Dual screening is part of the new marketing lexicon – effectively it’s just a quirky coinage that captures the consumer phenomenon of synchronous multi-tasking on multiple digital devices. This is usually undertaken in, but not limited to, the home.  It presents a clear opportunity for brands to create multi-screen advertising strategies that capitalise effectively on the split attentions consumers afford to more than one device at a given time. Dual screening is buzzing with potential right now because of the inexorable march of smartphones and tablets into our lives and homes. It wasn’t always so clearly promising.

Advertising media examined Dual (or multi) screening for its potential (or otherwise) to make TV commercials work harder for brands – for example, by creating opportunities to encourage immediate digital engagement with a TVC, or by adding meaningful incremental impacts.

It was recognised that consumers would engage in Desktop/Laptop PC use at the same time as viewing TV. Most often, consumers were partaking in tasks (web-surfing, working, listening to music, VoD etc.) entirely unrelated to the background TV viewing. Occasionally though, they actively supplemented the experience of their TV viewing (ads or programming) with complementary actions on their PC devices. This might have been product searches, social interactions, brand engagement, or other prompted actions. A tantalising conundrum for advertisers: did this underline that TV could provide a natural bridge to brand discovery in digital, or just highlight the realities of fragmented media attention?

TV is as strong as ever investment wise, and, now that dual screening has evolved to include same-time tablet use, it presents advertisers with the chance to capitalise on TV and tablets working in concert in the home. Never far from reach, it is these connected, go anywhere, use everywhere, ubiquitous devices that are in the new media vanguard of what brands must adapt to in order to stimulate meaningful dual screen engagement and targeting strategies.

Mobile internet-connected devices register extensive user engagement on a range of digital activities – from the functional, to the social and entertaining, and including retail. Both devices operate on respectable UK penetration rates (52% and c13% respectively), with phenomenal and continued growth. More so than PC devices, we now also know that consumers use their smartphones and tablets extensively while they watch TV, and that this is often for direct and ad hoc engagement with the TV content.

These devices, from a consumer point of view, offer absolute convenience, immediacy, and rewarding user experiences. Based on these essential truths, smartphones and tablets will increasingly tend to set the advertiser to consumer engagement agenda.

In order to create a positive consumer experience, brands must understand that dual screening creates new demands on brand discovery, by device. Any TV advertising brand must understand and meet some basic challenges in mobile optimisation of sites and content to ensure consumers are rewarded with the minimum viable brand experience for either device.

Tablets and smartphones don’t deliver a full-bleed desktop experience (regardless of the flash capabilities of the device), yet, through dual screening, they may be the first devices through which a consumer seeks your brand at home (if a consumer is out-of-home, they may likewise choose to engage with your advertising on their mobile connected devices first, rather than wait for a desktop).

Dual screening then adds weight to the demands that smartphones and tablets have already created for brand digital assets and platforms to be optimised for mobile devices. This task is to meet the minimum viable user experience expectations of the growing hordes of Smartphone and Tablet users, in a way that is optimal way for each device, or to manage the opportunity costs in not doing so.

Realities of home Tablet use present advertising opportunities – Mobext Research

(In association with inMobi) Mobext, MPG Media Contacts’ full service mobile media planning and marketing agency, conducted a research study entitled “The Role of Tablets in the Consumer Sales Journey” with the goal of uncovering the different use cases across tablet devices. The aim was to understand in better detail why and how marketers and media planners might leverage this knowledge to better reach audiences, and to gain insight into the role these different devices play in the consumer path to purchase (including the importance of dual screening as an advertising media strategy).

The extensive multi-market research can be found summarised in a whitepaper here. But, from a UK dual screening point of view, the research clearly identified a prevalent trend among tablet owners. They tended to use their devices most extensively from 6pm to midnight (the preserve of home life and prime time TV), and a whopping 70% of those owners were using their device while watching TV. With ownership still by and large the preserve on ABC1 audience, and tablet penetration reaching 9m or so, this clearly creates a compelling media case for building prompted dual screen engagement and content strategies for such a lucrative audience.

