Tag Archives: smartphones

Brands Look Far and Wide for a Niche in Virtual Reality

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From my story in The New York Times:

Even in virtual reality, it seems, there will be no escape from advertising.

The Oculus Rift, which is owned by Facebook, won’t be available until early next year, but many of the two billion consumers worldwide who own smartphones can already try out virtual reality on the cheap with Cardboard, a device from Google that folds into a viewer with a slot for a smartphone. As more devices come to market with the aim of making virtual reality more commonplace, advertisers and agencies hope virtual reality will be the next great medium for persuading consumers to buy stuff.

For now, marketers are producing mostly eye candy in their own apps and on YouTube’s #360Video channel. But with virtual reality movies, shows and stories coming soon, the question is what kind of ads, if any, will work on the platform.

Companies including Coca-Cola, Volvo and HBO are struggling to figure that out. So are publishers like Facebook, which introduced 360-degree ads on Thursday, including video ads from AT&T, Nestlé and other brands.The first obstacle is that it is not yet clear what kind of programming besides games will catch on in virtual reality to provide a place for that advertising.

“There’s lots of spectacle, but I can’t name one great story in VR,” said Ben Miller, director of content development at WEVR, a virtual reality entertainment and technology firm in Venice, Calif. And without a clear consensus on what sort of content will succeed in virtual reality, it’s difficult to predict what form the advertising will ultimately take. Success in the new medium will depend on finding the equivalent of the 30-second TV spot or the digital search ad. …

Read the rest of the story.

Why Are TV Makers Pushing Cadillacs When We Really Want Ferraris?

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US-IT-CES-ELECTRONICS

Samsung shows off huge new TV (Photo: AFP/Getty Images via @daylife)

Are TV makers going the way of Detroit in the 1960s? In what many, including those who didn’t bother to attend, are calling a boring Consumer Electronics Show, the star attractions seem to be leviathans such as Samsung’s and Sony’s new 84-inch TV sets. Even they apparently is not amazing enough, because Samsung is promising a 110-inch model later this year.

Size isn’t the only way they’re big, either. Those 84-inchers, which one Sony executive had the audacity to call “Ferraris,” costs $25,000, more than I will ever pay for a car, let alone a TV. And they have more pixels than my never-acute eyesight can ever process–even if there were content created for them, which there isn’t.

Seriously, guys, I’m not buying another TV for a very long time. The screen I’ve got is as big as I can fit in my living room, and that’s not going to change. Even if I did have a bigger living room, a big-ass 84-inch TV would feel faintly embarrassing, like tractor tires on a little pickup.

What’s more, not a single Smart TV feature, no matter how cool, is going to sway me to pony upwards of a thousand dollars for a new set to replace a perfectly fine screen. I’ve got TiVo, I’ve got Apple TV, I’ve got Roku, I’ve got Google TV, and probably there’s some other add-on device I can’t even remember. All of them offer more features and apps than I will ever use.

All of this makes me think of those road hogs of the late 1950s and early 1960s that Detroit insisted on manufacturing shortly before those cheap little imports ate their lunch. The fact is that more and more TV watching is occurring on much smaller screens, especially tablets. The sofa spuds of today don’t drive Cadillacs. We want Ferraris, or even Priuses. …

Read the rest of the post at The New Persuaders.

13 Questions For 2013 In The World Of Online Advertising

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questionsCross-posted at my Forbes.com blog The New Persuaders:

For the past few years, I’ve offered predictions here and on The New Persuaders for what’s likely to come in the next year. This year, I’m going to shake it up and throw out a few questions instead. I think I know the answers to some of them, but if many won’t be answered definitively by year-end, they remain top of mind for me and probably for many others in online media and advertising.

So in this, the first full week of the new year, here are some questions to which I hope to start finding answers:

* Will image advertising finally take off online? I have to believe that as people spend more and more time online instead of reading print publications and watching TV, brand marketers will want and need to reach them there with ads that are aimed at creating consideration for later purchases, not just eliciting an immediate sale like Google’s search ads and too many banner ads. We’re already starting to see signs of such advertising with the early success of Facebook’s Sponsored Stories, Twitter’s Promoted Tweets, and YouTube’s TrueView ads–not to mention the explosion of tablets, which provide a lean-back experience more compatible with image advertising. This won’t be a sudden change, since brand marketers and agencies don’t move quickly, but you can’t tell me there aren’t going to be increasingly compelling ways for brands to influence people online.

* Can advertisers and publishers make ads more personal without scaring people? That’s the $64 billion question, and it likely won’t get answered in full this year. It’s easy for headline-hungry politicians to make a big deal out of Facebook’s latest privacy gaffe or the Wall Street Journal’s or the New York Times’ latest scare story about an ad that followed somebody all over the Web. That’s especially so since Facebook really does push the privacy envelope too far at times, and too many advertisers idiotically chase one more sales conversion at the cost of scaring off hundreds of others or inviting onerous legislation. But making ads more useful to each individual person is not only crucial to online commerce, it’s potentially better for most consumers as well–seriously, I don’t need to see another ad for a fitness center or a new credit card, but that ad for Camper van Beethoven’s new CD had me in a split-second. The answer lies in these two words, everyone: transparency and choice.

* Will mobile advertising work? Well, some of it already does, to hear Google and Facebook tell it. And while those already devalued digital dimes so far turn to pennies when it comes to ads on smartphones and tablets, this still feels more like growing pains than a crisis in online advertising. Sure, the screens are small and people don’t like to be interrupted in their mobile cocoons. So a different kind of advertising is probably needed–clearly, banners don’t cut it on a four-inch screen. But the value to advertisers of knowing your location and maybe the apps you’re using, coupled with knowledge of what your friends like–all with permission, of course–is huge. That permission may be really tough to earn. But if advertisers can offer tangible value, perhaps in the form of useful services related to what you’re doing or looking for or shopping for–and isn’t that the ultimate native ad?–people may loosen their hold on that information.

I have a lot more questions, but I’ve got to stop before too much of 2013 is gone.

Check out more questions at the full post.

Sorry, Retailers–Cyber Monday’s Days Are Numbered

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Two cliches in one ad!

From my Forbes.com blog The New Persuaders:

Not long after Cyber Monday was invented in 2005 as an online alternative to Black Friday, I called it a “marketing myth” because it was actually not even close to a top holiday shopping day.

Then a funny thing happened–Cyber Monday, created by the National Retail Foundation’s Shop.org online unit, became a self-fulfilling prophecy as retailers jumped on the term and began offering special sales that day after the Thanksgiving holiday. By the following year, it had turned into a real phenomenon, at least for many retailers, and last year it became the heaviest shopping day ever to date. It might even happen again this year.

But now, even as many retailers have made Cyber Monday sales a stock part of their holiday strategy, I’m betting its days are numbered. Why?

* Early sales. Smart retailers noticed that before Cyber Monday, at least (and perhaps still), the period leading up to the big day actually were even more active shopping days. And in their never-ending attempt to get a step ahead of rivals, many retailers ran not just pre-Cyber Monday sales, but pre-Black Friday sales as early as the evening before Thanksgiving. Apparently they worked. They almost certainly will cannibalize Cyber Monday sales. …

Read the complete post at The New Persuaders.

Facebook’s Mobile App Install Ads Get Moving

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From my Forbes.com blog The New Persuaders:

Exhortations to install apps are likely a significant chunk of Facebook’s advertising revenues, and now they’re poised to become an even bigger factor in the social network’s future. Today, two months after offering app install ads for mobile devices to a select group of app developers and their marketing partners, Facebook opened up the ads to anyone.

These ads appear right in people’s mobile news feeds, providing prime placement for games and other apps in Apple’s App Store for iPhones and iPads and Google’s Play store for Android devices. Not surprisingly, Facebook says in a blog post that mobile app install ads are already working:

In early results, beta partners like Kabam, Fab, TinyCo and Big Fish were able to reach a more relevant audience and efficiently drive installs. For example, TinyCo saw 50% higher CTRs and significantly higher conversion rates compared to their current mobile channels, as well as a significant increase in player engagement.

A select subset of Preferred Marketing Developers (PMDs) has been testing mobile app install ads and saw similarly positive results. For example, Nanigans’ clients efficiently achieved 8-10x the reach compared to other mobile ad buys. Ad Parlor saw consistent CTR’s from news feed of 1-2% from engaged users looking for iPhone and Android games that their friends were playing.

No doubt those numbers will come down as the novelty factor in any new ad or feature wears off. Still, even a fraction of those results would still be valuable to advertisers.

That’s assuming–and this is a fair assumption given Facebook’s wariness about ad overload–that the company doesn’t go over the top and overload people’s mobile news feeds with the ads. Avoiding overload is especially important for these ads because unlike many of Facebook’s marquee ads, they don’t have a social component, meaning they appear strictly in response to developers paying for them, not because a friend liked an app.

Too many of these ads that don’t have the appeal of a friend’s connection, and the dreaded banner blindness is likely to set in.

There also more coming to improve these ads, according to Facebook engineer Vijaye Raji:

In coming months, we’ll continue to make updates that improve the user experience and the performance of mobile app install ads. For example, you may be able to customize your ad unit based on your audience, ensure that your ads are only shown to people who have not installed your app on iOS or Android devices, and allow people to start installing your app without leaving Facebook.

Apple’s New iOS 6 Ad Tracking Feature Is ‘Broken,’ Says One Source

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From my Forbes.com blog The New Persuaders:

With the new iOS 6 operating software released with the launch of the iPhone 5 last Friday, Apple introduced a new version of a feature that allows advertisers to track phones to serve targeted ads. But it seems that for people who updated their iPhones via wireless networks, Apple’s new Advertising Identifier is not working.

That’s a big deal for advertisers, for which iPhones and iPads are a rich channel for mobile marketing. Without being able to identify users–or more accurately, their phones–they can’t track whether those ads produced a sale or other “conversion” such as an app installation. And they may not to spend a lot on iOS ads until they can do that again. “It’s crucial for the advertising market,” says Ravi Kamran, CEO of the apps marketing platform Trademob, which discovered the problem. “It drives the whole ecosystem.”

Apple’s new Advertising Identifier, which replaced a Unique Device Identifier widely seen as flawed from a privacy perspective, shows numerical IDs that are entirely zeroes instead of the usual unique sequence of numbers. In an interview, Kamran said the problem affects only those phones updated via WiFi, not via iTunes on a computer or via Xcode that Apple software developers use, but that’s a lot of people.

For the time being, advertisers will have to depend on third-party identifiers such as Open Device Identification Number, Kamran says. IPhone and iPad users who don’t like being tracked may be perfectly happy the Advertising Identifier doesn’t work. But the new identifier also offered a way to opt out of tracking, so ultimately a working Apple identifier is probably desirable for all concerned.

I’ve contacted Apple on whether it’s aware of the issue and what it may do about it and will update this post if and when I hear back.

Five Reasons Apple May Not Dare To Sue Google

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The official online color is: #A4C639 . 한국어: 공...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

From my Forbes.com blog The New Persuaders:

Now that Apple has scored a decisive win over Samsung in its smartphone patent trial, the big question is whether the maker of the iPhone and the iPad will go after the real enemy: Google. The search company is the maker of the Android software underlying Samsung’s and many other companies’ mobile devices, after all.

But a direct shot at Google looks unlikely at this point for a variety of reasons:

* Apple’s schoolyard bully strategy of going after the legal weaklings like Samsung worked like a charm, so it’s likely to continue going after hardware firms such as HTC and the now Google-owned Motorola Mobility, rather than Google directly. There are many other cases involving those companies, as well as Samsung, around the world–plenty to keep Apple busy, especially now that it has such a clear victory to build upon.

Indeed, patent expert Florian Mueller of FOSS Patents, a persistent Google critic, thinks Apple is more likely to go after Amazon.com first. As Mueller told Fortune’s Philip Elmer-DeWitt: “If I were in Apple’s shoes the next company I would sue is not Google, but Amazon, which has an even weaker patent portfolio than Google and sells large volumes of Android-based devices with a subsidies-centric revenue model, which is even more of a threat to Apple’s margins than Google’s advertising-based model.”

* Other hardware makers may now decide to settle with Apple, ratcheting down the need for Apple to go after Google. Analyst after analyst notes that with the clear loss for Samsung, the leader among Android device makers, other firms may decide it’s not worth continuing a fight they now seem more likely to lose.

* Apple looks less likely to win a patent infringement case versus Google. For one, Google itself mostly makes only software, and although its Nexus S device co-branded with manufacturer Samsung was identified by the jury as infringing Apple’s patents, it’s the only one and it’s not clear whether a single device provides a strong case for a separate suit. (It’s also not on Apple’s list of Samsung products it wants banned from sale.)

What’s more, Google doesn’t charge hardware companies for using Android, relying instead on ad revenues derived from Android device use, so there may not be much for Apple to sue about. Finally, let’s not forget that Android existed well before the iPhone came out–in fact, Google bought the company that made it in 2005, two years before the first iPhone. That doesn’t guarantee that whatever Google has done with Android since then is on firm patent ground, but it doesn’t seem a stretch to cast doubt in a jury’s collective mind that Android is simply copying iOS when Android the company clearly predates the iPhone.

Not least, Google has pockets deep enough to counter whatever legal threats Apple throws at it. Indeed, this ruling could well galvanize Google’s mostly passive efforts so far to protect Android hardware licensees. Apple may get all it wants from going after hardware producers, given that Apple makes most of its money from hardware itself.

* Apple has already gotten what it wanted from Google with this ruling: the likelihood that Google will have to change aspects of Android to avoid infringement, potentially reducing the competitiveness of Android devices. As Needham & Co.’s Charles Wolf writes: “Google will be forced to design workarounds of the violated software patents, which was the intent of Apple’s lawsuit, not the monetary award. These workarounds are likely to materially degrade the Android user experience relative to the user experience on Apple’s iOS operating system.”

* Google itself may start talking with Apple about some kind of way to avoid litigation. Wells Fargo Securities’ Maynard Um told investors in a note today that the $250 million or more that Apple could get in licensing fees from Samsung–not to mention additional fees from other device makers that may settle or lose in court as well–would be significant enough for Apple to be worthwhile. Add Google in there, and it may be a cash flow Apple can’t resist. After all, it apparently already offered a royalty deal to Samsung, whose rejection led to Apple’s suit.

One might wonder why Apple would feel the need to deal. …

Read the complete post at The New Persuaders.