Twitter, the social media service that lets us share our thoughts in 140 characters or fewer, has grown so diverse among its users and its content that we apparently now require assistance finding exactly what we’re looking for.

As a result, we now inhabit a world with “Twitter search engines,” the latest of which is CrowdEye, a search engine launched yesterday that was developed by former Microsoft employees Ken and Becca Moss from their home office.

Ken Moss, who has been working on CrowdEye since September, ended his two-decade long distinguished career at Microsoft late last year to, among other things, pioneer this venture.

As a result, the Mosses have embarked on a mission that has actually yielded a pretty cool product.

Twitter users can now search and browse through Twitter status updates, and hone in on their unique interests by filtering results. CrowdEye also shows the most-tweeted topics within a search.

As of the launch, Moss said he’s “happy with the response to CrowdEye” and elated to see feedback comparing it to other Twitter search engines like Topsy and OneRiot.

It’s definitely worth checking out. You can do so at http://crowdeye.com/

Share This

Good news for mobile marketing service providers: Spending on mobile advertising will see strong growth even while other channels suffer during the global recession, according to  Juniper Research.

Mobile ad spend will grow to $5.7 billion by the year 2014, Juniper forecasts in a report released this week. According to a press release, the firm surmises that according to its research, “The need for engagement with the consumer, and a quantifiable ROI, meant that mobile was increasingly being perceived as a key medium through which to pursue this strategy.”

Other findings from Juniper’s new report:

• Mobile Internet will become the most popular mobile delivery channel for advertisers in 2009, and will attract the largest proportion of mobile adspend  throughout the forecast period.
• Mobile Cost Per Clickthrough (CPC) and Cost Per Mille (CPM) rates have fallen sharply over the past year in large part due the negative impact of the economic downturn.
• Mobile advertising response rates remain substantially higher than those in other media.

Share This

Remarkable but true, the growth of mobile marketing in Africa and Asia have outpaced the growth (and, mostly, acceptance) of mobile marketing in the United Kingdom.

But according to a recent report from the European Interactive Advertising Association, an accelerating number of UK marketers are now “including the mobile platform in their advertising initiatives.”

The newfound interest, in seems, spans a broad landscape of industries that are becoming involved with mobile advertising (including the automotive and financial services sector).

Jack Marshall of ClickZ speculated that “the fact UK mobile users receive a handset upgrade when renewing their service plans may increase usage of smartphones, which in turn could eventually help to push mobile marketing to a tipping point.”

For now, the numbers don’t lie. UK firms running mobile banner ad campaigns rose by 45% in March if this year compared with six months previously.

Share This

Openwave systems, maker of the popular Openwave Mobile Analytics solution, published a study recently that outlined the latest key trends in mobile Internet usage in the US.  While some of the findings aren’t anything new, some trends are beginning to emerge that are key to the future mobile marketing.

Derived from data pulled from its mobile analytical solution, Openwave was able to identify strong growth areas in niches like mobile-based classified advertising, location-based content and advertising, and of course, strong growth when it comes to mobile social networking- no surprise there.

It was interesting to me that classified advertising has become so prevalent, so quickly.  The study found that Craigslist ranked number 7 within the top 10 search terms on Google, suggesting a trend towards mobile classifieds for jobs, housing, bargain priced goods and services during the current economic downturn.  It’s hard to tell whether the economy is the driving force behind a simple spike in mobile classifieds, or if it’s truly a long-term trend that will materialize.  If you ask me, mobile classifieds will be an important sector in mobile marketing in the near future, especially as location-aware technology spreads. 

As for current mobile advertising trends, the study pointed out that while AdMob served the most ads (nearly 7 times more than the nearest competitor), it also had the lower click through rate in comparison to BuzzCity and Microsoft.  AdMob’s lower CTR seems to be the result of too many generic ads that are not targeted or relevant to the subscriber.  What this shows is that the landscape of mobile marketing is slowly changing, and the targeting aspect of any campaign remains of the utmost importance. 

The location-aware aspect of today’s mobile devices will be the driving force behind mobile campaign targeting before long.  The study shows that mobile marketing taking into account a person’s whereabouts at any given time is growing rapidly, and while AdMob may be the leader in serving up advertisements, it doesn’t mean a thing if the ads don’t produce.

Share This

Well-known mobile content provider m-Wise has launched its new commercial mobile-campaigns analytics suite for obtaining business, mobile marketing, and overall campaign and financial analysis of various mobile content-based services.  

