Music streaming service, Songza has partnered with Weather Channel to offer music recommendations tailored to local weather conditions. Advertisers have been using weather data to affect marketing budgets for some time, realizing it’s powerful impact on sales. For Songza, weather plays as much a role in mood as music, so it makes sense to incorporate that data when making music suggestions. As we continue to glean more insights from big data, look for even more sophisticated algorithms which will anticipate what media we want before we even know it.
Category: Percolate
Instagram Has More U.S. Mobile Users Than Twitter
According to a new E-Marketer report, Instagram now has more American based smartphone users than Twitter. Here are the specifics: Instagram has 35 million US mobile users, while Twitter has only 30.8 million. But for all users – which includes desktop users – Twitter still claims 40 million more users than Instagram, with 240 million total active users worldwide each month as compared to Instagram’s 200 million. The news comes on the heels of Twitter’s attempts to increase mobile engagement with multiple photo uploads and image tagging to, at least by the looks of it, compete with Instagram. Clearly both are viable platforms based on the numbers, but for the moment Instagram is creeping out in front, from a mobile point of view.
Pinterest Readying Ad Sales
Pinterst is a key target for digital advertisers, and now the company is getting ready to fully roll out ads on the platform. The social network will take a Twitter-like approach of “almost-native” ads, where Promoted Pins will look identical to regular pins, save for a “Promoted Pin” disclaimer across the bottom of the ad. Pinterest began testing on this platform last fall with select brands such as Four Seasons and TRESemmé, but the company will be rolling out a full fledged campaign this spring. The rollout will be “soft,” and will predate a Video Pins video rollout in June. Promoted Pins can be targeted, and posted in 32 different categories like “Animals,” “DIY & Crafts,” and others. As well, Promoted Pins will be geo-targeted, allowing advertisers to hone in on boutique brands and shops. Expect to see these as soon as early April.
Millenials Spend More Time Watching TV Content On Other Devices
A study from Deloitte has found that teens and younger twentysomethings spend more time watching TV shows and movies on other devices than their TV. Not surprisingly, desktop was leading the charge as the greatest TV competitor while approximately 8% of all viewing occurred on a gaming device. These stats point to why Chromecast and Roku streaming sticks are gaining traction as they couple the interactivity of mobile with the larger display of TV.
VMBeacon Turns Mannequins Into Beacons
A new, UK-based Beacon technology company called Iconeme has figured out an innovative way to enable store mannequins to transmit information to passers’ by about the clothing they’re modeling. It works through an app that users download, and something called a VMBeacon device that is installed on the mannequin, and the information transmitted by the beacon is stored in the cloud, so it can be accessed remotely. When users with the app are within 100 meters of the VMBeacon, they get an alert about the clothes on the mannequin, in addition to prices, direct purchase links, and information about the store the item is in. As well, they can share the look via social networks, or save it for later. The device itself has a battery life of up to three years, and because the content can be changed remotely, it’s maintenance-free. It represents one of the first – but most definitely not the last – introduction of beacons into the retail space to call consumers to action and increase sales.
Microsoft & Linkin Park Partner On Project Spark
When Microsoft launched Project Spark last December, all anybody really knew was that it would allow gamers and developers to interact with custom games from home. Now, Linkin Park is teaming up with Microsoft to create a custom music video experience on the platform that users will be able to remix and recreate – however they like. Linkin Parks’ new single, “Guilty All the Same,” can be in effect played on the Xbox – the user plays as a character trying to escape a particular environment while the single plays in the background. Linkin Park is offering the experience for free on Xbox and Windows. From a marketing perspective, the platform provides brands with a creative way of reaching consumers on an interactive platform with a proven user base. If you’re looking for a way to bring your project to a younger, gaming market, this is an effective tool to get results.
Android Dominates Global Market; iOS Controls Western World
In a confirmation of what many have already believed to be true, dotMobi released a new report indicating that although iOS tends to dominate the western world, on a global scale Android is outpacing the Apple mobile platform – as far as mobile browsing goes. The company gathered the data by sifting through mobile site views and their locations. The final tally? iOS services control browsing in 34 countries, including the major Western markets of US, UK, Canada, France, and Japan, while Android controls the remaining 67 nations that dotMobi was tracking. The other important conclusion to draw from this data is that there is a veritable global duopoly of mobile operating systems; that is to say BlackBerry, Windows phones, and others barely register in the study. Good news for Apple and Google, but for advertisers, it means that products geared toward mobile OS’s that aren’t iOS and Android aren’t going to be as valuable.
FitBit Partners With HTC
As health and fitness trackers become more and more of a mainstream item, smartphones and brands continue to look for new ways to bring them into their offerings. HTC’s new HTC One (M8) isn’t the first such item to do this with their phone, but it’s the first to partner with category-wide leader FitBit to bring their software onto all new HTC One devices. It means that the FitBit software will be pre-installed, so users will be much more inclined to use FitBit’s built-in software rather than heading to the Google Play store for their own. The FitBit software won’t just work with the Force or Flex; FitBit’s software will also work with any of the tracking sensors in the HTC One itself – so whether users use FitBit’s hardware or the technology built into the phone, FitBit wins. The goal, of course, is for FitBit to be to health and fitness trackers what Kleenex are to Tissues, and by integrating their software within popular smartphones at the point of purchase, they’re certainly well on their way to getting there. But whether they will be undercut by bigger companies yet to release their products – i.e. Apple – remains to be seen. Nevertheless, this is big news for both FitBit and HTC.
Rumr Brings Anonymous Chat To Mobile Phones
Anonymity and privacy are buzzwords of a new generation of chatters and messengers. Snapchat has risen to popularity in large part because the messages are never stored – it keeps the messages away from the prying eyes of anyone going through the phone. In the messaging world, Whisper and Secret have already established themselves as anonymous public forums, but Rumr is taking the concept one step further: anonymous group messaging. Funded in part by Google Ventures, users connect their phone numbers and emails to the system, and then pick a username. In order to start a chat, users agree to enter the chat with a listed number they know – the anonymous part is that users choose a color to represent themselves, not a username. Right now, the product is in testing, but it’s clear that personal privacy – and protecting one’s identity from others – is a key trend in the digital marketplace at the moment. It comes down to trust: as consumers become wary about how much data is being collected about them, they want to make sure their identities are only being revealed to the sources they want them to be. As the average consumer becomes increasingly digitally savvy, marketers will need to keep pace.
Google and Luxottica Partner On Glass
Even though Google Glass is still only available to a select few early adopters, Google is preparing to take a big step towards making the eyewear consumer-friendly with a new strategic partner: Luxottica. One of the biggest early criticisms of Glass has been its lack of form factor – that is to say, people thought the glasses themselves were ugly and not worth wearing. So Google attempted to solve the problem itself, with Titanium, an in-house, better designed pair of glasses that also featured Glass technology. But Google isn’t stopping there – according to Luxottica, Google will be working with two of its most popular brands, Ray Ban and Oakley, to design consumer-facing versions of Google Glass. If Google makes the eyewear fashionable and attractive to wear, it seems likely that more than 10% of smartphone owners would be interested in purchasing the technology.
