Emilio Castellanos' Blog

Yesterday the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) released a Declaratory Ruling stating that sending a one-time text message to confirm receipt of a consumer’s request to opt out of receiving text messages does not violate the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, 47 U.S.C. Section 227 (TCPA), if the following conditions are met:
* The consumer had previously given prior express consent to receive texts from the sender, ¶ 15;

An insightful article by Sebastian Anthony, on Nov 2, 2012, reminds us how Android devices are cornering the market. We already know that according to the latest numbers (June, 2012) Android activations hit 1.3M per day, according to Google's Schmidt. According to Anthony "no less than 75% of smartphones shipped ran Google’s Android operating system. This equates to 136 million Android handsets, almost doubling the 71 million Android smartphones from the same quarter last year. If we look at the entirety of 2012 to date, 68.2% of smartphones sold are powered by Android, up from 49.2% last year."

Huggies distributed its coupon on its own site, to its 800,000 Facebook followers and on a campaign site. The difference from a regular coupon is people could increase their savings by sharing it. Don’t share it, the coupon was worth $1.50 off of their next purchase. Sharing the deal via either Facebook or Twitter, or provide three friends’ emails, bumps the deal to $3 off. The introduction of a little self-interest spurred more sharing than the brand expected.

Google will pay cash to acquire Motorola Mobility for a total of about $12.5 billion dollars. This bold move intends to drive innovation for the Android Platform, an open source environment for mobile and online, and most importantly it aims to fill the gap left by the nearly obsolete cable entertainment services. The acquisition plans to build new and innovative programs and devices for the home market to create a seamless experience to engage users in creative ways and bring about a conversion between home and mobile devices.

Android started 6 years ago through the vision of Andy Rubin, Senior Vice President of Mobile at Google, to align standards across the internet and mobile under a single Open Source platform: Android. According to Larry Page, "since November 2007, more than 150 Million Android devices have been activated worldwide through a network of 39 manufacturers 231 carriers in 123 countries. 550,000 [new] devices are lit up [activated] every day."

Blogs have called it the end of the wallet but many people don't believe this is achievable by 2015. We will just have to wait and see. Personally I believe that digital currency will only gain relevance in the years to come and as we explore the topic by means of technology, scales might shift to different ways of measuring value and spending habits.

Mobile certainly pays a part here. According to the latest 2010 numbers released by CTIA, the US has over 300M Wireless Subscriber Connections and with a population of over 307M people ('09) you can bet that nearly everyone in the country has a mobile phone! And with smartphone penetration reaching 50% coupled with services like PayPass, PayPal, Google Wallet and others, digital currency will become a reality faster than most of us think.

Update: PayPal files lawsuit to protect trade secrets: A reason worth fighting for. Read more on the PayPal blog here: http://bit.ly/jrSW90 - According to .Net Magazine Google estimates that by 2014, over 150 million devices will be NFC ('Near Field Communication') capable. Read more about the lawsuit here: http://bit.ly/l1HMpY
---

We are very excited about the National Wireless Initiative. It confirms the growth and necessary direction that the US economy needs to compete in the decades to come. Smart and forward looking.

Here is what it promises:

• Nearly Double Wireless Spectrum Available for Mobile Broadband: The President has set the goal of freeing up 500 MHz of spectrum for everything from smartphones to wireless broadband connectivity for laptops to new forms of machine-to-machine communication within a decade. Critical to realizing this goal are “voluntary incentive auctions” and more efficient use of government spectrum, estimated to raise $27.8 billion over the next decade.
• Provide At Least 98% of Americans with Access to 4G High-Speed Wireless: Private investments are extending 4G to most of the Nation, but leaving some rural areas behind. The President’s initiative would support a one-time investment of $5 billion and reform of the “Universal Service Fund” to ensure millions more Americans will be able to use this technology.
• Catalyze Innovation Through a Wireless Innovation (WIN): To spur innovation, $3 billion of the spectrum proceeds will go to research and development of emerging wireless technologies and applications.

We had known about this for a while and are very excited about it finally being rolled out in the next few days.

Let's make sure we understand how to set it up before turning it on. But after that our Google devices/applications will be safer from hacking. It will be worth it for those of us who use Google Applications on a regular basis. You are only required to do verification once and password authentication check every 30 days if you so choose.

I just came across the review of what seems to be a great little book with a philosophy that us at Avanti Interactive always keep in mind as we go about our daily business. It is called "The Go-Giver: A Little Story About A Powerful Business Idea".

Here are the five laws outlined in the "Five Laws of Stratospheric Success:"

Marketers have long used the famous funnel metaphor to think about touch points: Consumers would start at the wide end of the funnel with many brands in mind and narrow them down to a final choice. Companies have traditionally used paid-media push marketing at a few well-defined points along the funnel to build awareness, drive consideration, and ultimately inspire purchase. But the metaphor fails to capture the shifting nature of consumer engagement.

This is an excerpt taken from the Harvard Business Review Article found here. Please visit the http://hbr.org to read the full article.

