AdTruth, the global leader in securing digital relationships, is teaming up with Adform, a provider of digital media trading technology and campaign management solutions, for a live webinar on May 30^th to discuss how the entire online advertising ecosystem can benefit from improving audience recognition across desktop and mobile.

The two companies will delve into how Adform is using AdTruth’s universal device recognition technology to reach both desktop and mobile audiences efficiently and at scale.

During this session, attendees will benefit from:

• Discussing the principles of universality: The ability to work on all device types and in all use cases
• Programmatic-level performance: The ability to support billions of impressions at millisecond speeds
• Privacy-by-design: The approach that is at the core of device recognition technology empowering marketers and agencies to execute online campaigns while respecting consumer privacy and choice

Attendees will learn from Adform on how they’re utilizing AdTruth’s device recognition technology to support its platform’s desktop and mobile real-time bidding (RTB) capabilities to increase campaign reach and audience engagement.

Join the conversation May 30^th, 2013 at 6 a.m. PST/9a.m. EST.  Register Now

But more about that later.

There’s a lot happening in retail these days, for both the customer and the retailer. Driving much of this is a unique and unprecedented combination of new technologies, unparalleled access to information, and significant changes in shoppers’ behaviors.

What’s especially different today is that shoppers, instead of retailers, are leading the way. Shoppers are taking their own networked computers, disguised as smartphones, into to the store. Retailers are left playing catch up with the new smartphone enabled shopping behaviors. This is in stark contrast from the time where retailers could largely implement and manage the rate of technology adoption.

Looking ahead, there is no doubt that technology will become an even more significant part of in-store retailing.

The questions are: How will traditional brick and mortar retailers deal with the smartphone? How do retailers take advantage of these new shopping behaviors? This is where Amazon comes back into the discussion.

Most importantly: How does Amazon do it and how do more traditional retailers take advantage of these strategies? There are a number of key perspectives, goals and strategies that have positioned Amazon as the highly successful dominant online retailer, as well as a significant influence on off-line retail. We’ll focus on a few of them here.

Look underneath Amazon’s hood - or the website - to learn the additional key drivers of their success.

The golden rule at Amazon is that the customer is, in fact, gold - both figuratively and literally. Customers make the purchase decisions, generating revenue for Amazon. At Amazon, decisions are often made that are good for the customer but may not be directly beneficial to Amazon’s bottom line. These decisions are still made and implemented because of Amazon’s laser focus on consumers.

Secondly, the corporate culture is best described as relentless. They don’t stand still. No challenge is too daunting and employees continually drive to improve what they deliver. If you’re not driving hard, you are in the way. Employees act fast, take measurements, improve and repeat.

Thirdly, they thrive on technology, but not technology for technology’s sake. Amazon does not view itself as a retail company using technology; they’re actually a technology company focused on advancing the state of retail. They are dedicated to scalable systems, fast response/delivery and reliability.

Additionally, Amazon knows data. It is one of the original big data companies. And they know how to use it.
Everything – that is, EVERYTHING - is incessantly measured, analyzed and understood. If you don’t have data, don’t show up at the meeting. That leads to a strong bias toward fact-based decision making. (One of my favorite Amazon conference rooms had the permanent sign “In God we trust, all others bring data” on the wall.)

Finally, Amazon has used this information to personalize the shopping experience. With tens of millions of products in the catalog, Amazon has the ability to show each of its more than one hundred million customers exactly what they are most interested in. They go on to present those products and related information in ways that will help customers make faster, more confident purchase decisions.

How does all of this relate to traditional retailers? The invasion of smartphones has made the physical store more similar to Amazon’s website than to the same store 10 years ago. These same shoppers have been trained by Amazon to use digital tools to help make purchase decisions – but now they’re also doing it in-store.

Data gathered through the smartphones can be used to analyze the complete shopping process. Retailers can know what their customers have on their shopping lists – before they even reach the store. They can see what shoppers search for, the suggestions and offers they respond to and what they eventually purchase. They can even see where the shoppers are inside the store.

This invaluable data can be used to deliver a highly personalized shopping experience, drive more revenue, and increase customer satisfaction and loyalty.

With more than 90% of retail happening in traditional brick and mortar stores, retailers can use Amazon’s strategies to their own advantage. Those that take this data and use it to improve their businesses will be successful. Others will be left struggling to keep up.

The new normal in retail is definitely Amazon.

Despite the ubiquity of these devices, marketers continue to struggle to effectively monetize the mobile channel. It’s time to step back, look at what makes mobile different and come up with some fresh thinking.

Mobile devices aren’t little desktops. They’re not even little laptops. Too much of the advertising taking place on these devices is rooted in what worked on the traditional Web. Banners on mobile browsers are for the birds. Tiny fonts and big fingers are a terrible combination. How many times have you inadvertently clicked an ad while simply trying to scroll or stretch or pinch a page? It’s great for click through rates, even if unintentionally.

Creativity takes the cake. When we see something novel we notice; it’s human nature. Marketers get this and they’re increasingly trying new ways to grab our attention in the mobile world. In-app advertising is a first step but a lot of it simply relies on what are essentially still banners. But some brands are doing interesting things with apps themselves – either as stand-alone programs or as part of a broader campaign.

One device, many use cases. The fact that we can talk about banner ads in the mobile browser, in-app ads and app-based campaigns speaks to the variety of use cases that exist on mobile. Within seconds a user can take a photo, customize it using Instagram, share it on Facebook and move on to browse the Web. In virtually every use case there is an opportunity for brands to engage.

A universal view of me and of you. One of the challenges with the various use cases described above is recognizing that the same user is performing them all. It may seem elementary but marketers have no way to bridge between the mobile Web and apps when it comes to recognizing their audience. The result is wasted impressions, the inability to do frequency capping and a less than optimal user experience.

Performance is paramount. Marketing on mobile devices is still marketing, and a big part of marketing is managing hundreds of billions of impressions on hundreds of millions of devices in tiny slivers of a second. While speed is critical, longevity is important too as it means customers can be confidently reached for an extended period of time.

Privacy, privacy, privacy. Marketers have played fast and loose with customer data, skirting best practices and turning a deaf ear to consumers’ requests for greater privacy protection. Mobile offers a fresh start – based on the concept of privacy-by-design – for the industry to give consumers the protection they want while still providing marketers with the data they need to create relevant and respectful relationships.

Mobile is exciting. It’s promising, fun, personal, immediate, intimate and it’s everywhere. Now is the time for marketers to create engaging connections with their customers that are just as exciting and promising and personal and fun as the devices they run on. It’s time for marketers to look at their audiences, the ecosystem and the available technology to deliver relevant content for engaging consumer experiences.

So why are brands focusing on engaging customers on the mobile phone? There are 1B smartphones on the planet today, generating staggering growth of mobile web and mobile commerce usage. And as more and more smartphones are activated, more and more engagement opportunities become available.  65% of shopping starts on the mobile phone and 20% of mobile engagement is done within the retail store. Within a few years, smart phones are going to have a bigger impact on the world than desktop Internet ever did.

Everyone has a mobile phone, so how do you create an engaging mobile experience?

