Tag: Mobile

Apple Adds Ad-Blocking Extension To iOS 9

Posted on by Lab Team

Read original story on: 9to5Mac

Preview of the upcoming iOS 9 reveals a new ad-blocking extension in Safari, which would prevent specified web resources (like images and scripts) from loading in Apple’s native browser, which affects the entire supply chain of digital media.

Two weeks ago, we reported on the increasing usage of ad-blocking, especially on mobile devices, and recommended brands and marketers to look into native ads as a way to circumvent the trend. Apple’s new move seems to be mostly targeted at cutting down Google’s ad revenues from iOS devices, as its AdWord serves the majority of digital ads, and Apple’s own iAd platform is unlikely to be affected. Therefore, it may be worthy for media owners and publishers to migrate from mobile web into apps, or Apple’s very timely News app, to avoid further hemorrhaging ad revenues due to ad-blocking.

Could Refund Of Virtual Goods Soon Be Viable?

Posted on by Lab Team

Read original story on: The Verge

Virtual goods, which include a wide range of digital products from audiobooks to in-app purchases, have mostly been non-refundable transactions. But Steam, the popular online games platform owned by Valve, might just change that with an updated Refund Policy that now allows its users to “request a refund for nearly any purchase on Steam — for any reason”, as long as the game was purchased within the past 14 days and played for less than two hours.

Compared to physical products, it is considerably more difficult to handle the return and refund of virtual goods due to its inherently intangible nature. Yet it doesn’t exactly stand as a legitimate reason for blocking purchasers from exercising one of their fundamental rights as customers. Steam is able to allow refunds partly because it can verify the usage of purchased games on its platform, and that could be easily expanded to other types of virtual goods through app tracking.

Yet, it is important to not that, while refund of virtual goods is certainly practicable, the complexity of implementation might just keep it from becoming a reality in the near future. Nevertheless, brands selling virtual goods need to be aware of its viability and actively work to improve after-sales service.

Fast Forward: Google Now is the New Search — How To Stay Visible

Posted on by Lab Team

Editor’s Note: FAST FORWARD is a new Lab product that aims to be your go-to guide to tech-driven changes in the media landscape. It is a FAST read for you and a simple FORWARD for your clients and team. This is the first of our Fast Forward analyses, and we welcome any constructive criticism or feedback.

 

What Happened?
Yesterday at its annual I/O developer conference, Google debuted some game-changing new products and services that could redefine the entire app ecosystem. The company wowed the crowd with a new “Now on Tap” feature, part of the new Android M OS, which aims to provide contextual information and app deep links based on the content currently on the screen. Moreover, Google also updated its AdMob platforms to add new features such as improved ad targeting and tools for native ad creation.

What Does This Mean for Brands?
For both Android and iOS app owners, make sure your app is submitted to Google for indexing. While Now on Tap will always be Android only, iOS apps should be indexed also as apps for both platforms will need to do so to appear in Google search results on the web.

Google also announced that Play Store app listing content can be A/B tested, and that they will help developers analyze and understand the results. The A/B testing will be a huge help in converting Play Store views into downloads.

The IPG Media Lab, Ansible, and Reprise Media can help you strategize for these changes and produce content that will maximize the benefits from the new distribution and tools. This will get your app in front of more users, both in search results and in the Play Store, and ensure that those users are reminded of your app at the most useful moments through Now on Tap.

How It Works
If a movie title is mentioned in an email, activating Now on Tap with a long press of the home button brings up a Now card with glanceable information pulled from IMDB, a link to the trailer on YouTube, and deep links to relevant apps on the user’s phone. In this case, the user could go directly to the Tomorrowland page in the IMDB or Flixster app.

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For a restaurant mentioned in a text message, Now on Tap surfaces Google reviews and direct links to its location and phone number, as well as the Yelp and OpenTable apps.

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For fashion brands, indexing will be key to allowing users to go directly from a brand or product mention in an email or text to an app like Spring where the user can browse your related products or complete a purchase.

For verticals such as travel, where a mobile-optimized website may have sufficed, that strategy will no longer deliver enough value on Android. A native app, submitted for indexing, will allow Now on Tap to surface your brand app at the best possible times and allow users to book the trip they were talking about.

Google has incentive to display some glanceable information to answer basic questions but not to go too far on that front because that would discourage Android app development if users got everything they needed from Now on Tap instead of the third party apps. Therefore, we expect that Now on Tap will drive more app use and surface the right apps at the right moments for Android users.