Block That Metaphor

Informa Telecoms & Media believes that the global mobile advertising market was worth US$2.3 billion in 2009. Over the next five years, the market is expected to show strong growth and generate revenues of around US$24.1 billion in 2015.

In 2010, the Asia Pacific Developed region (which includes Japan and South Korea) is expected to account for the largest share (43.6%) of the global mobile advertising revenues, but this will fall to 21.7% by 2015. The mobile advertising revenue share of all other regions is expected to grow during the same period.

In 2015, the largest share (30.9%) of mobile advertising revenues is expected to come from the Asia Pacific Developing region, driven by strong growth in China and India. North America’s share of the global revenues is expected to grow from 16% in 2010 to 18% in 2015 and Western Europe’s is expected to grow from 4.9% to 8.6% during the same period.

Key Market Trends

Twitter began allowing access to the redesigned front end today and will roll-out the new homepage to its millions of users in the next coming months. Here is the video provided during the conference.

From TechCrunch: Remember back in the day when Google was only activating 100,000 Android units a day? You should — it was May. By June, that number had jumped to 160,000 units a day. And today it now stands at 200,000 Android units activated a day. That’s pretty incredible.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt revealed as much during a sit down with a group of journalists after his panel at the Techonomy conference in Lake Tahoe, CA. When asked about how the Android platform is doing, Schmidt was practically glowing. He cited the recent quarterly shipment numbers (the ones showing total shipments passed those of the iPhone in the U.S.) and said that he just checked their own internal numbers this morning.

Have you ever bought something from amazon.com using your mobile device? Try it. It is convenient and easy and does not take more than 2 minutes. As a matter of fact, during the past 12 months, Amazon has sold one billion dollars through mobile devices.

"The leading mobile commerce device today is the smartphone, but we're excited by the potential of the new category of wireless tablet computers," said Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in a statement accompanying the company's release of second-quarter results.

Buying from Amazon (and soon others) with your mobile means not having to find time to log into the computer, etc. Just pick up your phone and type amazon.com. Enter your search item and you will be re-directed to your item or near matches. Select your item, click add to shopping cart, check out with 1-Click. Your purchase should arrive within 3 days.

One of the biggest questions companies ask themselves before investing in online social marketing revolves around the challenge of evaluating the return on investment (ROI). In general companies have few benchmarks as compared with traditional media to measure the success of these campaigns.

Nevertheless, it is possible to quantify them. Starbucks got one million clients in only one day thanks to a campaign launched in social circles. Read the complete engagement study in PDF here.

Recently, a new study (PDF) was published by Syncapse whose objective was to evaluate the commercial impact of clicking on the Facebook "Like" button. The conclusion is that on average those users that are fans of a company in the most popular social network spend an additional $71.84 on products for which they are fans compared to those who are not fans.

A historic turn of events for the print publishing business was reached recently as sales of the iPad version of Wired Magazine beat the print estimates of 80,000 copies.

Several sources confirm that 79,000 copies of the digital version of the magazine have already been sold. Both the print and the iPad versions cost $4.99.

Yes, this is the right magazine for the demographic but the mobility of the tablet device such as the iPad and coming mobile technologies such as the new iPhone 4G should now be clearly seen as the next step for the print industry.

As location becomes more and more relevant for users, businesses and advertisers, I am picking up a thread here from Carlo Longino/MobHappy.com and Matt Silk/Mobile Demystified that sheds light on the subject of location via SMS, still the most ubiquitous way to reach consumers on a mobile phone.

On the value to consumers of location-based ads

Marketers are expanding their focus to include more ways to digitally and directly reach consumers, so their vendors must follow suit. It’s just smart business.

Nearly every major email service provider has announced social media integration plans in one form or another, and most have selected a mobile partner or are building messaging into their platforms.

In general, and in particular for direct marketers, mobile continues to represent tremendous opportunity. As we’ve seen with these acquisitions, the appetite for social and digital media technologies is growing.

We regularly make the point that marketers should have a multichannel strategy – one that includes email, online, mobile and social media. The more opportunities you have to reach a customer, the more opportunities you have to engage with them.

NPR's Marketplace's Steve Henn reports on one company that's diving right in.

STEVE HENN: If you locked a mad scientist in a room and asked her to create the ultimate marketing device, she might come back with something that would follow you around, track your desires, slip into your pocket and would always be on. In short, she'd hand you a cell phone.

Apple’s iPad hasn’t saved publishing just yet, with Conde Naste revealing just 365 sales of its iPad-edition of GQ, while fresh research claims the average iPhone app sells 101,024 copies. [Via 9to5 Mac]

MediaPost’s Research Brief recently highlighted a survey from Ruder Finn on how Americans use the mobile internet. The post is worth a quick read and provides some insight on how people use their phones (which is helpful for crafting a mobile strategy).

You can read the full post here.

The survey, the Mobile Intent Index, showed the driving factor behind people using their mobile phones to go online is immediacy. And that people use their mobile phones as a “social connector” – with 91 percent of mobile users going online to socialize, compared to the 79 percent of traditional internet users.

See this interactive full study: Ruder-Finn’s full results here.

