4-2-15
eMarketer predicts the global mobile advertising market will hit $100 billion by 2016. If correct the $101.37 billion eMarketer projection for ads served to mobile phones and tablets would represent a 430 percent increase over the final 2013 number. All these crazy high numbers are being driven, of course, by consumer adoption of mobile devices. Next year, eMarketer estimates, there will be more than two billion smartphone users worldwide.
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2-17-2015
According to data from the UK's RAJAR, the total number of radio listening hours per week was only marginally lower than the total in December 2013. A slight rise was noted in the number of mobile radio listeners in Q4 2014 from Q1, up 3.4 percent. eMarketer reports the uptick in digital devices for radio listening bears out time-spent figures. Mobile non-voice use, which includes mobile radio listening, made up a 21 percent share of time spent with media, up more than 4X the figure of 2010.
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1-29-2015
Facebook's recent earnings report indicated a total of 526 million of its users access Facebook using only a mobile device. Those numbers are up from 296 million last year and is almost 40 percent of Facebook's monthly user base of 1.4 billion. Android Headlines
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9-2-14
There's a lot of ad money moving over to the mobile space with many forecasters predicting that will continue as the technology improves. There's certainly no sign that consumers plan to spend less time with their mobile devices any time soon. Marketers are betting on a better user experience for ads, according to an article in AdWeek, when the new iPhone 6 is released September 9. Leaked images show a larger screen than any current model, 4.7 inches and 5.5 inches. AdWeek says the change comes just as mobile ad leaders like Facebook and Twitter are selling more rich media, video, and in-feed promos. Managing partner at MEC Gian LaVecchia agrees. ?Folks gravitate to the larger screen, and some think ?banner ad,? but that?s outdated thinking. We?re seeing programming delivered through mobile feeds. And there?s going to be a new richness to the canvas.?
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8-6-2014
Mobile strategy is one of the biggest priority discussions in company boardrooms all across the country. As we continue to evaluate the seismic shift in the world around us, the "mobile mind shift" is clearly occurring and the radio industry is without a doubt heavily involved.
Ted Schadler (pictured right) and his associates Josh Bernoff and Julie Ask from Forrester Research have written
a must-read book called The Mobile Mind Shift which lays out case studies and strategies from all types of industries so you can capture your audience in their "mobile moments."
I recently spoke with Ted Schadler.
RI: What?s your official title with Forrester? I know you?re a long-standing researcher there?
Schadler: Yes. I am a vice president and principal analyst. At Forrester that means that I really dive into specific areas of how technology changes the world. I serve clients with my research and do all kinds of fun things relating to a specific area. In this case, it is mobile. I have been at Forrester for 17 years now ? a long time.
RI: A little bit of a rock and roll background before that?
Schadler: I have a speckled history. I did a lot of software development. Before that, I dropped out of graduate school and played rock and roll for about five years. I love radio because back in those days, that is all there was, radio to get your message out. This was back in the 80s. It was a great time. Five years, full time. That's all we did was play rock and roll, down in Baltimore, Maryland, a band called Crash Davenport.
RI: I think The Mobile Mind Shift is a tremendous book and that you and your co-authors, Josh Brenhoff and Julie Ask, have been very generous in terms of what you've laid out regarding the Forrester thought process. I think it applies to any industry, particularly radio, which we will get into. But, as a setting, what is the ?mobile mind shift??
Schadler: It is important here to see beyond the experience you have in this mobile moment in time, to go back in time in history a little bit, and do a little bit of the history, because if you go back to when the Internet really kicked in, in the late 90s, it took a while for the impact to really be felt in the world. It happened, actually, to consumers first, with Netscape and Amazon. Similarly with mobile, we had mobile devices forever. But, in 2007, when Apple introduced the iPhone, it was really a moment in time when things changed, I think, forever. All of a sudden, you had the Internet in your pocket. You had a computer in your pocket. Software developers, remember that is my background as well, understood that they could build unique, interesting applications on these devices. They started doing it by jail-breaking them, before there was even an App Store. Now we have more than a million apps in the App Store, and we've got the impact of mobile that we all experienced in our lives that is starting to have a very significant effect on where we go for help, where we go for service, where we go for entertainment or communication. We go to our mobile device. So, the mobile mind shift is this shift in expectation that I can get what I want, wherever I am, in my moment of need, when I need it most. That's the mobile mind shift ? this change of what people expect in everybody ? in brands, in companies, from the government, from each other. That is the mobile mind shift.
