Mobile Mix From Millennial Media

Millennial Media has launched a new report called Mobile Mix, which covers the latest trends in mobile devices, manufacturers, operating systems, and technology. Some of you might be aware of the fact that Millennial Media already releases a scorecard called SMART (Scorecard for Mobile Advertising Reach and Targeting) every month, which focuses on mobile advertising. The company says that Mobile Mix and SMART will complement each other.

Millennial Media has released its fist Mobile Mix report for the month of March 2010. Given below are some of the highlights from the report.

• Apple accounted for over 40% of the ad impressions in the month of March. The company has held on to the top slot continuously for six months now.

• Manufacturers supporting Google Android enabled devices dominate the list of Top 15 Mobile Manufacturers. In fact, more than 50% of the manufacturers on the list are associated with Android powered devices.

• Mobile handheld devices like iPod Touch, iPad, and Sony PSP accounted for nearly 21% of the impressions in the month of March. This is the first time the report has mentioned something about handheld devices with mobile web facility. Earlier, it used to focus only on mobile phones.

• Android ad requests increased by a whopping 75%, which is unprecedented. RIM ad requests, on the other hand, increased by 25%.

Categories: All things mobile phones.

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Steve Madden’s Plan to Enter the Mobile World

Optimistic predictions about mobile advertising are not new at all. You can find a whole bunch of experts claiming that the mobile phone will become the most sought-after advertising platform in the future. However, when something that validates these claims happens, it surely is exciting.

Steve Madden, a San Francisco based retail shoe brand, has been bitten by the mobile bug and is considering shifting its focus on mobile phone advertising. Jared Horowitz, who is in charge of the business development section of Steve Madden, has stated that it has become an integral part of their digital business.

As of now, only 0.5% of Steve Madden’s revenue is generated by mobile users. The company, however, is hopeful that the revenue will increase significantly in the coming years if they develop a mobile optimized site and drive traffic to it by running innovative mobile advertising campaigns. So, to prepare themselves for the mobile juggernaut, they have come up with a long list of plans. They include

• Developing a mobile optimized WAP site which is easy to navigate.

• Adding lots of interactive features to the site like click-to-call functionality (to help people get in touch with sales persons directly) and mobile social networking functionality (to help people share their favorite stuff with their friends via email, Twitter, or Facebook).

• Adding a Store Locator feature to help people find the nearest Steve Madden store.

• Developing an application for the iPhone and iPod Touch to make it easier for iPhone users to reach the site.

• Setting up multiple revenue streams with mobile web display ads, mobile search ads, and in-app display ads.

• Introducing SMS offers and mobile coupons to engage potential customers.

• Devising innovative mobile marketing strategies to target potential customers.

According to the numbers revealed by the company, the non-optimized site of Steve Madden got more than 55,000 visitors via mobile devices in the month of February. There were more than 300,000 page views and 450 purchases. If they go ahead with the plan and implement the ideas they have come up with, they will be able to get a lot more visitors in a short span of time. More traffic, needless to add, will result in more revenue, which is always good news for any company. It should be interesting to see where Steve Madden goes from here.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising.

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Entertainment Sector Tops Mobile Ad Spending

A recent metrics report from Millennial Media has the details about the recent trends in mobile ad spending. According to the report, entertainment is the sector which tops the list as far as mobile ad spending is concerned.

The report also says that 2/3rd of the money spent on entertainment was spent by movie studios for promoting their movies. Major movie studios in Hollywood have been spending a considerable amount of money on mobile ads of late. If you have a high end cell phone like the iPhone or any other web enabled phone for that matter, you could have seen ads for movies like Star Trek, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, and Fast & Furious 4. Since the response for such mobile campaigns is usually good, movie studios these days do not think twice to spend money on mobile advertising.

For the regular readers of this blog, this news might not be surprising, as we have already discussed this issue here, here, and here.

Apart from movies, a considerable amount has been spent on games (16% of the total spending), TV (9% of the total spending), music (4% of the total spending), and other things (7% of the total spending) that people are interested in.

One of the things to be noted here is that there has been a considerable change in the way mobile advertising is perceived by large companies in the entertainment industry lately. Earlier, the amount spent on mobile marketing campaigns was very little and it was usually for ringtones and stuff like that. Now, movie studios and television studios are coming up with mobile marketing campaigns to promote their movies, sitcoms, and reality TV shows. This just goes to show that a lot of people are slowly beginning to understand that mobile ad campaigns, when done the right way, can give very good results.

Apart from this, a lot of brands are turning their attention towards mobile ads to drive traffic to their mobile sites and enhance their presence in the mobile world. In my opinion, this is a good sign of things to come in the future. A lot of companies have developed mobile sites to help their readers access the websites they want right from their mobile phone. Since mobile web is becoming increasingly popular and the number of high end mobile users is growing fast, it is a good idea for big companies and popular brands to have their own mobile sites. This issue, as some of you might remember, has been already discussed in this blog.

The report also says that Apple iPhone and iPod Touch continue to dominate the mobile ad market by getting the lion’s share of ad impressions. However, it should be noted that other mobile phones like Samsung Instinct are giving a tough competition to Apple in terms of ad impressions.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising, All things mobile phones.

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Watch Flash videos in your Apple iPhone - right now

Have you lost count of the number of times you tried to play a Flash video in your Apple iPhone and failed? Well my friends; the solution, at last, is here. It has come in the form of a not-so-well-known website called Avot mV. The site has one hell of a collection of videos from YouTube, MySpace, and other sites and you’ll be able to play them in your iPhone.

All you need to do is – check out the site from your mobile browser, select the video you want, and simply click the play button and watch the magic of the video getting played in your Safari Mobile. It’s that simple. You can choose from a helluva collection including music, sports, politics, crazy stuff, sitcoms, and many other videos. You can even create an account with the site and bookmark your favorite videos and links there for future use. The site is uber cool and especially, it’s really cool to watch these videos on iPhone. Apart from the iPhone, you can also check out the videos on your iPod Touch, Windows Mobile device, Motorola RAZR, Samsung, and LG mobile phones.

Categories: Apple iPhone, Apple.

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