Monday, 11 January 2016

Into the Crystal Ball: 4 Online Marketing Predictions for 2016

business.com

The fast paced, ever-changing world of online marketing can be a daunting prospect for business owners.

But it shouldn’t be.

In fact, business owners should feel more in control than ever. After all, the needs of companies and the increasingly sophisticated preferences of consumers continue to dictate the direction of the digital marketing industry as a whole.

If anything, online marketing is becoming more user-friendly, which means businesses will have an ever expanding choice of tools to reach new markets and stay ahead of the competition.

These four trends promise to ensure the popularity and effectiveness of online marketing in 2016:

1. Watch for the Online Video Boom

Online video is the future of content marketing. Major players like Facebook and Bing now offer video options for advertisers and Google is experimenting with in-Search Engine Results Page (in-SERP) video advertising. These moves prove that users are growing more accepting of online video ads.

The stats in favor of video marketing are already strong:

Video will account for 69 percent of consumer internet traffic by 2017.
Seven in 10 people view brands more positively after watching their video content.
Sixty-four percent of marketers expect video to dominate their strategies.
Consider the potential reach—YouTube (owned by Google) sees more than a billion unique visitors each month, more than any other channel except Facebook.

What does this mean for small companies, and how can they afford this trend?

Video’s shareability is strong. Engaged viewers will share videos, spend more time on your website, and interact more with your brand.
Video is one of the best options for social media campaigns.
Production costs have fallen significantly, eliminating affordability concerns.

How can businesses use videos effectively for optimum ROI?

Remember your audience and use relevant material.
Small businesses must offer easily viewable content.
Use social media to promote across multiple channels.
Invest in mobile-focused online marketing. Google's mobile traffic recently overtook its desktop traffic in 10 countries, and its Mobilegeddon algorithm is currently phasing out sites not optimized for mobile.

2. Marketing Automation Will Continue to Evolve

Marketing automation is undergoing vast changes. According to industry expert David Raab, 70 percent of markets are unhappy or marginally happy with marketing automation software. But businesses must recognize the huge potential benefits of marketing automation. What’s on the forefront:

Industry experts predict a shift in the prevailing marketing platform over the next three years.
The platform will be predictive first, offer full circle recommendations, and embrace open programs.
Companies like Conversica, Lytics, and Infer are making predictive analytics much more accessible.
More companies are offering more efficient and effective solutions to the challenges with which marketing automation has historically struggled.

What do these new platforms mean for your business? Predictive intelligence platforms will be easier and more intuitive to use. These prediction systems can learn, improve, and adapt on their own as customers use them, essentially fueling the intuitive process.

3. Expect Digital Advertising to Experience a Major Transformation

Companies employing interstitial ads, the frustrating full-screen ads that pop up on your mobile device when you’re trying to access a website, are about to see a crackdown. Users are sick of the ads, which often redirect them to irrelevant pages. Industry giants Google and Apple are taking action against these ads. Google announced plans to “permanently retire” interstitial ads, while Apple’s new iOS 9 provides ad blocker apps. How, then, can companies using online marketing to reach their customers in this consumer-driven environment?

See ad blockers as positive and rise to the challenge of finding user-friendly marketing solutions.
Reach your audience with soft and subtle promotions instead of in-your-face ads by developing high quality content marketing.
Use click-baiting wisely by using the curiosity gap article technique. Consumers clicking on headlines that engage their curiosity will click into an ad-heavy page.
Consider using native ads. Although obviously designed to entice consumers to ad-heavy pages, if the content delivers, the customer will click.

4. Apps Are the Future of Digital Marketing

The app wins, hands-down, for biggest, most exciting innovation in online marketing. More consumers are turning to mobile devices and smart watches, changing the landscape of online searching. The app will revolutionize how users search and make purchases. Google and other industry giants are paying attention. Is your business?

The latest facts and predictions for apps:

Users spend 90 percent of mobile usage on apps.
Google is now indexing apps similarly to how it indexes traditional websites.
App developers and digital marketers will be able to develop ways to shorten consumers’ searches by recognizing and analyzing common intersections between apps.
Apps get more visibility for their downloads in mobile searches, in turn ranking higher in searches.
Jayson DeMers, founder and CEO of AudienceBloom, predicts apps will become commonplace for informational and functional needs within the next 10 to 20 years.

