Posts Tagged ‘apple’

Nielsen’s State of Mobile Apps: Shock and Blah

Friday, June 11th, 2010

While Nielsen isn’t exactly known for releasing studies that blow minds, the work they’re doing in the mobile space is quickly becoming a favorite read of mine.

While the mobile space is an ever-expanding space with more options than ever before, a majority of the players are making their bets on the iPhone market, but with the expansion of HTML5, you might see a move from apps to Web-based applications (remember when you used to have to create Web apps on your first-gen iPhone?).

Here are a few head turners (and duhs) from the Nielsen report:

• The Smartphones are Coming. U.S. wireless users continue to gobble up smart phones as 21% of those polled have a smartphone, which is up from 19% the previous quarter and 14% during the study before that.
• iPhone Users are App Collectors. The average number of apps on an iPhone: 37. That’s  a full 15 more apps than the next largest OS; Android with 22.
• Who’s Where? Facebook continues to be the most-popular social networking app, with MySpace still trending high with teens.

For all the info, head over to Nielsen.

Tags: Android, apple, applications, Blackberry, HTML5, iPhone, Mobile, Nielsen, Symbian, windows mobile
Posted in Facts, Graphs, Industry Insights, Mobile, Nielsen | 2 Comments »

Apple + Ads: Must-Skip to Must-Touch

Thursday, June 10th, 2010

I’ll admit, I read a lot of magazines, but mostly only when I travel. The only magazine that gets sent to my apartment is actually in my roommate’s name and involves a small, furry, woodland creature and a very old man with way too many girlfriends. So, for me, a lover of WIRED when I’m on a plane, the fact that they were one of the first publications I cared about to release an iPad application was pretty huge. What I didn’t expect, though, was that instead of flipping past the ads like I did in my use-to-be-a-tree copy of the rag, I actually stopped and looked at the ads because (get this) they were actually engaging.

For the first time, rather than just telling you about a product, service, or idea, brands are able to bring you into the experience through clickable links, video, audio and animations.

Now, the iAds announcements of late don’t necessarily play into the experience of in-application advertising with the likes of The New York Times, WIRED, USA Today, etc., but Apple is quickly becoming a best friend to advertisers looking for a way to showcase their brands not only in traditional and non-traditional mediums, but in mediums where the experience is heightened to levels never before seen.

Developers will be able to create ad experiences in tandem that can work both in the iAd environment on the iPhone, and as integrated ads on the iPad in publications and applications, each delivering targeted info to publics that are more likely to be receptive to the message.

While I don’t have any numbers for advertising included in WIRED or the likes, you can bet that brands are paying top dollar for a chance to be part of the next wave in the field.  Apple did, however, say they already have $60 million worth of advertising committed to their iAds platform for H2 FY10. That platform goes live July 1, 2010. The brands on board for the initial launch read like a who’s who of the big brands world: Nissan, Citi, Unilever, AT&T, Chanel, GE, Liberty Mutual, State Farm, Geico, Campbells, Sears, JC Penny, Target, Best Buy, Direct TV, TBS and Disney.

During that same portion of the WWDC keynote, Jobs also said that iAds are projected to account for 48% of all mobile display advertising in the second half of 2010. Add those numbers to the number of people taking more than a passing glance at the ads in publication applications and you’ve got a whole new ballgame. The recent news about Symbian users being the most-active ad clickers in the mobile space could easily read much differently a quarter from now.

To tide you over, until we get a snazzy photo carousel on the blog, check out these eye-catching pages from the latest edition of WIRED on the iPad:

Tags: ads, advertising, apple, News
Posted in advertising, apple, iPad, iPhone | No Comments »

Not-so-live Coverage of Actual Live Coverage of Apple’s WWDC

Monday, June 7th, 2010

If you’ve ever actually been near Moscone Center during WWDC’s opening extravaganza, you know what the scene is like – crazy. If you haven’t been, imagine thousands of guys walking around with their iPhones, iPads, iPods, iEverthings all waiting to hear their cult leaderesque, black mock turtleneck wearing guru tell them the “one more thing…” Now, that’s WWDC. We obviously didn’t get an invite to this year’s festivities – Katie Cotton swears she gave our invite to Gray Powell for safe keeping, but we never received it – but we did take some time to follow the excellent live blogs out there (including Engadget, gdgt, MacRumors, Technologizer and Wired) to bring you what we think are some of the highlights.

iPad

The big item already in market for Apple is the iPad, the tablet device that’s changing the way we look at mobile computing. With over 2 million units sold, Apple is averaging one iPad going out the door every three seconds – say what?

