Posted by Kim on Jan 7, 2009 in Predictions | 2 Comments
As the 2009 Super Bowl approaches I get ready to watch the one TV experience where I watch for the commercials and go to the bathroom during the actual content. I am not a sports fan and truly could care less about the game itself. But I am an avid Superbowl commercial fan. Seeing the latest and greatest campaigns in the highest cost venue is so exciting.
This year I plan to watch the game with my trusty Treo by my side ready to participate in dozens of mobile-focused campaigns. I plan to text in to every campaign and jump right onto every mobile site that is offered. Hopefully, this year I actually get to do that.
You see last year I was ready for the same thing, but my phone just sat there. It was an entirely un-mobile Superbowl last year and I was disappointed.
Maybe the Blumo offer of a free mobile marketing campaign will spark enough interest. Or maybe the advertisers will see that spending millions of dollars for 30 seconds of brand awareness without a direct response mechanism is quite silly.
I guess we’ll see. Join me on Superbowl Sunday on Twitter to discuss the ads as they happen. Let’s use #sb09ads.
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Posted by Adena on Jan 6, 2009 in Mobile Marketing, SMS / Text | 1 Comment
First Light Net, a Colorado Springs, CO-based online advertising network specializing in the fishing, hunting, sports and outdoor industries, announced today the acquisition of Fishing.mobi. This adds to their network of over 400 outdoors websites, including BigFishTackle.Mobi - a mobile phone site that allows anglers to access fishing reports and info from their mobile handset.
The plan is to turn Fishing.Mobi into a social network for fisherfolk who happen to be mobile savvy. It will offer users resources for researching fishing trips, techniques and providing them access to other members for advice and fishing reports while they are fishing. Fishing.Mobi will be suited to the “dotMobi” standard requirements enabling it to be available on all enabled handsets.
According to information from the newest National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation, during 2006, 30.0 million people fished, 12.5 million hunted, and 71.1 million participated in at least one type of wildlife-watching activity such as observing, feeding, or photographing fish and other wildlife in the United States. Nielsen Mobile stats say that 95 million Americans subscribe to mobile Internet access and 40 million of them regularly go online with their phones. If the fishing stats are right, this is a tempting target market for any of you promoting outdoors related products and services.
Mike Hodgdon, C.O.O. at First Light Net said, “The mobile phone internet is really one of the most amazing resources in the history of “fishing”. Historically anglers were limited to resources like, print periodicals that provided dated fishing reports… now anglers will have access to hundreds of hours of fishing videos, fishing reports, tips, a fishing resources directory, fishing forum and wealth of tools like tide information, weather reports, but most importantly they will have literally at their finger tips, a network of tens of thousands of anglers to answer questions and provide potentially live reports on the body of water they are fishing, while they are actually fishing.”
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Posted by michael on Jan 6, 2009 in Mobile Marketing | No Comments
m-Wise has announced the commercial launch of its new web and mobile microsite development kit.
For newcomers to the mobile marketing world, this kit could provide a helpful boost with valuable resources. The new mobile content product consists of an easy to use software package that allows “effortless configuration and setup” of fully branded, ready to launch web and WAP microsites for promotion and selling of mobile digital content such as ringtones, graphics, video clips, full-tracks and games.
Most importantly, (and I was waiting for this part) the microsite development kit further contains a designer’s kit providing all the necessary instructions, templates and resources for graphic designers to simplify the generation of branded designs.
Luckily, the web and WAP microsites support various channels, such as: “an on-deck mobile portal, via a mobile phone’s web browser, a web portal, SMS communication, as well as MMS messaging, and it supports all major US carriers such as Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Alltel, Boost & Suncom.”
For more information, check out www.m-wise.com
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Posted by michael on Jan 5, 2009 in Mobile Marketing | 1 Comment
UCLICK has launched an all-new mobile Web application for the iPhone that gives us all something to laugh about… literally.
