Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - What's Worse Than Mobile Shopping At The Thanksgiving Table?

Here’s the answer to the coming complaints about you shopping via mobile at the Thanksgiving dinner table: at least, you are not doing it on the potty. A PayPal holiday buying survey showed that 22% say they will shop on the toilet. That compares to 34% who will purchase in bed for their partner or spouse while sleeping next to them, and 35% who will shop between such activities as passing the cranberry sauce and downing three pieces of pecan pie.

Only one in six shopping carts converts on smartphones, per Adobe.

Mobile shoppers will account for 34% of ecommerce sales during the holidays, Adobe added.

Seventy-five percent of internet use in 2017 will be mobile, Zenith says. The same company predicts that mobile advertising will overtake desktop ad spending next year.

Nearly 75% of U.S. adults will use smartphones in 2016: eMarketer.

How important are mobile web sites? Purchases made via mobile browsers are more common than transactions completed in merchants’ native apps, according to Javelin. Transactions via mobile browsers in 2015 totaled $75.3 billion, while apps accounted for $46.9 billion.

The majority of smartphones and tablet users in Germany said they have only downloaded free apps, eMarketer reported.

Thirty-nine percent of people have downloaded malware on to their smartphone, per Crowd Research Partners.

By 2018, nearly 8 in every 10 programmatic dollars will be spent on mobile: eMarketer.

Mobile paid search has increased by 134% since last year, Merkle said.

By 2020, mobile video will represent 75% of global mobile data traffic: Cisco.

Google makes more ad dollars from mobile than from the desktop globally, according to eMarketer’s estimates of ad revenues at major publishers.

Last year, one-third of shoppers made a purchase on Black Friday or Thanksgiving with their mobile phone, per Forbes.

12.5 billion dollars were spent via mobile during the 2015 holiday season: Internet Retailer.

A Nielsen study showed that adults in the U.S. visit more desktop sites than smartphone sites, but the gap is narrowing. During May, Nielsen adults visited an average of 55 PC sites, down from 61 the prior year and 62 the year before. By comparison, adults visited 44 smartphone sites, up from 38 in May 2015 and 36 in May 2014.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - When Smartphones Are Used By Dumb People

An Ohio fugitive who sent police a selfie because he didn't like his mugshot was tracked down and arrested. Note modern devices are called smartphones. No one says that they are used only by smart people.

56% of smartphone users purchased a product using an app in 2015: Verizon.

I’m getting more spam voice calls on mobile - way more than spam texts. WTF?

In the poorest countries, mobile phones cost 1/5 to 1/2 of monthly income. In U.S., it's under 1%, per The World Bank.

Google paid Apple $1 billion to be the search engine on your iPhone, according to court documents.

Uber usage by business travelers surpassed taxi and car rentals in 2015, VentureBeat reported.

20% of U.S. homes now have a smart TV, 56% have a tablet and 82% of people have a smartphone, Nielsen said.

Amazon now sells as much clothing as 250 Walmart stores sell altogether: Re/Code.

Uber is preparing to go live with full-scale food delivery service in 10 U.S. cities this quarter, according to The Wall Street Journal.

3.8 trillion photos were taken until mid-2011. 1 trillion photos were taken in 2015 alone, MIT SMR reported.

Headline: Less Than Half of Consumers Are OK With Swapping Data for Deals. Me: 47% who say good to go is huge.

Ken Chenault of American Express: mobile pay is not about the "tap", it's about what's the value? what's the service I get? Bingo.

U.S. smartphone users spent 3 hours in mobile apps and another 50 minutes in mobile browsers daily in 2015: eMarketer

I have made a living NOT hyping mobile yet it fascinates me when brands and others operate in waiting, non-priority mode.

Per NBC's Alan Wurtzel, just 51% of TV viewing is live.

Twitter asked me to promote my app. I don't have one. 2016 personalization seems like 2015's – or 2008’s.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - Flying High With Mobile Boarding Passes

Mobile devices will issue a third of all airline boarding passes by 2019: Juniper Research.  That would double the current number. It’s also a good lesson on the lack of absolutes – not everyone will adopt this technology or any other.

Smartwatch as "the remote control of our lives"? Jeez, we’ve heard that hype for years around the mobile phone.

An accessory needed for Apple Watch - restraint. Self-control on when/if to react to more immediate info will be as important as anything, IMO.