It was hardly surprising to further discover that, while Tablets are enjoying phenomenal growth, expecting to reach 20% penetration by 2015, behavioural data from the survey also demonstrated mounting confidence in the platform for online retail, or t-commerce. This is good news for brands, as a Tablet (fully connected and always to hand) can now be exploited as a viable route to sales generation off the back of TV advertising; one that would also shorten the pathway to a sales conversion.

Implementing a Dual-screen media strategy can present easy gains in core brand metrics, like awareness and consideration

Brands and planning agencies should pay keen attention to, and act on, the mounting evidence that points the way to dual screening as a highly effective strategy for efficient media buying in brand campaigns. Huge leaps in positive brand metrics have been registered by third party moderated campaigns where the impact of dual screening was being assessed.

According to an April ‘12 Nielsen/Adcolony brand study on cross-platform video effectiveness, a synched, dual-screen buying strategy across TV and Smartphone/Tablets proved to be 1.7 times more effective for driving both brand recall and purchase intent than generated by TV buying on its own.

With so many consumers multi-tasking while watching TV, studies such as this set out to measure the importance of being with the consumer across all devices. Big TV advertisers should take note. Here is a chance to easily drive incremental cut-through, along with greater brand and product awareness. TV and Tablets can work well in concert and this should encourage fresh thinking around making more of TV spot buying. As shown in this study, the simple introduction of mobile video ad synched to display around TV spots could enhance brand performance metrics.

This makes a compelling case for running meaningful and structured test buying on appropriate MPG Media Contacts clients, to a similar methodology.

Over the coming months you can expect to see a raft of similar results-driven AB tests being recommended by your account team seeking to make sure you get the most from the dual screening opportunity around TV and Mobile Display advertising.

InMobi, the mobile advertising network, and Mobext, the mobile agency run by Havas, polled 8,400 people in India, France, South Korea, the UK and US, finding that 69% of tablet owners had shopped on tablet devices in the 30 days before the survey.

Another 10% would be happy to acquire a “big ticket” item via this route, falling to just 2.9% for smartphone users, where purchases are often functional and of low value.

Over 20% of tablet ‘early adopters’ claimed to have made less trips to bricks and mortar stores after obtaining the gadget. This trend may gain traction as a third of people yet to own such an appliance hoped to buy one in the next six months.

Elsewhere, 61% of the existing tablet community revealed this channel played a key role in building brand awareness when used at home, as did 58% for “active evaluation” and 63% for completing transactions.

Smartphones were pre-eminent when out-of-home, as over 40% of shoppers agreed they built awareness, consideration and purchase here, while more than a third said the same for evaluation and after-sales support.

More broadly, tablet users regularly employed these devices to undertake an average of 3.9 activities, ahead of 3.6 different pastimes on laptops and 2.7 on smartphones.

Looking at media usage, 58% of people with an iPad or similar offering accessed content – especially rich media – in short bursts throughout the day, as did 56% of their smartphone counterparts.

An additional 72% of this audience watched TV and used their slate simultaneously, and 20% spent more time in front of the television having bought a tablet.

Chris Bourke, Mobext’s Managing Director, said: “The arrival of game-changing touchscreen technology has given rise to rapid changes in media consumption patterns. This new phenomena is characterised by acute advertiser anxiety when trying to configure their digital marketing plans.”

51% of tablet owners claimed they used the device to fill “dead time”, while 49% shared it with family members.

A further 44% of the same group “would not want to be separated” from their tablet, and 42% found that the gadget had “revolutionised” the way they communicated with friends and colleagues.

Media consumption in the UK is clearly changing, with comScore reporting 72% growth in tablet ownership in the second half of 2011 alone*. According to InMobi and Mobext’s global consumer research, 63% of tablet users in the UK agreed that it is easier to access media content on a tablet than on a mobile or laptop/desktop. When asked about activities carried out on mobile devices, tablet users carry out an average of 3.9activities given a list of six broad options in the last 30 days.  This was higher than both laptop (3.6) and smartphone (2.7) users

When considering browsing and purchasing patterns, the research found that tablet users purchased more regularly than on any other device.  Additionally over 20% of tablet users claim to shop less in bricks and mortar stores, since purchasing their device.  Over two thirds (69%) of tablet users had shopped via their device in the last 30 days, with almost 1 in 10 of these consumers happy to use their tablet for a ‘big ticket’ purchase, in contrast with smartphone users who typically use their device for functional purchases (2.9%).