Why do apps appeal to users?

They’re more user-friendly and practical for smaller screens, like mobile and wearable devices.
Unlike older online search methods, the newer integration capabilities of apps allows them to offer more detailed and accurate results.
Voice-based search capabilities are on the rise, saving users time and frustration from web browsers.

2016 will be a crucial year in app adoption as business owners attempt to utilize the latest technology in apps to revolutionize methods of reaching consumers, potentially increasing ROIs. These tips will help online marketers prepare for the inevitable app explosion:

Create online marketing campaigns aimed at mobile users. Mobile digital media time has risen to 51 percent while desktop time has fallen to 42 percent. Forrester predicts mobile commerce transactions will reach $142 billion in 2016.
Businesses should utilize popular and well-reviewed apps.
Develop your own app to help your business stay ahead of the competition.
Be aware of consumer-driven changes in online marketing and be willing to adapt to the changing way users search online, capsizing on this cutting-edge way to do business.

2016 promises exciting new trends and changes for online marketers. Take advantage of the ground-breaking research done by Google and Apple to customize your own cutting-edge business marketing strategies. Remember, the consumer wants fast and convenient, so tap into these new ways to generate business on their terms

Snapchat Marketing Resumes Original Content Production After Failed First Effort

skyword.com

Building original content is a must for today's tech brands.

An earlier effort to produce its own original content failed, but Snapchat won’t be deterred: The social media app has launched a second effort to publish its own cache of created content.

Several months ago, Snapchat shut down its channel within Discover (the app’s publishing channel where stories refresh every 24 hours), which at the time had been its channel for releasing original content and other Snapchat marketing materials. Other brands and publishers were still publishing content through Discover. Snapchat also laid off members of its in-house content production team. But as 2015 wound down, the company quietly restarted efforts to use Discover for its own content, according to Ad Age.

Without making a public announcement on its long-term plans, or even offering hints as to what its goals for the brand’s in-house content team might be, the company rolled out a sponsored content series in collaboration with Spotify, publishing original articles and videos to highlight the “Spotify Year in Music.”

Whatever Snapchat’s ultimate goals are, the revival of its Discover channel shows the company is not ready to give up on its own digital content efforts. That’s a smart move, and perhaps an essential one if it wants to keep pace with the competition.

Correcting Past Missteps

When Snapchat shut down its own Discover channel months earlier, it insisted it wasn’t giving up on original content. Instead, the company had decided it didn’t need to spend its own time or money on programming and advertising, as Bloomberg reported. After working with other companies to help them produce content for Discover, Snapchat scaled back its production efforts.

Now, however, that move seems to have been in the interest of reorganizing its production strategy, and perhaps taking a more grassroots approach to content marketing on its social media app. When the brand gutted its channel within Discover in October, some of the casualties were on the video production side, including a former TV executive who oversaw the creation of several network TV shows. In this new iteration of its Discover channel, the names attached are writers and editors from influential culture publications. In doing so, Snapchat may have also scaled down the cost of original content creation, limiting its overhead as it works to build back a need for a large in-house production team.

This seems to indicate Snapchat’s desire to serve more as a pop culture destination and less as a production partner for brands. The content is still produced via sponsors, as Spotify is currently involved and there is no indication that the company will produce its own standalone content without a sponsor’s involvement. But as Snapchat’s brand re-involves itself in the content marketing of partner brands, Discover is being positioned as a hub of quality content.

If Spotify is a test of an upcoming re-launch, it’s not hard to see why Snapchat has been so quick to reorganize on the content side.

Balancing Risk and Reward

In 2015, digital brands seeking consumers all learned an important lesson: Original content is the key selling point. There’s a reason Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon all have plans to double their original video series by the end of 2016: Despite massive catalogs of movies, documentaries, and TV shows, each platform has learned it will live or die by the original content it provides to consumers.

Amazon has even applied this content marketing strategy to its online store. Fast Company reports that Amazon is testing original content in the form of expert advice and shopping guides, hoping to provide better supplementary content to the online shopping experience. Amazon may be the largest online store in the world, but it has still discovered an opportunity into supplementing its store with compelling original content.