Market Impact
The new Now on Tap feature means a system-wide deep-linking integration with all third-party apps via Google Now, which produces great opportunity for brands to benefit from contextual suggestions. Interestingly, the official announcement of Now on Tap was posted on Google’s official search blog, rather than the official Android blog. This signals the importance of the new feature for Google in a world where more and more time is spent inside apps and not in the web browser, where Google has been dominant. More than half of total internet time is spent in a mobile app and almost 90 percent of mobile internet time is spent in apps. Google has figured out a way to be useful for both users and app owners in this new reality and at the same time move ahead of Apple’s Siri and Facebook’s Graph Search.

Moreover, with the new updates to the AdMob’s platform, the over 650,000 apps it currently supports can now pull ads from 40 ad networks, including Facebook, Twitter, and Tencent GDT, and can present those ads in a more native format using CSS defined by the app. Similarly, Google also launched Universal App Campaigns for AdWords to help advertisers reach a wider audience across Google’s Search and AdMob platforms, as well as on mobile sites, on YouTube and on Google Play. With Facebook increasingly challenging Google’s dominance on mobile app install ads, Google clearly feels compelled to make it a more appealing ad platform for brands and developers alike with all these useful new tools.

For More Information
Please contact Engagement Director Samantha Holland ([email protected]) at the IPG Media Lab if you would like more detail or to schedule a visit to the Lab.

 

All featured images courtesy of Google’s Official Search Blog

 

Shazam For More Than Just Music

Posted on by Lab Team

Read original story on: The Next Web

We first heard of Shazam’s ambitious plan to go beyond simply music recognition back in January at CES. Now, the company has officially launched a new “Visual Shazam”, as it continues to expand its platform for contextual content discovery. The new feature that will allow users to use Shazam app to scan physical products, QR codes or print ads for more interactive experiences on mobile devices. The mobile interactions reportedly include augmented reality visuals, exclusive behind-the-scene videos, good ol’ coupons and more.

Similar to the visual scanning tools like Google Goggles or Amazon Firefly before it, this new Visual Shazam could offer great opportunities for brand integration. At launch, Shazam is already teaming up with several big-name partners from various industries, including Levi’s, Guerlain, Hearst, Condé Nast, Time, Harper Collins and Disney in promotion of its new blockbuster, “Tomorrowland”.

Compared to regular QR codes, “Visual Shazam” stands out with a vast built-in user base (Shazam claims to have over 100 million monthly mobile active users), its versatility in applications, and general user-friendliness. As the interactive mobile experience continues to grow in prominence, we expect to see more brands to give it a try.

By The Numbers: Mobile Purchase Habits

Posted on by Lab Team

As mobile usage continues to rise, mobile spending is correspondingly increasing, growing 42% annually over a four-year period. Therefore, it is important for brands looking to conquer the mobile space to understand how and when average users are making purchases on mobile devices and hopefully discover some behavioral patterns that can help inform brands’ mobile commerce strategy.

1- Applovin_RevenuebyHour

Whether in games, retail, travel or other commerce apps, users are much more likely to make purchases before and after work, according to a study from AppLovin and TUNE. The study found that, on an hourly basis, mobile revenues and usage spikes to a daily high around both 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. during weekdays, discrediting the myth of “lunch break shopping”.

2 -Applovin_RevenuebyWeekdayjpg

Similarly, on a day-to-day basis, mobile spending peaks over weekends, while Wednesday marks the lowest. Although it is generally established that Mondays are generally the best revenue for online retail, Fridays and Sundays take the top spots for most in-app purchasing and spending.

3- Applovin_UsagebyWeekday

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is also important to note that mobile spending revenue pattern doesn’t necessarily correlate to mobile usage. While Wednesdays, the lowest day in terms of revenue, do register the lowest mobile usage of the week, Friday, second slowest day in terms of usage, is also the second highest in terms of revenue.

4 - Applovin_UsagebyHour

Likewise, on an hourly basis, evening is when usage and spending both hit their daily peaks, whereas the morning hours post similar spending but less usage. The bottom line here is mobile commerce is not the same as general ecommerce, and marketers need to find ways to programmatically increase win rates during peak hours and weekends that fit the mobile spending patterns.

All featured charts courtesy of AppLovin Blog.

 

European Mobile Carriers Plan To Block All Online Ads

Posted on by Lab Team

Read original story on: Financial Times

A recent report claims that some mobile network operators in Europe are planning to start blocking online ads to target Google’s stranglehold on digital ad revenue. The mobile carriers have reportedly installed ad-blocking software in their data centers and plans are afoot to switch the technology on by the end of the year.

The software, developed by an Israeli-based company named Shine, will prevent most advertisements from loading, thereby causing some severe viewability issue for online advertisers. However, it seems that it will not affect social “in-feed” ads on Twitter or Facebook. Should this actually be implemented, which seems highly unlikely given relevant regulations, digital display ads would be seriously impacted. Maybe now is the time for brands and advertisers to take a look into native ads.