Chris Bourke, Managing Director at Mobext, comments; “The arrival of game-changing touchscreen technology has given rise to rapid changes in media consumption patterns and left digital advertisers in a Liminal-Media-Space; this new phenomena is characterised by acute advertiser anxiety when trying to configure their digital marketing plans. Mobext and InMobi’s unique research aims to assuage this angst by helping brands understand the role that Tablets and other connected devices play in the consumer sales journey and we go on to recommend a framework that advertisers can use to plan across this new fragmented device ecosystem.”

The research also revealed that 72% of respondents watch TV while using their tablet and a fifth of consumers stated that they watched more TV following a tablet purchase. Almost a third of current non-tablet owners said they were likely to purchase one in the next six months, further fuelling on-device purchasing.

John Stoneman, Sales Director EME at InMobi concludes: “Media consumption habits are indeed evolving, with digital consumers supplementing or even replacing time spent with traditional forms of media, such as print readership and much purchasing now happens in the home via a mobile device. The research shows there is a strong correlation between the use of tablet devices and TV viewing, with the UK showing the highest levels of ‘dual-screening’ across the globe. Considering the path to purchase point; tablets are being used to research and browse products; which is then followed by a decision to buy the product. Notably we discovered that when consumers shop on tablets, they spend more than on any other device.”

The global research indicated that tablet and smartphone users access media content on any device most frequently in several ‘snack’ sessions throughout the day, (58% tablets, 56% smartphones) with a continued appetite for enhanced or rich media.

The research findings has enabled InMobi and Mobext to produce for the first time, a Connected Device planning tool that allows advertisers to determine, by context, which devices should be up weighted when planning digital campaigns that target consumers using multiple devices.  Mobext and InMobi have published a unique infographic, ‘Role of Connected Devices in the Consumer Sales Journey’ that serves as an at-a-glance guide to planning across connected devices.

Advertisers looking for more detail can, on request, access the Mobext and InMobi Online Global Connected Device Metrics Dashboard. The tool allows brands to cut and dice all of the data collected in the global survey to help them make intelligent decisions when planning connected digital consumer campaigns.

Further research findings:

• 51% use a tablet to fill what would previously have been ‘dead time’
• 49% of respondents share their tablet with family members
• 44% said they would not want to be separated from their tablet
• 42% said that their tablet device has revolutionised the way they communicate with friends/colleagues

For more information about ‘The Role of Tablets in the Online Sales Journey’ research, InMobi and Mobext will be unveiling the results between 9.30am and 12pm on Thursday 10^th May at the MPG Media Contacts office in London (60 St. Martin’s Lane, WC2N 4JS).

On Tuesday Google released ‘BigQuery’ to the public. BigQuery is a cloud platform enabling queries (questions) to be asked across potentially VERY large data sets. Is it a revolution or an evolution? To answer this, it’s worth backtracking slightly to view it in context of ‘Big Data’ and cloud services generally.

The ‘Big Data’ ecosystem is relatively new, but essentially it enables data to be processed at a scale that simply was not possible just a few years ago. The way to achieve this is to horizontally scale (i.e. break up the load across large numbers of computers), and to minimise how much the data needs to move around. Many platforms offer this kind of capability – the Amazon cloud offers services based on Hadoop, and we ourselves in Havas use Greenplum software & EMC server clusters to power our global data analytics platform, Artemis™. IBM, Informatica, Teradata, Microsoft, Oracle, and others also have Big Data solutions of varying capability. With Tuesday’s launch, Google’s BigQuery is now another addition to that competitive set.

Ironically, just about every ‘Big Data’ platform borrows a process called ‘MapReduce’, which was released into the wild by Google’s own Labs division back in 2004. This technology underpins Big Data systems’ ability to break big problems into very many, much smaller, problems (the ‘Map’) that can each be sent out to individual servers. The ‘Reduce’ step subsequently matches up all of the results into a single response. This is the not-so-secret-sauce of Big Data – with enough servers, even the biggest queries can be trivial. With the core mechanics of Big Data largely understood, the question becomes where to keep data, and where to run the analytics. This is where “The Cloud” comes in.

Cloud-based services continue to generate a lot of hype. Why? The ability to simply throw problems at massive pools of servers ‘somewhere else’ definitely has its charms! The main benefit from services like Google’s and Amazon’s helps two types of businesses – those that need to avoid up front capex costs, and those that have highly variable or short term needs. An example of the former would include digital startups like a DSP; while an example of the latter would be a small animation studio that needs a high number of machines to render animation on a variable basis. In cases like this, the economics of cloud services are hard to challenge – but this is only part of the story.

In the case of businesses like Havas, our Artemis™ platform has massive long term data requirements that are continually growing. We store historical data for every individual touch point between consumers and our clients’ advertising, which can date back years. We also hold summarised performance data running back ten years. This amounts to a LOT of data. In addition, analytics – the process of creating insights through data queries – is endemic throughout our data. In cases like this, the economics of paying cloud services for data storage over time, and paying compute time or data access charges for analytics is not such an easy sell.

Data requirements in digital are constantly evolving; there seems to be literally no limit to the data that can be used for marketing analytics and reporting. Services like Google’s BigQuery and Amazon’s Elastic MapReduce offering are brilliant, as they offer firmly established, stable ways for companies to find advantage in data. Cloud based analytics also drives innovation by massively altering the economics of Big Data for startups and those businesses with heavily fluctuating analytical demands.

Is Google BigQuery a revolution or an evolution then? I’d say that it’s simply an evolutionary step forwards, yet a very welcome one that re-aligns Google within the Big Data space. The broader emerging ability to extract value from Big Data however – that is most certainly a revolution driving change throughout organisations within and far outside of marketing. It’s very early days and the potential can only be imagined today.

The separation of media from creative is also too significant for it to be healthy.

There was a benefit to the old model where both operated alongside each other in full service shops. Then the world became fragmented & too complicated. Or did it? Media rightly became a specialist skill and then ever sub channel within digital subsequently argued for its own specialism. This has created umpteen siloes and specialist departments in agencies; that in itself is not wrong if the agency culture obsesses around joining everything together. At the end of the day what we all do is very simple. We help advertisers sell stuff by either satisfying or creating people’s needs for a product or service. To do that, we need to make brands meaningful to people’s lives and provide clear and unquestionable value to them.

Today, everyone talks a different language dependent on the part of the industry they cut their teeth in. Those who learnt their craft through adversarial national press negotiations or TV spot trading are undoubtedly the best buyers. Those who grew up with Overture & Google as their primary media owners are analytically brilliant and effortlessly switch from one technology platform to the next. Which of those skills is more important? The answer is neither. Modern media campaigns require both.

So why is it then that most media people like to specialise in one specific vertical? Do TV buyers only consume TV, do PPC analysts only click on Google links and never turn on the TV. Of course they don’t. We would all do well to remember that everything starts and ends with people & understanding why people do what they do after seeing an ad; or more importantly why they don’t given most people do absolutely nothing. To coin one of Dave Trott’s favourite adages, the audiences we target haven’t (contrary to popular opinion) read the client’s brief.

I interview every single new potential recruit for our business. The real talent shines head and shoulders above the rest. They are able to switch between two languages; analogue and digital and they can translate between the two. They care about people and why people do what they do. When asked where they want to specialise, they talk about chemists or chefs; craftsmen who take the best ingredients and mix them in to a unique, a la carte solution. Oh and it’s beautifully refreshing when they don’t turn up with their future salary expectation tattooed on their CV.

I started my career working on brands such as Procter & Gamble, Dockers & Cartier. I pulled competitive reports, I negotiated press, I planned TV. I then became fascinated with this emerging medium known as online and I never looked back. When our fresh faced few grads ask why I got the break I did, they are surprised when I tell them that it wasn’t because I got in to digital early. It’s because I was able to talk both languages and have always been most passionate about seamlessly connected communications.