That example illustrates the value of content for Snapchat’s future plans, whatever they may be. While there’s no confirmation that Snapchat will continue producing Discover content after its sponsorship from Spotify runs out, the company has every reason to continue publishing and building an audience among its user base.

Like the examples above, Snapchat is a content destination. Even though we think of it as a social media app, users come for the content it provides. Every other digital publisher has found that original content is critical to its continued growth, and Snapchat marketing leadership is likely no different. The only difference between Snapchat and a company like Netflix is that it hasn’t yet figured out a winning recipe for its own content.

Snapchat’s new strategy appears to be more cautious than in the past, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It can continue testing and tweaking its strategy until it hits on a winning formula. Whether content proves an overnight hit or a months-long slog through several different phases of strategy, the only thing that matters is that brands continue trying until their hard work pays off.

Friday, 8 January 2016

Eight ways to get off to a flying start in your marketing career

marketingmagazine.co.uk

Charlotte Oates, former marketing lead for mobile at Moneysupermarket.com

In the latest of our Lessons from the Next Generation Power 100, Charlotte Oates, former marketing lead for mobile at Moneysupermarket.com, now at a start-up, and a member of the NxtGen Class of 2013, shares her tips.

Since featuring in Marketing’s Next Generation, when I worked as marketing and communications manager at DMG Media, a lot has changed. The personal-finance app we were building (OnTrees) was acquired by Moneysupermarket.com in early 2014 and I have spent the past year or so working with the group to drive growth and development across its mobile-app portfolio.

I recently left my role as marketing lead for mobile to work on a fintech venture called Moneybox. Our aim is to make it easier to set money aside and start making simple investments. We plan to launch early next year, so watch this space. Being involved at an early stage in a start-up has made me realise how much there is still to learn, but here are a few tips I’ve picked up so far.

1. Don’t worry too much about the future. It’s important to have ambitions, but it doesn’t matter if you don’t have a strict five-year plan. Five years ago I was starting an MA in Shakespeare Studies (which, as it happens, I didn’t complete…)

2. Have an opinion. Even if you’re the newest and most junior person in the team, you’ll be able to bring a different perspective.

3. Don’t get pigeonholed. It’s easy to specialise too early, particularly in marketing, so try to keep your options open. Any successful CMO needs an understanding of all disciplines and how they work together.

4. Training can come in many forms. You don’t have to be listening to a PowerPoint presentation to expand your skills. Volunteer for things. Sign up for events. Get out and meet people.

5. Spend time finding out what inspires and motivates you.That’s the most valuable thing to achieve in your early career. And do your best work. Try not to send people work that isn’t finished to the best of your ability. You can’t expect someone else to pick up your typos.

6. Try to do your manager’s job for them. Think about what they’re working on and be proactive. Don’t wait for someone to give you things to do.

7. Be open to taking risks. If an opportunity feels exciting and you think you can learn something, go for it. The average person starting their career now will have 10 to 15 different jobs in their lifetime. We don’t need to prioritise stability in the way our parents and grandparents did.

8. Set your own work-life boundaries. Whether it’s rugby games or violin recitals, make sure there are things you aren’t willing to sacrifice.

2. Have an opinion. Even if you’re the newest and most junior person in the team, you’ll be able to bring a different perspective.

4. Training can come in many forms. You don’t have to be listening to a PowerPoint presentation to expand your skills. Volunteer for things. Sign up for events. Get out and meet people.

6. Try to do your manager’s job for them. Think about what they’re working on and be proactive. Don’t wait for someone to give you things to do.

8. Set your own work-life boundaries. Whether it’s rugby games or violin recitals, make sure there are things you aren’t willing to sacrifice.

7 of the Biggest App Trends of 2015

business2community.com

it may seem like the year went by in a blink of an eye. However, if you take a look back on the substantial amount of growth that’s occurred within the mobile industry this year, it’s easy to see where the time went. Through advancements in marketing and analytics, the app world was able to engage with users in a highly personalized manner, and connect with them on multiple platforms to create seamless, omni-channel experiences. As a result, during 2015, apps became experiences.

