The following is a guest contributed post from Thomas Walle, CEO and Co-founder of Unacast.

Location and proximity are two of the biggest things that marketers can’t stop talking about. Here are six things you need to know about the market for location and proximity data.

The appetite for location data is enormous

The market for location data is heating up. Many brands are investing resources into location-based marketing, with one ad exchange alone reporting a 170% increase in the number of ad requests containing location data. But the relative newness of location technologies and approaches means that many are still unsure what exactly location data can do for them, especially with regards to potential use cases.

Furthermore, the sheer variety and complexities of the data has made it difficult for companies to interpret and apply the data on their own, forcing them to rely instead on third-party providers to turn that information into something actionable. The appetite for location data may be huge, but there’s still a gap between what people want and what they can do.

There’s a growing call for third-party verification

At the recent ProxSummit hosted by Unacast, the top global location and proximity platform, the CMO of Groundtruth (formerly xAd) Monica Ho made a convincing argument for the creation of a third-party verification system that would work to grade the quality of location data. She is not alone in this; as of late, there have been more and more people calling for standardization in the location and proximity industry.

This is because of the vast number of players already present in the space, each of which is free to make claims about the services on offer without providing third-party verification of such claims. As a result, in order to make it a fair playing field for all, companies must be held to a standard accepted by the entire location industry.

Machine learning is becoming central to mapping out people’s behavior

If you’re a company like Pandora with 50 million monthly active users, what’s the best way to map out and model their everyday behaviors? After all, a computer program can only go so far. That’s why Pandora and many others in the location industry are turning to machine learning to perform a myriad of functions, from modeling how people are likely to behave to verifying data accuracy to finding insights that would otherwise have been hidden to the human eye.

At ProxSummit, Jeff White of Gravy Analytics pointed to machine learning and AI as the tools that “will help predict human behavior” and create effective strategies for attribution. Eventually, machine learning will help data providers and brands use the information they have to go beyond marketing in real-time, and instead anticipate people’s needs and locations.

Clients don’t want to be confined to one use case

Generally speaking, nobody wants a complicated solution to a problem when a simpler one would do. The same principle goes for location and proximity: No client really wants to get into the nitty-gritty of location data quality, its origin, etc — the only thing that matters is what it can be used for, and how easy it is to use. As David Spitz, CMO of mParticle, mentioned at ProxSummit, “Clients are interested in ease-of-use and whether data can be used in different channels… they don’t want to be confined to one use case.”

Location is — and should be — an important component of any marketer’s toolbox. But data providers and data aggregators should be mindful of clients’ needs, and work to educate them about the uses (and hazards) of using location and proximity data.

The “wow” factor is wearing off

By this, I don’t mean that the appetite for location and proximity data is slowing down. Instead, I’m talking about the fact that clients, having had more experience and exposure to the location industry, are now asking harder questions and demanding more accountability from data aggregators and suppliers. As an industry, we have to figure out how to move forward and continue to innovate and provide value to our clients.

More transparency is needed

Finally, I believe that one of the biggest issues faced by the proximity and location space is the issue of transparency. As mentioned earlier, there should be a way to grade the quality of data so that buyers can be sure that the information they receive is of the highest caliber. However, we also need to be educating the public about where the data is coming from, as well as how best to use it.

By providing more transparency to clients, we will be able to interrogate the data from multiple angles: from the buyer’s point of view, the aggregator’s point of view, etc. If we show ourselves to be mindful of people’s needs, we can better fulfill our role as the industry that equips buyers with the information required to make better decisions.

All location and proximity data are not created equal, but all location and proximity data have a use case.

The post 6 Emerging Trends in Location & Proximity appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

On Wednesday, the Venice, California-based mobile moments company announced that Cameron V. Peebles will serve as inMarket’s first CMO.

Cameron joins the team as a respected mobile veteran with nearly two decades of valuable experience in integrated marketing, strategy, pipeline optimization, creative design, public relations and strategic positioning.

Having previously led marketing initiatives for mobileStorm, Stamps.com Enterprise and Nero Software, Peebles most recently served as Chief Marketing Officer of Airpush, a top global mobile advertising platform. At Airpush, Cameron was credited was bootstrapping the company to $100 million in revenue, while helping the company to rack up a wide array of industry accolades, including Marketing Department of the Year (Gold) at the 2015 Best in Biz International Awards, and Marketing Executive of the Year (Silver) at the 2015 Best in Biz U.S. Awards.

“Since 2010, inMarket has set the standard for real time engagement at the moment of truth and helped brands gain unprecedented advantage through beacon technology at scale. Now, as our space matures and we enter a seventh consecutive year of growth, we know that sharing our vision with the community will be an integral part of our next chapter,” said Todd Dipaola, CEO and cofounder of inMarket. “Cameron has the perfect blend of marketing experience, savvy and the entrepreneurial spirit to lead our marketing team to continued success in the future.”

