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Galaxy S Device Sales Top 100 Million

posted on January 15, 2013

Samsung Galaxy S3So this is news for marketers?

Yes it is. Marketers are faced with decisions every day as to where they need to invest budget money that has been fought for tooth and nail. When you fight for the capital to do all the things you think you can as a marketer then you better spend it wisely.

With the mobile world becoming the norm than something to be getting ahead of marketers are now being faced with the real question of how to assign mobile development dollars in the iOS v. Android battle. This used to be a pretty easy call. iPhones dominated the space overall. Android was seen as a threat but not one to invest in before any iOS app development. With this news of the success of the Samsung S Series of devices that decision may be getting a bit harde to make.

TechCrunch reported over the weekend

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Will Anyone Ever Truly Challenge Google in Search?

posted on January 15, 2013

google-logo1At the start of 2013 there is a fair amount of discussion about the activity of search.

There was the ‘victory’ by Google in the FTC antitrust ruling in the US. There is the hope of the anti-Google crowd that the European Commission will play hard ball with the search giant in their antitrust / anti-competitive crusade to bring the search giant to its knees.

Now two articles appear recently that focus on two very interesting areas of search that COULD happen. When you see a lot of these kinds of posts where people are playing the ‘what if?’ game it means there is either a lot of unrest in the marketplace OR there is little real news to report on. It’s probably a little of both but let’s look at two opinions that have surfaced about the future of the search industry.

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Millennial Media Infographic Shows Impact of Mobile Gifting

posted on January 14, 2013

tablet growthOne of the coolest things about modern technology is the speed with which things happen. And when things happen in large numbers, we can see a spike in activity right away and from there, make certain assumptions.

In this case, it’s Millennial Media making assumptions about mobile gifting this past December. The mobile advertising company saw a rise in ad impressions from December 23 to December 27 which leads us to believe that many people found a mobile device under the tree.

Smartphone average daily growth was 2% but tablets came in at 12%. You could take this to mean tablets are more popular than smartphones but Millennial has a better answer.

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Viggle and GetGlue Call Off the Wedding

posted on January 14, 2013

Back in November, second screen newbie announced its intentions to acquire front runner GetGlue. I was surprised because, in this particular space, it’s like announcing a merger between Facebook and Twitter. Both services do fundamentally the same thing but they each have their own special twist and loyal fans. A merger might have been spectacular but more likely it would have resulted n the end of GetGlue’s unique badge reward system.

This morning, GetGlue announced that they’ve called off the wedding.

Today we’ve decided that GetGlue will not be merging with Viggle. The two companies remain friendly and think highly of each other.

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Seeing the Future: Sentiment Analysis and Predicting Trends

posted on January 14, 2013

ibm-steampunkAs marketers we spend considerable time looking at analytics.

Much of the analytics has to do with prior performance. We look at what has happened, determined why we think it happened that way then we adjust accordingly.

In a real-time sense we look at analytics and we hope to learn what is happening “on-the-fly” and adjust accordingly.

So what else is there? Well, there’s always predicting the future. Yeah, that’s right. Predictive analytics are getting attention. I suspect that we are in the heavy hype phase where it sounds cool but will the delivery match the anticipation? We have enough of an Internet industry track record to know that hype often outpaces reality by a sizable margin (how many “This is REALLY the year of mobile!” claims were made starting in about 2000?).

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Building AdWords Accounts With No History Part 1: Launch

posted on January 14, 2013

google-adwords Whether you have a brand-new client who has never used AdWords, are launching an additional product line in an existing account, or starting up a new promotional campaign, starting a PPC account with no history to go on can be tricky. There’s so much going on in paid search, so where’s the best place to start? (Note: stay tuned for a future part 2 post on optimization steps!)

Build out Keywords
Before you can do anything, the first step is to figure out what you are going to bid on. With no historical performance data available, you’ll need to pay for information to find out what works and what doesn’t, so adding thousands of keywords off the bat can be an expensive and ill-advised plan.

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T-Commerce, a Two-Sided Phone, Flexible Tablets and Other Cool Stuff from CES

posted on January 11, 2013

iLoungeIWP_5334The Consumer Electronics Show is coming to an end and many weary reporters are heading home bolstered by the promise of quiet time and no lines for the bathroom. CES is six straight days of noise, lights, hype and pitchmen and more input than any one person can digest in that amount of time.

The reporter from Forbes was a first timer and here’s what he had to say:

If you ever really questioned if there is in fact an app for that, let me assure you — after perusing many, many of the booths from the more than 3,250 exhibitors spread out over the 1.9 million-square feet at the Consumer Electronics Show 2013 — that there is.