So, what exactly does this mean for the future of apps? The eight biggest app trends of the year shed some light on the direction we’re headed as we look towards 2016:

1. It’s Getting Personal (and Cross-Functional)

During 2015, we saw a shift in the mobile app space from just needing an app, to needing an app that offers a highly personalized experience. We conducted a study this year that found that app users expect interactions to be tailored to them through customized content, preferences, and location. In addition, the app should fit seamlessly into their lives by connecting with all important aspects (home, work, travel).

We saw this notion of personalization come to life during the year, as app experiences became much more tailored to the user and transcended beyond the in-app experience. However, there’s still work to be done. Moving into 2016, marketers need to play some catch-up and ensure they’re meeting the expectations of users by prioritizing a highly personalized, omni-channel app experience.

Personalization done right: Evernote is a great example of a brand doing this right. Their note keeping application allows users to write, capture, and share ideas in an organized tool which users can access from many channels. Evernote’s seamless and collaborative experience is the driver behind their success.

2. App Retention Improved in the U.S.

The emphasis on personalization is paying off. Despite retention declines elsewhere, the United States enjoyed growth in this important metric during 2015, up 3% to 42% average retention (app retention being defined as the percentage of users who return to an app 11 or more times).

The reason for the uptick? U.S. marketers prioritized targeted app marketing campaigns as well as improved the overall user experience through new functionality and cross-channel capabilities. If other countries want to keep up, they should follow suit of the U.S. and strategize ways to better engage with their users.

3. App User Engagement is on the Rise

Similarly to what we saw for app retention in the U.S., another statistic on the rise during 2015 was user engagement. As app analytics grew more advanced throughout the year, marketers used these data insights to connect with their audiences. As a result, apps are becoming more “sticky” in the eye of the user, and engagement increased.

Engagement done right: JetBlue does a great job at using its app to engage with users beyond in-flight. Travelers can check-in to their flight, access their boarding pass, and receive flight updates all from their smartphone. This not only creates a more seamless experience for travelers, it also boosts user engagement through personalization.

4. The Expansion of Appification Continues

Back in 2014, we introduced you to this notion of appification. Appification is an increasingly popular trend occurring across technology where all online experiences are becoming more interactive and task-oriented. This phenomenon spans well beyond the traditional idea of mobile applications, and has completely transformed the way we engage with brands. Translation? Digital experiences are becoming more app-like because that’s what consumers are demanding. This task-oriented, interactive experience that apps grant users has impacted other channels beyond mobile, and we’re seeing it as the defining model for new technology.

5. Moving Beyond Push Messaging to Remarketing

In 2015, we realized that the app world is a fickle space. For starters, almost 50% of app users opt out of push notifications, meaning you have no way to reach them outside of the app. Push messages are no longer enough to re-engage with lapsed users. So how do app marketers combat this problem? That’s where remarketing and email can come into play.

From research, we found out that 58% of users will churn within the first 30 days of using your app, while 75% will churn by 90 days. This is exactly why app remarketing emerged in a big way in 2015. Marketers can now use remarketing to target customers and app users based on how they’ve engaged with your brand on channels they frequent, like email and social media. In order to have a successful remarketing campaign, you need to have the right analytics tool in place to understand your target audience and capture your user’s interactions with your app. From there, you can work to implement paid remarketing campaigns.

Remarketing done right: Amazon knows me well, and I love them for it. Here is a perfect example of them using my previous interaction with them to reengage with me. Earlier in the month, I purchased a birthday present for my one-year-old nephew. Amazon used this data to target me with this remarketing ad for kids games. The deal was not only highly personalized for me, but also timely considering it appeared in my newsfeed a little over a week before Christmas.

6. The Emergence of the App User Lifecycle

In the early stages of app adoption, marketers measured success based on vanity metrics, such as app downloads. This is just one piece of the puzzle, and not a clear indication of user engagement. As app analytics evolved in 2015, marketers began taking a much more holistic look at their users and the idea of the app user lifecycle was born. By looking at where users are in their journey with your app, marketers can now better understand their users and personalize campaigns.