Steve Jobs noted that there are 8,500 native iPad apps in the App Store and thousands of apps downloaded every day… blah, blah, make with the iPhone news, Steve.

iPhone

Just when you think it’s all iPad, Jobs brought out the trusty iPhone (3GS style) and showed us a couple new items in the arsenal, but the one that stood out most was Netflix streaming over WiFi and 3G for the iPhone coming soon (free). This means you can now watch your Netflix videos and pick up where you left off on your PC, Xbox, iPad, and now iPhone.

Zynga came on stage to show off Farmville for the iPhone (a meh for us, but wow for them). Activision also talked about Guitar Hero ($2.99 in the App Store).

The big numbers were:

• 5 Billion (with a B) downloads
• With Apple now paying 70% of revenues to devs
• $1 Billion in revenues to developers.

Jobs threw a study out that showed RIM with 35% of market, iPhone with 28%, Windows with 19% and Android with 9%. To give a more-telling look, he also noted that iPhone is accounting for 58.2% of mobile browser usage and Android is 22.7%

And then, the moment all the fanboys were waiting for… iPhone 4

Jobs actually joked about the fact that people had seen the phone “I don’t know if you’ve ever seen this… you ain’t seen it.” This humble blogger still thinks it would have been great to have the guy who left his prototype in a bar bring the phone out.

“24% thinner than the 3GS. Thinnest smartphone on the planet.” We’re going to spare you all the actual physical specs here and just link you to Engadget, but the fact that the actual bezel/band of the phone is being used as part of the antenna system is engineering genius. You can catch the well-produced video featuring Ive and his crew here.

Retina Display is basically one of the big selling features of the new iPhone 4, with crazy specs. This does mean that existing apps will look better, but if devs do a bit of work, they can take even more advantage of the new resolution and deeper levels of color.

From the teardowns of prototypes left in bars and the likes, we knew the battery would have a much-improved life – we just didn’t know how much.

For the first time, Apple introduced a gyroscope to the iPhone, and coupled with the accelerometer and compass, created six-axis control movements – yay for gaming. Now you can actually drive the tractor to plow your crops in Farmville.

Camera updates to the iPhone were definitely expected, and with a 5 megapixel camera, Apple actually was able to up their megapixels and still capture great low-light images by increasing the number of photons that hit the sensor and adding an LED flash. The camera can also take 720p HD video at 30fps.

But, Steve, how will we ever edit those videos on the iPhone? Well, they’ve got an app for that – iMovie for iPhone ($4.99 from the App Store).

The ability to capture, create, and syndicate HD video that can use geolocation means you have a fully-functioning social video device right in your pocket. No longer will you have to run around with your Flip HD and your iPhone getting footage and then heading back to your computer to do a quick edit before uploading to YouTube. This single factor could change the way we look at self-produced video on the Web – it’s the next level of usability.

At this point in the talk, there had been problems with the live demoes which required WiFi access and Jobs actually asked attendees to turn off their laptops and stop using wireless… funny.

iPhone OS 4 = iOS 4

Here’s the good stuff, the stuff that actually changes the way we interact with the mobile device.

The biggest feature in the new OS is the ability to multitask (run numerous applications at one time). This means users aren’t logging out of their favorite applications, but simply switching to a new one just like they would on their laptop. This means more time in social networking applications, more time when advertisers can be running ads through iAds, and more time being productive (given that you’re not spending all your time playing Zynga games). It’s yet to be seen how much this chomps away at the battery life, but Jobs did mention that the reason Apple didn’t come out with multitasking in earlier versions was because they were perfecting how to do it with an eye on battery consumption and performance.

