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SMART Report Says: Parents are Twice as Likely to Shop Via a Mobile Phone

posted on November 14, 2012

Toot the horns and unfurl the flags, it’s time for another Millennial Media SMART Report! This month, it’s all about the three R’s, Retail, Restaurants and Revenue.

Ranked by ad spend, Retail and Restaurants come in third below Telecommunications and Finance but the field grew by an average of 11% per month.

For these companies, it’s all about location, location, location. 44% of all campaigns run on Millennial Media’s system had a store locator component and 60% used location-based targeting.

Not surprisingly, increasing foot traffic was a major goal for these advertisers coming in at 38%. 17% were hoping for site traffic and 16% went with the more general term of “brand awareness.”

Of all the ads in this area, Clothing represented the largest chunk followed pretty closely by Home Products. Fast food beat out dine-in restaurants 11% to 5%.

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Pinterest Learns To Speak Business

posted on November 14, 2012

Today, Pinterest has announced new tools for businesses. One can say that Pinterest isn’t just about recipes and crafts anymore but, in all likelihood, it still is for a lot people. What we often overlooked are the businesses that crave that kind of forum to get their products wedged into the Pinterest boards of cooks and crafters everywhere. What better way to sell things! Oops, I meant add to the conversation (selling is so 1900′s)!

Of course, Pinterest is far from being just for those folks and as it expands its horizons the need to be more business oriented is apparent and one that should be addressed. Well how about this, today it is! From the Pinterest blog we get

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Google Fiber Goes Live in Kansas City

posted on November 14, 2012

We have tracked the Google Fiber story since the times that Google was accepting applications to the choice made for Kansas City, KS to be the first city to get Google Fiber to the addition of Kansas City, KS to the troubles of installation to now the final delivery.

Let’s just say it has been interesting to watch and it will likely make many jealous when they hear that the users of Google Fiber are getting an average of 600-700 mbps out of the gate which drops off to a mere 200 mbps through wireless. I want some, how about you?

The whole thing has created some interesting circumstances like the story from Ars Technica about someone who is investing in start-ups in the new Google Fiber Zone.

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Google To Print: My Ad Dollars Can Beat Your Ad Dollars Anytime!

posted on November 13, 2012

Let’s call this one a graphical depiction of how the ad business has changed in the last ten years. The graph comes from Statista by way of Cnet and here it is:

According to this chart, Google finally pulled ahead of print advertising in dollars spent. Not surprising, given the state of the newspaper and magazine business, but wait. . . there are a few points to consider.

Earlier today, my son reminded me that numbers can be manipulate to prove almost anything. We were discussing time expansion as it relates to creation, (yes, really) but the point applies here as well. Statista states right off the bat that this isn’t a completely fair comparison. Google’s numbers are worldwide, while the print numbers are US only. If you included international print, I’d guess that the scale would tip in print’s favor.

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Thumbs Up for Facebook’s Popular Comment Test

posted on November 13, 2012

Mashable is reporting a change in the Force. Facebook is testing two new comment features that could have a big impact on brand pages.

One is the ability for page admins to reply directly to an individual comment. I’ve had this feature on my wish list for some time now. It would really help turn Facebook posts into a conversation which is vital for the strength of the community.

Right now, your only option is to add a post to the bottom of the list and hope that the person your responding to scrolls down to read it. And seeing how individual comment replies are common everywhere else, it should be an easy thing for Facebook to initiate.

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Google and FTC Heading for a Showdown?

posted on November 13, 2012

According to a report from Bloomberg the FTC has issued Google an ultimatum about practices that the agency has been investigating for quite some time. Now that the election is passed I guess it’s a good time to go after them, huh?

The gist of this can be seen in this quote from Bloomberg

Google Inc.is being pressed by U.S. Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jonathan Leibowitz to offer to resolve the agency’s antitrust probe in the next few days or face a lawsuit, two people familiar with the matter said.

Google has been in discussions with the agency for about two weeks and hasn’t put any remedy proposals on the table, said the people, who declined to be identified because the negotiations are private.

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Boston.com Uses Advertisers’ Blogs As Part of Ad Package

posted on November 13, 2012

Local Internet marketing is quite a puzzle for most businesses and even for most publishers. Display, while effective in certain ways, is usually not enough to get the point across for many businesses. Most small local businesses (and even large ones looking to reach a local market) have stories to tell that won’t fit in a display ad.

It’s for this reason that Boston.com is rolling out a new program called Insights. It’s a neat idea of taking real content from advertisers in the form of promoting blog posts in order to help Boston.com readers jump right into the conversation with advertisers because they are being exposed to real information that could help them. It could also help them make a decision to do business with the advertiser, errrrr, I mean blogger. Well, you get the picture. Take a look at this video to get the idea.

Is this the first program of its kind that does anything like this?