Cameron’s arrival at inMarket comes at a time of widespread growth for the company known for its market-leading beacon deployments in retail, bars, restaurants and nightlife.

InMarket credits its success to the strength of its retail beacon platform, which topped 100,000 retail locations last year. In December, the company launched its inBar on-premise customer engagement solution to more than 23,000 entertainment venues (read more about it here) and its comScore-verified reach of 50 million monthly active users.

“The strategies and technologies that brands use to engage with consumers in mobile have been consistently improving since the introduction of smartphones nearly a decade ago,” Cameron is quoted in a release issued by the company. “inMarket’s industry leading technology, impressive track record of driving ROI and history of consistent growth is second to none. I’m very proud to be leading the company’s marketing initiatives as we expand even faster and reach many more exciting milestones.”

Hitting the ground running in his new position, Cameron will present an inMarket co-sponsored  webinar (“Mobile Location & The Tale of Retail ROI”) on February 22nd. During the 45 min. presentation, Cameron “will shed light on best practices for using location in retail, present case studies from world-class advertisers such as Starbucks and analyze the status and quality of location data available to the retail industry.” To learn more or to register for the webinar, click here.

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How so? By offering what the partners call “a more personalized experience for Shazam users, through beacon technology.”

The partnership includes the incorporation of the Gimbal SDK into the Shazam mobile app, which has over 500 million downloads and more than 100 million monthly active users.

“We are excited to add beacons as a way that we connect our users with the world around them,” said Rich Riley, CEO of Shazam. “Gimbal is an ideal partner to provide an unprecedented, customized mobile experience, and a new and meaningful way to connect brands and consumers.”

Monday’s news release calls the move representation of “further evolution in the way consumers are looking to Shazam to magically connect them with the world around them.”

“By incorporating Gimbal into their platform, Shazam and their partner brands will be able to deliver even better experiences to their millions of users, based on each user’s individual interests and proximity,” adds Rocco Fabiano, CEO of Gimbal.

The post Shazam, Gimbal Aim to Boost Beacon-Powered Mobile Marketing Engagement appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The reason? Early adopters are entering the final year of the three-year technology adoption cycle, shifting from trials to full-scale deployments.

Another critical driver, however, is the boom in BLE/iBeacons, which are creating a wave of second generation start-ups in this space that will help to drive new growth and use cases across all major verticals.

All told, this is expected to result in over 30,000 indoor location installations in 2014.

“We can clearly see major grocery and pharmacy chains really pushing towards this technology,” says ABI Senior analyst Patrick Connolly. “These are very competitive verticals, which can benefit significantly from identifying and targeting loyal customers. Both already have large loyalty and advertising/offers deals in place and from a practical point of view, in-store items can be difficult to find. All of this makes indoor location a perfect fit.”

It’s interesting to note how other verticals are looking at using the technology. In the fast food space, where indoor location was not originally envisioned as having major success, a small percentage improvement in queue lengths can translate into millions of dollars. A number of chains are now trialing the technology purely for that purpose.

The post Indoor Location Installations Could Break Records This Year appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

Not surprisingly, this infusion of cash into retail from mobile consumers is inspiring a boom in mobile ad spend and related strategies to stoke the flames of this hot trend even further.

As a result, PayPal has just released its PayPal Media Network’s (PPMN) Location-Based Mobile Advertising Q3 Highlights.

The report shows how brands are increasing user engagement and boosting average click through rates (CTR) by a significant margin.

Digging into the average CTR number, we find the top three categories that saw the greatest growth from geo-fencing are: Cable, Phone and Internet Services (with an amazing 59 percent), Financial Services (18 percent), and Big Box Retailers (12 percent).

“Multiple PPMN advertisers are leveraging geo-targeting to drive purchases,” PayPal says, “including Quick-Service Restaurants (100%) and big box stores (21%). And retailers in cities across the country are saying, by all means, please ‘fence-me-in’ with New York, Los Angeles and Portland rounding out the top.”

To learn more, check out PayPal’s recent blog post on the subject here.

The post PayPal: Advertisers Leveraging Geo-Targeting to Drive Purchases appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The aim of this expansion, naturally, is to help businesses more effectively reach viable customers.

Engage Mobility says this propriety platform – called the Mobile Engagement System – enables focused outreach to hyper-local consumers based both on their proximity to a retail location, and their relevancy by time, interests and demographic.
So how does it work?

The geo-fencing and geo-targeting features of the Mobile Engagement System allow businesses to send the most relevant messages, real time promotions and push notifications to potential customers based on their exact location.

Engage sets up a virtual boundary in a real world area. When consumers enter this area, businesses can engage with them in the highly valuable mobile environment by delivering content that is contextually relevant to the audience.

“The results of these types of platforms have created a major shift in how marketing dollars are spent,” the company says, citing a recent BIA/Kelsey forecast suggesting that one of three dollars spent on mobile advertising now goes to location-targeted advertisements, a figure expected to grow to nearly one-half by 2017.

The post More Companies Focusing on Geo-Targeted Mobile Advertising appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The platform in question is designed to help connect merchants with both current and potential customers in real-time.

This approach grants merchants the ability to build direct relationships within their community while enjoying a competitive edge. With Babberly, merchants can connect with loyal users that are looking for their products and/or services when and where they need them.

According to details put forward today in an official press release from the company, Babberly says that with more and more merchants searching for a way to tap into the ever-growing trend of the “SoLoMo” (social, local, mobile) phenomenon, the company’s offering serves as a low cost, real time marketing solution that is superior to other platforms.

“We are on a mission to provide merchants with an easy way to connect with their local community and drive more business through their doors,” says Babberly’s CEO Bobby Marhamat. “Babberly is an on-trend “local goes social” solution that we’re excited to put into the hands of merchants so they can reach our ever-growing user base of potential customers.”

To learn more about the new platform, click here.

The post Babberly Unveils Hyperlocal Mobile Ad Platform appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

If you ask a knowledgeable source at Lenovo, the answer lands squarely in the affirmative. And here’s why.

According to a new case study presented by Twitter, Lenovo’s search marketing manager for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, indicates that geo-targeted tweets are far more effective than search when it comes to fostering engagement and boosting sales.

During Gadget Show Live, the brand also turned to Promoted Tweets to generate sales. @Lenovo_UK created a Flock to Unlock campaign, directing Twitter users to retweet in order to get special discounts on Lenovo products. After a certain number of Twitter users retweeted its message, @Lenovo_UK shared a deal code that people could only get on Twitter.

“The real-time quality of Twitter is brilliant,” observes Lenovo’s Andy Murray. “It lets you tap into exactly what your audience cares about most. There’s also real potential to drive action and have a strong sales impact with something like a fantastic offer or a giveaway. Twitter campaigns are also much more flexible. They allow you to make creative or strategic changes that you can’t with more traditional ad buys. Plus, geo-targeted Twitter Ads are powerful and can outperform search.”

So what makes Murray believe that Twitter can outperform search?

Lenovo’s reliance upon Promoted Accounts to attract followers and Promoted Tweets to generate improved visibility had an enormously positive impact. The effort drove $27,000 in direct revenue, an approximately 700% spike in brand mentions, and more than 2,500 new followers.

The post Can Geo Targeted Tweets Really Outperform Search? appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

Urban Airship, the largest provider of push messaging technology, is sponsoring a new webinar right here on MMW to discuss every facet of push messaging; including how it works and why some of the largest brands around are using the technology for user engagement and retention.  “While the number of connected consumers continues to skyrocket, brands still struggle to drive core business goals using mobile marketing,” the company explains.  “Consider changing that with a mind-blowing mobile opportunity: using relationship-driven push messaging to increase consumer engagement, conversion, and retention.”

Brent Hieggelke, CMO of Urban Airship, will discuss how different types of organizations deliver real-time, context-driven interactive engagement using push technology.  Based on real-world examples, the webinar will also uncover best practices and new technologies to help put these practices into place.  The goal is that attendees will walk away knowing how to bring together customer location, CRM, and customer-stated preference data to build relationships that translate into improved customer lifetime value.

The webinar is scheduled for Tuesday, August 21st at 10am PDT.  You can register to attend here.

The post New Webinar: Mobile App Engagement & Retention Using Mobile Push Messaging appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The following is a guest post from Jim Wehmann, senior vice president of global marketing for Digital River.

Mobile commerce continues to generate a lot of buzz among online marketers. It holds out the promise of sizable incremental sales as tablet and mobile smartphone shipments continue to soar. Smartphone sales in 2012 are expected to be nearly 1.8 billion units, while tablet unit sales are expected to climb to nearly 100 million. Mobile commerce in the hands of this many consumers is a very exciting prospect. And it speaks to the very core of direct marketing – go where your customers are rather than waiting for them to come to you. Mobile commerce will truly enable consumers to purchase anytime, anywhere – on the commuter train, at the pool, at the game and everywhere else on the go.

But, getting it right is more difficult than just pushing out your Web content and shopping experience to a connected device. The challenge starts with the smaller screen, but it doesn’t end there. There are other issues regarding consumer behavior and expectations, dedicated app versus browser, geo-targeting and follow-up communication.

Consumer behavior and expectations

Consumer behavior and expectations while using a mobile device continue to evolve and diverge from the behavior they display while using a PC or laptop to access the Web and Web-based commerce. Most significant are expectations around simple, easy-to-navigate user experiences. Think about it – the consumer is on the go, perhaps in the company of other people and most often with a more limited keyboard. He or she wants an expedited shopping experience that can be completed quickly. Solutions like stored credentials and account information become crucial to them having an overall good buying experience. Marketers should be even more sensitive to the number of steps and necessary information that needs to be captured during checkout processes on a mobile device.

Smaller screen size

We’ve all experienced the less than satisfactory user experience while accessing Web content on a mobile device. Most often this is in the form of having to scroll left and right and up and down to fully view a page or image or even text. Obviously, the smaller screen size presents a challenge to the marketer. Combine this with the changing consumer behaviors and expectations mentioned above and not getting the content and format right can dramatically interfere with a successful launch of a mobile commerce initiative. Part of the solution is device detection and designing the Web content for an optimized mobile experience. Most of the best Web content management systems can perform device detection and have tools that allow the marketer and designer to build pages perfectly optimized for the screen size of each device.

When planning the optimal mobile commerce experience, it’s important to keep a few things in mind. First, mobile commerce lends itself to less complicated, higher impulse products. Solution selling with highly structured, complicated products is less suited to the mobile environment. For complex products, typically the best option is to dangle some teaser copy and images and direct the user to another channel, perhaps a phone call to a sales representative from the smartphone right then. Or maybe a short lead generation form for follow up in an alternative channel, perhaps email. Second, recognize the fact that cross-selling and upselling are more difficult and at times downright disruptive to closing the sale on the mobile device.  When compared to a laptop, the experience and screen size just don’t accommodate accessorizing as well, whether it is on a product detail or interstitial page. In some cases, business models that depend on driving higher average order values through such techniques may not transition well to the mobile device.

The dedicated app versus the browser

Many merchants wonder whether a dedicated, branded app distributed through an app marketplace can make a significant impact on the mobile commerce experience. These apps are generally designed with a built-in browser that allows the end user to browse and shop from the online merchant without accessing the device’s native browser or a third-party browser. In addition, they also often come with other useful functionality that can enhance the user experience, for example, account information or perhaps a locker of previous purchases in the digital content space. A dedicated app also generally eliminates the need to execute standard device detection as mentioned above. Finally, having a dedicated app on the home page of the device is a great marketing opportunity to keep your brand top of mind at every use of the device. On the other hand, due to app proliferation, standing out amongst the clutter is getting harder and harder.

Geo-location

Geo-location has become an important feature in improving many online user experiences. For example, the search engines include local content on search results pages. In addition, you have likely seen Internet service providers (ISPs) and content providers incorporate targeted local news, weather and sports on their content pages. And merchants are using geo-location to improve the online shopping experience. In the same way, brands thinking about mobile commerce should definitely include geo-targeting in their mobile user experiences. Most mobile operating systems enable a dedicated app through API’s or the native browser through HTML5 to access the GPS of the mobile device. Through this functionality merchants can provide value added information, such as best sellers in the consumer’s area, location of the nearest stores and even targeted merchandising. This might include merchandising outerwear on the home page to people located in northern climates in the winter. In some instances, this more precise location detection can create an even better user experience than geo-targeting through IP address detection on a laptop in the home or office.

Follow-up Communication

Marketers are beginning to optimize their promotional emails for the smaller screen of mobile devices. Post transaction email communication to the customer, including confirmation and bounce back emails are sure to follow. Marketers should be tracking customers’ online shopping channel preference and optimize the follow-up communication for the highest frequency channel. Another approach would be to optimize each individual follow-up communication based on the channel of the related purchase. In this way, mobile buyers would get confirmation and bounce back emails optimized for their mobile devices. Another best practice is to include a “view online” link, which allows the marketer to code the email Web page in a way that is fully optimized for laptop and mobile device viewing.

Mobile commerce presents exciting new possibilities for marketers. And tablet and smartphone penetration and growth are just too big to ignore. But, marketers need to be realistic about how quickly their mobile commerce sales will build. Certain categories, including less complex and higher impulse products are more amenable to the mobile shopping experience. Regardless of the category, however, all marketers can improve their results by paying attention to both the limitations on the one hand and the expanded opportunities on the other of selling through mobile devices.

About the Author

Jim Wehmann is senior vice president of global marketing for Digital River (www.digitalriver.com), a leading provider of global e-commerce solutions that builds and manages online businesses for software and game publishers, consumer electronics manufacturers, distributors, online retailers and affiliates.

The post Mobile Commerce: Getting in Right appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.