Over at AdWeek, Simon Vella makes some excellent points in his op-ed “Forget Apps, Text Still Reigns in Mobile.”

He notes: "Nearly every cellphone in the U.S. is capable of text messaging and because it’s used for regular personal communication, it’s always top of mind in terms of general daily use. By comparison, only 18% of all phones in the U.S. are smartphones. Further, Juniper Research forecasts that smartphones worldwide will account for just 23% of all new handsets sold per annum by 2013, hardly representing the mass market for general consumer goods and services."

Mary Meeker, an analyst with Morgan Stanley who’s an expert on Internet and mobile trends, gave a fast-paced talk at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. It was packed with more points and more data than I can cover in a short post, but the big point was that the mobile internet is taking off — just like the desktop internet a decade or so ago, but much faster.

Meeker was speaking at Atmosphere, a conference that Google is hosting for chief information officers, so she concluded by offering four big ideas for CIOs:

1. “The desktop internet ramp was just a warm-up act for what we’re seeing happen on the mobile internet.”
2. The pace of mobile innovation is “unprecedented, I think, in world history.”
3. Consumer companies are taking the lead over enterprise companies.
4. “It’s more important than ever to listen to employees” about where to take your IT department.

By Bryce Marshall,
Chief Marketeer

Mobile marketing creates opportunities for timely and intimate consumer experiences, but is often poorly understood. And unlike online tactics like search, email, and social marketing, few brands have dollars set aside for mobile development, meaning business cases and ROI models must be cemented upfront. The good news is consumers are already mobile. Hundreds of millions of North American consumers are engaged with their mobile devices.

Many marketers are overwhelmed by the technologies and terminology that fall under "mobile." However, the foundational components of mobile marketing are straightforward, support core marketing and communications programs, and deliver clear and measurable outcomes.

Here are a few tips for making a mobile business case:

The Foundation

1. Text Messaging (SMS)

Mobile Marketer's Dan Butcher interviewed David Katz, vice president of North America at Yahoo Mobile, who revealed part of Yahoo's strategy for mobile. Below are some mobile tips from the conversation.

1. Pitch cross-platform buys: Most of the RFPs that Yahoo sees have mobile.
2. Assemble an integrated sales force: People that sell PC ads sell mobile ads.
3. Have a mobile specialist sales force but don't force advertisers to deal with multiple sales people to buy mobile.
4. Local is huge, use it: Mobile search results blocks away from you at a time of day.
5. Be platform agnostic: Go where users go.
6. Offer rich-media: Advertisers love ads like expanding ad units and mobile video.
7. Partner with local sales forces: Interface with local merchants.

Read the full story here.

According from the latest report from AdMob, the Android operating system was the fastest growing year-over-year. Android's share of smartphone requests increased from 2% in February 2009 to 24% in February 2010.

Gizmodo confims that AdMob sees "a predictable continuation of what we'd seen before from the ad tracking firm—specifically, that Android is on a serious tear, thanks in no small part to the massive success of the Droid. But before, the iPhone seemed unassailable. Now, it's about to get trumped by Google's OS, on terms it defined. In the US, that is. The rest of the world's still warming to Android."

For this month's report, AdMob separate the traffic in our network into three categories – smartphones, feature phones, and mobile Internet devices – to examine the growth rates of

By Matt Silverman, From Mashable

Google Apps for business has a number of benefits over traditional business IT and desktop software. Using the full suite essentially places all of your data and entire workflow in the cloud, meaning you can access it all anywhere, any time, from any Internet connection.

At $50 per year per user, the fully integrated apps system is certainly cost-effective, and even adding the free versions of Gmail, Calendar, and Google Docs into your workflow can keep your employees coordinated.

For more casual users, or even those who might not be acquainted with Google Apps, here’s a guide to how the software can benefit your small business.

Read the full article here.

From Read Write Web, by Sarah Perez

For publishers big and small who, for whatever reason, can't or don't want to build their own iPad or tablet application in-house, digital magazine distributor Zinio will be introducing an iPad application which provides readers with easy access to digital subscriptions and an online "newsstand." The company, which has been around for a decade now, got started by offering magazine reader software for desktop computers. Now that the mobile revolution has taken hold, Zinio has expanded their offerings to include subscription and reading experiences for magazine customers which are accessible no matter what device you use: Mac, PC, iPhone, web or mobile web and soon, iPad, plus - who knows? - maybe one day Kindle, too. Zinio's goal is to make it simple for publishers to get their content out there on any form factor, screen size or platform.

From Mashable, by Shane Snow.

Social networking has finally become something valuable for brick-and-mortar businesses. Smartphones and location-based social networks allow users to interact, share, meet up, and recommend places based on their physical coordinates. This real-world connection to social media can mean more foot traffic and profits for business owners.

So-called “lo-so” networks like Foursquare, Loopt, and Gowalla enable any business with a physical location to not only communicate with customers online, but actually get more of them to walk in the door — and that’s exciting.

The question any brick-and-mortar business owner should be asking him or herself is no longer “Should I use lo-so networks?” It’s “How do I do it?” The following tips are essential to getting started.

Read the full article.