Publishers: Ditch your apps; focus on mobile Web

Publishers know they must grapple with media consumption shifting to mobile devices, but merely having a mobile focus is not enough. Consider this: While time spent on mobile devices increased by 24 percent from June 2013 to June 2014, app usage grew at a greater rate (52 percent) than mobile Web consumption (17 percent).

That’s just one takeaway from a new comScore report on mobile consumption, a murky, continually shifting behavior. Below are more key statistics from the report.

Apps, not mobile Web, are driving mobile growth
Mobile now makes up a majority (60 percent) of all time spent on the Web, with mobile apps themselves constituting 52 percent of all Internet consumption.

READ MORE

One way to tell how rich a country is: Look at its profusion of Android phones

There are now nearly five times the number of phone models running Google’s Android operating systems in use in the world as there were in 2012.

That’s according to OpenSignal, a mobile network analysis company based in London, which found that nearly 19,000 different devices accounted for the last 682,000 downloads of its app. (Google doesn’t disclose these data, but OpenSignal is a reliable proxy, thanks to the worldwide ubiquity of their app.) That is up from nearly 12,000 last year and just under 4,000 in 2012. What that fragmentation looks like can be seen in the image above, which shows the market share of individual models.

READ MORE

Data Point: It Looks Like 30 Is the Ceiling for How Many Apps People Use

Younger people spend more time on apps and use more of them each month, though there seems to be a ceiling to how many people ultimately will use.

People in the U.S. aged 18-24 spend on average about 37 hours a month using Android and iOS apps, according to data by Nielsen that was charted by Statista. That was the most amount of time among all age groups. While time spent on apps decreased with each age group, people 55 and older till spend about 22 hours a month, the data showed.

Nielsen looked at app usage of about 5,000 U.S. adults in the fourth quarter of 2013. Including all age groups, people spent 65% more time each month using apps than they did two years ago, Nielsen said. But the average number of apps they used each month increased slightly to 26.8 from 26.5 a year earlier and 23.2 two years earlier.

READ MORE

Creating a SuperpowAR: Blippar and Layar join forces

You’ve probably heard our exciting news, but let’s explore what it means for us all…
Blippar’s acquisition of Layar - and the resulting creation of the world’s largest augmented reality consumer reach - has taken place. It’s a milestone event and we are now excited to begin work with our exceptional peers in Holland, pooling technical and consumer expertise to accelerate growth within this ecosystem.
 
The deal has huge potential for both businesses, all our partners and, indeed, the whole AR industry. It gives our clients access to unparalleled thought leadership, plus all data and best practice guidelines accumulated by both companies.
 
Blippar and Layar have always bucked the AR business model trend for white-label app-creation, instead promoting the download of one solo app through which multiple content owners access a burgeoning single audience - and offer one strong, consistent consumer message.
 
The creation of our new superpowAR will serve only to make this message even stronger.

During this transition period business will continue as usual; nothing will change without notice. The two apps will co-exist; products and services remain as they are, current agreements remain valid. We will keep you updated and be transparent regarding all changes and their implications.
 
Together, Blippar and Layar are the undisputed world leader of augmented reality and visual browsing. We look forward to building on the huge global potential of this mass consumer behaviour for our clients’ benefit.

WTF is cross-device tracking?

As Stephanie Bauer Marshall, marketing director at Verizon, succinctly put it during the “mobile first” M1 Summit on Tuesday, the mobile ad ecosystem is in “chaos.” Cross-device tracking — also known as cross-device targeting — aims to make sense of that chaos for brands, publishers and platforms. Here, we try to make sense of cross-device tracking.

What is cross-device tracking?
Cross-device tracking describes the myriad ways platforms, publishers and ad tech companies try to identify Internet users across smartphones, tablets and desktop computers. The goal of cross-device tracking is to be able to know that the person using smartphone X is the same person who uses tablet Y and laptop Z, and then allow brands to retarget that person accordingly.

READ MORE

Why You Don't Need To Sleep With Your Smartphone To Get Ahead

Do you sleep with your smartphone under your pillow, or beside your bed?

In our noisy world, many of us find it difficult to switch off, frantically checking messages late into the night.

Despite the fact we’re often doing this because we think it will help us stay ahead at work, the consequences can severely damage our productivity, our work, and our health.

READ MORE

Why Marketers Just Can't Crack Mobile

While AT&T, the nation's second-largest mobile carrier, is venturing into car connectivity -- and bidding for DirecTV -- it mostly sells one thing: access to phones. It is also the nation's fourth-largest advertiser, spending about $2 billion on media, according to Ad Age DataCenter.

And where did it spend almost all of those dollars? On TV. "We're TV-first," Charlie Hinton, exec director of marketing analytics at AT&T Mobility, said on stage at the Mobile Marketing Association conference this month.

READ MORE

The state of tablets in 5 charts

Four years since Apple introduced the iPad and launched the tablet craze, the U.S. tablet market is maturing. In that short time, tablets have become not only the new entertainment go-to, encroaching on the TV set’s dominance, but they are threatening to supplant the PC as these portable devices become shopping and productivity aids. Here are five charts that put it all into perspective:

Shipments of tablets worldwide is forecast to grow 38.6 percent to more than 349 million units in 2014 as mobile-first adoption catches on,according to Gartner research. By 2015, tablet sales are forecast to overtake those of PCs, whose sales will have declined 6.6 percent in 2014.