At www.uclick.com, the built-in Safari browser now displays the Uclick archive of 400,000 comic strips, single-panel comics and editorial cartoons.
The new mobile safari site builds on the company’s experience from the Uclick GoComics.com desktop site, but the iPhone experience is completely reinvented for Apple handsets.
According to Uclick CEO Douglas Edwards, “We’ve taken our huge ‘toon-bank of daily comics and editorials and made it easy to find and navigate on the iPhone. In addition to updating more than a hundred features every day, we’ve made it easy to step through previous days’ cartoons and discover more classic creations as well as innovative new webcomic artists. We also deliver cartoonist’s views of the news by featuring three-quarters of all the working editorial cartoonists in the U.S. today.”
The iPhone-optimized site features 150 comic strips and single-panel cartoons, including Doonesbury, Garfield, Calvin & Hobbes, Close to Home, Cul De Sac and a bunch more.
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Posted by justin on Jan 5, 2009 in In The News, Marketing Strategy | 2 Comments
I’ve been involved with affiliate marketing for quite some time now, but lately I’ve been discouraged with the lack of available inventory for mobile content sites, WAP portals and other mobile-centric properties.
As purely mobile-based sites gain in popularity, the need for site and content owners to be able to monetize their content becomes more important. Traditional affiliate marketing networks such as Commission Junction, LinkShare and others have been slow to adopt mobile-only ad-inventory since it differs so greatly from traditional online inventory.
One network, the “XY7 Network,” is setting out to change this by announcing they are now the only affiliate network to have a dedicated division of WAP deals and other mobile-ad inventory for their mobile phone portal-owners and publishers.
The Las Vegas-based XY7 affiliate network differs from others in the fact that it’s the only performance-based network offering performance-based advertising in seven different media verticals in addition to a dedicated division for mobile-based advertising.
When most people think about mobile marketing, they usually think about SMS or direct placement networks such as AdMob, but many tend to forget that affiliate marketing also plays a huge role in mobile as it does in traditional online advertising. Now, we just need more networks like XY7 to start offering dedicated services intended for the mobile-based affiliate marketer.
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Posted by Adena on Jan 5, 2009 in Mobile Fun, Mobile Technology | No Comments
The growth of mobile technology is all about convenience. Technology has certainly made the chores of life easier in the past few decades, but one necessary inconvenient evil of all mobile devices is still the bane of my existence - electricity.
Let’s face it, even the fanciest mobile phones are a pain to charge, and they run out of battery too quickly. What’s a 21st century gadget geek to do? Cue a generic sci-fi theme song… WiTricity is said to be making its grand debut at CES this year. Also known as wireless electricity, the technology may create “electricity hotspots” in public places.
Companies like Sunnyvale, Calif-based PowerBeam use lasers to generate about 1.5 watts of power to an area around 10 metres. That’s not enough to power a laptop, but it is enough to power digital picture frame, speaker, or maybe even a mobile device. So in case you were worrying about battery life effecting your opportunity to reach your target audience, rejoice that one day mobile users won’t have to think twice about charging up their mobile phone.
PowerBeam competitors Witricity and Powercast aren’t transmitting electricity as far as PowerBeam is trying to do. Other companies in the wireless electricity space include Powermat, eCoupled, WiPower and WildCharge. Expect one electrifiying experience at CES this year, as many of these companies are scheduled to show off their wireless electricity 1.0 accomplishments.
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Eighties idol Rick Springfield once sang, “We all need the human touch.” That’s what Limbo, a niche mobile social network, attempts to do. Limbo’s shtick is that it’s “location-aware.” Rather than digitally report every bit of minutiae of a person’s life, the service focuses on where people are and what they’re doing, anywhere in the world. Users’ locations are inputted via GPS, Wi-Fi, or SMS, depending on their phones’ capabilities. Users can also find and meet up with their friends–and indeed, that’s the company’s goal. It’s using digital communication to foster in-person communication.
