The following is a guest post by Glen Suh, Director of Marketing for TapIt mobile advertising.

In today’s mobile world, smartphone users expect a lot out of their mobile phones.  Users desire fast processors, high data speeds, and a well laid out operating system. Furthermore, users also expect higher quality pictures and video playback as smartphone technology advances. HTML5 banners provide marketers with a richer canvas on which they can create a more beautiful and engaging advertisement.

With the demand of rich media increasing, HTML5 will play a large roll in changing the way ads are made in addition to the way users view and interact with mobile advertisements.  HTML is being implemented in today’s mobile advertising world due to the fact that it can be downloaded from an ad server and then displayed on the web or in apps. The ability that apps have to render HTML is a huge advantage for developers because Android and iOS both support this technology, which allows for multiple platform and OS compatibility across devices. HTML5 can be leveraged to fix the fragmentation issues even allowing advertisers to take a successful desktop campaign and run it on any mobile operating system that embraces the technology.

The utilization of HTML5 also benefits advertisers in the sense that they can now give mobile users a richer interactive experience without the need to leave a mobile-optimized site or app to view an ad. Also keep in mind that when a developer integrates a rich media ad kit, it generally tends to result in sluggish performance. However, with implementation of HTML5 the ad rendering engine is lighter and simpler, speeding up load times and making it more suitable for resource-constrained mobile devices.

While traditional mobile banner ads typically redirect users to an external mobile site, rich media ads built off of HTML5 technology gives advertisers another way to drive response rates without annoying or interrupting the user.

According to the survey, nearly 40% of respondents used mobile devices in response to TV ads and 45% estimated that they spent 30 minutes or more on their mobile devices during the game.  Interestingly, the survey showed that almost twice as many respondents used their mobile devices during the first half of the game compared to the second half – a powerful take-away for advertisers indeed.

“Mobile is an amazing channel for reaching consumers when they are in a lean-back entertainment-oriented mindset,” explained Anne Frisbie, Vice President and Managing Director, North America, for InMobi.  “Savvy advertisers will allocate more dollars to mobile advertising, either in conjunction with TV ads or through mobile-only advertising campaigns during similar sporting events and key holiday weekends throughout the year.”  Other takeaways from the survey include:

• 39% used their mobile device in response to a TV commercial during the game by doing one or more of the following: discussing commercials, getting more information about an advertised product, or watching TV ads again.
• 30% reported using their mobile devices most during commercials.
• 27% downloaded a Super Bowl app.

It also delivered a victory to food – tasty, delicious, and anything but healthy food, much of which was ordered by a mobile phone and delivered in time for the big game.

As MMW reported earlier Monday, mobile devices and corresponding social media platforms were very popular during the game, with Twitter generating more than 12,000 tweets per second during the final three minutes of the Super Bowl.

But mCommerce was also a huge success, estimates independent business analyst Mike Randazzo.

On Monday, Randazzo told Mobile Marketing Watch that the national pizza chains could report some interesting number in the days ahead.

“I would venture to guess that pizza chains saw a record number of orders placed online and via mobile devices,” he says, “possibily to a mind-blowing, record-shattering degree.”

“People were plugged into their mobile devices like never before on a day that, historically, tends to be very strong for pizza sales,” Randazzo concludes.

“This was the first year that the Super Bowl was live streamed, and there was a significant spike in searches related to Super Bowl live streaming on game day,” the Google Blog reads today. “Searches peaked at kickoff, and were made predominantly on desktop, followed by mobile phones and then tablets.”

Did you use your mobile phone to order food during yesterday’s Super Bowl? If so, please leave a comment – or some leftovers – below.

According to the latest insight provided by research firm ForeSee, Apple’s mobile shopping satisfaction score puts the Cupertino, California-based tech giant on the top tier of players in mCommerce.

An impressive 85% of 3,000 consumers surveyed rank Apple at the top of their favorite companies to shop from online. Incredibly, Apple’s mobile shopping score was even higher than consumers’ overall satisfaction with Apple’s web store, which has an 83% approval rating.

“As the adoption of smartphones increases, more consumers are using them to access retailer websites,” said Larry Freed, president and CEO of ForeSee. “More and more, there is expectation that companies will address the mobile environment in ways that are effective and user-friendly. Mobile commerce is still relatively new and there is a lot of room for
innovation and improvement.”

Based on the findings of the research, Apple topped Amazon, Dell, Netflix, and eBay among the top five providers of the most satisfying mCommerce experiences.