READ MORE

How The Smartphone Ecosystem Model Will Disrupt Business Everywhere

It’s possible to write a history of the platform and ecosystem model of business and never mention Apple or Google, yet it was Apple and Google that created amazement with the scale of their ecosystems, altering not just their own business models but that of hundreds of other companies. It was the smartphone industry that made the business ecosystem a must-have, a matter of significant, embedded competitive advantage. Of course we now know that Google erred in scaling its ecosystem via Java APIs but the bug is spreading and fast. Ecosystems are about to convert new sectors to the smartphone model.

READ MORE

Smartphones: The silent killer of the Web as you know it

The PC is dying, long live the PC! These headlines have been thrown around for years, as sales of laptops and desktops have continually dwindled downward.

The tablet has long been pinned as the murderer of the traditional computers and it certainly looked like it was going to be the one to do away with them (perhaps in a few years), with the focus of many companies such as Apple and Microsoft shifting towards a tablet-first world.

READ MORE

When Hitting ‘Find My iPhone’ Takes You to a Thief’s Doorstep

WEST COVINA, Calif. — After a boozy Saturday night, Sarah Maguire awoke the next morning to find that her iPhone was gone. Her roommate’s phone was gone, too. Were they at the bar, she wondered, or in the cab?

Using the Find My iPhone app on her computer, she found that someone had taken the phones to a home in this Los Angeles exurb, 30 miles east of her West Hollywood apartment.

So Ms. Maguire, a slight, 26-year-old yoga instructor, did what a growing number of phone theft victims have done: She went to confront the thieves — and, to her surprise, got the phones back.

“When I told my mom what I did, she thought I was crazy,” Ms. Maguire said.

READ MORE

Stop Calling Tablets 'Mobile'

Stop me if you've heard this one: Two guys are sitting in a Starbucks. One is tapping away on his Macbook Air. The guy next to him is busy pecking as well, on a keyboard attached to his iPad.

Yet only one of these two are considered to be on a "mobile" device.

If this were an isolated incident, you could conclude that yes, sometimes, the way we use tablets and laptops are pretty similar. It's not. Study after study shows that only a small minority of tablet owners connect them to cellular networks. That means most of the time most are employing them within Wi-fi range. Translation: They're using them on their couch, often in a reclining position.

READ MORE

Canopy: A Curated Site That Finds the Best Stuff You Can Buy on Amazon

Amazon is a great place to shop. It is not a great place to browse. The downside of having an inventory that spans everything from spatulas to stuffed animals to micro SD cards is that it inevitably becomes a destination for buying those sorts of humdrum products, not a place you go to discover cool new ones.

Buried deep in its massive catalog, though, Amazon does indeed have all sorts of nice stuff. Canopy was built to help you find it.

Created by a group of former Google designers without any official affiliation to Amazon, Canopy is a curated storefront trading exclusively in beautiful products that happen to be sold on Amazon.com. It’s the same type of fare you might expect to find on sites like Svpply or Uncrate: well-designed watches, bowls, knives, stools and blankets. But where those sorts of sites so often lead to 404 pages and out-of-stock listings, Canopy comes with a built-in guarantee: everything you see is available to buy with just a few clicks. Online shoppers with little self-control, beware.

READ MORE

8 Key Takeaways about Social Media and News

As news organizations  work to understand how consumers interact with digital news, the Pew Research Center’s Journalism Project, in collaboration with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, delved into how news is functioning in the social media space. Here, Pew Research pulls together eight key takeaways on what we learned in 2013 and early 2014 about social media and news.

READ MORE

Home Décor Retailer CB2 Invites Pinterest Users to Furnish Apartment

MORE visitors to the website for CB2, the home décor chain owned by Crate & Barrel, come from Pinterest, the virtual bulletin board, than any other social network. Now CB2 is turning to Pinterest users to weigh in on decorating an apartment the company has rented in New York.

For a promotion called APT CB2, the brand has rented an unfurnished apartment at 873 Broadway near Union Square, and is asking five designers who are popular on Pinterest to help decorate it with items from the store. But rather than making final decisions, the designers, who will be on-site, will present a selection of, say, three couches or four lamps, and Pinterest users will vote to determine the winner.

READ MORE

In an increasingly digital publishing industry, alums innovate and compete

Drama can be made out of a desk job.

Lindsey Palmer, a 2005 College graduate, is preparing for the publication of her novel “Pretty in Ink,” which is based on her seven years in the publication industry following her graduation from Penn.

“There’s an interesting story to be told about this world that’s struggling — magazines have already taken a hit with all this competition with blogs and websites,” Palmer said.

“It’s work that’s sort of fun and glamorous,” she added.

READ MORE

The 6 Most-Used Social Networks on Mobile in the U.S.

Every social media company knows that enhancing the mobile user experience is necessary for a network's success. But among all the app updates, bug fixes and design changes, how much time do users actually spend on social media with their mobile devices?

According to a new report from comScore, Instagram users in the U.S. spend 98% of time with the network on mobile — which isn't very surprising, considering the platform was originally mobile-only and is innately conducive to mobile device use.

Perhaps more interesting is that Pinterest users spend 92% of time on mobile, while Twitterusers choose apps over their desktops 86% of the time.

READ MORE

The Mobile Browser Is Dead, Long Live The App

Analytics firm Flurry has published data on mobile usage by US consumers during Q1 2014. While users are spending more time on their devices (an average of 2 hours and 42 minutes per day, up four minutes on the same period last year), how they use that time has changed as well. Only 22 minutes per day are spent in the browser, with the balance of time focused on applications.

READ MORE

User Onboarding

User Onboarding is the process of increasing the likelihood that new users become successful when adopting your product.

Learn some lessons from how popular web apps do it!

Read more

The Cassandra Report

Very useful resource!
http://www.cassandra.co/report/ and http://www.cassandradaily.com/