• Make a good impression: The mobile experience you build is the FIRST mobile experience your customer has with your brand.
• Be respectful: Be honored to live in the pocket of your consumer! Understand that apps and push messaging uses battery life and data plans
• Know your audience: Your audience has a passion for your brand, by why?  What does your brand represent to them?
• Give them options: Some mobile users will love your app, others will love your text messages, you must give them the choice of ways and places to engage
• Commit! Mobile database are filled with super fans.  You must create a long-term strategy to always be sharing personalized, fresh content
• Be useful: How does your app tackle your user’s core problem? Create content that is specific and meaningful to your user
• Be personal: You cannot treat mobile users the same, customizing your messaging will drive much higher ROI because it builds a more personal relationship
• Use text messaging! Text messaging has the highest ROI of the mobile tool kit.  But they must be personal and of interest to the user.  In App push messages can drive up to 16x same day usage.
• Use location: Be relevant by creating natural programs based on what is happening right then and now in the user’s location. Bad weather + a good message drives Redbox movie rentals every day
• Be kind to yourself: Mistakes happen, learn from them.  This is a new industry; you have to be brave to be a game changer.
• And lastly, don’t forget multimedia. A photo is worth 1000 words and a video is worth 1.6M. Smartphone owners are extremely active content creators, tap into this behavior for additional success

Who is doing it well?

Sports teams

Sports apps boast an 85% retention rate.  Why? According to Scott Michaels “Sports apps do not lose users because they’re passionate about the teams.”

BET

When BET created their app, they looked at 3 main pieces of research:  Mobile usage, viewing behaviors and audience aspirations.  Analysis showed that BET fans over indexed on smartphone and mobile web usage and frequently multi-tasked while watching the BET channel.  In addition, a majority of viewers were also inspiring artists.

With this information, BET created the 106 & Park app. This app includes a heat map of opened apps, featured prominently during the show. BET created a fan shout out program to reward fans using the app during the show.  Additional gamification elements allow fans to compete with show guests.  And the results?  Spectacular.

By understand their audience and what the audience wanted from the channel, BET app users create more than 75% of their content and delivered more than 24M votes for the 2012 Hip Hop awards, in only 2 weeks.

Walgreens

Walgreens went with the KISS approach and implemented a variety of tools – both text marketing and apps - to solve their three biggest customer requests, prescription refills and pick up notifications.  And with great success! Walgreen’s mobile users spend 6+ more and a 50% of prescription refills are by mobile

Starbucks

Starbucks uses their apps to warm up engagements with the local baristas, allowing them to continue relationship building online and off.  Starbucks mobile fans are their most engaged and loyal fan club members, and their engagement provides Starbucks the data it needs to continually refine their program offerings for higher engagement and sales.

WWE

Talk about a mobile smack down!  WWE identified early on that their fans were super fanatics craving first access to content, whenever it was created.  To meet their need for content, WWE created a live, real-time video stream to enhance their second screen experience.

Walmart

Walmart’s core mobile strategy includes mobilizing both their website and their in-store experience.  Creating a seamless mobile/in-store experience helps customers find what they are looking for and driving sales, and smiles from mobile users.

Measuring Mobile

For many of our speakers, the ultimate KPIs include engagement, sign ups and/or download (all panelists agreed that app deletions would be the perfect metric, if available), repeat usage/opt-outs and sentiment towards the mobile engagement channel and content.

Let’s talk about sex appeal

The hard truth is, an app, text message program or mobile experience does not have to be sexy, but it does have to be useful and valuable.  While many marketers immediately think app, the truth is that text marketing boasts higher ROI.  Leave the shiny stuff to the amateurs.  Create mobile experiences that have focus, clarity and provide a delight to the end user using the medium they prefer.  Use brand imagery and/or multimedia to deepen brand connections and delight users.

Apps vs. other mobile opportunities

50% of apps never get opened more than 4 times.  The best quote of the day was that app icons shake when you close them because they are afraid to be deleted.  Combine that with the fact that a successful app now costs $1MM to develop and launch and the challenge of requiring Wi-Fi/data to access and marketers realize they must look for other ways to engage fans.  Other opportunities such as fully branded MMS opportunities have a much lower price point, and allow brands to build and engage a mobile database.

The mobile future:  What will we see in 2013

Tap and go payments (Walmart is already implementing this) are used by 15% of Japanese consumers daily.   Retailers are also installing new cash register scanners to allow for mobile scans.

What we will NOT see in 2013

No mobile discussion is complete without a real look at NFC (near field communications) and AR (augmented reality).  As one speaker so eloquently put it – NFC in 2013 = No F****ng chance. Why ? Because NFC is Android and enterprise only.  AR got a lot of love at SXSW with interesting demos throughout the conference center, and the use cases continue to grow.  But AR for AR sake is boring and will kill the medium.  If you are going to create an AR experience, be useful but more importantly, be interesting!

And lastly, mobile payment systems will not be replacing credit card in the near future. Customers simply do not find credit cards to be a hassle and until they do, mass adoption of a replacement system will never occur.

In 2013, the top marketing tool will continue to be the mobile phone. It is now up to the brand to create the long-term engagement strategy by understanding who their mobile customer is, how they prefer to engage, which tools work best for that engagement and which content resonates best.

2012 could be dubbed the ‘Year of the Recall’ for the auto industry with various automakers calling back more than 14 million cars in 12 months for inspections and repairs involving safety issues.  For perspective, nearly 14.5 million cars and light trucks were sold last year.  The number of cars sold versus those recalled was a near wash by year’s end.

And it was recently announced that Toyota plans to settle an estimated $1.3 billion in class action claims involving sudden, unintended acceleration first reported in 2009 in certain Toyota, Scion and Lexus vehicles.  The anticipated settlement would be the largest payout by any auto company, ever.

What’s interesting about 2012 is that in spite of widespread safety issues, auto shopper interest saw negligible impact.  In fact, year-end sales were 13 percent better than 2011 and the best we’ve seen in the past five years.

So, what’s going on here?

Maybe it’s a recovering economy or a testament to the loyalty of certain car shoppers who, despite all odds, remain steadfastly devoted to a particular brand. Or, perhaps it’s consumer indifference, which has adapted over time to safety issues that, in recent years, have become the norm rather than the exception.

More than any other factors, I believe the reasons automakers have fared well in the midst of seemingly insurmountable obstacles are twofold.  First, there have been drastic improvements in the way auto recalls are handled. In tandem, auto marketers have optimized digital to successfully speak to—and listen to—their customers in times of crisis.

Toyota in Crisis

In 2009, on the heels of a crash reportedly caused by sudden, unintended acceleration that claimed the lives of four people, additional reports began emerging of sudden acceleration problems in a number of Toyota and Lexus vehicles.

The automaker’s top-down management style was cited as the culprit for the fundamental curtness in which an ever-growing wave of consumer complaints was addressed.  Amid accusations of ignoring hundreds of complaints for almost 10 years prior and being rebuked by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for “misleading” comments in a press release, Toyota was criticized for sitting on its hands by failing to effectively communicate with its customers along the way that there was indeed a problem it was making every effort to fix.

In a February 2010 Jumpstart Automotive Group Survey, 80 percent of respondents indicated they’d buy American on the heels of the Toyota crisis and 51 percent indicated the automaker’s safety issues had changed their perception of the brand, leading them to eliminate it as a consideration for their next vehicle purchase.