There are also folders on the home screen (like we all knew) which allow you to place applications within them.

The enterprise crowd will love the increased support for enterprise mail systems (exchange) and Bing has been added to the search engine list available on the iPhone.

iAds

This recently-announced program would bring standardized advertising to the iPhone and help developers continue making free and low-cost applications. The platform launches July 1, 2010. Brands on board already: Nissan, Citi, Unilever, AT&T, Chanel, GE, Liberty Mutual, State Farm, Geico, Campbells, Sears, JC Penny, Target, Best Buy, Direct TV, TBS, and Disney. And they’re spending a lot of money, enough money in fact that Jobs said iAds are projected to represent 48% of all mobile display advertising in the second half of 2010. These numbers are big time when you think about the recent report on who is actually clicking on ads (hint: it’s not iPhone users).

And then, in classic Jobs style…

“It’s called FaceTime. WiFi only. iPhone 4 to iPhone 4. No setup.” The video chat feature uses both the front-facing and rear cameras to provide a face-to-face experience over WiFi, which is pretty awesome. The video they showed had some incredible uses, including the one below where users were actually chatting using American Sign Language (yay for accessibility!).

And that’s it! Check out the blogs I mentioned up above, and even Gizmodo, who wasn’t invited, but played nicely with everyone else throughout the day.

What’s Next?

Well, as Apple often does, they’ve changed the game a bit. This isn’t truly monumental, but whenever a product comes to market that shifts the way you use an everyday device, things change. It will be an interesting time as we see what comes out of Palm’s acquisition by HP, developments in the Android operating system and handsets, and the planned introduction of Windows Phone 7 Series devices further down the road. It’s an exciting time to be addicted to shiny objects.

Bye, Steve.

*Note: Microsoft, maker of Bing, Windows Phone and Xbox is a client of Spring Creek Group

**Another note: All photos in this piece are property of Engadget. We weren’t in attendance, and couldn’t take as beautiful of pictures even if we were.

Tags: apple, iAd, iPad, iPhone, Mobile, WWDC
Posted in Accessibility, apple, Bing, events, FarmVille, iPad, iPhone, Mobile, News, Social Media, Social Media Technology | 1 Comment »

Going Mobile 101

Wednesday, May 19th, 2010

It’s not enough to have great print or TV ads these days, hence the reason I have a job and am able to write this blog. It’s not even enough to have great print, TV, and social these days. In a time when everyone is walking around with a device in their pockets more powerful than the $4k Packard Bell (yes, you read that right) my dad brought home those many years ago, brands are scrambling to create an all-encompassing experience with users – a seamless brand agnostic of medium, screen size and location – and mobile is the last bit of that puzzle.

But, how do we go about creating a mobile strategy? What do we need to think about? Here are 10 steps to creating a mobile strategy that not only works for your brand, but that works for your customers/clients/and users.

In the end…
Mobile strategy is constantly changing and anyone tasked with running this area of ongoing marketing efforts has a heck of a job ahead of them, not to mention a lot of sleepless nights. As with any new/reimagined area of marketing and advertising, the mobile space offers near-endless opportunity heavily guarded by near-fruitless endeavors. The ability to track, know, and see what’s next is probably the best set of abilities any one person or group can have – and even these are changing.

Tags: ads, advertising, analytics, apple, business, design, interactive, marketing, search, seattle, services, YouTube
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

A Case Study About Social Media and Controversial Uses of the Word “All”

Monday, November 10th, 2008

At Spring Creek Group, we love case studies. They are the easiest way to explain to clients (and future clients) why social media is important and such an influential way to start actual online conversations. So imagine our pleasure when we were able to turn the case study microscope upon ourselves, after an unexpected opportunity was thrust upon us by someone we have never met.

The situation: As a leading Social Media agency, Spring Creek Group is sometimes asked to comment on industry events or trends. Our CEO, Clay McDaniel, is our appointed spokesperson. It’s usually a good opportunity for him to comment in an established media publication, part of the “mainstream media” if you will.

