobile Internet audience, they accounted for 47 per cent of total page views, and 51 per cent of the total time spent online in December 2009.”

Closely followed by the fact 5 million people in the UK access Facebook on their mobile!

http://www.mobile-ecosystem.org/?p=1521

 

Are QR codes finally going mainstream?

With publishers now testing QR or 2D codes and Google using them for their favourite places we think widespread adoption of these codes is imminent. The key thing holding them back seems to be a lack of a true standard – too many vendors are pushing proprietory codes and readers are of varying quality. In (unscientific) testing we found QuickMark (http://bit.ly/c48EC1) to be the best iphone QR reader. Any other suggestions?

http://bit.ly/d43zga

http://bit.ly/6zEBXf

 

Is it all about touch?

Some good new thinking around the idea that the real step change with smartphones is touch – and that the debate around apps vs browser is really about touch vs mouse

http://ow.ly/13HZb

 

Mobile to pass PC as the main way to access the web – by 2013?

New Gartner data is even more aggressive that Morgan Stanly about the switch from PC to mobile. With other data suggesting smartphone sales soared by 30% on q4 last year that doesn’t seem outlandish.

http://bit.ly/b9NmdE

http://bit.ly/a9KoFo

 

Innovating in mobile

With all the evidence that the mobile media is big enough to warrant serious investment from brands we should remember that much of the advertising tools are pretty rubbish. The formats are drawn from the PC web and don’t work. So we see a major role for us over the coming years is to innovate in terms of formats and how mobile is used as a marketing medium. This article has some good commentary on what the vendors are doing (registration required)

http://bit.ly/cpRKgq

 

 Cross posted from addictive - where you can now sign up for updates by email or RSS

Interesting times in UK TV

From the Guardian;

BSkyB increased the number of customers using its Sky+ personal video recorder set-top boxes by 553,000 in the three months to the end of December. The total Sky+ customer base now stands at 6.5 million

And Paid Content have an interesting take on the announcement of Adam Crozier as the new CEO at ITV.

We still wonder why so much attention is paid to traditional TV which is clearly in decline as online and mobile grow in importance. Especially as we heard that almost 20% of iplayer viewing happens on mobile!

Mobile Fix - jan 28

The new Mobile Fix from addictive is out and on the addictive site now. Topics include the ipad ( of course) a forecast saying apps will be a $30billion market by 2013, a look at the players in Mobile Metrics and our look at data which suggests iphones are bigger than twitter.

Click here to read it.

Smartphones bigger than social?

One of the things I find surprising is how many marketing people diss iphones and apps as a niche market.

My favourite was hearing that the buzz around apps is driven by the fact creative directors have iphones yet don't realise that nobody else does. Of course now you can buy an iphone on Orange, Vodafone and at Tesco (and it is rumoured that TMobile and Virgin will get you one if you shout loud enough) as well as O2, that myth is evaporating.

But I was delighted to see some new data which shows that more people have iphones than use Twitter;

Admob have an interesting post showing Apple had shipped 78million devices by the end of 09

And BBH Labs pointed out research showing that Twitter had 75 million user accounts at the end of 09. And the research points out that in December only 17% of those accounts actually tweeted - supporting their view that;

A large percentage of Twitter accounts are inactive, with about 25% of accounts having no followers and about 40% of accounts having never sent a single Tweet.

Add to that one of my favourite stats - since the start of 2007 Canalsys data shows that over 350 million smartphones have shipped. So the number of people with Smartphones is around the same as the number of Facebook users.

Now I'm a big fan of Twitter and Facebook - and social in general - but this data supports my view that brands would be much better off investing in a smart mobile strategy than jumping into social.

And the future of social is all about mobile any way.

 Cross posted from Addictive