The MoPR Blog

Mobile users will watch ads for “free” content. According to 4th Screen Advertising’s Adlndex for Mobile research, conducted by Dynamic Logic, 88 percent of mobile users in the UK are willing to receive pre-roll mobile ads in return for free video content. Mobile pre-roll ads, which ran on O2 Active, are “attention grabbing” and increase brand recognition and favorable opinions of advertisers, the study found.

More surprisingly, 59 percent of participants said the mobile ads made them more interested in the advertised brand, and 62 percent said the ads gave a good impression of the brands being advertised.

Will Web 2.0 leave email in the dust? Text messaging, blogging and social networking have reached critical mass. More than half of adults in the U.S. surveyed said they now rely on at least one of these so-called Web 2.0 platforms to communicate with friends, family, or colleagues on a regular basis, says MediaPost reporting on an ongoing tracking study from Interpublic’s Universal McCann unit.

The study also found that the 18-34 crowd primarily uses social media as its dominant form of personal communication media, with 85% of this influential demographic group relying on one or more Web 2.0 platforms to stay in touch with others.

So, where does that leave email? Of the three conferences we have attended in the last six months, at least one presenter claims that “email will soon be extinct.”

On the other hand…

Search may overtake email as the ‘ubiquitous online experience.’ Though email is still the most common daily online activity, the percentage of consumers who use search daily has grown considerably over the past six years, according to a report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project and reported in iMedia Connection.

Based on Pew’s survey, email is the only more popular online activity, with 60 percent of users checking their inboxes on a daily basis. Search has quickly risen to second place, with the percentage of daily searchers growing 69 percent since 2002.

Coca-Cola goes for interactive media marketing gold at the Summer Olympics. Coca-Cola is partnering with Pioco, China’s biggest Bluetooth Media company, and reaching out to Olympic attendees via thousands of hotspots around Beijing. Their campaign includes broadcasting Coca-Cola Bluetooth video commercials to Bluetooth-enabled phones and broadcasting messages to users entering hotspots asking them for permission to download content from Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola’s relationship with Pioco marks the first time in Olympic history that a brand has used Bluetooth media for its marketing campaign.

Year of the Mobile. New research from The Nielsen Company shows that a substantial number of mobile users across the globe will be following the Olympics on their cell phones this summer, making the Games a watershed event for media fragmentation tied to mobile.

According to Nielsen Mobile, a service of The Nielsen Company, nearly 45% of US and 31% of UK mobile video users will be part of the mobile audience for the 2008 Olympic Games.

The data reveals that track and field and gymnastics both rank among the most popular Olympic events mobile video users want to watch on their phones.

The research also suggests that the mobile Internet will play a critical role, as 23% of US and 17% of UK mobile internet users will be tracking the Games through their phone browsers, with event results and medal counts being the most desired pieces of information.

We’d be remiss if we didn’t mention that our client Viigo has partnered with The Globe and Mail to bring mobile updates, scores, medal counts, and exclusive content from the Globe and Mail sports team, to smartphones worldwide.

Google looks over shoulder after Nokia Symbian buyout. Big news this week with Nokia taking control of Symbian. Nokia is riding on the hopes of increasing the sales of mobile phones while boosting revenues from its wireless web services.  According to InfoWorld Daily’s Tom Sullivan, the move could damper Google’s Android. Still wondering what this means to the industry? Read “Seven things you need to know about Nokia-Symbian deal.”

If you think your broadband is slow, you’re probably right. Enter InternetforEveryone.org led by the FCC [?!] that wants universal access to high-speed, broadband Internet throughout the US. Thirty-five percent of homes with less than $50,000 in annual income have a high-speed Internet connection in the U.S. Moreover, nearly 20 million Americans live in areas that are not served by a single broadband provider; tens of millions more live in places where there is just a single choice for high-speed Internet service.

We’re in Awe: 15-Year-Old Girl Sends 15,000 Text Messages A Month. According to WEWS in Cleveland, a 15-year-old Ohio girl discovered her true talent recently - the ability to crank out 15,000 text messages in a month and keep an 3.0 GPA- all under a 9:00 p.m. curfew. According to WEWS, she didn’t realize how many text messages she sent every month until she went to the cell phone store to get her phone fixed.

“I just don’t look. I guess I had the phone a long time and I just know where the buttons are and I just hit them,” said the speed texter.

Mobile coupons finally a reality? According to MediaPost, Yahoo! is teaming with Coupons Inc. to offer mobile coupons through its Yahoo! Mobile service. The initiative would “create a national platform for large brand advertisers to distribute mobile coupons, which so far have mostly been tested only in local markets or niche categories.”

Mobile coupons, says the article, will rely on solely electronic means, such as a secure bar code system allowing shoppers to swipe mobile devices at the point of sale to get discounts or special offers.
Distribution of the coupons would involve different methods, such as e-mail, banner ads, SMS text-messaging and apps on Yahoo!’s mobile portal.

McMobile McMarketing. The Mobile Marketing Association newsletter landed in our mailbox this week. A mix of industry news, trends and upcoming events, the newsletter is always an informative read. Our favorite section is successful case studies of mobile marketing in action, such as a recent story on McDonalds and its use of SMS in Germany.

Via the SMS Lounge, McDonald’s invited customers to text their information which then registered them at their local McDonald’s. In the following months, users received a mobile voucher directly from the restaurant onto their phone every two weeks. The coupons – embedded in code - could be redeemed by scanning them at the restaurant.

Since its launch in July 2007, more than 10,000 participants have used SMS service. This first of its kind mobile couponing pilot achieved response rates up to 29% throughout Germany according to the MMA. Using SMS and mobile technologies to extend and build your brand is something we can get behind!

Wind Charged Cell Phones. Folks toting mobile phones to this year’s Glastonbury Festival 2008 in the UK later this week will have a free and green way to recharge their phones thanks to a charging station being set up at the festival by Orange. Measuring more than 7 meters tall, the free-standing recharge pod is a self-sufficient unit that taps into a wind generator and solar panels to charge as many as 100 mobile phones per hour. It’s actually the next iteration of a portable wind charger Orange tested out at last year’s festival through a partnership with Gotwind and will serve as a trial for using renewable energy sources on a larger scale at future festivals. Orange expects the recharge pod will charge thousands of mobile phones over the course of the three-day festival. [See Grace's post for more on Gotwind.]