Clay’s recent post at DMNews included the phrase, “We’re all spending plenty of time in our social network accounts,” a fairly innocuous phrase that nevertheless set the social media wildfires ablaze. Over at Bly.com, professional copywriter Bob Bly took particular offense with the word “all” and provided the following response,

“I for one spend NO time on the social network sites — Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn — where I have accounts. So Clay is wrong….There are very few instances where “all” — which in Clay’s statement is synonymous with “everyone” — can be safely used.”

Now Bob Bly is an established copywriter, and technically he is right. In a strictly literal sense, the use of extreme words such as “all,” “never,” or “no time” should rarely be used. But instead of arguing semantics, let’s follow the social media train, which is far much more interesting.

Unlike a read-only advertisement, this conversation doesn’t end with Bly’s criticism on his blog. And if there’s any form of online media more conversational than the actual blog post, it’s the post’s comment thread, where Clay gets criticized once again, from a poster named Brian who complains,

“That’s the general problem with the Social Networking crowd. They surround themselves with each other, so it appears to them that everyone is doing it. And once you think that everyone is doing something that thing suddenly seems to be really important.”

The complainer has taken Bly’s specific technical argument and taken a broader brush to slam social media professionals in general. This is the fear of big corporations, who are scared of social media because of what a random blogger or commenter might say about their product. Advertising is positive, while social media invites criticism. And that rightly frightens people who are managing marketing campaigns for lousy products. But marketers sometimes forget that when someone who doesn’t fully understand your product criticizes it, you are just as likely to have an evangelist come to defend you with a much stronger and relevant argument.

Such is the case here, where a champion of Social Media pops up and politely criticizes Bob Bly for being out of touch with today’s environment. Michael Foreman writes on his blog (which includes a trackback to Bly.com),

…If you follow (Bly’s) blog, you know he hails from a time before web 2.0. He’s skeptical of social media trends…So why have accounts on Twitter, MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn if you never check them?… I think a little old school bias shows through his statement. Even big business and law enforcement are turning to sites like Twitter for feedback and communications. And the last election demonstrates the raw power of social networking. (See MoveOn.org, and more recently Change.gov, Obama’s new transition site.) No, you don’t need to be plugged-in 24/7, or get a Facebook account because it’s ‘cool’ as one comment on the post suggested. But we live in an age of paperless newspapers, iPhone apps, viral marketing, cloud computing and an increasingly mobile workforce. It’s good to log in every now and then.”

So let’s track this:

• Clay McDaniel contributes to an article on DMNews.com.
• Bob Bly criticizes the article and writes disparagingly about Clay Daniel (sic).
• Clay is then both attacked and defended by Bly.com readers.
• A thoughtful response is posted at ByMichaelForeman.com, who judging by his blog, may be the most interesting read out of all of us.
• And then of course the story comes full circle back to the Spring Creek Group blog.

The Conclusion: We think this is a pretty interesting example of how social media really is a conversation that leads to other conversations, and much more powerful than a “read-only” piece that you view once and then forget. We can’t put an ROI number on it, but at least eight people engaged in the conversation, across at least four pieces of online real estate, and many more people had opinions that they didn’t bother to write down. Can you say the same thing about a brochure?

Epilogue: For the record, Clay McDaniel apologizes for his use of the word “ALL,” and to prove his apology is genuine, refuses to say it will “NEVER” happen again.

Tags: ads, advertising, agency, apple, business, communication, events, Facebook, marketing, myspace, News, Social Media, social network, Spring Creek Group, tech, Twitter
Posted in Social Media, Social Media Case Study, Spring Creek Group | 1 Comment »

Will Social Networks Replace Email?

Thursday, November 6th, 2008

Technology continually changes our means of communication. There was actually a time when mail was written on paper and men delivered these messages by foot, horseback or even train.  Then email came, and in less than 15 years, was transformed from something you did on AOL to a vital and necessary business communications tool.

Now, will social networks supplant email? Spring Creek Group’s Clay McDaniel debates Sean O’Neill on this subject at DMNews.com.