7. Predictive Insights Give App Marketers the Ability to See into the Future…

As a fellow marketer, I can relate to having a desire to predict the future. After all, a big part of our jobs is to study marketplace trends and try to anticipate what our users’ next move will be. With the launch of predictive insights, I’m happy to say that we’re getting close to that point. Predictive marketing grants you the ability to use both historical and real-time data to get a holistic view of user trends. You’re able to see which groups of users are close to completing a key conversion event, and which are at risk of churning. From there, you can segment out and run impactful, highly personalized campaigns to not only acquire users, but grow and retain them.

As you can see, the app world evolved substantially over 2015. The idea of a personalized and seamless omni-channel experience became the underlying trend throughout the year, and we can only expect this to evolve even further as we move into next year. More importantly, if 2015 was any indication for what lies ahead, then buckle up, because 2016 is going to be a wild ride.

Thursday, 7 January 2016

How to choose the best name for your mobile app

bizcommunity.com

Building a mobile application demands patience and perseverance. After a long and iterative process, developers tend to rush through the final stages and drag the project to the finish line. However, premature release of an app is never a good strategy. If you want to make a fortune, choosing the right name for your mobile app can make a big difference.

When you name an app, there is so much to think about... a name that grows with you, is highly visible and create a lasting impression on your target audience. Therefore, choosing a name for a mobile app can be difficult. Your target audience is not only on app marketplaces, but they are on social media and web too. Your mobile app name is your brand, and it should be everywhere.

Whether you have built a robust enterprise app, a photo editing tool, mobile game, an online shopping app or a fitness tool, naming a mobile application is most crucial for its success and marketability. Here are some valuable tips on how to name a mobile application.

1. Choose a name that is short, simple and relevant

Imagine a scenario where your app name evokes an idea in the minds of your customers and the app actually happens to be something different. It will leave a bad impression on your target audience. Because when the name suggests "shooting," for instance, the app should also be something related to shooting.

Image via 123RF

Moreover, the app name should be something that the users can easily pronounce, remember and recall. So if you are wondering how should a mobile app name be, a smart way is to keep it short, simple and most relevant.

2. Distinguish yourself from your competitors

Brand names are meant to offer distinction... something unique from what others provide. If your app name is something, which is very similar to another app that offers almost same features, or there are hundreds of popular apps that start with that word, it can be extremely confusing for your customers. It can seriously impede your app exposure and visibility due to muddled or mixed app store and web searches. One of the most effective mobile application naming strategies is to keep it short and simple to avoid technical issues, descriptive enough to portray app relevance, and offer distinction from competitive apps.

3. Make your app name evocative

Amidst today's highly competitive mobile app market, stealing the attention of your customers and keeping them engaged is most important. So, if you are considering how to name your mobile app, the best way to do it is to make it evocative that draws attention of the users. On one hand, it should be descriptive enough to illustrate its functionality; on the other hand, you must make it interesting and attention-grabbing. You can use rhyming words like "Double Trouble" to make the name evocative and memorable.

4. Optimise your app name

Optimising the name of your mobile application is most crucial to get free and organic traffic. A keyword in the app title, rather than in the meta data, may result into 10 times higher search rankings. However, the chance of rejection also exists, especially if optimisation is done improperly. Make sure that you do not use too many keywords in the app title or this may jeopardise the fate of the application. Rather, including one or two keywords may increase app visibility and traffic manifold.

5. Test the trend

There are tons of mobile apps that have followed the latest app naming trends and have been successful. For instance, look into the app named Shopify. Following the trend of 'ify,' a bucketful of apps hit the market during that time - Gamify, Spotify, Webify, etc. However, you do not need to follow the ify trend. It is outdated.

How to choose the best name for your mobile app

So, what is fresh now? Adding an -i or -y at the end of the name such as Famili; dropping or doubling a syllable such as Vouchr or Faamli; replacing a syllable with another one that sounds the same such as Lyft. Check out what your competitors are doing. But make sure that you don't follow the trend blindly or sound too similar to that of your competitor.

6. Localise your app name

It is crazy and unwise not to include localised keywords, meta data and screenshots for other languages. If your app name is a descriptive name, you can translate it to other languages. This will not only make it simpler for your customers to find your app globally, but also increase app downloads dramatically.