RI: I love the guy that you mention there and quote, Cody Rose, who is listed as a restaurant-preneur. I love his comment, which is, "We look for annoying things in everyday life that can fixed with a mobile app and then we jump on it."
Schadler: Cody gave me that quote when he was working at the company. They were doing restaurant listings, restaurant bookings. He is now actually at Square, which is a mobile payments company. I think Cody really nailed it by saying that the opportunity here is to find those moments in a day when you ought to be able to do something, but you can't. So you turn to your mobile device and you are a little frustrated that you can't do it. As an entrepreneur, that is an opportunity to jump in and deliver a service, build an application, and offer something that really solves that problem and helps them get out of that pickle they are in. You think about maps or you think about a banking application, it changes the way that you live because somebody has figured out exactly what you need in that moment.
RI: There?s also the quote that you give from Intel's Andy Grove, "At a time when there is a lot of chaos and change around us, only the paranoid survive." That sort of says it too.
Schadler: It does. This is a thing that is important for an established company or an established service to really understand: that there is disruption here. Entrepreneurs are jumping into these moments. They are seizing what we call mobile moments of engagement or service or opportunity. A tractional company, that may be using, in the case of radio, broadcast and maybe Internet, or if you are in banking and you have an ATM and a branch and online banking, all of a sudden as an established company you have to rethink your engagement model. How do people want to consume your service in those moments of need? It is disruptive when an entrepreneur comes in and as an established company you are not responding with an equivalent offer. This is very, very challenging for companies because mobile is fundamentally different from Web. It is not small Web. It is much more about service and the Web is more about self-service. This is a really hard change for many companies to figure out. Yet, I think that quote kind of nails that as well.
RI: You really talk about a lot of processes to help people through it. It isn't just case studies. I think the case studies are fantastic that are here, but you really walk through an internal and external process on how to find the best way to capture those mobile moments.
Schadler: Yes, that is very important. We have found this consistently in every area we have looked at. One of the nice things about this book, I think you and others will agree, is that this idea of a mobile moment and really understanding who, what device they are using, what their motivation is, to pull that smartphone or that tablet out, what they are trying to do, where they are in their day or their workday or their life day or their journey with you, that idea of a mobile moment is a catalyzing language to say what you are trying to accomplish. But the How do you accomplish that? is the tough part. You mentioned processes, we identify this very consistent process and we call it the idea cycle. It really is driven by idea teams. Idea is an acronym. You Identify the mobile moment, when somebody really needs you. You Design your mobile service, your mobile engagement. What are you doing to deliver into that moment? Now, after I and D, that's the hard part. You have to Engineer or reengineer your systems, your processes, or what we call, at Forrester, the business technology. All of that supporting stuff, in order to deliver into that moment. That is the E. Then the A is Analyze. If you don't know what is going on, you are flying blind. You don't know if you are being successful in that moment. You are not sure whether someone is paying attention or cares to engage you. Or maybe it gets started and falls off. You need to know why. So every example we have found has this consistent pattern. Identify the moment. Design the mobile engagement, Engineer the platforms, processes, people and applications, Analyze, and then do it again. It is not a do-once. It is not a project. It is a product. You have to keep investing in it. So you start small, but you rapidly iterate about every three months and improve it. That is the process that we think is a revolutionary approach to understanding the customer, designing the service, engineering the offering, and then analyzing the results, and then doing it again. That is the core idea, the central idea in this book.
RI: The case studies that you identify are from every industry, every walk of life, really. Since the book has been written, have there been any other case studies that you have stumbled upon that fascinate you in terms of people engineering the mobile moment?