Media is wallpaper unless it stands out. It’s nothing without the right message, just the place where a forgettable ad appeared or perhaps worse, best remembered as a dusty voucher copy in the agency basement. The right message and right media are also nothing without a clear purpose and a destination, which provides something of value. Improving awareness or consideration is a pointless exercise unless it changes purchase behaviour. Measuring the cost per acquisition of a campaign is equally flawed if you are only basing it on the final action a punter conducts.

In my humble opinion, what we do is actually pretty simple and ultimately defined by the people we seek to target. These people are normal people like you and I; if they notice an ad and react to it, it’s something that takes up seconds (or if we are lucky) minutes of their day, not hours. (would be nice if someone could tell certain creative agencies that when they are busy writing War & Peace outdoor copy.) ‘Target audiences’ react in simple ways, they are busy, cynical and like you and I, they react best to things that make their lives richer or easier.

For this reason, any media planner would do well to remember the following:

- 90%+ of ad messages get ignored, to stand out you need to have impact – this is where ‘media firsts’ & inspired creative work originates.

- Different communications really do different and complimentary jobs. Some grab attention, some give more detail and some facilitate a purchase with one click – removing the ones that grab attention or give more detail may well kill the final killer action.

- Not enough time is spent understanding how each of the ingredients in an ad campaign works – for me attribution of outcome to the right media channel or to message over media is the biggest marketing challenge for the next decade.

None of the points above are rocket science. They could have been written by an ad agency guy, a digital agency guy or indeed by a marketer.

That’s why at our agency we have tried to build a different type of media business. A modern, agile media business, which seeks to ensure, that brands have meaning to consumers in a world where trust is waning. Only 5% of Brits would care if a certain brand vanished tomorrow. (Source: MPG MC #meaningful brands research)

Clearly planning and buying paid media is no longer a complete answer. Like most media agencies we have invested heavily in to digital expertise. Where we differ is that we see the need for this digital expertise to extend beyond the placement in to the destination. We now create, build and maintain full web, mobile & social environments for our clients. We fundamentally believe that big ideas, which create meaning, must be executed under one roof. That’s why we have built a Creative Services team of 30 people in-house.

I’m all for hot housing expertise and if you don’t do that in the digital, you will undoubtedly fail, BUT there needs to be clear leadership that brings every cog in the wheel back to human understanding which in turn feeds connected thinking & measurement.

I’m predicting that before we hit 2015, people will stop talking about digital and revert to talking about the relationship between media, ad creative and destination experience.

@paul_framp

The ICO was put in charge of regulating the new rules last year but gave site owners a 12-month period of grace before they were enforced because most sites were not ready for the new law.

Key points set out in the ICO interpretation of the new law, issued in December 2011, cover the following:

• More detail on what is meant by consent. The advice says ‘consent must involve some form of communication where an individual knowingly indicates their acceptance.
• The guidance explains that cookies used for online shopping baskets and ones that help keep user data safe are likely to be exempt from complying with the rules.
• However, cookies used for most other purposes including analytical, first and third party advertising, and ones that recognise when a user has returned to a website, will need to comply with the new rules.
• Achieving compliance in relation to third party cookies is one of the most challenging areas. The ICO is working with other European data protection authorities and the industry to assist in addressing the complexities and finding the right answers.
• The ICO will focus its regulatory efforts on the most intrusive cookies or where there is a clear privacy impact on individuals.

Privacy is one of the key challenges facing the analytics industry in 2012. As well as the amended cookie law, the European commission has put forward proposals that would see a single set of rules on data protection apply across the EU.

But what does the cookie law mean for web analytics? Reaction to the amendment of the law varies from confusion as to how to comply with it, to the belief that it is, at present, unenforceable and therefore nothing to worry about. However, what is clear is that the law will certainly present changes for the way analytics systems and online marketing teams work.

Conrad Bennett, VP of Technical Services, EMEA at Webtrends said businesses must think ahead in order to ensure they are in compliance with the law.

“Short of a company removing all cookies from their site, which is not really an option, brands need to take action and plan how they are going to comply with the legislation. Our advice is to, firstly, conduct a cookie audit of your website(s). Remove any cookies that are no longer required (remember to check with stakeholders to make sure they really are redundant).