7. Adhere to camel/sentence-case

If you browse through the list of apps on your mobile, you will find most of them to be in camel-case (for e.g. ScoreCenter) or in sentence-case (for e.g. Cut the Rope). You might consider doing something unique with your app name and experiment with all caps or lowercase letter such as SHOT NOTE, but to tell you honestly, it can risk the success of your app. Consumers have a tendency to buy what they trust or have been seeing for long. Anything beyond that can be delegitimised. Therefore, if you break the upper-lowercase convention, they may find you sketchy or fake.

8. Do not forget about social media and domain name

Since social media accounts and a website or landing page plays an integral role in app marketing efforts, it is important that you consider availability of social media accounts and domain name corresponding to the app name that you are thinking of. You have to first secure these valuable assets before you proceed about naming a mobile app.

9. Names that deliver visualised experience

There's nothing more impressive than the power of words which conjures up amazing visual experiences and takes you into trans. For instance, the name Farmville instantly evokes the thought of a farm, fields of corn and fruits, ploughing crops, etc. The app also delivers the same experience as its name promises. Your app name should spark appealing visual images in the user's mind that will attract him or her to download and use it.

When it comes to naming your app, do not rush with your thoughts. Remember, a name can make all the difference

European app trends: The year of the emoji

netimperative.com

Last year was the year of the emoji, with phablets set to dominate 2016 and productivity apps on the rise, according to new data from Flurry.

After tracking 3.2 trillion sessions over the course of 2015, Flurry reveals Europe’s astonishing app growth, with overall mobile app usage rising by 58%, as well as the rise of phablets.

Some of key headlines from the report include:

• 2015 was the year of the emoji! Personalisation apps saw sessions grow by more than 344%! The majority of the growth is from Emoji apps (mainly keyboards) giving consumers the ability to share customized correspondence via Whatsapp, Snapchat and others. Kim Kardashian’s app ‘Kimoji’ skyrocketed to the no.1 spot in the app store on its launch

• Phablets to become the dominant smart device by October! The report predicts that the time spent on phablets will continue to grow. Having increased by 334% year on year, it will become the leading form factor by October, and will replace small phones by 2017. The growth of news and magazine apps on phablets was almost five times that of all devices, much higher than the rate of the average smart device

• Productivity apps – favourite of the millennial generation! Productivity app sessions grew by 119%. Teens and college students in particular used their smartphone and tablets to access apps such as Google Docs, Quip, Slack and the Microsoft productivity suite

Read the full report below (source: https://developer.yahoo.com/analytics/”>Flurry)

Media, Productivity & Emojis Give Mobile Another Stunning Growth Year

In the seven years that Flurry has been reporting on mobile app usage, we have seen nothing but growth, and this year continued the trend.

In 2015 overall app usage grew by 58%. In this context, we define app usage as a user opening an app and recording what we call a “session.” With the exception of Games, every app category posted year-over-year growth with Personalization, News & Magazines and Productivity leading the way with triple-digit growth.

Mobile Use Grows by 58% in 2015

The mobile industry has matured fast. In fact, 7 years into the mobile revolution, Flurry tracks over 2.1 billion smart devices, worldwide on a monthly basis. While the growth rate has declined (58% in 2015 compared to 76% in 2014 and 103% in 2013), it remains stunning as rates like these are rare in mature industries. What was even more impressive is the majority of that growth rate came from existing users versus new users. In fact, in 2015, we estimate that 40% of the 58% total growth in sessions came from existing users, compared to 20% in 2014 and 10% in 2013. This jives well with the report we released last summer, showing a fast increase in mobile addicts.

From a category perspective, four categories grew faster than the average.

Personalization apps saw their sessions balloon more than 344% in 2015. These apps range from Android lock-screens to Emoji keyboards. When we looked deeper into the category, we noticed that the majority of the growth is coming from Emoji apps (mainly keyboards) giving consumers the ability to share customized correspondence in their favourite messaging apps, such as Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp, Line and Snapchat. It is not a surprise then to see Kim Kardashian’s app “Kimoji” skyrocket to the number 1 spot on the Apple AppStore, on its launch day.

News and Magazine apps grew a whopping 141% in 2015. This growth validates the trend in media consumption we reported on last summer, signaling a shift in media consumption from television and PCs to smartphones in general, and phablets in particular, as we will discuss later.

