Where does mobile marketing stand?

It seems like mobile marketing has been "the next big thing" for a few years now, but marketers have yet to see results in the U.S.

Despite the fact that Yahoo expanded the reach of its OneSearch mobile search application, making it available to more mobile Web users, and that Medio has now launched a PPC text ad platform for mobile search, Forrester Research has revealed that adoption for mobile marketing among interactive marketers is low, according to one of their surveys.

While mobile marketing is not being widely adopted, social media is growing rapidly. "The category has grown quickly over the past 12 months to the point where 40% of marketers are using or piloting RSS, up from 10% last year, and 34% are use or piloting blogs, up from 13% in the 2006 study. Social networks have the slowest adoption of all social media tactics but still notched 20% penetration in terms of marketer use. " (Advertising Age, "For Marketers Social Media Soars, Mobile and Gaming Lag")

However, while mobile is lagging, Forrester analyst, Brian Haven, says in his report that mobile marketing is more promising than online gaming.

The question remains, will 2007 be the year for mobile marketing? Time will tell.

Flixfind.com

While most of the internet is watching user-generated content on Youtube, Flixfind.com gives you all the information you need about full length features and then some.

Essentially, it is a reviewed list of links to movie-related sites that is coupled with a movie blog. The sites in the directory are divided by categories which include “animated, black film, festivals and awards, film genres, etc. Under each category there is a list of links to sites. There are also tools to help find movie sites. Moreover, you can find theatres, tickets, and trailers. All of these features leaves Flixfind.com touting themselves as "The only movie bookmark you'll ever need..."

While it certainly has many great features, its appearance is lacking. Overall, I just can't see people choosing Flixfind over IMDB.

aloft Hotels in Second Life

This week in class we explored Second Life a little bit to see the different ways that companies are using SL to interact with customers and prospective customers.

aloft Hotels is a company that has been in SL since September 2006. They made a replica of their proposed hotel that will open in Rancho Cucamonga, CA in 2008. People were able to go into the hotel, stay in the rooms, swim in the pool, get free aloft apparel, and most importantly provide feedback to the company about their experience.

Aloft took the feedback into account, which will be shown when the hotels open in 2008. Right now, there is a "box" around the hotel in SL so that people cannot get in until the hotels open.

I think that when the hotel reopens they should have a feature at the conceirge that will allow users to book the hotel in real life. They should also make more aloft apparel available to users, but have the apparel be more specific, such as souveneirs from hotels in specific locations. Feedback should still be accepted by the hotel, so that they can get feedback on adjustments they should make to future hotels. Also, users should be able to vote to get an aloft hotel to their region. These features will encourage brand interaction, and provide incentive for people to visit and return to the island. Moreover, it causes interaction that crosses over from Second Life into the real world.

Update on Blinkx

A couple of weeks ago I posted about the new widget by Blinkx that scans your blog posts and returns relevant video based on the content.

Recently, Blinkx issued a press release announcing the launch of its wiki-style, Video Search Optimization community forum site – to help marketers, advertisers, and content owners “maximize traffic to online video.” The new site is located at www.seowiki.blinkx.com.

Blinkx is aiming to create a hub for discussions regarding best practices and ways to maximize results for video content. The site also includes a white paper on search engine optimization (SEO) which covers metadata, optimizing titles, RSS, content management, and more.

Blinkx is the world's most comprehensive video search engine. Today,blinkx has indexed more than 7,000,000 hours of audio, video, viral and TVcontent, and made it fully searchable and available on demand.

Online Ad Spending

Numbers released on Tuesday by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) showed that online ad revenue continued to grow at a quick pace in Q4 2006, reaching nearly $4.8 billion, the highest reporte quarter for the industry. The revenue from Q4 2006 was up 32% from the same quarter in 2005. The report anticipates total 2006 revenues, to be revealed next month, to clock in at $16.8 billion, a 34 percent increase from 2005.

While spending continues to increase, the rate of growth has slowed slightly. At $4.8 billion, revenues in Q4 2006 represent an increase of 15 percent over Q3 2006, when spending on online advertising hit $4.2 billion. In Q4 2005, Internet ad revenues were up 34 percent over the same period in '04, reaching $3.6 billion.

The report determined that the increase in spending was a result of more spending by more marketers. In addition, the revenue increase was affected by the increase in the cost of online advertising and accompanying services.

The fourth quarter figures and full 2006 estimates, sponsored by the IAB, were calculated by PricewaterhouseCoopers based on surveys and aggregated data from the top 15 online advertising sellers.

Autobytel pimps it out with MyRide.com

Well, sort of.

At the 2007 National Automobile Dealers Association Conference in February, Autobytel announced the upcoming launch of MyRide.com, the world’s first fully-integrated automotive vertical search experience. MyRide.com won't be fully launched until Q2. Autobytel also had a press release that details the announcement.

MyRide.com will definitely be a huge step for automobile consumers as it provides a comprehensive array of information related to the purchase and lifecycle of the vehicle. The new site, which integrates automotive content with categorized auto search results, will also provide dealers, manufacturers and other service providers with multiple "marketing touch points."

The new site isn't just intended to be used to find information on purchasing a new car, it will allow searchers to "easily find a new or used car, car parts, accessories, and even a local business for service and repair, based on a tightly-focused combination of relevant content and auto-related web search results and user-generated content." (Press Release) MyRide.com intends on offering full-screen vehicle images from the largest online auto photo gallery, as well as extensive video assets and capabilities. Relevant multimedia content will be integrated throughout the MyRide.com search and navigational experience, not just segregated in “galleries” as on many other sites.

With all of the features available at MyRide.com, as well as the highly segmented audience provided by vertical search engines, it will definitely be a valuable investment to place text and banner ads. Moreover, Autobytel has been dedicated to the consumer in past ventures, and the consumer continues to be the main focus for MyRide.com, which will ensure that the product will continue to improve as demand increases.

If you're looking to do anything with buying cars, MyRide.com is the place for you. Therefore, if you're looking for those people, MyRide.com is also the place for you.

Google and click fraud

Click fraud has long been a issue for marketers that have voiced their qualms with Google and other search engines, but to no avail.

On March 1, Google's Shuman Ghosemajumder revealed that invalid clicks on Google AdWords ads have consistently remained under the 10-percent mark, and are generally in low single-digits. In addition, the amount of invalid clicks that are not proactively detected and are caught by advertisers is less than 0.02 percent.

In order to prevent advertisers from being billed for invalid clicks, proactive filters catch the invalid clicks in real time, which prevents the clicks from appearing on bills or metrics. Not all of the clicks removed here are fraudulent; some are questionable, or have been deemed invalid by Google, such as the second click of a double-click.

Google's click quality team also performs offline analysis. These are the clicks that show up on advertisers' statements as click quality adjustments. Clicks that are detected at this stage are still not billed to the advertiser, but they do show up in click metrics, so they affect ROI measurements.

In addition, next month, Google plans to give advertisers the ability to prevent their pay-per-click ads from being shown to competitors suspected of repeatedly clicking on the ads to drive up their cost. The announcement came via Google's AdWords blog.