iMedia Connection - ad:tech blog

Mobile World Congress in Barcelona was another blockbuster event. Between the sprawling vendor booths and the late-night sponsored dinners and cocktail parties, there were lots of interesting discussions on the future of mobile.
During the 140 Proof presentation on the Mobile-Local panel, we talked about a few key trends in the mobile space. Some of those topics are summarized below.
Mobile advertising is going to have another huge growth year in 2012. One of the most compelling trends in mobile is the desire to deliver audience targeting capabilities to brand advertisers on the mobile device. Of course, here at 140 Proof, we agree that targeted mobile advertising is the future. We’ve been on the cutting edge of leveraging the Interest Graph generated from social feeds to accurately match advertisers and users’ interests for almost two years – via both web and mobile applications.
Mobile payments are getting a lot of attention. Beyond Square and LevelUp, there appears to be at least a half-dozen well-capitalized startups trying to dominate the mobile payment space. The jury is out as to when or if a phone-based payment solution will ever replace the tried-and-true magnetic strip of the Visa-MasterCard duopoly. Sure the phone... Read more

Amazon and Apple are massively successful retailers, the envy of digital and brick-and-mortar businesses alike. Currently, the two tech retailers enjoy a place among the biggest, most successful companies in the world. But they have a blind spot. The premises on which they've built their market advantage are now no longer the most important things in digital. They're missing a data asset that would allow them to understand their customers better: the interest graph.
What is the interest graph?
Not to be confused with the social graph, which describes who you know, the interest graph describes what you like. On Facebook, the difference between the social graph and the interest graph is easily understood as the difference between a friend request and a Like. On Twitter, the social graph and the interest graph is mapped via only one vector — the follow — but in this case, following influencers is what signifies interest. If you follow an influential account like @David_Lynch on Twitter, it's safe to assume you probably like indie films. 
The interest graph attracted significant interest from technologists in 2011. Read Write Web said the interest graph is part of “the future of the social web,” while PayPal founder Max Levchin... Read more

2011 was a huge year for social advertising. As agency teams reorganized and scrambled to take advantage of social as a modern media framework, the campaigns got bigger and smarter.
Marketers will face important challenges in 2012, as customers are more savvy than before and late-adopting brands enter the social stream. Take a look at the top 5 upcoming social stream trends of 2012: each one will affect brands' marketing plan in different ways.
1. Online Video Is Getting Social
"It's not only in the stream, but video is feeding back into the stream too"
Video is powerful. Brands are learning that adding video to a site increases traffic and improves SEO, and marketing email effectiveness increases 90% when video is used (Creattica). In the social stream, Twitter users post YouTube links 500 times a minute, and Facebook users watch 150 years' worth of video every day. 
What's your brand's social video strategy for 2012? Are you increasing the volume of video you produce and share, or building entire campaigns around video content?
(Soon, 140 Proof will unveil a special offering for brands interested in enhancing their video strategy. Stay tuned.)
2. Smartphones Rule
"Brands not mobilizing in 2012 are behind the curve"
The smartphone buying spree of 2011, plus the... Read more

After two years of social advertising, one thing is clear: some social stream audiences are more valuable than others. So which audiences in social are the hottest for 2012?