Schadler: Well, they come up every day, of course. Hilton Hotels, for example, just announced they are going to spend $550 million re-engineering their business for mobile moments. You think about a hotel experience, you book a reservation, but then you need to find your way to the hotel and you want to check in, and you want to get into your room, and you are going to want to order room service. Afterwards, you are going to get your receipt. Those are all mobile moments. A company like Hilton figured it out. They weren't first. In fact, Intercontinental Hotels Group was much earlier, and Westin is there now, you can open your door with a mobile phone kind of thing, but now Hilton is jumping on this and spending a huge amount of money. In really every industry, we are seeing these mobile moments. In publishing, for example, there is a lot of atomization of content and personalization of content. ABC News, you can follow a story now from your mobile device, using a technology from a company called Urban Airshift that does push notifications. On your app you say, "I want to follow this story." Then as new information comes in, you get a message on your phone that there is new information on that story. You can't do that on Web. You can't do that on broadcast. But you can do that on a mobile device. That is ABC News really rethinking its engagement model and how it is going to deliver relevant and useful, interesting, entertaining, or informing content out to somebody. Yes, we are seeing many, many examples from many industries here.
RI: As far as radio, do you have an opinion on the job that the radio industry does to maximize its mobile moments to its audience and its clients?
Schadler: I think radio has got a lot of disrupters out there, of course. Going back in time, I used to look back at satellite for example, but when you think about the impact of the Internet on broadcast media in general, on radio specifically, there is very much this drive towards personalization, to get what I want. Of course, that is reflected in Pandora and Spotify and whatnot. What mobile does, of course, is radio is designed for being out and about. Yeah, it is great at home, but when you are in your car or waiting for your bus, you've got the chance to really consume this media in a new way. So, the radio industry generally has, I think, stumbled, because I think the broadcast sort of mindset of it, is to develop these deeply personal experiences. You look at iHeartRadio and that app has got Clear Channel and it has wide adoption and it is used, but it has really not changed the model of engagement. It is still broadcast mostly radio coming through on a mobile device. That's interesting. But it hasn't necessarily taken advantage of the personalization and the opportunity to engage somebody in that mobile moment. I don't get a push notification if my favorite song is about to show up, so let?s get on and wait for it to come. That would be nice to know. I don't get that. I would say, kind of baby steps, but not really thinking disruptively about the impact of mobile and mobile moments on radio.
RI: Then, as far as the client base side too, our relationship with clients, any thoughts on how that is being captured? In terms of our commercial client base, because we have one audience to serve, which is obviously our listening audience, but mobile and maximizing mobile dollars is obviously a tremendous opportunity.
Schadler: If I think about the commercial side of radio, there is an opportunity to dive into this analyze piece of the idea cycle. If you can get data on what somebody is doing in that moment, and that something is maybe listening to the radio or receiving an ad, or engaging with the application in some way, maybe they are following through on something, there is an offer or whatnot, that analyzed piece of it I think is extremely valuable to anybody ? to an advertiser, to a broadcaster. When you think about mobile moments, it is about that personal delivery of that experience to that person and what can you do to take advantage of that. I think it is early going. Certainly, the advertising world has moved to mobile and understands; look at Facebook's revenue, for example, and over 60 percent, last quarter, of their ad revenue was mobile. It is starting to change in terms of advertising, but I think there is more to be done and there is a lot more to do because of this analyze component of mobile moments.
RI: In the case studies that you have observed, are there any that you think are relevant to the radio industry on how somebody has shifted their thinking to capture mobile moments?
Schadler: Yes. I just mentioned the ABC News that came after. I think that is an example. What I would say is that consumer engagement case studies, and I am thinking now of Sephora with a loyalty program, for example, or Walgreens with a transaction program ? these are, I think, simple examples. There is a flash purchase example, which is still sold out that was relevant to radio. When you think about these other consumer experiences that are very much about the here and now in daily life, that's a place where the radio industry generally can absorb some of those lessons and start applying them. It is really about establishing a deeper connection into that person. Not just thinking broadcast but thinking interactivity. So, those are some examples that I think have illustrations and some value to the radio industry in general.
RI: Lastly, one area I want to touch upon is something that you call the mobile center for excellence, which is really part of another process you just described that I think radio can adapt internally. Please talk about that.
Schadler: Sure. If you are a large organization and you are really trying to reinvent your processes or your service that you deliver to somebody, it is hard to do that in a fragmented way. You get little pieces of the company, maybe it is marketing from a different product or something different from selling and you get this fragmented experience. That is not a good idea. You have to bring all of the mobile moments of engagement together in order to deliver a consistent and valuable customer experience. A mobile center of excellence is a way to bring skills together, awareness together, maybe data about what a customer wants. By bringing that under one umbrella, usually it is loosely affiliated, it is not usually a separate group that is funded and stood up, but it is more of an informal governing source or management structure where people exchange ideas, and then when there are tough decisions to be made, there is a process for doing that. There is a senior executive very often or the heads of products or head of marketing, or sometimes the CIO who manages this cross-functional steering group, and we see this in lots of companies. We see it in American Airlines, for example. We see it at ING Bank in the Netherlands. We see it in these kinds of companies. But really, in any organization, when you've got so much happening in mobile, you've got to bring it together under one umbrella in order to really make sense of it, get the most value out of it, establish the right partnerships, develop the rights skills, and build the right applications.
Buzz Knight is the Vice President of Program Development for Greater Media and he can be reached at bknight@greatermediaboston.com. Knight was named among ?Best Programmers? by Radio Ink magazine in 2007 and 2010. He has served on the programming subcommittee of the National Association of Broadcasters(NAB) and is currently a member of the Nielsen Radio Advisory Council and the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) COLRAM Committee.
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7-2-14
eMarketer just came out with a report that says ad spending in the United States will see its largest increase since 2004 -- and the main reason is mobile. Total ad spending is projected to hit $180.12 billion in 2014, an increase of 5.3 percent over 2013. Of that $180.12 billion total, television will see the lion's share with 38.1 percent which is down from 2013's 38.8 percent. Digital will grow from 25.5 percent in 2013 to 28.2 percent in 2014, and in the digital category, mobile advertising is projected to jump from 5.7 percent last year to just under 10 percent in 2014. Radio, excluding digital and off-air, will decline from 8.9 percent to 8.6 percent, according to eMarketer.
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6-5-14
JacAPPS President Paul Jacobs, following John McAfee's opening keynote on day one of Radio Ink's Convergence ? in which McAfee made some scathing observations about smartphones and privacy ? drew a laugh from the crowd as he asked, "Who would schedule a panel on monetizing mobile after that?" But Jacobs kicked off this key panel with some RAB stats, showing that in 2013, radio was flat to down while mobile was up 16 percent. "Where would you put your focus?" he asked the crowd.
More stats showed that radio advertisers are spending only 12.5 percent of their ad dollars on radio, and Ford Motor Co. is requiring that its dealers spend ever-larger portions of their co-op money on digital. But, he said, "Car dealers aren't sophisticated digital advertisers." He said, "Car dealers are looking for digital solutions, but is radio getting in their face?"
Panelists Jim Kott, SVP of products and marketing at Abacast, and Joe Schembri, VP of corporate business development, sports sales and sponsorships at Entercom, agreed about the importance of mobile. Schembri said, "I see digital as the Holy Grail, and mobile as the key to what we do moving forward." And all agreed that in digital, it's not about numbers, it's about ideas. Schembri said, "Opportunity lies in providing the concepts and ideas" ? not in what a given station is about. Kott said larger advertisers are "trying to get high-impact campaigns, things where there's a visual component to it" ? and advertisers of all sizes are very interested on geotargeting, not wanting to waste a penny of advertising money on someone who's not a prospect. Schembri said, "You can say, 'We're No. 1 25-54, or, 'We have 17,254 people in your market that you can touch in a minute.'" And it's the second will get the call back.
Asked for some specifics, Schembri noted that consumer packaged goods "really resonate with mobile," as consumers may come in to buy with smartphone in hand. Kott said that people now want a multi-faceted approach, that may include not just spots, but video preroll and display."
Kott later noted, however, that if there's no mandate to commit to digital from the top, from the president's level, "It's not going to happen. It's not going to be successful." Schembri agreed that commitment and dedicated digital staff are crucial. All the panelists agreed that bonusing digital is a terrible practice; as Jacobs said, "What is the value of a great idea?" Schembri noted that in the direct business he does, CPM never comes into play. "It goes back to the idea, and the results that are driven from that." Radio needs its "swagger" back, he said, and to truly believe and commit to the power of radio and mobile.
Follow Day Two of Radio Ink's Convergence on Twitter at #CONV14
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4-17-14
On Thursday, Nielsen announced the launch of the final trial as it gears up to expand Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings to mobile this summer. Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings measures the audience of digital advertising and the company says it will become the first and only measurement suite to "offer robust insight into a campaign?s full digital and cross-platform audience." Video ad platforms BrightRoll and TubeMogul will participate.
The expansion of Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings to measure mobile devices will use a similar approach to Nielsen?s methodology for measuring computer and tablet browsers, which combines Nielsen?s Cross-Platform Homes panel with data from third-party providers, to measure all ads, including video and display. In addition to mobile browsers, this release will measure in-app ads for the iOS and Android app eco-system.
1-30-14
More confirmation the world has gone mobile. In Q4 Facebook made 53 percent -- or $1.25 billion -- of its total advertising revenue ($2.34 billion) from mobile. Facebook said it now has 945 million monthly active users on mobile, which is a 39 increase over the year-ago quarter. Overall, Facebook Q4 revenue jumped 63 percent to $2.59 billion. Revenue for the full year was $7.87 billion, up 55 percent from 2012, and 2013 net income was $1.5 billion.
1-3-14
The Moto G phone by Boost Mobile will be available Tuesday, Jan. 14, at http://www.boostmobile.com/ and select Boost Mobile retail stores nationwide. The Moto G will come preloaded with the free FM radio app NextRadio. A Boost press release says, "With NextRadio, listening to FM radio on smartphones is a new type of interactive radio listening experience. When compared with streaming, NextRadio consumes about three times less battery life than other music apps. That's because the audio is coming through a built-in FM tuner instead of over the Internet."
10/23/13
Those were the words of Ford Global Product Manager for SYNC AppLink Julius Marchwicki (pictured) during his keynote address to open the Radio Ink DASH Conference in Detroit on Wednesday. Marchwicki dazzled the crowd with mobile statistics to back up his words, leaving no doubt about the role smartphones play in the lives of today's consumers and the impact that's having on his industry.
Marchwicki said the fundamental shift toward mobile devices started in 2008 with the iPhone and the growth of smarrtphones, and that today there is tremendous global scale. He said there are 6 billion mobile subscribers in the world today, 1.8 billion mobile devices were sold in 2012, and there were 63 billion app downloads in 2012. Marchwicki's job is to mesh those two industries.
"We need to introduce technology that allows people to use their devices in a safe manner." Marchwicki said. Seventy-five percent of smartphone users believe it's important to connect their phones to their vehicle, and 46 percent of young adults would prefer phone access over buying a car. "Kids expect constant on-demand access to their entertainment now," said Marchwicki. "We've pioneered in this space, but we have not done enough."
Marchwicki left the crowd with a pair of questions: "How do we educate consumers on how to find the content they want? How are they interacting with devices so you can deliver them what they want?"
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10-9-13
The Interactive Advertising Bureau says revenue for the first half of 2013 was $20 billion. Mobile was $3 billion -- an increase of 145 percent. IAB CEO Randall Rothenberg said, ?Digital has steadily increased its ability to captivate consumers and then capture the marketing dollars that follow. Mobile advertising?s breakneck growth is evidence that marketers are recognizing the tremendous power of smaller screens. Digital video is also on a positive trajectory, delivering avid viewership and strong brand-building opportunities.? Here are a few more highlights from the report...
? Digital video, a component of display-related advertising, took in $1.3 billion in revenue during the first six months of 2013, an uptick of 24 percent over the first half of 2012 at $1.1 billion.
? Search revenues in the first half of 2013 totaled $8.7 billion, up 7 percent from $8.1 billion in the first half of 2012.
? Display-related advertising revenues in the first half of 2013 totaled $6.1 billion, accounting for 30 percent of revenues in the time period, up 9 percent from $5.6 billion in the first half of 2012.
? The top three advertising verticals accounted for 46 percent of advertising revenue, including retail at 20 percent, financial services at 14 percent, and automotive at 12 percent.
(10/10/2013 10:29:20 AM)
Mobile is increasingly growing and with the size of the screens being displayed, it is no wonder that digital video content seen the highest increase in revenue due to the need to capture the user's attention. We started with creating banner ads that had the ability to rotate on our radio apps, but now have included other clever ways to advertise on the applications that are able to generate revenue for the stations that we work with.
(10/10/2013 10:28:07 AM)
Mobile is increasingly growing and with the size of the screens being displayed, it is no wonder that digital video content seen the highest increase in revenue due to the need to capture the user's attention. We started with creating banner ads that had the ability to rotate on our radio apps, but now have included other clever ways to advertise on the applications that are able to generate revenue for the stations that we work with.
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9-27-13
(by Dana Hall) On the mobile front, at the Summit Friday morning, Emmis CEO Pat Walsh cited the just-launched radio ?app? offered on the HTC phone for Sprint as a game-changer. It?s an FM radio app that sits on top of every Droid and Windows phone ? just like one you?d have for Pandora, where users can listen to a station?s terrestrial signal, not a stream, along with interactive tools and visuals. ?Our growth is in social media and mobile,? explains Walsh, adding that ?30 years ago, Sony sold 40 million Walkmans, in which the FM band was the primary main function. We really haven?t had a mobile device dedicated to radio since.?
The day?s second panel, ?The Future of Radio? continued on the discussion of mobile, social and the connected car, stressing that whatever radio does today, it must take into consideration new technology, yet-to-be commonplace. Owen Grover, President for content partnerships at Clear Channel Entertainment, including iHeartRadio, explains that while auto makers are saying that analog radio will remain ? it?s guaranteed that the dash will look drastically different in the next few years. ?That impacts our design decisions today.? He also notes that one size design does not fit all, ?what (functions) you have in the mobile and web apps should be drastically different than what?s in a dash/auto app.?
(9/27/2013 4:33:55 PM)
"Emmis CEO Pat Walsh cited the just-launched radio “app” offered on the HTC phone for Sprint as a game-changer."
Just in the nick of time, too. We've never had a portable radio before....
8-21-13
Calling it the tip of the spear driving growth, audio revenue now makes up 60 percent of total revenue at Pandora. The company took in $116 million in mobile revenue in the quarter and the company is extremely pleased with how local salespeople are performing in the 29 markets they are now selling in. CFO Mike Herring said there's a lot of room to penetrate radio's $15 billion ad market, adding local is the fastest growing revenue stream for the company. "That's exactly why we're stepping up investment. Salespeople are executing well. We are getting a tremendous return on our sales and marketing."
When asked about why Pandora isn't getting a premium for its low-clutter geo-targeting, Herring said, "We think our service does deserve a premium. We are not discounting. We drive additional revenue through calls to action or digital revenue paired with audio revenue giving the advertiser a better experience with the consumer. We offer things traditional radio never has and never will be able to put out there." Herring also said testing back-to-back ads has produced positive results. Pandora is always analyzing how many ads is too many before the listener gets agitated.
For the quarter, Pandora reported Q2 revenue of $157.4 million, a 55 percent year-over-year increase. The company also reported that Q3 revenue is expected to be in the range of $174 million to $179 million. The cost to aquire content dropped from 59 percent to 51 percent.
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6-12-2013
For years we?ve been bombarded by doomsday predictions for traditional media outlets.
?The iPod killed radio!?
?People only watch TV On Demand!?
While these arguments might have validity when it comes to consumption of entertainment, recent statistics suggest there is still robust news consumption on traditional media.
Consulting firm McKinsey and Company found that radio accounted for 16 percent of total time spent consuming news. Forty-one percent of news consumption time was with TV. That compared to only four percent of total time spent on smartphones and tablets combined.
While McKinsey and Company?s numbers are reassuring, they are not reason to relax. Audiences might currently consume news through traditional media, but you still must cultivate and retain audience through new technology, including mobile. In fact, these numbers offer an opportunity to use mobile technology to engage your audience while simultaneously driving them back to consume news and information from your legacy broadcast outlets.
The biggest hurdle to traditional media is getting someone to turn it on. During the day, when most of us are working in an office, co-workers and bosses usually frown on keeping the radio on at all times.
However, we always have our phones on, in case we get that important client call or emergency text from the kid?s school. It?s that ?always on? connectivity that traditional media can use to ?push? people to tune in to their station.
Think of mobile like the co-worker in the next cubicle who tells you, ?Hey, you need to turn on the radio now! Something big is happening.? Given the correct mobile prompt, people will turn to traditional media to find out what?s going on.
The first step to giving this correct prompt is to build up a database of mobile users who have opted to receive SMS text notifications.
How do you do this? Offer something worth receiving. Offer breaking alerts. Offer sports scores from local teams. Offer traffic or weather updates. There are some stations that offer SMS alerts specifically for car chases, celebrity sightings, or trial verdicts.
Play to the strengths of traditional media: It?s trusted, personal, and local. In an era of syndication and national outlets, SMS alerts for local and useful information help you maintain and build trust with the community.
Once you have built up a mobile database, you can reengage your audience with target messages. Did you know that one-third of us check our phones before we even get out of bed in the morning? What if a text message from your station was the first thing someone saw when he or she woke up?
You could present them with a compelling reason to turn on your morning show. You could offer a sponsored traffic report with a reminder to tune in on the eights for updated information. On a sunny day, Sunglass Hut or Coppertone could sponsor the weather. Your station can be first in their mind all day.
A mobile database also gives you a more comprehensive demographic picture of your audience. It?s not a small PPM or Arbitron snapshot. It is extensive data on the audience members most engaged with your station. You can use that to customize the content you present on air. You can also present that information to advertisers and generate additional revenue streams with sponsored messages and content.
The media landscape will continue to change. Just because there is still an audience interested in traditional news outlets today doesn?t mean news delivery and consumption won?t evolve in the next five years. We are at a unique time of technological overlap, where emerging technologies can drive participation to traditional outlets. Building a solid mobile strategy now will strengthen your market position both short and long term.
Ivan Braiker is the president of mobile marketing company Hipcricket. He can be reached at ivan@hipcricket.com.
Read more articles from Ivan HERE
6-13-13
According to eMarketer, Google took in more than half of the $8.8 billion that advertisers worldwide spent on mobile ads in 2012. That helped Google take in nearly one-third of all digital dollars. In 2011, Facebook didn't have a penny of mobile revenue.
In 2011, the company took in half a billion dollars worldwide on mobile ads. eMarketer says Facebook is expected to increase mobile revenues in 2013 to just over $2 billion. That will give the social media company a 12.9 percent share of the global net mobile advertising market. Read more from eMarketer HERE
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5-23-13
One year ago, Q1 revenue was $80.7 million. This year Pandora's advertising revenue was $105 million for the quarter compared to $70.5 million last year. Mobile revenue was up 97 percent to $83.9 million. Subscription revenue went from $10 million to $20 million. Content acquisition costs also jumped from $55.8 million to $82.5 million.
In the U.S. Pandora now has over 200 million registered listeners. In Q1 700, 000 new subs were added to Pandora 1, which was more than all of last year. More than half of those new subs came from mobile. Pandora had 4.2 billion listening hours for the quarter and now has 70.1 million active users. The company also reached the
30 billion thumb mark and claims is has 7.33 per cent of total radio listening in the United States.
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5-9-13
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that ESPN is considering a plan to pay wireless carriers for the mobile content used by subscribers. When users reach their data limit, they log off to avoid overage charges. That also means they will no longer see mobile ads being served up by companies like ESPN. The Journal says ESPN is discussing, with at least one carrier, subsidizing connectivity on behalf of users.
The company would pay a carrier to guarantee that people viewing ESPN mobile content wouldn't have that usage counted toward their monthly data caps. According to the Journal report, ESPN has received feedback from at least one big carrier that significant numbers of its mobile users reach their monthly cap before the end of the month, after which their usage drops off.
The ESPN digital brand is huge. According to the Journal, ESPN now has 45 million digital users, including about 16 million that access ESPN content exclusively from mobile devices. The mobile offerings include a website with news and streaming video, and a host of mobile apps, including WatchESPN which streams the live signals from ESPN's TV channels over the Web. ScoreCenter, its top mobile app, has been downloaded more than 40 million times. Over the last three years, ESPN's average users per day on mobile Web and apps has more than tripled, from 3.2 million in 2010 to more than 10.3 million so far this year.
Read the full Wall Street Journal HERE (Subscription required)
3-7-13
Pandora has been able to do what radio has not: generate significant revenue from mobile. In the quarter that ended January 31, Pandora generated $80.3 million from mobile. That's an increase of 111 percent over the same quarter one year earlier ($38 million).
For the year, Pandora doubled mobile revenue to $255.9 million. Even better news for Pandora is that mobile revenue is climbing faster than the growth of mobile listening.
(3/7/2013 11:53:36 PM)
Isn't radio in a car mobile?
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