Mobile Chat is the Next Killer App?

Facebook recently announced on F8 Conference that its Messenger app has reached 600 million users, a 50% growth from last year. Considering similar mobile chat apps such as WhatsApp and WeChat, the number of mobile chat accounts is approximately three billion.

Messaging apps are clearly the killer apps on mobile, but U.S. brands and retailers have not yet made themselves available via mobile chat. With an effective, omnipresent messaging experience, brands may now be able to effectively leverage mobile, which has been the thorn in the side of marketers for years as apps and advertising have both failed.

For consumers, being able to interact with brands via messaging apps would provide obvious benefits: highly personal support instantly; all communication kept within a single thread; the elimination of phone calls and interaction via other customer support channels; and anytime, anywhere communication on the apps they are using every day. Brands could better nurture relationships, drive loyalty through better customer experiences and decrease operational costs if artificial intelligence is leveraged to automate most of the interaction. The biggest game-changer, however, is that messaging leverages on-demand explicit intent (i.e. the person is stating exactly what they want, when they want it) combined with implicit intent -- if brands could carry context forward.

Message to Marketers: Mobile Chat is the Next Killer App

Social Networks to take 1/3 of US Digital Display Ads by 2017 Thanks to Mobile

According to a recent report of eMarketer, Facebook and Twitter are foretasted to take 33.7% share of US digital display marketing by 2017. eMarketer

Based on a multipronged approach which takes into consideration both trends and forecasts of different market aspects, eMarketer predicted the total spending on digital display advertising in the US will total $27 billion in 2015,  and will reach $37 billion by 2017. Among this, social network Facebook and Twitter's share is expected to rise from 30% now to 33.7% in 2017.

The gain in market share of Facebook and Twitter in display ads is a result of mobile advertising. For the first time in 2015, mobile is predicted to surpass desktop in display ad spending in the US, increasing from $9.65 billion in 2014 to $14.67 billion. Meanwhile, desktop display ad spend is expected to decline in 2015, falling from $12.56 billion to $12.38 billion.

Notably, eMarketer also estimates that Twitter will surpass Yahoo in total US digital display ad revenues for the first time in 2015. At the same time, while Google is expected to maintain its market position behind Facebook in digital display ad, its revenues will dip from 13.7% in 2014 to 13.0% this year—and down to 11.1% by 2017.

Can Kik Beat Snapchat With Better Targeting?

Kik is a popular messaging app among teenagers. With more than 200 million registered app downloads, it is consistently near the top of app ranking charts, just below a top echelon that includes Facebook Messenger, Instagram and Snapchat. Recently Kik says it is giving brands the ability to better target on consumers when delivering promoted messages. Kik Better Targeting

Kik first introduced Promoted Chats last year, which lets brands build a following in the app that they could then message. It later introduced keyword capabilities that helped brands communicate with fans through automated responses based on the keywords. According to Kik, more than 10 million of its users opted in for chatting with brands since Promoted Chats launched last August. Now the company is revealing new reporting capabilities to measure the effectiveness of Promoted Chat campaigns after they run.

If brands can truly reach out to targeted customer segments and effectively measure campaign performances through Kik, the messaging app may outperform Snapchat because Snapchat is still an uncertain proposition when it comes to defining and hitting an intended audience.

As of now there are about 60 brands using the Promoted Chats feature on Kik, including Funny or Die, Seventeen Magazine, Skullcandy and Vans. Most of the brands are using Kik to reach out to young people since the signing up for the app does not require a phone number.

Google Acquires Mobile Startup That Manages Facebook Ads

Red Hot Labs, a startup that helps developers promote their apps on Facebook, announced its acquisition by Google Inc. this past Tuesday. Google & RHL

The company’s aim was to make launching and optimizing Facebook ad campaigns as easy as possible for mobile app developers by automatically creating and testing “hundreds of variants” for each campaign. Now that Red Hot Labs is joining the mobile ads team at Google, it will stop creating new campaigns on Facebook but instead shifting focus to making the lives of app developers easier with greater resources and distribution at Google.

This acquisition is Google's move to improve and optimize its mobile ad campaigns. As Google is expanding beyond its desktop-based tools, it's investing in new ways to help companies market on smartphones and tablets as users increasingly access digital services via wireless devices.

How to Bridge the Generational Screen Gap

As new evidence is suggesting that there is significant variance in generational preferences for screen usage, ranging from content consumption to shopping, it would be wise of marketers to take these variances into consideration when optimizing their buys and maximize marketing investment. Bridge the Generational Screen Gap

A recent study by Millward Brown Digital showed that while younger audiences are more smartphone-centric, consuming less TV than older generations, the majority of consumers across all generations still rely on laptops or PCs. The study also found that for low-attention tasks, audiences prefer smartphones, but that as the amount of time spent on a task increases -- usually after a five-minute threshold -- so does laptop and PC usage for all groups. Screen size and speed were the biggest determinants of screen preference across generations.