Tags: apple, business, communication, News, social network, Spring Creek Group, tech
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Back from Federated Media Summit

Friday, October 17th, 2008

The Spring Creek Group returned today from the Federated Media Conversational Marketing Summit. We’ll try to punch out a few posts commenting on specific news and insights we heard, but the general takeway is that people are desperate for some way to track the success or failure of Social Media campaigns.So far, the only thing everyone can agree upon is that there is no right formula yet. How much is it worth to have someone watch a YouTube Video? Or to create a new one? In fact, the value of User Generated Content seems to be a slippery crocodile for big agencies to grapple with. What is the incentive for “Big Agency X” to launch a campaign designed to get 25,000 people to create their own ads? While Agency Creative teams are desperately trying to control the message (and the work), there are tons of people with a camera, a laptop, an idea, and now a giant platform to talk from.

All of this makes the ROI argument more relevant. An agency needs to be able to justify why spending $xx,000 to have their NYU Art School guys build a MySpace page or YouTube video is better than the company giving a couple of film school kids a handycam and a credit card. And since there is no way to value the return yet, it’s hard to quantitatively make any kind of argument.

What does this mean for firms who specialize in Social Media? Well quite simply, it means the industry is growing up. People don’t care about ROI on having a salesperson buy someone coffee. But they care if they are going to send her to New York for 4 day conference. ROI only matters when you identify a place you want to spend a lot of “I” in. When that “I” was a few hours of an intern’s time to build a Facebook page or write a blog post, no one cared. But the fact that ROI is becoming so important indicates Social Media is becoming a real line item on the Marketing Budget, not part of the “Other Channels” bucket. And no matter what, that is good for everyone in the space.

Tags: ads, agency, apple, design, Facebook, marketing, myspace, News, Social Media, Spring Creek Group, YouTube
Posted in Social Media, Spring Creek Group | No Comments »

The Free Web Application Syndrome

Tuesday, August 19th, 2008

This post was originally entitled “Can Twitter Ever Make Money?” But as we wrote it, we realized the issue is bigger than simply wondering how, when and if companies like Twitter will monetize.

The early days of innovation are truly fantastic for early adopters and consumers who are ahead of the market. VC’s and Private Equity firms pour billions of dollars into cool ideas. Those who are “in the know” early are/were able to get M&M’s brought to them on a Friday night (Kozmo.com), groceries delivered free wherever they lived (Webvan), 100 pounds of pet food without a shipping charge (Pets.com), free music to their PC (Napster), free phone calls across the world (Skype) and more.

The problem is, like your economics teacher told you, there is no free lunch. Someone is paying the bill. And eventually, that person paying the bill, the person paying the salaries of all the people doing things for you, well, he wants to get reimbursed for his efforts.

So look today at what we are getting for free. We can stay in touch with every one of our business contacts no matter how many times they switch jobs, thanks to LinkedIn. And we know the personal lives of all of our friends, thanks to Facebook. And if we want, we can get global updates in real time, 140 characters at a time, thanks to Twitter. All of this for free.

Now the business models that the investors saw said something like this. “We are going to be hugely popular. Everyone will love us. We’ll run some ads. And if we get 1% of the people to click on an ad, we’ll make a gajillion dollars.” It’s the model that has worked since Mr. Marconi showed off his first radio nearly 100 years ago.
But 1% of the people aren’t clicking on Facebook ads, or upgrading to premium LinkedIn accounts. And Twitter hasn’t even come up with any ways to make money. Throw in the fact that the economy is struggling, and that even rich people don’t like losing money. Someone has to start generating profits some day.

Well, that’s the story FastCompany is addressing in this article. Their synopsis – everything cool you get today for free will basically become a lead generation tool for Google, Microsoft, Amazon, eBay, Apple, etc…. For the Social Media Marketer, that means that these are the days to leverage the creativity and free form activity this medium allows. We all remember how Flickr got destroyed when Yahoo turned it into a way to generate YahooMail accounts. Take these great opportunities available to you today, and grab them before they are simply ways to get you to buy other products. Of course, it wouldn’t hurt if we all would just click on a few ads

Tags: ads, advertising, apple, business, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Social Media, Twitter, yahoo
Posted in Social Media, Social Media Business Models, Twitter | No Comments »