The following is a guest contributed post from Andrew Dubatowka, VP, North America Performance and Marketing, AdColony

Six hundred years after the Chinese explorer Zheng He circumnavigated the world –  allegedly discovering America along the way –  the tables have turned, and it’s the Western world that has its eyes turned to China as the next frontier. But it’s not looking for a land grab. No, it’s looking at the 1.4 billion Chinese mobile users that are poised and ready for global brands and apps.

China is a mobile-first economy, with users in both urban and rural areas turning to apps and the mobile web for search, gaming, news, entertainment, and shopping – having completely leapfrogged the West when it comes to mobile commerce. As such, China is a veritable playground for mobile app publishers, rich with users who are both hungry for more apps and also accustomed to in-app purchases of all types.

The best part is, you don’t have to nab the majority. The sheer volume of China’s mobile base – they have more gamers, for instance, than any other country – means you only have to capture a small percentage to multiply the success you’ve already had elsewhere. As they say, if you break into 1% of the Chinese market, you’re made.

For advertisers, this means one thing: inventory – and lots of it. So much that it’s almost like an open field, just waiting to be sown. Mobile users in China are also more open to ads, possibly downright eager. Nearly 8 out of 10 (78%) Chinese consumers are more likely to click on a mobile ad if the content is relevant to them versus just 33% of UK and 29% of US users. Now is the time to get in, before more advertisers go through the floodgates and prices go up.

Because they will.

The mobile ad market in China is on a tear. By 2021, eMarketer predicts 82% of digital ad spending will be dedicated to mobile, and it will represent an incredible 60% of total media ad expenditures. Sure, three-quarters of that is going to go to the ad giants Alibaba, Baidu, and Tencent, just as Facebook and Google dominate elsewhere, but there is one big difference: In China, social media isn’t nearly as flexible and open to advertising as it is in the West. Instead, advertisers focus on online video, gaming, messaging apps, microblogging sites, and search engines.

While we all know that search will continue to grow, as will messaging, I believe that mobile video and gaming is where we see significant untapped opportunity. For brands, sight, sound, and motion can elicit emotion, deepen engagement, and put an indelible stamp on the psyche of a user. For performance advertisers, video is an effective way to fully convince a user that your app is worth downloading. It’s no wonder that in just a few years mobile video will comprise 72% of all video ad spending.

As mentioned above, China has hundreds of millions of heavy mobile game players, many of which would be considered “whales,” based on their higher engagement retention, and in-app purchase rates, all of which results in significant lifetime value for publishers. Why would you wait to get these big fish? They’ve never before been accessible by Western advertisers.

It’s very easy to say you should do something, and much harder to answer the question, “But how?” The truth is, entering the Chinese market is not simple; it requires three T’s, all of which have their own nuances of execution. But they are a great starting point:

TECHNOLOGY. Because China’s internet is separated from global internet, the first box to check is to make sure you are working with a partner who has a dedicated infrastructure in place. That way, you’ll have the speed and reliability required to serve ads to the users in China.

TEST. Don’t throw away your existing strategy; in fact, there are many best practices from your existing market and user base that will be invaluable as you break into this one. But be open to the fact that not everything that has worked for you so far – from your marketing approach to how you measure success – will work in China. Test them out, but try new things. Then A/B test them against each other. Then test and iterate again. Sound familiar? It’s really about getting back to what you did in the beginning that made you so successful.

TRUST.  Find local and/or international mobile ad partners that you can trust to guide you through this new market. This is also easier said than done, but the first thing to look at is their clients and their experience. Have they done this before? Then look at how they can customize service to your needs because you’re going to need a partner that can adapt to the changes you’re making across apps, campaigns, etc. – and even work with you to make them better.

The post Op-Ed: The Next Billion Mobile Users appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

Sponsored by Accellera Systems Initiative, DVCon U.S. will be held February 26-March 1, 2018 at the DoubleTree Hotel in San Jose, California.