The new suite compliments the extensive m-Wise MOMA data warehouse and legacy reporting suite that already consists of more than 70 report templates and a plethora of reporting options.  The new analytics suite enables quick analysis of mobile content and services advertised by the likes of TV, radio & Internet campaigns, Google AdWords, newspaper ads, billboards and more.

This allows extensive analysis of topics such as conversion rates, billable vs. non-billable users, traffic sources, traffic channels web/WAP/SMS/MMS, traffic quantities, distinct users and subscribers analysis, revenues analysis, purchased content and product analysis, popular content analysis, and pretty much all other information you could ever want.  

The suite from m-Wise goes above and beyond most existing mobile analytical suites in that it provides an effective tool for analyzing the success of mobile services and content instead of just mobile campaigns.  Each of the 18 “graphical analytics reports” offered by the new software suite allows fast filtering of the report by: date range, associated services (such as a mobile content storefront), associated mobile carrier, incoming traffic channels (such as web, WAP, SMS, IVR) and the associated mobile campaign (such as a TV promotion, or web banner).

By understanding which traditional campaigns (such as TV or newspaper ads) are driving the most traffic to mobile content services and mobile-based campaigns, advertisers and content-owners can more effectively manage their overall presence, and better position themselves for success.  With a company like m-Wise, with all its mobile content experience and know-how behind the scenes, the new analytical suite will no-doubt be an integral part of many future mobile campaigns.

Share This

Segmentation-based targeting has been around forever in the advertising world.  In consists of taking data from the U.S. Census, and combining it with proprietary methodology that classifies the U.S. population into 66 demographic segments based on demographic, psychographic and socio-economic data attributes.

What this does is organize the vast amount of targeting data into easily interpreted and manipulated groups, or “segments,” to help advertisers better target their demographic.  This methodology has already been introduced, in its most basic form, in the mobile marketing community, but never to its fullest extent.

A leader in segmentation-based targeting data is Nielsen and its “Nielsen Claritas” solution that has been utilizing segmentation data for the past 35 years in a variety of industries.  Finally, this data and methodology is making its way into mobile campaigns, where the full potential of segmentation targeting can be fully utilized.

The Weather Channel, and its “interactive” solution, are already jumping on the bandwagen with an announcement that it will fully integrate Nielsen Claritas-based segmentation targeting data on device-specific mobile weather applications and at The Weather Channel’s main mobile site.   This further enhances its ZIP Code-targeting capabilities TWCi already provides its advertisers on the weather.com site online, and allows advertisers to customize their message and creative units to reach a highly-targeted, receptive audience.

“Working with The Weather Channel Interactive allows Nielsen Claritas to deploy our proven segmentation data and add value both online and via mobile media,” said Bruce Wilkinson, Nielsen Claritas VP, practice leader for media and communications. “This helps advertisers reach their targets more efficiently, and it helps media companies prove the value of their Internet and mobile media offerings.”

Data is key in all advertising campaigns, and nowhere is it more important than in the mobile channel.  While analytical data is one thing, tarteting data can be just as important, if not moreso.  Marketers need analytical data during and after a specific campaign, while targeting data–epecially segmentation-based targeting data–is important during the beginnning and planning-phases of a campaign.

It will be interesting to see the differences, if any, in the ROI and effectiveness of the advertising on TWC’s interactive mobile apps and Websites.  Segmentation-targeting has been proven in other areas of advertising, now we just need to see how it works in the mobile channel.

Share This

Ventraq will debut a new “Customer Behavior” analytics solution at the Mobile World Congress this week, as well as other new editions to its popular Business Analytics Suite.  

Behavioral data of mobile users is a key ingredient in most mobile marketing campaigns, the problem is, how do you retrieve, organize and analyze a vast amount of incoming data on such a large scale.  Ventraq is aiming to solve this problem with its new Customer Behavior Analytics solution which will soon be integrated with their full-scale Business Analytics Suite.  

Customer Behavior Analytics, or CBA, works by keeping track of customer transactions and interactions with the service provider, advertiser, etc. while noting their choices and actions, cross-referencing demographic, psychographic and other profile data and applying advanced techniques to understand their preferences and anticipate their needs.  The resulting analytical data is then used to provide timely and relevant targeting recommendations, and can be integrated into other campagn-based analytical data.  

With any mobile marketing campaign, there can never be to much analytical data.  Behavioral analytics is something I’ve really never heard of, and I’m curious as to how the data is collected and manipulated.  It should be interesting to see what effects it has on campaigns that actually utilize the data on a large scale- such as an entire wireless carrier.

Share This