Productivity apps continued the trend that started in 2014, with 119% sessions grow in 2015. In fact, more and more consumers, especially teens and college students are using their smartphones, phablets and tablets as their primary computing device and their sole device to access email and other productivity apps, like Google Docs, Quip, Slack and the Microsoft productivity suite.

Lastly, Lifestyle and Shopping apps grew 80% in 2015, following a 174% growth in 2014. This growth rate validates reports in early 2015 that mobile commerce is “growing like a weed” and already accounts for 33% of online commerce in the US and 40% of online commerce on a worldwide basis.

Inch by Inch, Mobile and its Apps Absorb the Media Industry

While the overall growth rate of 58% paints an interesting picture, our analysis dug a bit deeper by looking into growth rates cut by categories and form factors, especially phablets. In the above chart we compared the year-over-year session growth rates of the News & Magazine, Sports, and Music, Media, & Entertainment categories on phablets and all devices combined.

The growth rates of these three categories dramatically over-indexed on phablets compared to the growth rates on all devices combined. Growth in News & Magazines apps on phablets was 4.8x that of all devices, meaning phablet users are engaging in these apps at a much higher rate than the average smart device user. A similar pattern emerged for Sports and Music, Media & Entertainment apps, at 4.6x and 4x respectively. It appears that the extra inch of real estate has made the phablet the ultimate media consumption device.

The picture got much clearer when we looked at year-over-year growth in time spent and cut that by form factor. Time spent on phablets grew 334% year-over-year (2.9 times more than the average), compared to 117% for all form factors. With time spent on mobile surpassing that on television, and phablets posting astonishing growth in media consumption, it appears that the cable industry will find in the phablet and its apps its long-awaited digital nemesis.

The Phablet: The Unstoppable Media Consumption Device

Once labeled a fad (even by us), Phablets have become the unstoppable media consumption device. 27% of all new devices activated for Christmas this year were phablets and 50% of all Android devices activated in the same timeframe were phablets.

We say “unstoppable” because if the current trends hold, the phablet will become the dominant form factor by October of next year. The above chart shows our forecast for worldwide device distribution, by form factor through the middle of 2017. Also interesting to note is that small phones will be extinct by the second quarter of 2016. It’s clear consumers want their content, and they want it on a bigger screen.

3.2 Trillion Sessions and Counting

In 2015, Flurry tracked a mind boggling 3.2 trillion sessions. When we started 8 years ago, we never thought that our counters could reach these numbers. But, we have been fortunate enough to have a front row seat watching the mobile revolution unfold and absorb (and in some case demolish) industry after industry. On January 1st 2016, 12:01 am, our counters reset to zero and the guessing game started again. Which industry will mobile and its apps absorb in 2016?

We will have the answer a year from now, but for now: Here’s to Emojis.

Wednesday, 6 January 2016

The Umpteen Rules For Post-Millennial Social Marketing

pymnts.com

A recent article in The New York Times attempts to shed light on a segment of particular interest to retailers: the teen app user. In addition to shedding light on rapidly changing attitudes toward different apps, the story took a look at how app developers are trying to use that information to create engaging new products that cater to the youngest and arguably most connected generation yet.

While some brands are rushing to try and figure out how Snapchat works or what time of day is best to post to their Instagram feed, maybe a better question is: What are the rules of engagement across different platforms now, and how can a consumer-facing company avoid the pitfall of looking uncool to this coveted demographic? Like any question involving the quest for acceptance from a group of teens, it’s murky territory but well worth the angst for those that want to crack a new social code.

To understand teen app usage, it’s a good idea to start with one of the most popular apps for users under the age of 17: Wishbone. At just over a year old and with 3 million monthly users, the social app asks users to create and answer polls on a variety of pop culture topics via side-by-side pictures that compare rappers (Wiz Khalifa or Drake?), celebrities (Kim Kardashian or Beyoncé), dueling prom dresses and the like.

As NYT notes, Wishbone users achieve status (after all, high school is still one big popularity contest, albeit digital now) on the social network by amassing friends who vote with a thumb tap. Just to drive home the message of who is “in” and who’s not, twice a day, the Wishbone team sends a “Daily Dozen” of the most popular polls to every Wishbone user. Like being named to prom court or voted “funniest” in a yearbook, featured polls are nearly guaranteed a lot of views and thumbs-up votes, and votes, similar to likes on Facebook — which teens barely even log onto anymore — are the coin of Wishbone’s realm.