As has been case with beacons, we won't know how much consumers want delivered on their wrists until we test, ask and learn.

To me, the No. 1 question remains around Apple Watch - is it really solving a problem?

As Yahoo pointed out, you could buy the most expensive Apple Watch, or one of everything else Apple sells.

Selfie drones are on their way, according to VentureBeat.

The mobile ad spend in the U.S. is projected to grow 50% this year, vs. 1.1% for traditional media, per eMarketer.

Tablet shipments will grow just 2% in 2015, projects IDC.

49% of shoppers ages 20-29 regularly use a mobile phone in-store to compare prices, Gfk says.

Starbucks has expanded its mobile-ordering service across the Northwest.

100,000 Coke vending machines in North America will accept Apple Pay by year end.

A California court has said that cops need warrants to get phone location data.

More than 40% of all time spent on TV properties is on mobile: comScore.

60% of users now choose mobile devices over PCs for local search: Thrive Analytics.

In Q4 2014, 16% of smartphone owners said they had recently acquired their phones within the last 3 months, according to Nielsen.

In 2012, 24% of US consumers wanted to use their mobile to send money to friends. In 2014 it was 50%: Mobile Payments Today.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - No, You Can't Drive A Truck Over Your iPhone

I’m guessing that beyond sitting on it, you can't drive an F-150 over an iPhone 6 Plus. But don't try it at home.

67% of moms entertain kids with mobile videos & games, up 2X from last year, Yahoo says.

The North American mobile industry accounts for 3% of the GDP, according to industry group GSMA.

Apple sold 39 iPhone 6's per second in its first weekend.

A Homeland mobile ad uses phone vibrations to set off a virtual bomb in your hand.

Nordstrom wants to text shoppers who are interested in certain merchandise. That makes sense. It gets us closer to one-to-one marketing rather than one-to-one list.

Mobile spending on branding-related objectives will grow faster than direct-response initiatives in the next year, Nielsen says.

Nearly 75% of consumers ages 18-44 access a social network daily, Adobe reports. Mobile is the most-used device.

Smartphone penetration has made it to 70% in the U.S., Nielsen tells us.

Here’s one to stump your friends at a dinner party - research shows Japanese travelers are three times more likely to book via mobile than Germans.

Mobile now accounts for more than 50% of ecommerce traffic, according to Shopify.

Gartner says that more than 75% of mobile apps will fail basic security tests through 2015.

Mobile search prompted 30 billion calls to businesses in 2013, reports Harte Hanks.

Pinterest is the most popular social media channel on mobile devices.

Over 30% of Staples' mobile traffic is tablet-driven.

Trend Micro says that 40% of mobile users do not use a password to protect their devices. I would’ve guessed 70%.

Reports say that approximately 85% of iPhone 6 buyers had previous Apple phones. That explains the record pre-order – it was something other than blind faith

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - 6 Clicks To Make A Reservation? See Ya

More than half of the higher-end hotels require 6 clicks or more for consumers to make reservation via the mobile web, according to digital think tank L2. I would be gone after 3 and never return. You?

Only 3% of retailers today that have technology that can identify customers when they walk in the door, according to Boston Retail Partners. But 75% say that they plan to implement this technology within the next five years.

31% of advertisers put 21%+ of 2013 budgets to mobile, Nielsen reported.

I saw a tweet about USB thumb drives. Talk about something indispensable then, not needed now. The cloud changed all.

The San Francisco Airport is testing a beacon system to help blind travelers navigate.

Years later, I still can't figure out why Apple hides the scroll bars on Macs by default.

The iPhone 6 may not be available until October, later than expected. Cripes. Another month of rumors then.

Facebook had over 1.5 million active advertisers during Q2. 12 months earlier? One million. Half a million 24 months ago.

Tablet sales are "crashing" because not enough innovation has come to push the need to upgrade, says Best Buy’s new CEO Hubert Joly.

Sprint will sell a $12 wireless plan that only connects to Facebook or Twitter.

A third of cell owners say that their primary internet access point is their phone, Pew says.

Headline on print edition of GQ - A Boob-ier Tube: GQ's Guide To The New Naked TV. Whatever it takes to revive "old" media.

The pace of Promoted Tweets has seemingly picked up. My interaction with them has not.