Turning to Social to Calm Concerns

That same month, Toyota realized the need for open lines of communication with its customers in the wake of public backlash and turned to Digg (with roughly 40 million monthly unique visitors at the time)  to offer up Jim Lentz, Toyota Motor Sales USA president, to answer questions voted on by fans in a video Digg Dialogg.

Around the time of the first Digg campaign, the automaker also launched “Toyota Conversations” on TweetMeme to aggregate top stories being tweeted about Toyota.  It took to YouTube to post an apology by Lentz explaining the sticking accelerator pedal situation in recalled Toyota vehicles while assuring customers its dealers had already begun repairs on floor mat issues from an earlier recall.

Toyota’s better late than never PR and social media campaign proved effective, bottoming out negative consumer opinions about the brand.  Industry analysts praised Toyota’s proactive social media approach, crediting it in part to helping lessen the recall blow.

Toyota in Fast Forward: A New Approach

This past October, the automaker announced a recall of 7.4 million vehicles worldwide—the largest number of units in Toyota’s 75-year history as well as the auto industry’s single largest recall since 1996—due to a faulty power window switch that could melt and potentially catch fire.  One month later, it announced another recall involving 2.8 million vehicles due to a steering glitch.

Not only were the latest Toyota call backs mass and swift, digital communications efforts were candid and clear.  Malfunctioning components and potential hazards were outlined, and the repair process was described in detail.

Recently, Jumpstart gauged the behaviors of approximately 19 million monthly car shoppers across our network of 14 automotive websites in the weeks following the October and November recalls.  Our analysis revealed that interest in Toyota cars and trucks was virtually unaffected.

During the four-week period following news of the 7.4 million vehicle recall (from October 10 to November 10), shopper interest in Toyota cars and trucks across Jumpstart's suite of websites remained relatively strong with a meager 0.4 percent decline in share at an average of 9.0 percent compared to the first 10 months of 2012.

Following November 14, when it was announced that 2.8 million vehicles were being recalled, Toyota's shopper interest held relatively steady at a tiny 0.1 percent decline over the prior two weeks.

Sales data indicates consumers are embracing the brand in record numbers, with 9.7 million Toyota vehicles sold in 2012—its biggest sales year ever. Granted, Toyota customers are fiercely loyal in general, but the manner in which Toyota handled its latest mass recalls proved much more effective in mitigating negative opinions.

Digital marketers have access to the most powerful communications channels available today.  Never before have we had the capability of real-time, two-way dialogue—an immediate and reciprocal communications stream enabling us to allay concerns, answer questions, address problems and tap into the opinions of the people who matter most—our customers.

Using these channels to 1) acknowledge problems clearly and quickly 2) explain solutions to problems and distribute messages broadly and 3) address consumer concerns in real time is always the best approach when mitigating a crisis.

Nick Matarazzo is CEO of Jumpstart Automotive Group, an innovative marketing solutions provider for automotive advertisers.

During a period when online publishers were already improvising monetization efforts to compensate for the rise of programmatic buying, mobile introduced yet another variable that would further complicate the situation, forcing a shift in focus. Already squeezing every last cent out of online CPM’s, mobile traffic immediately made its presence felt as online audiences were no longer restricted to a computer screen as a means of accessing their favorite digital content. As a result, mobile traffic began cannibalizing impressions from the desktop impressions, further impacting an already depleting bottom line. Digital publishers reliant on online advertising revenue were suddenly dealt with a brand new form of supply to figure out and monetize immediately, or face a slow death at the expense of mobile's rapid growth.

By properly understanding the psyche of the mobile user, and aligning approaches to meet what consumers demand, these basic mobile guidelines for publishers will not only help your properties produce a mobile experience that maximizes mobile audience engagement, but also the revenue stream that follows:

· Content is king, and this is especially true in mobile. When determining how to slice and dice online content for the mobile screen, hone in on the content that matters to your audience and make it compatible for their mobile viewing pleasure. For this content to be considered mobile compatible at least two requirements must be met. First, this content needs to be easily found and identified by the user upon initial visit and, second, it must be made native to the mobile screen. Simply shrinking pre-existing content, which then requires the mobile visitor to pinch and zoom to engage with information is a mobile property’s worst enemy. In fact, a recent study commissioned by Google found that 79% of mobile visitors that find a mobile site difficult to use would immediately leave to find a suitable replacement.

· Mobile is a “need to know now” medium. Unlike TV, Radio or PC, mobile users carry this Internet connected device with them at all times. This reality feeds our instincts for instant gratification, so it’s only natural that a mobile user is accustomed to immediately being able to access desired content or information. Within seconds, a mobile device can be leveraged to find the nearest food, access the latest sports scores, lookup tomorrow’s weather forecast, watch a trailer, or purchase movie tickets. To reproduce a successful mobile experience for your organic audience, their immediate asks must be met.

· Which is better, App or Mobile Optimized site? Depending on who you ask, there is an argument to be made for either as each format comes with an inherit set of benefits and limitations. When deciding on which to adopt, it is advised to let the content influence the decision-making. For example, apps are conducive to rich content experiences. Publishers with an audience who primarily consume video, music, images, and social media are more likely to reproduce a favorable mobile experience for their audience through an app. On the other hand, a well-designed mobile optimized site may be best suited for content that is research or task oriented. Whereas apps are largely utilized for consumption of media or leisurely browsing, mobile web audiences are typically on a mission in search of facts or specific information.

· Monetization of mobile is very possible. For most publishers reliant on ad revenue, low mobile CPM’s and ad fill rates are top concerns of this medium. That said, many publishers who find themselves in this situation can look to experience immediate gains by examining mobile monetization shortfalls and adjusting appropriately. For one, just because a site can be accessed from a mobile device does NOT make it mobile optimized. All too often I come across web based properties simply trying to milk their pre-existing ad demand by serving online formatted banners within mobile based viewing sessions. Plenty of mobile demand exists, but a "mobile first" ad serving infrastructure must be in place to start reaping these benefits.

Given that mobile traffic already accounts for 20% of all daily U.S. Internet traffic and, with sales of mobile devices also surpassing PCs, this shift in traffic from desktop to mobile is not destined to slow down anytime soon. For those ill-prepared to fully absorb this continual transition, the good news is that it’s not too late for publishers to adopt a successful mobile strategy, regardless if they are starting from scratch or purely looking to improve upon current framework.

Mobile Marketing

While 2012 was a dynamic year for mobile marketing and the multi-screen user, 2013 will be the year that advertisers will embrace this medium.  Less focus will be placed on the existence of the multi-screen user and more attention will be placed on the different options that the multi-screen user presents to marketers.

Brands should be able to gain more insight into mobile devices users in 2013 as mobile device users will become more comfortable allowing brands to recognize their location, intent and preferences.  As a result push-pull mobile marketing will take place as the best brand apps and experiences will tie this information into their marketing campaigns in order to optimize conversions and connect with consumers.

Prospect Email

With more than half of all email opens occurring on mobile devices, I believe that Prospect Email will continue its rapid growth in 2013.  One change that we see for 2013 is the growth in the number of emails that will be designed using a responsive design or will be sent out using a mobile decision engine.  Responsive designs allow for optimal viewing experience across a wide range of devices by using fluid proportion-based grids and flexible images.  A mobile decision engine is able to detect the device the recipient is using and will then deliver and display device specific creative that best targets the end user.  By doing so, advertisers will better be able to target and optimize their campaigns to customers no matter what device the consumer is accessing their email on.

Search Marketing and Display Advertising

Search and display will still remain two of the cornerstones of online marketing campaigns in 2013 however there will be a shift as advertisers will be spending more money in the mobile space.  Currently, the mobile search and mobile display space remains relative uncluttered and in 2013 I expect that  several brands will look to invest top dollars in this space in order to own the mobile consumer and differentiate themselves from their slow- to- adapt competitors.

As local advertising continues to explode with the rise in smartphone users, search and display will take center stage with their hyper-targeting abilities.  New tools will emerge to support these micro-targeted program and marketers will increasingly take a systematic approach adding coordinated multi-channel efforts including local mobile search marketing and display retargeting.

If one thing rings true for 2013, the mobile and digital marketing era continues.  With cross-channel marketing plans at the forefront, marketers will need to pay close attention to analytics, targeting and optimization this year as online campaigns remain a very effective marketing medium in 2013.

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.

But often the best way to understand what's around the corner is to take a peek back at where you came from, what direction you're going, and how fast you're traveling.

Last week our parent company, Opera Software, released a report that does just that. It looks back on the biggest moments and trends from the year, leveraging the data from its mobile ad platform of 10,000 sites and apps which serves 40 billion impressions a month. So we're not talking about a casual, subjective glance; this is a deep dive into what actually happened in the last 12 months.

Several of these trends are no doubt going to continue in 2013, and likely build even more momentum:

iPhone and iOS will enjoy the view from the top

The Samsung Galaxy III is definitely a huge hit among many -- about 30 million have sold since it's mid-year launch. But the iPhone 5, which launched about four months later, now accounts for 16.1% of all iPhone device traffic compared to the S III's 8% of Android traffic. And nearly half (44.4%) of all impressions are served on iOS-based devices, compared to 29% on Android devices. To top it off, iOS 6 is now at a 65% adoption rate, and as we've noted, is providing solutions to a lot of problems we had been facing this year.

Music, video and entertainment content will continue to dominate mobile

Mobile music powerhouse Pandora was in the news a lot this year for its success in monetizing mobile, and Shazam and Slacker Radio made huge strides too. But mobile consumers are devouring video and entertainment content as well. Nearly one in four (23.8%) mobile impressions in 2012 was served on a site or app in the Music, Video and Media category. Together with Entertainment, these publishers generated 30% of total revenue for the year.

Targeting will only get better

To say we're exciting about the targeting possibilities in 2013 would be a grand understatement. Apple has led the way with a simple privacy-compliant unique identifer called the IDFA built into iOS 6, and we hope Google will follow suit.

Innovative ad units will kill the boring banner

We're already seeing cool campaigns like Kia's Build a Car, which uses a tap-to-expand ad unit that allows users to see various colors and 360-degree views, leading to a more sophisticated mobile site with customization options, video content and car-shopping tools. Look for more engaging experiences like this one in the coming year.

The Hispanic segment will explode

With publishers like Univision catering to the Latino community -- and being named one of Opera's notable publishers of the year -- many brand advertisers are finally seeing clear opportunities to hone in on this segment. About halfway through the year, a study confirmed that Hispanics outpace non-Hispanics in smartphone adoption, and use them to research and make purchases more often. The demographic is more likely to remember brands advertised on mobile devices, and they are motivated to visit brand sites and/or retail stores as a result of digital advertising and social posts.

MediaMind recently analyzed the impact that Cyber Monday plays across the internet advertising ecosystem and recorded large jump in both impressions served and engagement. MediaMind’s platform served 46.2% more standard banner, video and rich media impressions on Cyber Monday in 2012 than 2011. In addition, the total number of clicks rose 40.0% for an average CTR of 0.14%.

As smartphones and tablets become more common in the home and people continue to show a willingness to browse and shop on them, consumer-oriented brands are purchasing ads to reach their engaged mobile customers. In 2012, MediaMind’s platform served 220% more mobile standard banners than on Cyber Monday 2011. Mobile clicks skyrocketed a staggering 1293%, an almost thirteen-fold increase. While some of these can be attributed to fat fingers, the sheer magnitude of clicks indicates a broader  trend of rising mobile engagement. As a result, mobile standard banner CTR jumped to 1.54% for the day.

The importance of Cyber Monday is spreading beyond the at-work customer and reaching the on-the-go mobile consumer. Increasingly, retailers are turning to mobile as a sales channel, especially via advanced smartphones and tablets. But consumer oriented brands are beginning to capitalize on mobile customer’s engagement with ads, as well.

Cyber Monday might be an exaggerated example of the current digital marketplace, but a different way of thinking is that it highlights what is possible when consumers are hyper-connected.

In my last post I discussed how marketers are changing their methodology for driving more effective campaigns by expanding their testing from A versus B to A to Z. In that same post, I cited the power of machine learning to test in-numerous combinations to determine the winners.

Some people took the post to say, “Great. Now with machine learning I can find the best offer not from a simple bake off but against any number of offers. I’ll take the best one out of an A to Z test (which will clearly be better than what I’d get from a simple A/B test) and scale that one, say offer T, to EVERYONE, right?!”

Wrong. That’s like taking a highly trained gem cutter and replacing their facet cutting machine with an ax to cut a rough diamond.  Imagine the amount of waste of that precious mineral. Customers need to be thought of in a similar way; like precious metal versus a piece of wood.

Woodcutters don’t care how they treat each log. Each one is cut indiscriminately with the goal of building a big pile of fire word and getting a good work out. Traditional marketers are a lot like woodcutters; they batch up customers into big piles and send messages or offers from a pool of what has worked in the past. And what do they have to show for it? How many customers they touched and results that aren’t very ground-breaking for the business.

“But if you could target the best offer at the right time and place to each customer, would you shoot better than average? In a word, yes.”

Back to my last post, when I posed the above question what I was really asking is: are you ready to take this new, more precise way of marketing and really let it change the way you market? In short, are you ready to become an advanced marketer?

Advanced marketers don’t view customers as a pile or one mass. They see the power in understanding a customer’s unique attributes and behaviors. They see differences – natural  fissures in base that divide customers into meaningful sets – and how each might respond to specific treatments. They look for ways to cut customers into these finer slices to get better results.

Advanced marketers understand that traditional offer-response driven campaigns – where the focus is on pounding customers with offer message after offer message – may be short term optimizable but certainly not sustainable when the pounding stops. They see the shortfalls of focusing solely on offer-response because they understand that reliance on offers is like “ginning” up results – anyone can get a great take rate if you offer everyone an iphone-5!

Understanding customer potential is the key

Advanced marketers see potential in their customers but they also see waste. They know that, for any given marketing objective, there are customers that have zero potential and marketing to them is a waste of time and money. The advanced marketer knows it’s just as important to find these customers who might as well be a “box of rocks” and isolate them as it is to find new campaigns that work.

Understanding a customer’s potential is the key. And the only way to do that is to understand their past behavior and predict their future behavior. This is the real power of what I described in my last post. Machine learning doesn’t just give you the opportunity to do A to Z or alpha to omega or infinite combinations of treatments; it gives you the ability to apply that capability according to a customer’s potential to achieve the marketing goal you’ve set.

Doing A to Z testing where you apply the winning treatment to everyone is just a different form of batch campaigning that we’re all familiar with from the past. And just focusing on customer’s behavioral response (post treatment) without understanding their potential is just as bad.

Diamond cutters measure in slices.

And diamond cutters certainly don’t measure results in batches. They do it in slices.

Marketing measurement has to change. It’s not about reporting a single number that reflects an average response rate across the entire base. It’s about slicing your customer base into as many slivers as possible and reporting on the impact you have with each target group.

In a typical marketing campaign, think of how many customers you touch who have zero potential in helping you achieve your marketing objective. Advanced marketing is about eliminating those customers as targets, determining the customers who do have potential and targeting them with the right message in the right context. Think of it as a never ending process of finding gems and eliminating rocks.

Slicing your customer base into smaller and smaller slices is how you move the needle and deliver dramatically better results. It’s also how you get the coveted title of “advanced marketer”.

I can’t believe the holidays are almost here.  As the year quickly draws to a close, Jumpstart is busy putting the final coat of polish on our clients’ 2013 digital marketing strategies.

Around this time each year, as we shore up campaigns for the next twelve months, I ask departments within our organization to develop best practice snapshots for the road ahead.  Whether it’s fine tuning successful tactics from the past or exploring what’s exciting on the horizon, our yearly informal think tank nets some interesting results.

I thought I’d share the following highlights from input our product team offered when asked the ways Jumpstart could optimize our clients’ mobile marketing efforts next year.  I couldn’t help but think all marketers could benefit from the advice.

1. Remember the fundamentals first.

Sure, mobile is a marketing game changer, but the best campaigns still rely on good old fashioned business principals.  In this case, it’s bad business to put the technology cart before the marketing horse.

Identifying what your customers want and need and then leveraging these insights to communicate the benefits of relevant solutions you offer before you decide which mobile strategies to use is always the best first approach.

2. Be more relevant. 

Numerous studies show the more relevant content and ad experiences are – those most in line with specific consumer interests – the more exponentially effective they’ll be.

Smart marketers know how to move mobile users to the narrowest point of the purchase funnel by leveraging contextual information to positively impact user engagement and improve overall ad-supported mobile media experiences.  Greater relevancy to your audience’s known interests or to the content they’re actively engaged with nets the best marketing results.

3. Retarget in the real world.

When it comes to retargeting, marketers can glean deeper mobile user intent info from social media posts and from real-time location markers, such as routine and predictive shopping behaviors at local stores or restaurants.  As technology improves and data becomes more readily available, it will also be very beneficial to offer ad solutions based on a mobile user’s previous interests.  Being able to tie those interests to your brand or products will enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of your mobile media spend.

For some marketers, location-based data can also indicate product-specific purchase intent where retargeting can successfully reinforce relevant offers, promotions and merchandise and service benefits.

4. Be more creative. 

As Land Rover’s Evoque ad campaign taught us, creativity makes a huge impact on mobile user engagement.  This was evidenced by the automaker’s use of fully-interactive touch-and-motion sensor ads enabling users to build their dream Evoque by changing features such as body style or color with the swipe of a finger, or to access panoramic views of the Evoque’s interior when iPhones or iPads were rotated or tilted.

In the end, users engaged nearly a minute and a half on average and had purchase intent 2.5 times higher than those responding to an Evoque TV ad.  Be creative and watch ad engagement grow.

5. Don’t forget to integrate.

The most successful marketing campaigns are those that integrate across channels.  Align mobile content with TV, print, radio and live events.  Develop campaign-centric dedicated landing pages from mobile ads.  Use 2-D/QR codes to direct users from print applications to mobile sites with dedicated URLs to gauge performance.

6. Get to the point.

Be mindful of the way people use their handheld devices and implement marketing strategies someone would appreciate most when they’re on the go.  Chances are, users want quick access to relevant information, services that recognize they’re on the move and location-based activity-centric solutions wherever they might be, at any given time.

Concise messaging combined with strategies that enhance the functionality and helpfulness of a mobile device will help increase a user’s appreciation of your business.

7. Evaluate your mobile site…then reevaluate it. 

As obvious as it seems, evaluating and/or optimizing your mobile site on a routine basis is Rule One in achieving mobile success.  Are primary keywords secured and synched?  Is content categorized by user importance?  Is the interface clean and easy to navigate?  What’s the average load time?  Is it optimized across a variety of platforms?

According to a recent study by Google, 61% of people said that they’d quickly move onto another site if they didn’t find what they were looking for right away on a mobile site, while 67% of users are more likely to buy from a mobile-friendly site.

Do you know how well your site performs?  Do you know what content people are most interested in viewing when visiting from a mobile device?  Understanding these things is just the first step.  The next step is optimizing your site according to this understanding and continuing to optimize it as the interests of your audience change.  At the very least, stay with the curve.  At best, be ahead of it.

8. Tap social via mobile.

Smart marketers enable mobile users to easily and quickly enter a company’s social media sphere.  Mobile apps and icon-embedded marketing content are perfect gateways for mobile users to follow or like a company, or to post reviews.  Give users a fun reason to do so, or reward them when they do, to increase your chances for success. 

9. Embrace the need for consumer control.

This coming year, look for advanced mobile technologies like Apple’s Identifier for Advertising (IFA) to enable both sides of the age-old marketing debate (proponents of behavioral tracking/targeting versus privacy activists) to peacefully coexist – or at least, to allow them to get along better than they did before.

In the meantime, marketers should understand that when it comes to consumer consideration, it’s more a matter of control than privacy.  Enabling consumers to have an active hand in choosing when, where, why and how they wished to be marketed to by putting them in control of the information they share about themselves results in a highly targeted, highly engaged audience.

Mobile marketing (marketing in general, for that matter) will prove to be more successful if we all do a better job of listening to and understanding what our customers want instead of telling them what they want.

10. Keep mobile commerce solutions simple.

Mobile commerce obstacles can be eliminated by simplifying the purchase journey.  Paths to acquisition should be intuitive, calls-to-action clear and obvious, and click-to-buy and/or click-to-call features conveniently presented.  Users should never be more than one to two steps away from inquiring about or purchasing a product or service.

In short, mobile devices provide marketers a new platform to relevantly reach extensive and highly targeted audiences.  Clearly define the goals of your campaign, explore the many different options available to reach your target audience, then choose the options that best help you reach those goals.  Develop a creative campaign that leverages your existing marketing assets while allowing users to engage with your business in the unique ways that mobile devices allow.

Nick Matarazzo is CEO of Jumpstart Automotive Group.

Last month, a survey of Generation C mobile users conducted by RadiumOne found new insights into the ways that consumers are responding to and interacting with mobile advertisements.

Research highlights include:

• 47% of respondents indicated they have clicked on a mobile advertisement
• 55% have made a purchase on their mobile device in the last 6 months
• 35% have used mobile payments in-store
• 55% have used their mobile device to comparison shop at least once per week

Mobile has also reinvigorated the sharing of coupons and offers with family and friends. When asked how frequently these mobile shoppers share coupons, sales, and promotional offers with their direct social networks and family members, just shy of half of the surveyors said they used their smart phones for this purpose approximately 1-6 times per month.  This shows that sharing offers is not only a phenomenon of face-to-face interactions and desktop display channels, but it is also happening at an increasing pace on consumers’ mobile devices.

Generation C, which is comprised of adults 18-34, pro-actively leverages mobile advertisements as a form of peer-to-peer sponsorship for certain products and sales offerings. A whopping 79% of respondents revealed that mobile purchases are largely driven by personal recommendations and sales based content. This observation in and of itself should capture the attention of advertisers strategizing their next mobile campaign. These statistics overwhelmingly support the broad impact social influence continues to have on mobile platforms. With tools such as RadiumOne’s audience amplification technology, ShareGraph^TM, advertisers can leverage their current consumers as brand ambassadors to promote products more robustly and contextually. Strong media partners who possess access to first-party data offer a competitive advantage in delivering mobile-based campaigns, as they are able to act and make decisions in real-time.

The same study also took a deeper dive into consumers’ common smartphone behaviors. Turns out, there isn’t equality among the apps. The survey found that for a majority of users, mobile apps act as a direct substitute for traditional forms of entertainment. The two most popular app categories were gaming and entertainment and social networking.

As Generation C continues to rely on their phones more and more, there is no doubt that their tastes will be refined and advertisers will create new ways to interact with this growing audience. Advertising campaign messages and branding schematics applied to traditional and display campaigns may in fact have to be re-directed to suit the tastes of the next generation of mobile consumers.

A new survey based on data from 300 small and midsized businesses in the third quarter of 2012 was recently published by BIA/Kelsey, a distinguished local-media research firm. One of the top findings of the survey was that 40 percent of these businesses are planning to increase their budgets for digital marketing sometime in the next year. While 40 percent is not a majority, only 3.7 percent said they planned to decrease their budgets for online advertising. In the survey, 48 percent of business owners said they would maintain the same budgets, and 8.3 percent were not sure if their budgets would go up, go down or remain the same.

One of the major reasons why many small businesses are increasing spending for online advertising is that there is a wide variety of legitimate online channels through which to market every type of company. Most businesses claimed that their budgets for online marketing would be spread across multiple channels. Also helping the trend is the availability of assistance from digital agencies that specialize in online display for small business, such as Vantage Local.

Business owners have slowly begun to understand that their potential customers are not available through a single website. The customer bases of most small businesses are spread through a variety of channels, and missing one of them could make a big difference in how many new customers are acquired in the coming year. In 2007, small businesses engaged in digital marketing through an average of three channels, but according to the new survey, the average channels being used per business was 5.8. This means that the number of online channels used for advertising by the average small business has nearly doubled in the past five years.

The online channel rated as the favorite among the small businesses surveyed is Facebook. Over 52 percent of businesses used Facebook for promotional purposes, which puts it above most other forms of marketing, such as the following:

• Newspaper advertising – 31 percent
• Community sponsorship – 27 percent
• Email marketing – 25 percent

The slowest sector in small-business advertising is mobile marketing. Although mobile marketing is becoming a trend, only one in five small businesses in the survey had any type of mobile marketing strategy in place, and about one-third of respondents had never heard of mobile marketing.

This summer, after diving into data from campaigns running on our parent company's mobile ad platform, we discovered something pretty neat: Mobile campaigns that take full advantage of the sophisticated capabilities of the modern smartphone (e.g., HTML5, camera, video) always result in higher dwell times and interaction rates post-click.

Now, in the Q3 report, we're discovering something even better: the deeper characteristics of a high performing mobile campaign.

We found that those that emphasize fun and simplicity catalyzed the most user interaction and brand stickiness, and those that utilized new, innovative ad units delivered click-through rates of 5% and even higher. Incidentally, they also generated the most revenue and publisher satisfaction, so everyone was happy.

By closely observing these campaigns (two of which are demonstrated below) we were able to pull out some mobile creative best practices that will hopefully help mobile marketers as they think about how to best capture the attention of their roving audience.

Challenge the user's expectations

For Mazda, we used a “break-in”unit that enters from the outside and places the ad in position. The expanded unit dynamically drags the ad across the screen, causing surprise, as the user is accustomed to the static screen content of their mobile web browser.

Appeal to the senses

Mazda’s robotic arm effect was visually satisfying because of the movement, and Fiat’s bright, bold colors served to add an element of fun to its campaign – also in alignment with the nature of the brand.

Invite the user to create and customize

Mobile users are accustomed both to playing games and creative expression such as taking photos, sketching or even including emoticons within email and text messages. Ads that allow them to continue to play and create on their phones offer incredible brand engagement opportunities. The Fiat campaign, for example, allowed consumers to swipe the color onto the car, letting them customize the image as they would want to customize their cars in real life.

For those already on board with mobile advertising, make sure to run with Rich Media creative. Mobile is all about engagement; so don’t be shy about using the native functions of the smartphone to engage consumers with your brand, products and offers.

• Use push notifications to let users know when they are close to your store.
  • GPS locators are great for retail stores—brands like Starbucks, Target and Goodyear use this creative functionality to drive in-store traffic.
• Include the option to set calendar reminders.
  • This functionality is great for entertainment clients that want to remind fans to watch upcoming movies and shows, or for retailers to remind customers that a sale is starting or announce that a new product is available.
• If you have an app, increase interactivity by implementing a rewards or loyalty program.
  • Consumers will be more excited to keep spending with you if they are getting something in return.
• Apply audio and video to grab attention and make your offer more appealing.
  • Audio and video complement cross-platform campaigns, especially for new product launches as they can align with radio and television advertising respectively.

Also, make sure ads are built in HTML5 when possible—this will lower the cost of creative and you will be able to run the ad on both mobile and display.

Outside of advertising on mobile platforms, there are two distinct ways for brands to better connect with mobile consumers—mobile optimized sites and branded apps. Any brand ignoring mobile optimization risks losing revenue as 61% of customers who visit a mobile unfriendly site are likely to go to a competitor’s site and 57% of consumers will not recommend a business with a poorly designed mobile site[iii]. And, although users prefer to shop on the mobile web, apps are important too.  This is especially true for retailers; 43% of mobile consumers have downloaded retail apps to shop[iv]. As mobile usage continues to grow, so will these numbers.

Developing a mobile marketing strategy can seem overwhelming. Some savvy mobile platforms will create alternatives to the above options as an added value if your creative development resources are limited. Instead of going without a mobile presence at all in Q4, partner with someone who can solve your cross-platform media needs.  The efforts will keep your brand top of mind among mobile audiences and boost sales as m-commerce continues to skyrocket.

The statistics¹ are overwhelming. This year:
• There are 1.2 billion mobile Web users worldwide
• All mobile phone users will reach 242.6 million
• 94% of smartphones users will be mobile internet users
• Mobile internet users will reach 113.9 million
• Mobile shoppers will reach 72.8 million
• Tablet users will reach 54.8 million
• iPad users will reach 41.9 million
• In the U.S., 25% of mobile Web users are mobile-only

We all know mobile is big and we all know it has enormous marketing potential. What many advertisers don’t yet know (and what’s probably more overwhelming than these statistics) is the most effective way to harness its power.