“I am very proud of the program we have put together for our attendees at DVCon this year,” stated Tom Fitzpatrick, DVCon U.S. 2018 Technical Program Chair. “It is the must-attend conference for design and verification engineers because it continues to grow and evolve with the needs of industry. This year we’ve added some new vertical topic areas that I think attendees will find particularly intriguing and useful. Safety critical verification is a theme that attendees will see addressed throughout the conference, and the tutorials on Thursday afternoon are focused primarily on issues surrounding automotive safety and compliance. There is also a paper that will discuss UVM-based Verification of a RISC-V Processor Core. There is something for everyone at DVCon and our team of reviewers has done an excellent job of pulling the best for the program from an outstanding group of proposals,” Fitzpatrick concluded.

To get a more complete guide to the conference, Dennis Brophy, DVCon U.S. 2018 general chair, explains why DVCon is even “Bigger and Better” in his Welcome Message to attendees. You can check it out here.

For the full DVCon U.S. 2018 schedule, including a list of sessions, tutorials, workshops, sponsored luncheons and events, visit www.dvcon.org. To register for DVCon, visit here.

The post DVCon U.S. 2018 Adds New Topics to Technical Program appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

From the official release:

Basketball, football, baseball, hockey, and soccer modules will be released alongside ePlay’s partners throughout the year. The game, sometimes called “Pokémon Go meets DraftKings” allows users to meet and draft 3D animated athletes in AR.

“Working with our partners and athletes directly, the mobile game is designed to increase engagement between athlete and fan,” says Trevor Doerksen, CEO of ePlay Digital. “Athletes and players can control their appearance in the game with selfies and via social media. All players and eSports viewing audiences walk between two worlds: the on-court, on-ice, on-field performance augmented by customizable 3D avatars, front and rear-facing mobile cameras, player narration, selfies, and actual game play.”

A range of critical elements for the game, including logos, player images, as well as the sports data that will underpin the fantasy statistics and scores will be supplied by sports data technology leaders Sportradar. Those statistics and scores, delivered off the back of Sportradar’s own partnerships and processes, will enable users to draft athletes and begin earning points and prizes.

“At Sportradar, we are committed to delivering cutting-edge data and products that push insight and engagement to new levels,” says Dave Abbott, SVP Innovation and Product Integration at Sportradar. “Where fantasy and Augmented Reality meets is a fascinating space and it is exciting to see our data chosen by ePlay to ensure their upcoming game titles are reliable as well as innovative and fun”.

The post ePlay to Demo AR Sports Fantasy Game at CES in Las Vegas appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

In today’s high-tech society, cyberattacks are a large and still-growing issue. The public and businesses alike are embroiled in a constant but rarely-felt battle to keep infrastructure online and to prevent important data from falling into the wrong hands. This battle encompasses all devices from tablets to vending machines, but the devices you’re probably the most versed with are both laptops and computers. Which of these two portable devices are more susceptible to cyberattacks? And what are the attacks to look out for?

Laptops and Computers.

Laptops are generally more potent than phones. They feature larger internal storage, more powerful operating systems and as such can operate more sophisticated or specialised software. But for all this bang, a great deal is lost with regards to simplicity, portability and battery life. The primary issue with computers is that they are part of an open and less standardised environment.

Statista reports that in 2015-16 88% of all UK households contain a computer, yet according to Netmarketshare, 7% of these computers are still running Windows XP, an operating system released in 2001 – for which Microsoft support stopped in 2014. Close to 50% of computers are also still running Windows 7. These older operating systems are more vulnerable to cyber threats, as Microsoft are now focusing on maintaining and updating Windows 10 instead of their previous systems.

Mobile Phones.

Smartphones are a portable, versatile device that opens far more doors for workers on the go. They are incredibly popular, with roughly 48 million smartphones in use in the UK, and with that number set to rise to 54 million by 2022.  With advancements in cloud based storage, and through program ecosystems like Office 365, phones can now access all the important documents you once needed a computer for. The issue is that with smartphones, very little emphasis has been placed on cybersecurity awareness and so there is very little knowledge on the subject.

