Marketing Pilgrim

What would you give up in order to keep your favorite phone apps? Coffee? Chocolate? Lunch? That’s one of the questions MTV asked as part of their new study, “Love ‘Em or Leave ‘Em: Adoption, Abandonment and the App-Addled Consumer.”

They began with 1,300 self-reported daily mobile app users and added in a bunch of interviews with app consumers and found that people were pretty hardcore in their belief that apps have changed their lives.

83% of people in the study said they were addicted to apps and one (someone who is my kindred spirit) said “apps are like Xanax in a phone.”

We were happy when eMarketer predicted a 10.5% rise in online ad spending back in December 2010. Now, they’ve revised that number, saying the increase will be more like 20%.

How does that translate into dollars? Try $31.3 billion spent on online advertising this year.

eMarketer principal analyst David Hallerman says:

“The internet has become as fundamental as television to advertisers. As consumers continue to increase their time spent online and as a resurgent economy continues to bolster ad budgets, we’re going to continue to see an influx of dollars toward the internet. More ad formats, such as video, and more channels, especially social media and mobile, are also key contributors to the spending gains.”

If you are in Boston, Portland, OR, San Diego, San Francisco, Madrid and Turin you can get live transit updates in Google Maps. This is pretty cool. Here is the video from the Google Mobile blog.

I wonder what percentage of people in these cities will be aware of this feature in the next few months? You’ll be able to tell who knows and who doesn’t because those who are informed will be more relaxed and won’t be leaning out into traffic to see if that bus or train is coming.

Facebook has once again decided that it will turn on a feature without telling anyone and just let everything be ‘business as usual’. This time it’s the facial recognition feature for photo tagging that is on by default. Some folks are creeped out by this (Google has said it isn’t going to use it’s own version, at least not now) but, let’s face it, Facebook could care less.

This capability has been available to some Facebook users since December but now it’s the default setting for everyone across the board. That will get some folks upset but only the small (as a percentage of overall users) subset of users that actually pays attention to this. Zuck and friends depend on this disproportionate uproar dying quickly and they know it doesn’t really impact the overall business (although we act like it absolutely will).

Groupon is big on restaurant discounts but for those of you who would rather eat at home, they also have a deal for you. This week, Groupon began testing a new feature that adds deals to grocery store loyalty cards.

They began the experiment at the Big Y Deal stores in Springfield, MA. It’s a $39.99 Summer Seafood Grill Pack for $24. When you hit the buy button, instead of getting a printable coupon, the deal is loaded on to your store loyalty card and automatically comes off when you check out.

That’s the theory.

I’ve been using ecoupons on my Ralphs grocery store loyalty card and it’s a very confusing process. You have to assume that most people will be doing a full shopping run, not just picking up this deal, so making sure you actually get your discount will take some effort. And can I say, $16 off? That’s the best they could do?

You can check-in to your favorite restaurant, retail store and even your friend’s house. Now, Meebo wants you to check-in to your favorite websites in return for VIP status, discounts and more.

Meebo is the company that makes that sharing bar you see at the bottom of many sites. The bar can be customized to show recent activity, offer chat options and present promotional campaigns.  The new bar, which launches later this week, has the ability to reward users who visit a site multiple times.

The new widget uses a “super secret algorithm” to determine if a person is a VIP visitor. If so, the widget pops up in the bottom corner with a discount or link to special content.