“They have immediate social validation or lack of validation at the touch of a button,” Michael Jones, chief executive of Science Inc., which owns Wishbone, told NYT. “So, if you thought that the immediate gratification generation was two generations ago, you haven’t even seen what immediate gratification looks like until you start spending time with, like, a teen on a phone.”

Since this past July, Wishbone has consistently ranked among the top 30 most downloaded social media apps in the Apple App Store, according to App Annie, which tracks the popularity of applications. With brands projected to spend over $30 billion on in-app advertising in the United States this year — roughly double what they spent in 2014 — the business of developing apps with the potential to attract the next generation of shoppers has huge potential.

To do that, app developers are starting to shift their attention to 17-year-old and under teens as they pour through data, conduct focus groups and aim to understand how they increasingly live their lives via their mobile devices. Much like the dividing line between Generation X and millennials was the fact that millennials were Internet-native, a major difference between millennials and post-millennials has been the widespread availability of “always connected” smartphones.

With this native use comes a set of unspoken rules integrated so fluidly into usage that an outsider struggles to catalog and make sense of them all. One of the more interesting passages of the NYT article outlined these such rules as defined by two teen girls, Leila and Lucy, as they spent an afternoon at the mall in Southern California, of course, with their mobile phones. As they explained to reporter Conor Dougherty, since nothing particularly special happened that afternoon, Lucy posted only a few videos to Snapchat — including a clip of the interview— but nothing on Instagram.

While teens have a list of complaints about Snapchat — including challenges in following conversations, since images disappear after 10 seconds — Instagram is a highly coveted space where praise for perfectly curated images, captions and comments can make or break your online reputation. Instagram also, compared to Snapchat, holds a lot more emotional volatility with the risk of not gaining the acceptance of their peers perhaps the highest of any social network. That’s one of the reasons, the girls explained to Dougherty, that they regularly delete photos from their feed, keeping only a few select prized images up at any time.

“I have zero [images on Instagram] right now,” Lucy told NYT.

“Yeah,” Leila chimed in, “’cause I’m like, ‘Oh wait, I look stupid in this one.’”

And there you have it.

NYT articulated some of Leila’s other rules for Instagram: Never post more than one photo a week and avoid photo filters (too fake) and hashtags (too desperate). It’s also important to find the perfect timely occasion to post — such as National Watermelon Day — and she is so concerned about adding the right caption to her photos that she keeps a list of ideas on her iPhone.

These “rules” fly directly in the face of some of the “best practices” for brands. Companies would be well-advised, however, to move past the shock of having to learn a whole new set of posting behaviors and allow the possibility that to reach teens, they’ve got to think like a teen. In that regard, there is potential for some interesting strategic experiments for advantageous brands seeking to reach sub-millennials.

The emotional stakes of these “rules” are also very high for teens, which also offer some interesting perspectives for brands.

As Neil Howe, author and historian who is credited with coining the term “millennial generation,” points out toNYT, “There’s a whole new curriculum being pushed by Gen X parents, and one thing it emphasizes above all is emotional intelligence and being very sensitive to the needs of others.” In surveys conducted by Howe’s consulting company, LifeCourse Associates, teenagers show tendencies toward extreme anxiety around being criticized on social media and are more conscious than their parents of when an app makes them feel bad.

App developers, like Wishbone, as the article notes, see these digital social anxieties as an opportunity. The app doesn’t ask users to post perfect pictures nor does it require picturesque locales for their vacation shots. Users just make funny polls to talk about celebrities, makeup and bands. It is about your tastes not your identity. Therein may lie the most important lesson for brands: Drop the idea of perfection and embrace the idea of “we’re all good enough” at least to participate, which is of paramount importance in the world of apps.

Monthly users are far less important to advertising dollars than daily engagement, and the apps that can achieve this are few and far between. Apps that allow everyone to participate — regardless of what they look like or their access to envy-worthy experiences and products — are likely to come out on top in the battle for users. Brands looking to stay competitive in the app space should take a note and design creative, interactive ad experiences and their own native content that speaks to this growing feel-good trend.

The APP Ecosystem