Cyber-attacks can indeed affect smartphones; mobile devices encounter potential threats each month. While mobile phone software is standardised, many updates sent out to prevent new and emerging cyber-attacks are delayed by users from being installed. If you have ever delayed an update you’ve put that device at risk. A good practice for businesses is to make these updates mandatory and immediate.

Attacks on mobiles are almost identical to attacks on computers. Generally, a website, email or another kind of lure will prompt a mobile user to download a file, or to provide information which can then be used to access other information. This can lead to dangerous infections like ransomware being installed on your phone, which locks and encrypts data on a device before demanding a payment to unlock the data.

But are either laptops or mobiles more susceptible to threats? It’s a complicated question. With both computer and phone operating systems, if programs and operating systems are kept up to date, the threat of successful attack and infection is small, but this chance is affected greatly by user knowledge. According to data released by Crowd Research Partners, ninety percent of organisations are vulnerable to insider threats – and this is because again, knowledge of mobile data security is sparse and not discussed. If individuals never used their devices malware would never be installed, and it’s the knowledge of how to safely use those devices that prevents these cyberattacks from becoming widespread.

The post Mobiles or Laptops – Where Do Cyberattacks Hit Hardest? appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The following is a guest contributed by Josh Ong, Director of Global Marketing and Communications at Cheetah Mobile.

The holiday season is upon us and the weather has turned cold, which can only mean one thing: It’s time to make my predictions for the future of marketing in 2018. If there’s one overarching theme here, it’s that mobile is the future – and the way we interact with our phones, whether it’s by talking with a voice assistant or peering through cameras, will have a significant effect on which advertising methods are successful, and which are not.

Without further ado, here are the three trends that I’ll be keeping a close eye on in the coming year.

Voice assistants will continue to gain popularity

Siri has been a constant, reassuring presence in our iPhones since 2011, yet voice assistants have been fairly slow to catch on – until recently. Amazon Echo changed all that, by introducing an easy-to-use voice assistant who also happens to be handy around the house. Lately, it seems like nearly every big tech firm is getting in on the idea, from Google to Apple to Samsung to musician Will.i.am’s tech startup.

According to research firm Juniper, 55% of US households will have voice-enabled smart devices in their home by 2022. This will be in addition to the multitudes of people around the world wielding Siri-enabled iPhones, Google Assistant-powered Pixels and the like. That number is sure to continue growing as people become accustomed to using voice commands, and as voice technology becomes integrated into more household gadgets and furniture.

What does this mean for brands? For one thing, it means that advertisers will have to come up with new, audio-only ways of getting people’s attentions. Some brands might even decide to pay Amazon and Google to ensure that their products come up first for certain keywords, which is fairly similar to the way Google already operates. Beyond that, more brands will likely develop “skills” for Alexa as a way of trying to get their brand into people’s homes. Juniper forecasts that ad spend on voice assistants will climb to $19 billion in the next five years, although not all of it will be tied directly into revenue. People’s voice search habits might prove to be as lucrative a goldmine as their web searches.

AR is finally ready for its close-up

After years of fits and starts, Augmented Reality (AR) is finally ready to hit the mainstream, thanks to Apple’s ARKit and Google’s ARCore enabling developers to incorporate AR directly into their applications. In the past, much of the focus and excitement have been directed towards VR, but the relatively tepid response to Oculus Rift does not bode particularly well for the widespread adoption of the technology. AR, on the other hand, is beginning to emerge from the shadow of its much-hyped cousin, and holds great potential for consumers and brands alike.