Why Messaging App Tango Launched In-App Shop

Posted on by Lab Team

Read original story on: TechCrunch

Mobile messaging app Tango is taking a page out of WeChat’s playbook with the launch of an in-app commerce service called Tango Shop. Initially available in the US, Tango’s e-commerce platform is powered by two retail giants, Alibaba and Walmart.  The Tango shop features a wide variety of items that can be purchased without leaving the chat app. Payment and logistics are handled by the two retail partners.

Messaging apps have enjoyed a meteoric rise in recent years, emerging as a major platform in the mobile ecosystem. As of the third quarter of 2014, 616 million global users were using chat app and mobile instant messengers, spending 7.6 hours per month on them on average. Accordingly, mobile messaging commerce has been seeing some early success in Asia markets with LINE in Japan and WeChat in China, where it has become the de facto mobile Internet platform in China, particularly for retailers.

However, messaging app-based mobile commerce has yet to take off in the U.S., where the relatively high usage of iMessage and persisting popularity of SMS has made it harder to build a mainstream audience for chat apps. Still, if the recent success of Snapchat, with its relentless push towards original content, is any indication, messaging app-based mobile commerce could certainly take off in the U.S. market sooner rather than later.

Why New York Times Switched Its Mobile Revenue Model

Posted on by Lab Team

Read original story on: The Verge

The New York Times just released an update to its iOS app, NYT Now, that fundamentally altered the prestigious publisher’s business model on the mobile platform. Instead of a subscription-based model priced at $7.99 per month for full digital access, the app is now retooled to be ad-supported, granting all interested readers—with or without subscription—access to an editorially curated selection of articles. In addition, the relaunch of the app is sponsored by Delta airline, with future brand sponsorships to come.

The choice between subscription-based model and ad-supported model has long been a dilemma for media owners to consider when it comes to entering the mobile space. Many prestigious content brands, such as HBO and ESPN, have gone with subscriptions so as to keep their offers consistent across platforms. Yet more and more content owners, especially digital publishers, are starting to realize that the old subscription-based model that worked in print doesn’t translate well in the mobile-first world.

The bottom line here is, the choice between the two revenue models is not so clear-cut. It takes careful evaluation of various factors for brands to figure out which one works for their mobile offerings.

Facebook Strikes Deal With Nokia’s Here For Better Mobile Map

Posted on by Lab Team

Read original story on: TechCrunch

Facebook has quietly inked a deal with Nokia to use its Here mapping division to power location services on Facebook’s mobile website. The company is also running a test with Here data in its proprietary apps like Instagram and Messenger.

Facebook has long been trying to improve its location services, acquiring companies like Glancee, TagTile, and Gowalla to buff up its location technology and talent pool. With this new deal, the social media giant not only can provide users with a more uniform mobile experience and more accuracy in Facebook Places and Instagram venue tagging, but also potentially scale up its online-offline attributions with the superior mapping data that Here promises with more details and accuracy in converting geo-data to actual venues.

From partnerships with Datalogix for POS data, offering retailers in-store WiFi with Cisco, and now the deal with Here, Facebook is making great strides in attacking what marketers have said is their biggest challenge with digital attribution: matching online campaigns to offline conversion.

Global Watch: China’s Tencent Launches TOS+ And Bets On Mobile Gaming

Posted on by Lab Team

For years, apps created by Chinese Internet behemoth Tencent has run on all major operating systems, including iOS, Android, and even Windows OS. But propelled by the potential for its uber-popular messaging app WeChat to become a full-fledged platform, Tencent is now looking to develop its own operating system, specifically to capture the nascent IoT market.

Earlier this week, the Shenzhen-based company launched Tencent Operating System, or TOS+ for short. Designed to run on a wide range of connected devices including smart TVs, smartwatches, gaming consoles, and even virtual reality headsets, the Android-based OS will be free to use for manufacturers and developers if they agree to share revenue with Tencent. Unsurprisingly, it also comes with its own mobile payment system. With its own operating system, Tencent is now in direct completion with Alibaba (which developed YunOS) and Xiaomi (which also touts their own MIUI firmware) for a rapidly growing Chinese market.

In related news, Tencent has continued its push for mobile gaming with a minority stake in Glu Mobile, the game publisher behind popular iOS games such as Deer Hunter and Kim Kardashian: Hollywood. In addition to its online and mobile gaming clout in Asia, Tencent already owns two mobile game companies Epic Games and Riot Games that have been quite successful in the US market. Whereas TOS+ obviously has a long way to go before it can compete with the likes of iOS and Android, it looks like mobile gaming could serve as a nice entry point for Tencent to break into western markets.

Header image taken from Tencent’s TOS Site