An app that dims your phone so that other concertgoers won't hate you? What we need is one to silence yappers. I had that frustrating experience recently.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - An App To Do Everything But Get 49ers To Beat Seahawks

The Levi’s Stadium app is said to change the role of mobile at sporting events forever. Fans will be able to instantly watch replays from their mobile devices in the stadium, choosing from a variety of different camera angles. The app will feature paperless ticketing and the ability to order food and drinks directly from your seat.

What it won’t change is the 49ers’ inability to beat the Seahawks.

Mobile payment users span all income levels, with the highest usage among those making less than $50,000 (32%) and more than $100,000 (29%) – Nielsen.

"The Beginning of the End of Smartphones" is a provocative headline that isn’t likely so.

Mobile now represents 62% of Facebook's total ad revenue, which reached $2.91B in Q2 2014.

Mobile phone penetration in Singapore is at 156%, according to Forrester.

17% of US internet users with an income of $150,000 or more have opted in to receive text message info and offers from luxury brands – eMarketer. Uninterested? I say it’s more likely that they haven’t been approached in compelling ways.

This year, for the first time, advertisers will spend more on mobile ads than on newspaper or radio, reported the Wall Street Journal.

Twitter stats: 70% male globally. 59% White.  29% Asian in U.S.

Fitbit tweeted to step it up near the end of the month. That zapping wearable competitor lets action speak louder than words.

Fixed raised $1.2 million for a mobile app that fights your parking tickets for you. It’s a tool to win on technicalities.

15% of Starbucks' revenue last quarter came from smartphone transactions.

The "demise" of tablets is the week's winner for gross exaggeration. Phablets will get some dollars. Tablet innovation will stem flow of others.

Where do mcommerce transactions take place? eMarketer says that mobile websites get 55%. Apps 34%.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer: The "Just Shush Already" Edition

Twitter is testing a mute button to quiet your follows. This would be for temporary silence rather than a more final unfollow. Will hashtag be #shushalready?

I want a weather app to be simple. The latest ones are visually nice but make it harder to get basic info. Or is it just me?

Apple has 800 million iTunes accounts. The 800 million credit cards on file are more than any other company in the world.

And Apple says two-thirds of iPad registrations and one-half of iPhone registrations came from new users in the last quarter.

We're supposed to view wearables as inexact but needed? I don't understand that.

Sephora's mobile, online and in-store shoppers are 4X more valuable than single-channel shoppers, according to the company.

The reason why in-store mobile interaction is important to Walgreens? There are 45 million weekly in-store shoppers compared to 14 million online visitors.

More than 119 million people in the U.S. will watch video on tablets this year, eMarketer says.

Nielsen: The U.S. radio audience has hit an all-time high; 244 million (age 12+) listen to radio each week. The dummies said it was dying.

But the world is changing, of course – the average U.S. adult spends 5 hours 46 minutes with digital media - 2 hours and 51 minutes of that with mobile - per day, according to eMarketer.

80 percent of Twitter's advertising revenue now comes from mobile ad buys.

More from Nielsen: for the first time, a majority of Americans of all age groups own smartphones.

18-24 year olds are over 20% more likely to log onto Twitter via a mobile device.

70 percent of U.S. consumes will use a mobile device to redeem a discount in 2014, Accenture projects.

89 percent of mobile devices aren't recycled, according to Verizon.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - Keeping Watch of the Wearable Opportunity

I scoff at the "consumer demand" label on wearables. Samsung's massive ad campaign only introduces the concept to most.

Retailers overemphasize loyalty in creating mobile experiences, according to a report covered by Mobile Marketer. I say that you can't overemphasize loyalty.

Tablets are most shared devices with 40 percent of users sharing their devices with someone else in their house, according to eBay.

Mobile accounted for one-third of Google paid clicks in Q3, yet CPCs dropped from the previous quarter.

Nielsen: The average amount of times a message needs to be in front of a millennial to be absorbed – 23.

The biggest question for Apple isn't what they are announcing Tuesday with new iPads - it's the quantity of product available for holiday sales.

In their IPO S-1 filing, Twitter expects the mobile advertising market to increase from $10.0 billion to $52.2 billion between 2012 and 2017.

Despite claiming to be the friendliest carrier, T-Mobile is killing grandfathered plans.

Do you shake your head more when someone is carrying a feature phone or a BlackBerry?

Am I the only one who never had an interest in a larger iPhone?

Headline says deeper understanding of mobile users a challenge for media buying. Please. Information equals opportunity.

Mobile commerce is growing 30 percent per year, comScore says.