The traditional selling point for VR has been as a tool to lose yourself completely in a different world, and go to places you’ve never seen and that might not even exist in real life. I have found, however, that technology is at its best when it plays a supporting role to our existing world, instead of trying to replace it outright. That’s the beauty of AR: Instead of giving us an alternate reality, AR enhances our current one, which keeps us grounded in the present but also gives us the ability to explore beyond what we’re familiar with. Just think about Pokemon Go – most of the fun of the game was discovering the Pokemon out and about in the world. Given the success of Pokemon Go and the AR capabilities now widely available to developers via ARKit and ARCore, I wouldn’t be surprised to see more advertisers using AR to create engaging and shareable experiences for their audiences, whether it’s simulating a demogorgon from Stranger Things or creating AR versions of furniture to see what they’d look like at home.

People will begin to take breaks from technology

There has recently been a growing backlash to the role of technology in our lives, especially as it relates to the ceaseless churn of information that inundates us at every turn. While this backlash is certainly not new, it is true that people are starting to feel the wear of having to keep up with the newscycle, where every day brings a new outrage, as well as having to remain abreast of the latest news in pop culture and trends. People are finally getting sick of having constant access to content.

How, then, are brands meant to address their need to bring more content into the world via advertising while still acknowledging the need of the consumer to unplug? This question is difficult to answer, not least because it’s a contradiction in terms. Apple’s answer was the Apple Watch, a device designed to encourage people to leave their phones behind but still stay connected; however, it’s unlikely that people trying to get away from technology will go out and buy another gadget. Brands just have to be accepting of the desires of their consumers, and create content that speaks to the consumer without overwhelming them.

Smartphones are relatively new, but they’ve already managed to completely transform the way we live, work and interact with one another. New technologies – voice assistants, AR, and so on – promise to continue that transformation. People want experiences, and marketers will have to give the people what they want in order to stay relevant and keep consumers engaged on their own terms.

The post Smartphones Will Continue to Take Over Our Lives – And Other Predictions for 2018 appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The Merchant Advertising Spending Data product analyzes more than 200,000 keywords with insight into price and volume measures across 13 categories and 112 subcategories on Taobao and Tmall. Key metrics include impressions, click volumes, cost-per-click (CPC), click-through-rates, conversion rates and revenue.

“In addition to the company’s core commerce segment, advertising is a key growth driver for the company,” said Henry Guo, Senior Analyst at M Science. “Our proprietary analysis of Alibaba enables our clients to view drivers of a significant portion of Alibaba’s total revenue. Our tracking data suggests that in the month of October, strong traffic growth and improving click-through-rates helped drive the growth of Alibaba’s advertising revenue, benefitting from the robust user growth and the company’s ongoing efforts to increase user engagement through personalization enhancements.”

M Science will deliver its Merchant Advertising Spending Data product monthly and will include three years of historical data beginning as of October 2014. Additionally, M Science offers a proprietary view into Alibaba’s commission revenue, tracking Gross Merchandise Volume across 18 core categories and over 70 local and international brands on Tmall.com

“Our priority is to provide clients with actionable insights derived from in-depth analysis and a panoramic view of success metrics for companies,” added Michael V. Marrale, M Science CEO. “The addition of this data product meaningfully expands the depth and richness of our China Internet and Media offering.”

We’re told that M Science’s current product suite of M Analysis and M Data cover over 430 companies and sub-brands across U.S. and European Consumer, Industrials and TMT in North America and Asia.

The post M Science Launches Alibaba Advertising Spending Data Product appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The following is a guest contributed post by Dana Gibber, Co-Founder and COO of Headliner Labs, the leading chatbot creation platform.

Chatbots for Hotels

These days, almost every imaginable industry is experimenting with the use of intelligent, AI-powered chatbots to speed up processes, increase efficiency and provide more satisfactory customer service. Among the most exciting and high-potential are the uses for chatbots in the hospitality industry. Hotel patrons expect on-demand service; it is difficult to imagine anything easier than messaging a hotel concierge right on your mobile phone with an instantaneous response. Hotels should adopt chatbots to serve as the first line of contact for guests in certain circumstances, especially when the need is simple (more towels!) or when accessibility should be twenty-four/seven. In the hotel context, chatbots afford much of the functionality that mobile apps provide, without requiring guests to download an app. Chatbots are an ideal tool for fast service when the need is short in duration (typically, a hotel stay of a few nights), but requires a high frequency of interaction during that time.

