One in four American adults now has a smartphone, and one in five owns a tablet. And 27 percent of Americans are getting news on mobile devices — increasingly across different platforms. That’s according to the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, and its annual report on the State of the News Media in 2012, released today.

It is clear that mobile is here to stay and that consumers are increasingly looking to their mobile devices for their daily news intake. We highly recommend reading this poignant analysis of the recent Pew Research study from Nieman Labs.

News-to-go is here to stay

The annual State of the News Media study from the Pew’s Project for Excellence in Journalism officially rings in the “age of mobile.”

Mark Challinor, The Director of Mobile for the Telegraph Media Group in the UK wrote a simple and poignant post on the INMA Mobile and Tablets blog last month that inspired me. I had the pleasure of meeting Mark in New York last year at the INMA World Congress and can honestly say that he truly understands the mobile news space. One must only look as far as the Telegraph to see a company that believes in the true potential of mobile.

Probably one of the most important quotes in this article states that, “As an industry, we are generally poor at this (knowing your user and where they are digesting your content), offering basically the same content regardless of platform, age, time of day, and who the viewer is.” Mark is spot on here. Mobile is an extremely unique medium in that it is truly personal. It has the potential to know who we are and where we are, it’s connected and is on us at almost all times of the day. As an industry we need to take advantage of these unique qualities and not simply offer a one size fits all strategy when it comes to the mobile space in general and specifically mobile content.

Mark then goes on to lay out 4 strategies that we should all focus on. I will list them out here, but the full article (linked below) is definitely worth a read. They are:

1. Know your readership and how they use mobile with you (think deep analytics and actually using the data in a meaningful way)
2. Make your mobile ads as relevant as possible
3. Create premium, multichannel experiences, befitting your perception.
4. Make mobile a social affair

Readers on mobile devices are generally more time-poor, specific-reason focused, and armed with a different viewing method (a small screen) — and many are ready to go away if not instantly engaged or informed.

It is of no great surprise that the team at Spreed believes that location is an extremely large part of the mobile mix. Location targeting can be used for displaying more relevant content to users, but it can also be extremely effective as a form of targeting for advertisers.

Spreed has been on the forefront of location based advertising since the inception of the iPhone and it’s ubiquitous GPS technology. Not only have we developed a content platform that can detect someone’s location and actually re-skin the application based on where that users is (i.e. Metro News in English speaking Canada versus French spreaking Canada), but we have also included to-the-meter targeting of advertising in our CleverAds Ad platform.

We have seen a number of our publishers sell smart location based campaigns to their advertisers partners. Some of the most notorious examples being the targeting of large sports stadiums during professional games with deals for bars and restaurants right outside of the stadium. However, in most part we haven’t seen a large number of these campaigns run.

Mobile Marketer published a good article last week entitled, Have Marketers Forgotten About Geotargeted Mobile Advertising. We do not believe they have forgotten about it, we believe they haven’t even really tried it out yet. We are hoping that 2012 will bring a change in the trial and testing of location based campaigns.

The article by Mobile Marketer references Wilson Kerr, vice president of business development and sales at Unbound Commerce, Boston, who says  that location based campaigns haven’t been sold yet because, “ there is far more mobile ad inventory than ad campaigns booked. Mobile ad networks likely want to broaden the net they cast, rather than narrow it, to maximize impressions rendered.”

Essentially he is implying that mobile ad networks are just trying to fill as much inventory as possible, as we are still in the infancy of mobile advertising, without thinking about the conversions. This is a problem as generalized, untargeted campaigns are not going to translate into high CTR’s and in the infancy of mobile we need to prove campaign can really provide significant benefits over other mediums in order make mobile a permanent and potential dominant part of the advertising mix.

The above reason could be the issue for the lack of location based campaigns. But we would also like to throw in the possibility that the technology in not generally available in order to sell premium location based campaigns. The achilles heal of location based marketing has always been it’s inability to accurately predict a number of available impressions within a specific location.

Most ad platforms give publishers or advertisers the ability to target campaigns to the city or meter level. But very few can actually tell a sales representative how many available impressions they have to sell within any given location. Without understanding what you are selling it is hard to have confidence in your product and even harder for a potential advertising partner to understand what they are buying.

Spreed is proud to be one of the few, if not the only ad platform with the ability to report on trending available inventory within any given location. Because our ad platform is directly integrated into our analytics platform and the application or mobile site, we have significantly more information about a user and can actually use that information when targeting them with advertising. Location is just one example of information that we collect and can then utilize from an advertising perspective.

If location based advertising is going to become popular (and it should be as the conversions could be massive) more technology providers are going to have to provide detailed reporting on available inventory within a location. In the mean time our platform is ready to provide publishers and advertisers with that information.

