We’re speaking, of course, about location data. And eMarketer is out with a new report probing the headaches and challenges surrounding the use of location data.

While location data can be extremely helpful to marketers in connecting with their audience, the latest insight from Forrester Consulting (commissioned by Verve), shows that marketers are still struggling to grasp and capitalize on location data.

“A third of digital marketers in North America polled in March 2017 said that understanding how to use location to deliver relevant mobile ads was one of the leading challenges their organization faced,” eMarketer reports. “Inaccurate location data was another key challenge mentioned by almost as many respondents. And the list goes on.”

“Many marketers also felt there was a lack of clarity on what third-party vendors for location data are out there, and some found it difficult to combine mobile location with other customer data.”

If you’re among those for whom location data remains a source of frustration and mystery, check out the eMarketer report in full here.

The post Location Data Driving Marketers Loco appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

Major hotels see a need for charged-up marketing via digital and social channels as they work to combat threats from Airbnb, Priceline, Expedia, and other actors in the extremely competitive hotel business.

How to stay “top of mind” with consumers? More hotel marketing professionals than ever plan to increase their budgets for digital marketing and social media strategies.

Evidence for this comes from a recent SiteMinder survey. When the hospitality marketing platform queried hotel professionals worldwide “about their projected budget allocations for the next 12 months, 48 percent of respondents said they planned high spending to go toward digital marketing, while 44 percent said they intended to designate high investment in social media strategy.”

The goal among hotels is to invest in marketing campaigns that encourage customers to “book direct.”

“One reason hotel professionals are doubling down on digital marketing and social is the growing market power of accommodations upstart Airbnb,” according to eMarketer. “Hotel operators must also compete with the deep pockets of online travel agencies Priceline and Expedia, both of which spend considerable sums on consumer marketing (and cut) into hotel profits by charging commissions for customer referrals.”

Review of the top 10 U.S. accommodation websites tells the tale about challenges confronting hotels.

“Airbnb ranked as the most visited accommodation website in Q4 2016, receiving nearly 88 million visits, up 42 percent from Q4 2015,” reports eMarketer. “Priceline Group’s Booking.com came in second, with more than 82 million visits and a 24 percent growth rate, while Expedia-owned Hotels.com was fourth, with more than 65 million visits, up 25 percent year on year.”

Did any hotel chains make the top five chart? Only two: Marriott and Hilton.

The post More Cowbell! Hotels See Bigger Digital, Social Budgets as Way to Counter Competition appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

A recent ‘Think with Google’ survey conducted by Ipsos revealed that roughly seven in 10 teen smartphone users spend at least three hours per day watching video on their phones.

Smartphone time in general is big with this age cohort.

“More than half (51 percent) of teens said they spend three or more hours a day on social networks, and another 52 percent said the same about messaging apps,” reports eMarketer. “Meanwhile, roughly four in 10 respondents said they spent 3 or more hours each day playing games.”

Smartphone ownership, required for such extensive video viewing, is high among teens. Common Sense Media, a nonprofit organization supporting children and media, recently released stats showing that nearly eight in 10 respondents ages 13 to 18 now own a smartphone. In fact, they’re more likely to own a smartphone than a tablet, video game console, or laptop.

Data shows that many teens like to watch Netflix (37 percent of teens’ daily time is spent viewing video content there), while cable TV accounted for 25 percent of daily viewing and YouTube accounted for 26 percent of teens’ video time.

These observations are valuable to marketers who want to reach teens on channels they frequent.

As for parents and teachers, this insight is — no doubt — not exactly earth-shattering news.

The post Teens Totally Tubing: Mobile Video Watched Three Hours Per Day appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

That’s something commentators and analysts have been watching vis-a-vis Facebook, whose appeal has been dwindling among young people, according to some. That’s despite the fact that it remains the most widely accessed social platform. In fact, among internet users ages 18 to 24, Facebook has a higher penetration level (79 percent) compared with Snapchat’s take (69.6 percent), notes eMarketer.

There’s data — and then there’s anecdotal evidence. More than a few have noticed that more and more of those young people profess a preference for Instagram and/or Snapchat. And that they save Facebook for posts they don’t mind their mothers seeing.

Not all the evidence is anecdotal. Some of it is downright circumstantial.

For instance, Facebook just unveiled an upgrade allowing users to post disappearing photos and videos. It’s modeled, of course, on Snapchat’s signature feature.

“It’s the latest in a series of Snapchat knockoffs by Facebook and its trio of mobile apps Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger,” reports eMarketer. “The stream of lookalike features not only signals how seriously Facebook takes the threat of Snapchat, but also the risks Snapchat faces if its key features become available—and widely used—on other platforms.”

Then there are the recently available large font Facebook posts, reserved for entries with about 35 characters. They come off as tweets — or “Facetweets” — and the numbers of such posts are growing. While Twitter enlarges font size for tweets it deems important, Facebook’s type enlargement happens for any brief post whether it’s the titillating “Rachel Maddow has Trump’s tax returns” or the tedious “I’m eating lunch now.”

Armchair analysts could surmise that Facebook intends to rule social media the way Amazon works to command the online retail space.

Real analysts agree.

“As Instagram and Facebook Messenger adopt features previously unique to Snapchat, potential new users may reconsider adding Snapchat to their social portfolio when they can post stories and play with filters on other networks,” said Jaimie Chung, a forecasting analyst at eMarketer. “This trend is especially true for younger age groups.”

Younger users are indeed a critical concern for Facebook as it maneuvers to stay ahead of social space competitors. Recent surveys have found signs of higher enthusiasm for rival platforms (including some of Facebook’s own units — like Instagram).

“A March, 2017 survey conducted by LendEdu found that more than half of college students in the U.S. said they checked their Snapchat notifications first, compared with 27 percent who checked Instagram first, and 13 percent who said the same of Facebook,” notes Chung.

Two things are certain. First, social media will remain an ever-involving sector in which users gravitate for numerous reasons providers will seek to ameliorate. Second, social media executives will continue to have the occasional nightmare — usually involving MySpace.

The post Facetweets, Disappearing Posts: Is Facebook Copying Snapchat and Twitter? appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

Offering a new estimate of the size of the native advertising market, eMarketer notes today that spending on native digital display ads “will make up more than half of all digital display ad spending in the US this year.”

The new forecast estimates that US native digital display ad spend will grow 36.2% this year to reach $22.09 billion. At that level it will make up 52.9% of all display ad spending in the US.

“Growth of native digital display is being driven by publishers’ pursuit of higher-value and more mobile-friendly inventory, as well as by advertisers’ demands for more engaging, less intrusive ads,” said eMarketer principal analyst Lauren Fisher.

Fisher is also the author of the new report.

“We’re seeing a huge ramp up in non-social publishers adopting in-feed ads and video,” Fisher said. “Coupled with continued advances on the programmatic native front, this will accelerate non-social native display spending.”

To learn more, check out the eMarketer report summary here.

The post eMarketer Posts New Estimates for Native Ad Spending appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

In fact, Google could account for 40.7 percent of U.S. digital ad revenues this year. That would be more than double Facebook’s share, according to recent eMarketer estimates.

Google’s share of the search market is forecast to grow 16.1 percent to $28.55 billion in 2017. That would be roughly 78 percent of total U.S. search ad revenues this year.

“Google’s dominance in search, especially mobile search, is largely coming from the growing tendency of consumers to turn to their smartphones to look up everything from the details of a product to directions,” said eMarketer forecasting analyst Monica Peart. “Google and mobile search as a whole will continue to benefit from this behavioral shift.”

But when it comes to display, Facebook rules. While Google’s display business will rise to $5.24 billion, its slice of the display market pie will drop to 12.5 percent.

“The social network’s U.S. display business will jump 32.1 percent to $16.33 billion, capturing 39.1 percent of the display market, taking share away from Google, Yahoo, and Twitter,” notes the forecast.

Facebook’s revenue growth can be attributed to growth in both usage and time spent, which continues to draw advertisers in greater numbers — as well as video, both live and recorded, which are attracting big engagement.

And then there’s Snapchat, fresh off its recent IPO.

“Snapchat is poised for explosive growth this year,” posits eMarketer. “In 2017, Snapchat’s ad revenue will grow 157.8 percent to $770 million in the U.S. That’s slightly lower than the $800 million previously projected, due to higher-than-estimated revenue sharing with partners.”

The post Digital Titans: Google Rules Search, While Facebook Dominates Display appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

An estimated 91.3 percent of Gen Xers — individuals born between 1965 and 1980 — used the internet regularly in 2016, according to a new eMarketer report entitled “Where US Gen X Stands: A Hard-Luck Cohort that Is Too Important to Neglect.”

Could they be easier to reach than other touted demographic groups? Perhaps so: unlike millennials, Gen Xers are less eager than younger people to jump on the latest new trend. That makes them easier for digital marketers to find.

“Whatever their method for accessing the internet, many Xers spend lots of time doing so,” notes the report. “In September, 2016 polling by Limelight Networks, four in 10 internet users ages 34 to 50 said they spend at least 11 hours per week online outside of work.”

Video is bolstering that online time. The report suggests that 77.7 percent of Xers were digital video viewers last year — a number expected to increase a bit, to 78.2 percent in 2017. In fact, YouTube is a regular feature of the Gen X media mix, according to a September, 2016 Think with Google survey.

“Almost three-quarters (73 percent) of internet users ages 35 to 54 said they watch YouTube videos “to learn how to do something,” according to the report. “Meanwhile, Xers are old enough to be susceptible to nostalgia and are prone to use YouTube to connect with pop culture and events from their past, the survey found.”

Xers are also still fans of the screen they grew up with—the TV set.

“They’re very much still in front of the television,” said Derek Smith, principal for U.S. advisory entertainment and media at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), which examined generational viewing patterns in a December, 2016 report. “For the most part, they’re the core audience who are still paying for pay TV. As such, traditional advertising over TV is reaching these folks.”

There’s more to learn about this eminently reachable generation. Listen to eMarketer analyst Mark Dolliver discuss Gen Xers in the latest episode of “Behind the Numbers” here.

The post Attention, Mobile Marketers: Gen X Easy to Reach Both Online and Via TV appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

As to be expected, research shows that internet users are the most likely to unsubscribe from email lists because they get too many emails in general. In an October 2016 survey, MarketingSherpa asked US adult internet users why they unsubscribe from email lists and found that 25% did so because they received too many emails.

The question then remains how many emails is too many. According to an August 2016 survey from  Mapp Digital Internet users said that receiving emails twice per week was the preferable amount, while the second most popular response was receiving emails only once per month.

It’s not only the email frequency, but also the content of the email that swayed consumers answers. if an email was irrelevant to users, if it’s constantly pushing a sales message, or if the content of the email is boring or repetitive one in five users said they would unsubscribe. And apparently emails aren’t that useful to users in the first place. According to October 2016 research from Fluent LLC, only 15% of email users said they find marketing emails “often” or “always” useful, 29% said they were sometimes useful, and more than half (57%) said they were “rarely” or “never” useful.

eMarketer analyst Jillian Ryan explains, Maintaining a high level of list health and subscriber quality, as well as including relevant, personalized messaging, can combat some of these (email marketing) concerns.”

The post eMarketer Explains Why Why Consumers Get Email Fatigue appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

As eMarketer puts it, “Twitter faces a conundrum: At a moment when its platform is more visible and influential than ever before, key measures like revenues and usage appear to be stuck in neutral.”

Then there’s Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who had to admit on the company’s fourth quarter earnings call — which revealed global revenues up a mere 1 percent while U.S. revenue declined 7 present — that influence and making bank are two different things.

“The whole world is watching Twitter,” Dorsey said. “While we may not be currently meeting everyone’s growth expectations, there is one thing that continues to grow and outpace our peers: Twitter’s influence and impact.”

Twitter’s recent popularity is proving to be a harsh mistress. Its visibility could be turning many users and many brands away from a venue they now view as potentially dangerous. In fact, eMarketer pegs Twitter’s user base will grow a paltry 1.9 percent in 2017 — and predicts that rate to decline further in successive years.

Could it be that politics and brand advertising don’t mix?

“Ironically, Twitter’s high visibility in a charged political environment could actually be a liability,” notes eMarketer. “The company has tended to rely on brand advertising for much of its revenues, and brands are skittish about being associated with controversy of almost any type, political or otherwise.”

Skittish about controversy? Whoo-boy. That could be a problem, unless someone near the Oval Office deactivates certain Twitter accounts soon.

The post The Downside of Popularity: Despite Visibility, Twitter Revenue and Growth Are Flat appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The final numbers aren’t in yet, but numerous studies indicate that consumers now demand discounts and other promotions (free shipping, for instance) in order for retailers to snag a sale.

In other words, deep discounting might have boosted sales a bit, but they also bite deeply into actual profit.

“Retailers, which typically close their fiscal fourth quarter end of this month or early next month, are expected to see their critical holiday quarter profit decline 1.9 percent on average, according to Retail Metrics, a research firm that tracks Wall Street analysts’ estimates and provides retail industry research and data to institutional investors,” reports eMarketer. “While retail giant Wal-Mart’s expected profit decline (thanks to its technology and other investments) is the key culprit contributing to the sector’s decline, holiday discounting is also partly to blame.”

Retail Metrics president Ken Perkins even suggests that 53 major retailers — about half of the group his firm tracked — are expected to see lower fourth-quarter profit.

“Among the holiday winners, Perkins pointed to retailers including Amazon, beauty products seller Ulta, T.J. Maxx parent TJX, athletic gear retailer Lululemon and electronics chain Best Buy,” notes the report. “Still, he said the firm’s December store checks generally found disappointing in-store traffic and conversions.”

One big takeaway from the holiday? It’s hard to make an actual profit without an omnichannel strategy.

“Almost 70 percent of total holiday related spending occurred in stores with both a physical and online presence as consumers routinely favor shopping with retailers that have a physical location, according to an International Council of Shopping Center’s post-holiday shopper survey,” reports eMarketer. “Among millennials, for instance, the survey showed 77 percent of them said it’s important to buy online from stores that have a physical presence.”

The survey found that 91 percent of holiday shoppers made purchases at physical stores — about the same as holiday 2015.

The post Holiday Sales Healthy, But It Took Discounts, Promotions, and Omnichannel to Get There appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.