Here are five ways chatbots can be used by the hotel industry:

1. Instant Reminders

After check-in, chatbots can send useful updates related to a guest’s stay. For example, a chatbot can notify a guest when his or her room becomes available, or conversely send reminders about upcoming check-out times. The chatbot can even be used to set wake up alarms in the morning, or send reminders about dinner and spa reservations. For a hotel, this reduces the volume of simple queries directed at human staff and clogging up phone lines, while reducing wasted resources due to missed appointments.

2.            Ability to provide upgrades/ additional services

A chatbot can be a valuable channel for upselling to hotel guests. With its unique ability to ping guests with concise, bite-sized messages, a chatbot can proactively notify guests of things like available upgrades, spa appointments, amenities, activities, etc. Chatbots are typically powered by machine learning algorithms that optimize messaging, so when implemented properly, these messages are helpful and informative — leading to conversion — rather than aggressive and intrusive.

3.            Customer Service

Up to 67% of queries directed at concierges or hotel personnel are repetitive on a daily basis, and can often be reduced to the same five or six topics. A text chatbot accessible from a guest’s mobile phone, or a voice chatbot sitting in each hotel room, could easily absorb some of these queries. For example, a voice bot sitting in a room can be directed to bring new towels, to request additional shampoo or soap, to provide the hours of operation of various hotel amenities, and serve as a clearinghouse for basic information and outbound requests.

4.            Room Service Delivery/ Online Ordering

Using a chatbot for online ordering is much more efficient than having a guest calling in. Chatbots can show photos of menus, enabling guests to click and instantly order. This streamlines the room service delivery process on both ends. With proper integrations into the hotel’s systems, a chatbot can give updates on how long the wait will be before room service arrives.

5.            Stay in Touch

After guests check out, chatbots are an optimal channel for soliciting feedback and securing a repeat booking. Chatbots can send feedback surveys with incentives for filling them out. Sending promotions and deals for future stays is also a highly effective way to encourage a second booking.

The post Chatbots in the Hospitality Industry: Enhanced Personalized Guest Experiences appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

Ericsson asserts that by 2020, 50 per cent of TV and video watching will be on mobile, with consumers watching on their smartphone, laptop, or tablet screen: an 85 per cent increase from 2010. In particular, the smartphone is expected to become even more popular, accounting for approximately 25 per cent of TV viewing. Even now, 70 per cent of consumers watch video content on their smartphone, a 100 per cent increase from 2012.

Record viewing hours being watched

Ericsson states in its report that consumers are watching more TV and video than ever, at a record 30 hours per week, including on-demand, recorded or downloaded content, and traditional linear television. Close to 60 per cent of consumers have a preference for on-demand, as opposed to scheduled linear viewing. The number of on-demand services consumed by the typical viewer has risen by 2.2 to 3.8 within the last seven years. Further, 40 per cent of viewers said that they are paying for on-demand television, with 32 per cent intending to invest more in on-demand over the next 12 months.

This shift is very clear among 16-19-year-old group, who are spending 33 hours per week viewing content, the highest over any other age group. The report also explains that over 50 per cent of this age group consumes content on-demand and over 60 per cent of these viewing hours are on mobile devices.​

Where there is entertainment, there is mobile

Mobile devices are also replacing other forms of what was once home entertainment. The music industry has been transformed with streaming services, such as Spotify and Pandora, offering a vast selection of music. The latest challenger to the throne is Apple Music. Thanks to its free trial strategy, it has pushed ahead of its competition, in terms of unique users at least, and on mobile, in particular. Mobile devices are also popular in online gaming. Consumers feel safer when comparison sites such as Casino Quest recommend online gaming companies, with an option to watch the video on playing for real money at the casino. That provides additional comfort to those who enjoy the thrill of spinning a roulette wheel, pulling the lever on their favourite slot machine, or buying gems and credits for games such as Clash of Clans.

Consumers demanding content search

While viewing hours are on the rise, that is also the case with time spent on searching for content. The average amount of time invested in searching for content has risen close to 60 minutes per day, 13 per cent higher than 2016. Further, 6 in every 10 consumers have come to regard content discovery as a significant factor when choosing to subscribe to a new service, with 70 per cent wanting universal search for all TV and video content.

Consumers will likely continue their support of VR, with an estimated one third to be using the technology by 2020. Challenges remain however. The cost of a headset is a bone of contention for 55 per cent of consumers, with over 50 per cent asking for greater choice in immersive content. A third of those surveyed expressed interest in a VR bundle from TV and providers.

The post Ericsson Predicts Mobile TV Viewing to Reach 50 Percent by 2020 appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

We’re told that the data-as-a-service solution combines 4INFO’s Predictive Visitors audience segments with Acxiom data to create compelling, location-informed targeting segments for digital campaigns. Through the partnership, marketers can improve their ability to provide consumers with relevant offers and engaging consumer experiences.

The partnership is the latest example of Acxiom’s strategy to bring all the world’s data to marketers’ fingertips through its Partner Enablement Program. 4INFO’s highly predictive data has been carefully combined with Acxiom’s world class consumer data and omnichannel identity graph, enabling instantaneous connection to over 500 partners in the digital ecosystem.

“In this busiest of advertising seasons, these new, actionable target segments allow retailers and other marketers to create location-based audiences and deliver highly relevant messaging to consumers,” stated Rick Erwin, president of Acxiom Audience Solutions. “According to the Mobile Marketing Association*, 78 percent of marketers have increased their spending on location-based mobile advertising based on foot traffic data. This new offering enables marketers to leverage this trend, by making it safe and easy to reach specific audiences across any connected device.”

If you’re not familiar, 4INFO starts with historical location data from billions of data points seen on more than 300 million unique devices, then applies a deep learning process that finds location, device and app usage patterns to predict future visitation.

With the addition of Acxiom’s privacy-compliant data, “marketers can be confident in the accuracy of their campaigns.”

“By using 4INFO’s predictive visitation information combined with demographic, purchase or propensity data from Acxiom, brands are equipped to deliver more relevant ads that will provide tangible benefits to consumers,” noted Tim Jenkins, CEO of 4INFO. “The combination of our Privacy by Design methodology and Acxiom’s industry-leading ethical data use practices ensures personally identifiable consumer information will be protected and removed in the process to create these audiences.”

The post New Partners: Acxiom, 4INFO to Deliver Location-Based Segments for Digital Campaigns appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The company’s Q3 2017 Quarterly Mobile Index (QMI) identifies the latest trends in mobile advertising.

According to the insight gleaned from the report, header bidding continued to thrive worldwide as more publishers replace the old auction waterfall system with this solution.

Mobile PMP impression volume in PubMatic’s platform rose 75 percent year-over-year (YOY) in Q3 2017, making it the seventh annual improvement in as many quarters. Desktop remained strong in the overall picture as app monetization still provided the largest mobile advertising opportunity. The volume split between app and mobile web environments normalized after six quarters of market rebalancing.

Additionally, we’re told that mobile continued to drive header bidding growth with a 252 percent year-over-year increase in mobile web impression volume in Q3 2017. This trend is indicative of the need for wrapper solutions like PubMatic’s OpenWrap that empowers publishers to utilize a holistic approach of both client and server-side across formats, including mobile web and in-app. Publishers can use header bidding to improve their mobile monetization while retaining control of their user experience and performance.

“Mobile, once regarded as the third screen is now quickly becoming the first screen for many consumers globally which has accelerated header bidding on mobile,” said Rajeev Goel, co-founder and CEO at PubMatic. “Publishers should be in control of their ad decisioning and those looking to take advantage of both server-side and client-side header bidding should implement a single, holistic wrapper solution to avoid the limitations of a multi-wrapper solution.”

To review the full Q3 2017 Quarterly Mobile Index report, click here.

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