If you have any questions about location based mobile advertising or location based reporting, to not hesitate to reach out to us via email/phone or leave a comment on this post. In the mean time we highly recommend reading the Mobile Marketer article linked to below.

Have Marketers Forgotten About Geotargeted Mobile Advertising 

Geotargeted mobile advertising is a hot commodity and a great way for marketers to not only drive in-store traffic, but make ads relevant to consumers. Although companies such as Best Buy and Ace Hardware are using location to their advantage, others are not.

We are currently looking for a bright, talented and eager developer who will be responsible for a number of duties in our tech team. Candidates should be self-starters, entrepreneurial and have the ability to work both in teams and by themselves. Mobile development skills are not necessary, but you should have an excitement to learn if you do not currently possess them.

Required Skills:

• Must have programming experience in 3 or more of the following:

1. C#
2. ASP.NET
3. HTML(5)/CSS(3)
4. Javascript
5. SQL
6. XML/XSLT
7. Ajax
8. JQuery
9. MVC

• Ability and desire to learn new languages and technologies
• Knowledge of Object Oriented Design patterns and practises
• Understanding of programming best practices
• Understanding of client/server architecture
• Excellent problem solving skills
• Detail oriented
• Ability to work equally well in both a team and individual environment
• Strong communication skills
• Strong English Skills are mandatory

Daily Responsibilities:

• Develop and maintain webservice products
• Develop and maintain client interfacing web portals
• Develop and maintain Mobile Web and HTML5 solutions
• Manage CSS and XSL Transforms used within the system

Experience:

• University degree in Computer Science/Engineering is an asset
• 2+ Years of experience in software development

Complimentary Skills:

• Experience with Visual Studio, SQL, C++, XML, XSLT, JSON,  Web application development
• Mobile application development
• Understanding of relational databases

Here’s a great deck provided by the IAB on mobile creative. I am sure a number of these slides have useful data and content that can be used when pitching advertising clients.

Okay, we are clearly in an infographic mood today. The graphic below  was developed by the folks over at Text Marketer and explains how to run a successful SMS campaign by avoiding the so-called “7 deadly sins of mobile marketing.”

Although Spreed doesn’t do SMS marketing a lot of the sins here are applicable to mobile display advertising. When selling a campaign to a potential advertiser make sure you are coaching them what to do and what not to do. At the end of the day you will see a higher CTR and therefore a happier and longer term advertising partner.

If your client doesn’t have a mobile site or landing page setup then speak to us about building one through our good partners at MoFuse.

The good folks at Inneractive have published their latest infographic dubbed “From Barcelona to Barcelona: the Growth of Mobile Advertising in 2011.”

Although this still may no be the year of mobile advertising, this graphic certainly paints the picture for hockey stick growth in the industry.

It is very important that publishers think about their mobile advertising strategy and not just their mobile development strategy. The two components need to be very closely tied together and must be acted on now if you want to be a part of this exciting new wave of advertisers.

Over the past three years we have heard a lot about the decline of newspaper advertising revenue and falling subscriptions. Although some analysts may be predicting doom and gloom for the industry others believe there is still a lot of opportunity for newspapers, especially in the local advertising space. Newspapers have something special, especially in local markets, that other online publishers don’t have and that’s brand.

I have seen example after example of digital sales representatives pitching local businesses and failing terribly as the business owner had no idea where his ad was being shown. On the other hand most small businesses know their local paper very well and have been advertising with them for decades. This is an opportunity that newspapers are seizing today and need to continue to harness in the future and mobile could be the driving force to increased ad dollars from local advertisers.

Mobile and local advertising have been touted as the next big thing for newspapers. Smartphones are in peoples pockets/hands at all times and are increasingly becoming a driving force behind peoples purchasing decisions. Matched with to the meter location based targeting, local advertisers are moving to mobile in droves.

Gordon Borrell of Borrell Associates recently predicted at MediaPost’s Mobile Summit that local mobile advertising was going to shoot up from $2Billion this year to $24billion in 2016. We highly recommend reading the below article from MediaPost on Borrell’s predictions and how it may effect your digital strategy moving forward. The important thing to note is that if you are a local newspaper, now is the time to get into mobile so that you can start building advertiser intelligence within your communities. Read more below:

Local Mobile Advertising To Reach $24 Billion In 2016

Local mobile ad revenue to shoot up from about $2 billion this year to about $24 billion by 2016.

By then, Borell estimates that 88% of all local online advertising will be delivered on a mobile device. That growth will come directly at the expense of the desktop Web, where spending will decline 76% in the next five years.