Secondly, update your Privacy Policy and include a Cookie Policy (ideally with a link in a prominent position, clearly visible on all pages). This new policy should detail all cookies that you place on the user’s PC/mobile and include who owns the cookie and what it does. Finally, plan what approach you are going to take to comply with the EU Directive in getting users to opt-in to accepting cookies.”

He also cited the importance of clarifying the use of cookies on a brand’s website as a positive thing for consumers; “The key is to make the message clear for customers that cookies are used for measurement and to enhance their experience; try not to mention words like ‘tracking’ which have a negative connotation. Cookies ultimately benefit the repeat site visitor, remembering preferences, language choices, wish-lists etc. If websites are clear about the benefits, there should be little impact on the quality of the analytics, and thus the customer experience.”

Bennett also observed the new law will mean that fewer visitors will opt in, but that insights to improve performance will still be gleaned from those who do.

Duncan Parry, COO at STEAK agrees that even if the development of on-screen prompts increases in the long term, data will still provide insight even after the new legislation:

“If in the longer term the development of “Do Not Track” buttons in browsers and on sites does significantly rise, then analytics providers will have to innovate – or website owners find ways to reward consumers for accepting cookies, perhaps with discounts or loyalty points. Data will still have value.”

Meanwhile, questions are being raised about the different interpretations of the law across Europe. Foviance lead consultant John D’Arcy stated:

“The particular issue for analytics is that there are different interpretations across Europe. The UK government has always indicated that it will be less focused on analytics technologies while countries like Germany flag Analytics as a major risk.”

D’Arcy went on to explain that if sites ask for opt-in agreement from visitors, a change in thinking will be required from both analytics and marketing teams:

“If sites ask for active opt-in we can expect only 10% of visitors will agree and therefore be tracked. So we’ll only be able to understand the behaviours of 1 in 10 of our customers. If that’s the case then analytics tools are going to need to be treated like survey or panel data which only take small samples of customer data. That’s going to be a major shift in thinking for marketing and analytics teams. Not to say that data won’t be valuable but it will need to be reported on, analysed and utilised in completely different ways.”

Perhaps summarising the feelings of many in the industry, D’Arcy also questioned the ability to design a solution to a challenge that “even the law makers don’t understand”, saying: “It may even be fun watching the chaos unfold over the next year but I do have a hunch that we are a way off the ICO taking an active interest in fining people.”

Head of ad operations at MPG Media Contacts, Chris Swarbrick highlighted a decrease in recorded traffic as one of the most obvious – and serious – threats to analytics, citing an example of the ICO enforcing this on its own site:

“Officially the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has confirmed that site analytics cookies require consent just as any other “non-essential” cookies do. Famously once the ICO enforced this on their own site, and made it conditional on a user ticking a box before GA cookies were set, they saw a 90% decrease in recorded traffic.

So at face value it would appear that the new ‘cookie laws’ may pose a major threat to current analytics systems.”

Swarbrick went on to explain that ICO guidelines imply that not to fall foul of the new rules in practice, site owners must simply explain analytics somewhere on their website.

“However, right at the end of their guidelines the ICO state ‘Provided clear information is given about their activities we are highly unlikely to prioritise first party cookies used only for analytical purposes in any consideration of regulatory action.’

In practice then it appears that site owners can continue as they are – so long as they take that all important step of explaining somewhere on the site what analytics is. The topic therefore shouldn’t be ignored but doesn’t need to be considered a threat.”

Given Facebook already commands an army of 850m users globally, the purchase clearly wasn’t about buying in Instagram’s measly 30 million users. It’s been widely reported that Facebook is struggling with its mobile proposition. For a property that gets about half of its usage via mobile, that’s a problem. £1bn is however, an awfully big outlay to buy in some (albeit pretty sexy) mobile app functionality.

I think the truth goes deeper than this. Was Zuckerberg scared of Instagram eating his lunch? I’m not sure he was. I think it’s more likely he was inspired by a beautiful product, a product that his developers have so far failed to deliver. Facebook is ultimately about shared experiences. People seem to prefer to share pictures rather than text where possible and where it’s easy to do so. Smartphones unite these two forces. Cue the rise of Pinterest & Instagram.