88 percent of mobile shoppers also use PCs to research purchases, according to Yahoo.

One more, this time from Deloitte: consumers who use their mobile while shopping spend 61 percent more than the average trip.

Cisco says that 33 percent of the world's mobile data traffic will be video by 2017.

I saw a tweet that claims that some of the city of San Diego's website is “kinda mobile-ish” I’m so glad that we’ve progressed in our mobile understanding. Sheesh.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - The Punishment Edition

Great – a to-do list app that punishes you for not getting things done. I have a wife for that.

According to recent research, kids born today will spend about 25 percent of their lives looking at screens. Not blackboards. Not printed books. Not the world around them.

A mainstay just a couple of years ago, digital cameras look like dinosaurs in this mobile era.

Rave reviews for Yahoo's revamped mobile weather app. Pretty? Yes. Stop the rain from falling? Nope.

Devices are reportedly getting 20 percent of search budgets as spending rises dramatically. That’s because of the actions mobile users take after the search.

Can Verizon customers end wireless contracts with petition signatures? Not if it doesn't pencil out for the carrier.

Facebook hired the former Apple Maps boss. Did it take this long to find him?

A way out there Facebook Home TV spot makes the claim that the product is so awesome, you won't even listen to Zuck.

As said in the New York Times, "People don't want a fair price. They want a great deal." That’s true everywhere, certainly so on mobile.

A survey said that 71 percent say “nothing” could get them to buy a BlackBerry. That says to me that 29 percent are there to be convinced. Opportunity.

More than 500,000 new magazines were created in two weeks by Flipboard's 53 million users. Personalization wins again.

Phabulous news. Samsung introduced the Mega, a larger phablet. It will be available in Russia in May. You in? I will never buy a product called a phablet.

An indicator of a pickup in the housing market? Zillow says 89 homes are viewed per second on mobile devices.

For all talk of on-the-go mobile searcher, a great majority of activity happens in the home or office, according to research by Google and Nielsen.

Some Basic Truths About Marketing

Know the customer is rule one whether you are marketing luxury goods or a low cost commodity. Yet, according to a leading consumer neuroscientist, brands fail every day to act upon some basic truths.

Like “women shop, men buy.”

And shoppers react more favorably to curves than they do to squared-off products and store displays.

And don’t ask the customer to do more than three things. If you do, he or she will bolt.

And offering an interesting fact to a consumer in a marketing message produces a dopamine rush that could lead to a sale.

These observations were shared this week in New York at a CMO Summit http://nrf.a2zinc.net/rama13/public/Content.aspx?ID=20865 that was held during the National Retail Federation conference. I presented mobile learnings from the just concluded holiday season, but Nielsen’s A.K. Pradeep stole the show.

Pradeep is the founder and Chairman of Nielsen NeuroFocus, which has numerous patents for its advanced technologies and a blue-chip client list representing many Fortune 100 companies across dozens of categories. NeuroFocus became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Nielsen in 2011.

More than funny, Pradeep was smart. According to him, each year a trillion dollars is spent on communicating to and persuading the human brain, yet few understand how the brain really works—what’s attractive to it, how it decides what it likes and doesn’t like, and how it chooses to buy or not buy the infinite variety of products and services presented to it every day.

Pradeep says that neuromarketing research is revealing a myriad of fascinating insights that help improve the effectiveness of every aspect of clients’ brands, products, packaging, in-store marketing, advertising, and entertainment content.

He says the female brain has four times as many neurons connecting the right and left hemispheres, greatly enhancing its ability to process information through both rational and emotional filters—a fact that must not be ignored when crafting a message.

Among the five senses, vision is the most pronounced and the brain will discount information that is not in concert with the visual stimuli it receives. The sense of smell is quite powerful too, as it is the most direct route to emotions and memory storage. Being linked with a pleasant, iconic smell can significantly improve a product’s success in the marketplace.

Brains are also quite empathic, Pradeep believes, and it is a neural “monkey see; monkey do” mechanism that can help companies around the world create and market products and services that consumers will find naturally compelling.

Mirror neuron theory says that when someone watches an action being performed, he or she performs that action in his or her own brain. Activating this mirror neuron system is one of the most effective ways to connect with consumers.

Of course, Pradeep’s instruction works just as well for the small and medium sized business owner as it does to the marketer pushing $3,000 suits and mass market soft drinks.

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This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business http://goo.gl/S6P7m program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet.