When you think about mobile, what are some of the things that come to mind? Fast, personal, ready, fun and connected are a few terms that come up. People think about mobile much differently than they do personal computers. How many times has someone almost bumped into you on the street as a result of their eyes being fixed on the screen in their hands? This is a familiar interaction in today’s device-obsessed contemporary culture.
Archive for James Lamberti 
Reaping the Rewards of Getting Around Mobile Marketing Roadblocks
Posted by James Lamberti on January 15th, 2013 at 2:23 pm
Over the past few months I’ve shared thoughts on some of the obstacles to mobile marketing success, as well as on ways these roadblocks can be overcome. Understanding and overcoming these obstacles only matters if doing so provides a real benefit – and you’d have to be living under a rock not to recognize the tremendous potential of mobile marketing. In this chapter, I’d like to lay out the specific rewards of mobile and why everyone in the industry should be doing everything they can to make mobile work well.
OPPORTUNITY: First, there are billions of mobile devices in the world and a growing number of them are smartphones and tablets. But as explosive as the growth has been over the past year, less than half of US mobile subscribers have smartphones. In the fast-growing BRIC economies, the levels of penetration are even lower: Brazil, 20 percent; Russia, 9 percent; India, 4 percent and China, 24 percent.
REWARD: There are literally billions of smart devices out there. It’s a market opportunity that can’t be overstated. In addition, as emerging markets continue to mature, taking the global approach advocated in past articles will open the way to tremendous revenue opportunities.
OPPORTUNITY: The growth in... Read more
The Danger of Dependency
Posted by James Lamberti on December 17th, 2012 at 11:46 am
The Android Device ID has bugs. This shouldn’t come as news to anyone but the problem is widespread and causes the Device ID to be an unreliable identifier. Research conducted in August 2012 found there were 3,997 discreet Android device types and there is no reliable way to recognize audiences on any of them. This is a huge issue for app developers and publishers. All major manufacturers are impacted and Google is not offering any solutions to the problem.
Just look at what the Google Dev Team has to say about this issue:
“Device manufacturers are welcome to backport the change if they wish. However, Android 2.2 is final as far as our codebase is concerned — with the exception of critical bugs, we can’t really make changes to it. Regardless, there’s nothing that can be done to fix this on affected devices without an OTA, which is again up to device manufacturers.”
There is a better approach for the mobile advertising industry – Universal Device Recognition. This approach does not depend on a device-provided identifier like the Android Device ID, does not leave any permanent identifiers on the device and works across all devices all the time.
The advertising industry has gotten a glimpse into... Read more
Do-Not-Track Comes to Mobile – Thanks to Mozilla!
Posted by James Lamberti on June 28th, 2012 at 2:53 pm
As government entities, privacy advocates, self-regulatory bodies and the online advertising community continue efforts to come to a compromise on the standardization of the Do-Not-Track (DNT) technical specifications and policies, one company continues to lead the way on this important innovation in consumer privacy: Mozilla.
Earlier this week, Mozilla – the creators of popular web browser FireFox, introduced their newest version of FireFox for Android mobile browser to the world. In addition to introducing faster browsing and synchronization functionalities the Mozilla team has launched a full suite of safety features to help protect users privacy and security while surfing on the mobile web. The most exciting of these privacy features is Do-Not-Track (DNT) – a mobile version of the friendliest controls for consumer privacy in existence today and a feature that was introduced to the online community by Mozilla in 2009 and has been a feature of their desktop browser for a few years now.
Mozilla’s continued focus and innovative development around the consumer experience, not only in terms of features and functionality, but also for consumer privacy, has propelled the DNT concept to gain recognition and support from the FTC and the EU Commission as well as from all major desktop browsers (IE,... Read more