It’s understandable given challenges such as complications with the myriad of handsets and technologies available, privacy and spam concerns, tiny supplies of valuable ad inventory and obstacles to streamlined mobile commerce.

It’s also understandable why this year, mobile ad spend continues to represent a mere 1 percent of total worldwide ad spend.  And why last year, more than half of companies surveyed (58 percent) said they don’t even have a mobile strategy primarily because they’re not sure how to get started².

What we all seem to clearly understand, however, is that the more consumers buy and use smartphones and tablets, our ability as marketers to leverage this action-oriented medium is critical to our success.

The Evolution of Mobile

Even though it seems advertisers don’t have the best handle on mobile marketing (yet), the industry certainly has come a long way.  Early innovators laid the groundwork for some of today’s most successful campaigns and today’s innovators are laying the groundwork for future success.

In its simplest form, mobile marketing started with rudimentarily optimized mobile websites and text message marketing, followed by targeted banner ads, followed by search giants Google and Yahoo in the mix, combining results with local mapping and click-to-call features.

In its present form, there are apps and ads in video and multimedia, in search and social, and in technologies such as QR codes, Augmented Reality (AR) and Near Field Communication (NFC).  Marketers push the creativity envelope using device technologies too, such as accelerometer, gyroscope and touch interface to name a few.

Post-2012 promises to bring greater interactivity and creativity, enhanced ad value, improved targeting, advanced search and fully optimized content.

In our industry, the evolution of mobile marketing has followed a similar trajectory.  In particular, there are several noteworthy auto”mobile” strategies demonstrating how marketers are closing the gap between auto brands and the billions of always-on consumers who never leave home without their mobile devices.  Following are highlights.

Car and Driver, Toyota Get “App-Happy”

In recent years, Jumpstart has worked closely with its publisher partners to develop leading-edge mobile applications designed to effectively and conveniently reach in-market car shoppers.

These efforts include our work with Car and Driver to develop an iPad app combining the magazine’s in-depth car reviews, car comparisons and award-winning automotive editorial with fully interactive, high-resolution car videos, photo galleries, graphs and charts, and up-to-the-minute news feeds.

And to combat the dangers of texting while driving, Car and Driver launched the Txt U L8r app sponsored by Chrysler, to automatically reply to – and read aloud received text messages – to prevent drivers from taking their eyes off the road and their hands off the wheel.

Automakers are relying more heavily on apps to market their vehicles, including two newly-launched this year by Toyota for its Prius C.  One featured in Words with Friends and the other in Urbanspoon enables users to play spin-the-wheel and spelling games focused on the new hybrid.

The apps are an extension of mobile ads featured at sites like Yahoo, YouTube and Amazon (and around digital partnerships with Facebook, Pandora and Hulu to name a few) and are based on the popular board game Life to demonstrate how the Prius C can help owners overcome life’s obstacles.

Road & Track, Cadillac Tap Barcodes

In another Jumpstart partner venture, Road & Track has integrated 2-D barcodes into its print issues, enabling readers of the nation’s longest running automotive magazine to “point and click” on steering wheel-shaped icons to instantly access exciting videos related to content featured there.

Cadillac has also integrated barcodes into its marketing efforts, launching a sophisticated QR code campaign earlier this year for its XTS through inside front cover ads in various print media, including Fortune.

When QR codes are scanned, readers are directed to mobile landing pages to view XTS photos or videos, to find a local dealer based on zip code or device GPS, or to link through to the automaker’s social media sites.  Unique codes and dedicated URLs enable Cadillac to track user engagement.

Kia Rio, Land Rover Push the Mobile Envelope

Earlier this year, Kia launched a full scale mobile campaign to promote its 2012 Rio to younger buyers through ads, apps and dedicated mobile microsites.

Through the Flixster iPhone app, users were directed via ads to optimized mobile landing pages (where they could browse photos, learn about features and build their own Rio), and to other Rio multimedia content at YouTube and Facebook.

Kia also launched tablet-centric apps and mobile sites enabling users to build Rios, find local dealers, browse multi-view images, and research the vehicle’s full lineup of features – and Kia’s full lineup of cars too.

And late last year, to reach a younger audience for its newly-launched Range Rover Evoque, Land Rover used fully-interactive touch-and-motion sensor iAds on iPhone and iPad.

The ad units, featured through the iAd Network, allowed users to build their dream Evoque by changing features such as body style or color with the swipe of a finger.  Images of their dream car could be captured and saved as a wallpaper or attached to an email to be shared with friends.  The ads also enabled panoramic views of the vehicle’s interior when a device was rotated or tilted.

According to the automaker, users engaged with Evoque ads for astoundingly long periods of time – nearly a minute and a half on average – and had purchase intent 2.5 times higher than those responding to an Evoque TV ad.

Ford Dealers Selling Through iPad

Ford has equipped its dealers with Showcase app-enabled iPads to improve customer service and streamline sales.  The app is designed to assist dealers in helping customers find the Ford vehicle that’s right for them.

Showcase includes a finger swipe-enabled photo gallery of Ford cars and trucks so employees can highlight a vehicle’s features digitally and in real-time, while providing information about the models that are in-stock and available at dealer lots – complete with trim-level info and pricing.

It also highlights videos of Ford vehicle technologies in action, including its popular Sync system.

Essentially, the automaker’s app for iPad is a lightweight, virtual product brochure dealers can carry with them in the showroom to assist with servicing their customers and ultimately, selling cars.

2013 AutoMobile Marketing Trends

Video among mobile users continues to catapult the industry forward as carriers evolve to successfully meet bandwidth and speed demands. This coming year, look for video to play a much larger and more sophisticated role in automaker and dealer mobile marketing initiatives in search and display, and in local mapping.

Look for more advanced tracking capabilities to emerge next year as well, as marketers better understand how, when and where people use their mobile devices to research and shop for cars (down to the days of the week, the times of the day, and what sites they visit in the process).  As marketers’ abilities to track and define user engagement improves in the mobile space, so too will our ability to find and target automotive shoppers.

Lastly, expect improvements in the optimization of mobile websites and an upsurge in mobile ad inventory in 2013 as marketers glean a better understanding of how people consume and engage with content through more sophisticated tracking.

Increased scale will make mobile targeting more efficient and valuable to both publishers and advertisers while becoming more contextual and relevant to users – ultimately boosting audience engagement in the process.

Nick Matarazzo is CEO of Jumpstart Automotive Group

¹ AMA 2012:  The Year of the Mobile Roadmap http://www.marketingpower.com/ResourceLibrary/Documents/ebooks/mobil-%20roadmap-2012.pdf

2The Association of Strategic Marketing 2011: http://www.associationofmarketing.org/

Originating with direct mail before being applied to online, A/B testing continues to be used as a means for determining what is more effective in driving response rates.  But when are marketers going to stop shooting for the average?

A typical A/B test would help you measure the impact of certain elements, such as:

• Does a percentage or dollar value discount drive customers to respond?
• Does a concise or extended amount of product information lead to online purchase?
• Does an immediate or extended call to action more likely to drive a purchase?
• Does a confident or humorous tone lead to a higher response rate?