The results of the study indicate that marketers should optimize digital ad buys and marketing performance based on product category and targeting audience. For example, in categories such as financial services that require in-depth understanding of product features and comparison of multiple offers, digital marketing focused on product benefits and features is better targeted to more desktop and laptop screens, where users can pay attention to and act on the content in the ad. At the same time, ad buyers should also avoid putting all the eggs in the mobile basket, but investigate on how their consumers engage with the category, since even among millennials, use of smartphones and PCs for consumer packaged goods purchases is almost identical (39% of millennials have used laptops or PCs for CPG purchase and research, and 37% have used smartphones).

From Cookie-based to People-based Digital Measurements: Facebook Brings New Partners Into Its Ad Network

A round of new deals between Facebook and big holding companies and advertising software firms has offered marketers a potential alternative digital ad infrasturcture besides Google's DoubleClick: Publicis and its tech arm, VivaKi, are now plugged into Facebook's Atlas ad network; at the same time, ad tech companies Mediaocean and Merkle are tapped into the system. Facebook Adds New Partners to its Ad Network

These new Atlas partners reveal how Facebook is approaching the future of its ad business. Last fall, Facebook announced it would shift from cookie-based digital measurements, which track users by the software placed on websites, to "people-based" metrics. The Mediaocean deal, which would allow marketers on Facebook to get report on unique people,  will enable company's brand clients to use Atlas and its unique measurements.

People-based measurement, according to Facebook and its partners, means more efficient ad spending, because it removes some uncertainty when delivering ads based on user or device identifications that may or may not know exactly who is on the other end. With the help of the recent deals, agencies and brands can take control of how frequently they send a person a promo, and which messages to send to an individual as they know if the person has seen the ad before.

Tweets To Be More Searchable on Google

According to Bloomberg Business, Twitter Inc. has struck a deal with Google Inc. to make its 140-character updates more searchable online. Twitter & Google Deal

Previously, Google had to crawl Twitter’s site for the information. Thanks to this deal which gives Google access to Twitter’s firehose, the stream of data generated by the micro-blogging service’s 284 million users will now automatically be visible in Google's search results as they are posted. Twitter, which also provides data to Microsoft Corp.’s Bing search service and Yahoo! Inc., is aiming to draw more people to its site as user growth slows.

It is believed that the deal between Twitter and Google will be mutually beneficial. It means “more opportunities for Twitter to convert, and possibly monetize, logged-out users,” said a JPMorgan analyst. It will also increase the frequency that people with Twitter accounts check the site. For Google, on the other side, search results will be enhanced by access to real-time tweets and a much broader amount of content.

Oreo Marks First Super Bowl Ads to Be Purchased Programmatically

As marketers are competing to impress their audience with creative Super Bowl ads, Oreo becomes the first to buy Super Bowl ads with programmatic technology that will for sure excite ad geeks. Oreo Super Bowl Programmatic TV Commercial

Mondelez, Oreo's parent company, is running 15-second spots during the halftime show for Oreo and Ritz, and the commercials will only show in Erie, Pa., to about 100,000 people. According to Brett Wilson, CEO of TubeMogul, this is the very first Super Bowl ad bought through software.

Now you may wonder: what on earth is programmatic TV advertising? Well, simply put, it is a data-driven automation of audience-based advertising transactions which relies on audience data instead of show ratings to pipe advertising to optimal places. Because of the way programmatic ads work, brands and agencies stand to benefit from more targeted TV marketing. Meanwhile, advertisers can get analysis of the views within 24 hours and know exactly what ran.

Of course there is some fear in the industry about the programmatic future, because the technology is seen as a threat to the ad world's glamour and creativity. Also, ad space sold programmatically is often viewed as being lower quality.

Facebook Ad Clicks Are Shifting to Mobile, so Why Aren't Conversions?

I recently came across an interesting article on AdWeek about Facebook mobile ads conversion. A recent study by quarterly Global Online Advertising Index shows that in Q4 2014, even though 63% of Facebook ad clicks happen on mobile devices, only 1/3 of them converted (purchase, download or lead form completion). Mobile Ads Conversion

The same study compared mobile ads conversion on Paid Search and Facebook. As summarized in the table below, while Facebook ad clicks are shifting to mobile, its mobile ad conversion rate is far behind paid search ads on Google and alike search engines. Even within Facebook ads, the study found that desktop ads got 1.1% conversion rate, while mobile ads only generated 0.3%.

One may conclude from the numbers that Paid Search on mobile devices is more effective than Facebook mobile ads because customers actively searching for a product have better intents to purchase. On the other hand, however, the fact that clicks on mobile ads are greater than desktop ads indicates Facebook mobile ads may be a great way for a retailer to build brand awareness and reach consumers on mobile devices. If Facebook wants to make its mobile paid ads more effective, it faces the challenge of making social network a buying opportunity app rather than just personal social space.