What Instagram does beautifully, is allow the image to transcend the text. Facebook is still governed by text – my witty status update or my check in at a certain location avec commentary. Instagram delivers messages via a snapshot in time; somehow it transforms the simplest snap in to a memorable and poignant work of art. We used to be content with a world wide web that was text based. As broadband speeds multiply, we yearn for sharper imagery (witness the iPad 3 retina display) and for moving images, i.e. video. The only true barrier to a mobile video sharing platform is connection speed.

Instagram instantly brings to Facebook a proven concept for sharing visual experiences. Still snapshots will quickly evolve in to video clips & who owns the biggest video property on the web? Google. Simultaneously, video sharing is rapidly becoming a huge part of what people do on Facebook (particularly amongst the kids), & it defines what You Tube users do.

I therefore fundamentally think this move is a defensive play against Google. Through You Tube, Google wants to ‘own’ video. Google’s mobile trojan horse, Android, is on a ferocious march with a 300,000 strong app store already in place. Google also happen to be rather dominant in the search space (& one increasingly being driven by image & video) and no-one gets even close to Google in mobile search. Google has struggled with its web content strategy, but has  its eyes firmly set on owning both search & content on the mobile.

Google have struggled to monetise a network of video generated by users you don’t know, but on Facebook, you are sharing with your friends & people you know. Facebook is consumed heavily on mobile but before Instagram, Facebook had a pathetic mobile offering and importantly no mobile ad model. Imagine contextual, location based mobile ads targeted to static and moving images, with a thumbs up from one or more of your mates for good measure. Imagine Facebook Mobile.
Reads far better than Google Photo Sharing for Mobile if your initials are MZ.

Should you log on to any blog right now, you will witness a plethora of superlatives describing the relationship that users have with Instagram. Partly, because it’s an intuitive application in your hand and partly because it’s in tune with the human psyche, Instagram commands true adoration, something that Zuckerberg must worry his platform is a little lacking in.

Does $1bn still sound like a lot of money? It might do if the 30m users desert the platform in the fashion being predicted by many. If not, in 18 months time, this move could be seen as a masterstroke by Zuckerberg.

Paul Frampton, managing director, MPG Media Contacts
@paul_framp

http://www.mandmglobal.com/community/opinion/11-04-12/is-1bn-too-much-for-instagram.aspx

We’ve considered the rise and rise of mobile and the web unplugged, but that’s a topic for our mobile friends. Their time is now and we couldn’t do that to them. We’ve even mulled over the increase of personalised content curation; platforms like Flip board and Polyvore, and an ever more personalised digital experience made possible through data.

At last, it’s not just the geeks who are getting off on data and surely it would be wrong of us to steal the thunder from those boys and girls who have long understood the potential of data that the rest of us are only now beginning to appreciate.  That would be daylight robbery!

Before we even put the kettle on, we figured that having the digital card would make this task a cinch; there’s so much innovation and disruption that we could pick any number of things.  But what we’ve come to realise is that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to isolate digital both in the world we live in today as consumers and in how we do our day job as marketing practitioners.  Is Million Pound Drop or Zeebox a TV or a digital experience?  It’s both of these. Can the ever-expanding Xbox Live platform stay pigeonholed as just a gaming channel?

Of course not, it’s truly multichannel.  Is the future of data just about what we do on our tablets and PC’s?  Increasingly not, as more and more of the technology we use becomes Internet enabled and starts to generate its own visible data trail.

So, we can’t help feeling, as everything becomes digital that the digital prefix will start to fade, as it becomes harder to define media and technology in the simplified binary terms of analogue and digital.  Layered over this “everything digital” scenario are brand experiences that are increasingly always-on and frictionless; accessible wherever and whenever we want and existing effortlessly across whatever platform or device we choose.  Due to traditional structures, working practices and decision processes, this is neither a comfortable nor a natural state for many brands today.

What makes this situation all the more pressing is it’s exactly what we, as consumers, are already warming to, and increasingly expecting.  Here at Media Contacts, we think to be a successful brand in 2012 and beyond, these challenges need to be addressed head on. Rather than seeing them as an inconvenient truth we help our clients realise the opportunities that such change presents; create and manage communications that tap into this new reality and in so doing connect with people in more meaningful ways.