The assumption is made that if group A’s treatment results in a higher response rate, than this is the ‘winner’.   A perfect fit for all?   Not likely.  What about the people that actually preferred offer B?   Force offer A on them?  And what about offers C, D and G relative to offers A and B?  What about messages F, J and M?  Content elements G, H, and L?  Plans E and H?

Now sure, a marketer could test each of these different combinations to determine the winners.  But how long would it take?  And chances are that the marketer would have no way to determine the efficacy of each message by customer in a given context.

But if you could target the best offer at the right time and place to each customer, would you shoot better than average?  In a word, yes.

Contextual marketing is relatively new and it’s not something that can be done easily given the vast amount of data that exists and the difficultly associated with harnessing that data.  There are, however, new technologies in this area.  They involve real time data capture and analysis and sophisticated machine learning to determine, for example, the best context for engaging each customer and the most relevant message – whether it be promotional, educational, informative, billing related, etc.

Let’s look back at the A/B test examples above.   Now let’s take them a step further to incorporate context:

• Does a percentage or dollar value discount drive a multi-purchase customer to respond when delivered 48 hours after a previous purchase?
• Does a concise message or one with more detailed product information lead to online purchase for a customer who engages with our app at least three times a week while at home?
• Is an immediate call to action more likely to result in a purchase for a recently-acquired customer who works within a five mile radius of your retail location?
• Does a confident or humorous tone lead to higher response rates for customers who have decreased usage by more than 25% over past month?

Questioning if this is possible?   Most marketers have the data – purchase history, location information, usage, tenure, loyalty scores, etc. – but do they have the tools to easily act on it?

Recently some mobile marketers have discovered new technologies that allow them to test hundreds of treatments simultaneously to determine the efficacy of messages and contexts, learn through automated analysis and model generation, and then seamlessly iterate and optimize campaigns to ensure delivery of the best treatment to each customer.

Essentially what makes this move from A/B to A/Z testing possible is machine learning.  With machine learning capabilities, you can rapidly – that is, automatically – determine what is the best offer for a given customer and context.  The technology does all of the complex analysis to sort out what works best for whom, when, where, etc. and automatically identifies which factors drive a certain behavior or outcome, thus eliminating the guesswork.  As a result, marketers gain the ability to test an infinite number of combinations of offers and contexts, get quick learnings, and then based on the insights continually iterate and optimize.

Part of the glory of this type of technology is that the drilling in to the details of campaign performance is no longer manual.  Machine learning automatically identifies which factors among hundreds of behavioral and demographic attributes drive a certain behavior or outcome for an individual customer. What this means is that it virtually eliminates the manual nature of analyzing campaign performance and trying to figure out which rule or condition, for example, led to a positive response.  The result is that by targeting the best offer in the right context to each customer you’re able to maximize returns in terms of increased lift for every one-to-one communication.

So for those marketers who are still shooting for the average – that is looking for the winner in either A or B and blasting the winner to the entire customer base, I say it’s time you look at what is going on in mobile.  Mobile has forced marketers to figure out how to act in context.  Mobile marketers are making great strides in harnessing the vast amount of data that they have to be smarter marketers.  They know that being relevant requires understanding your customers’ behaviors, and actually monitoring behavior in real time to then deliver the right message in the right context to the right customer.

They are realizing that determining the right context and the right offer means more testing.   But using machine learning means less guesswork in determining what is working and why.  It means shorter cycle times for campaigns.  And it means less dependency on internal and external groups to develop and deliver campaigns.

Finally marketers can spend more time thinking creatively about what delivers more value to their customers rather than how to deliver it.  As a fellow marketer I say…that’s a winner.

Last week the Mobile Leaders Alliance kicked off MLA Sessions, an innovative new continued education series, in New York during this year's Advertising Week. The first iteration was an in-depth classroom on mobile planning that featured several tenured professionals leading sessions on Holistic Mobile Planning, Mobile Planning for Social Integration and Navigating Mobile Creativity.

With nearly three hours of curriculum, attendees walked away with a plethora of knowledge and thanks to our sponsor Eye - the innovators behind the location based service Amplify by Eye, enjoyed cocktails and networking at the After Sessions Cocktail Party with mobile leaders from: Mediavest, Fresh Digital, Disney, Chase, Travora and more.

The MLA, in conjunction with Eye, has just released a downloadable white paper that includes MLA Sessions Key Takeaways & Best Practices. This comprehensive document recaps the learnings and best practices discussed during the inaugural MLA Sessions. Download the white paper today and contact the MLA directly for more information on a customized Session for your business.

 
Download the White Paper
 

Digital marketing is a great solution for retailers looking to target consumers throughout the holiday season. With multiple channels to choose from including email marketing, search marketing, affiliate marketing and mobile marketing, retailers should work with digital experts to determine the channels that will best meet their needs.
Based on consumer behavior in 2011, email marketing remains one of the most effective digital strategies for retailers. Chad White of Responsys stated that “To date in 2012, email marketing volume has already grown 20%, signifying that the channel will retain its importance, especially with the online holiday shopping season becoming longer and increasingly influenced by mobile devices.”

Retailers should look at acquisition email programs that provide reach, scalability and targeting since email is the key to reaching consumers at work, at home and on the go. By working with 100% opt-in lists that have been tested, retailers can benefit from high open and response rates and in return can benefit from an increase in sales.

Paid search marketing is one of the most sought after services this time of year and retailers should not wait to start implementing a search marketing strategy. In 2011, clients increased their paid search budgets by 31% to ensure their brand stood out in online searches. By determining key words or themes like Cyber Monday, Black Friday, holiday gifts, and free shipping, you can increase your visibility and online activity in the form of clicks and conversions. You can also take advantage of Google’s ad extensions by incorporating consumer reviews and social media into AdWords ads. This tactic allows you to stand out on the search engine results page with engaging products and advertiser information. By continuously optimizing for CPA and ROI by analyzing keywords, sales trends by daypart, landing page conversion funnels, negative keywords and more you can help stay one step ahead of your competitors.

Affiliate marketing is another key online marketing channel during the holiday season. According to shop.org affiliate marketing was the most successful online marketing channel used during the 2011 holiday season only behind paid search and email marketing. According to US retailers, affiliate marketing is the highest sales converter and therefore is a channel that should not be overlooked this holiday season. Networks like GAN and Linkshare provide access to top publishers with distribution in blogs, loyalty, rewards, shopping, and special promotions channels. By working with an agency that specializes in affiliate marketing, retailers can let the agency work as an extension of their marketing team to manage, optimize, monitor and scale their affiliate marketing program on these networks.

If 2011 was any indication, then in 2012 shoppers will be using their mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets, this holiday season to shop online, search for discounts and coupons, and scan QR codes for product information and locations. One third of consumers surveyed by Yahoo Advertising Solutions said they would like to receive holiday deals via their mobile device, making in-store purchases easier and faster. By strategizing creative ways to reach mobile users whether by encouraging an app download or utilizing display ads, retailers should look to implement a mobile campaign that focuses on design, content and interactivity.

With so many opportunities to expand your brand and acquire new customers this holiday season, retailers should look to implement a digital marketing strategy as it is sure to produce high traffic to your retail website and increase sales over the following months. By creating a digital marketing strategy now, you will be one step ahead of your competitors!