Donahoe revealed that eBay reached $5 billion in mobile GMV and PayPal reached $4 billion in mobile payment volume in 2011.

More than 890,000 new eBay shoppers made their first eBay purchase through the company’s mobile apps in 2011, a 113% increase year over year.

“EBay is continuing to drive the next generation of commerce in a new retail environment, where lines between online and offline commerce are blurring,” a statement from eBay read following the presentation.

Donahoe is projecting that in 2012, eBay will reach $8 billion in mobile GMV and PayPal will reach $7 billion in mobile TPV.

“Mobile is the true pay per call platform as there is an immediacy about mobile local search that drives higher response rates and the dominant mobile ad response is a call,” says said Bill Dinan, president of Telmetrics. With mobile, consumers are ready to make a purchase right away and advertisers are seeing the valuable link between a call and a purchase. The mobile marketing performance model is more easily defined and monetized, and that will help drive more revenue for advertisers and further tailor their mobile approach.”

Among the predictions for 2012 outlined in the report:

1. Pay Per Call Goes Mainstream With Mobile: High mobile adoption rates for both consumers and advertisers mean there is a mutual understanding of the platform and the relevancy of calls. Unlike the drawn out learning curve that came with online advertising, this new proficient mobile knowledge base will help drive pay per call programs.
2.  Mobile Propels Pay Per Action: Advertisers today realize the wealth of data available via mobile and are eager to track and pay for revenue producing actions including calls, map/directions downloads, QR code reads – any definable and concrete action that means a purchase is likely imminent.
3. In-App Call Tracking Rises: We expect consumers will continue to hone their lists of favorite apps and use them as their go-to resources for everyday planning and purchasing more so than mobile browsers. As such, advertisers will increasingly track the impact of in-app activity on call volumes and sales. This includes social apps like Facebook and Yelp.
4. Marketers and Advertisers Shift to Mobile-First Strategy: The combination of continued low advertising budgets and the tracking capabilities of mobile will mean a market shift of companies implementing a digital strategy that starts with mobile and then extends to other platforms that can supply similar metrics.

Do you agree with the bold projections made by Telmetrics? Please weigh in with a thought or comment below.

The goal, according to AOL, is to help sell reserved ad inventory on Parenting.com, the digital home of Parenting magazine.

The partnership is significant in terms of the added reach by advertisers to parents – but, particularly, to moms inclined to shop online or find digital content, coupons, or other deals worth pursuing.

Conversely, AOL will drive web traffic to Parenting.com as the partners have apparently found a true win-win working relationship in this digital effort.

AOL says it will prominently feature links to Parenting content on a number of AOL sites. Together the companies will share revenue from the respective campaigns.

“I think every advertiser wants to reach as much of a target market as it can with a single purchase,” says Ned Brody, AOL’s chief revenue officer. “By taking their inventory and our inventory, we have the scale to get to as many parents as possible in a single buy.”

According to the Ad Age piece, Parenting.com, AOL Family and HuffPost Parents sites reached a combined 12.5 million unique visitors in November 2011.

The impressive stats tell one compelling story in the big picture – the 2011 holiday shopping season was a strong one for digital retailers.

For the holiday season-to-date, $35.3 billion has been spent online, marking a 15-percent increase versus the corresponding days last year.

The report shows that the most recent week (ending Dec. 25) witnessed $2.8 billion in spending, an increase of 16 percent versus the corresponding week last year.

“Holiday e-commerce spending has remained strong throughout the season, and we have now reached a record $35 billion in U.S. online sales for the season-to-date,” says comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni.

“We can now say with certainty that the $1.25 billion spent on Cyber Monday will rank it as the heaviest online spending day of the season for the second consecutive year,” Fulgonia adds, but we should also note that it was accompanied by nine other billion dollar spending days this year.”

Did you spend more of your hard-earned dollars online this holiday season, or did the brick-and-mortar giants primarily win over your business again?

The following is a guest post from Shane Neman, CEO of Web-based SMS marketing provider Ez Texting.

One of the most consistently exciting things about working in the SMS Marketing business is watching how quickly things change. When I got into this business, six years ago, text messages were just beginning to catch fire, there was no such thing as an iPhone and my BlackBerry was the ultimate in cutting edge mobile tech. Every year brings change when it comes to the mobile industry, and 2011 was an especially busy year – which is why it’s important to look back at the past 12 months.

Over the past couple of weeks we have been looking at the many things that affected Ez Texting this year, internal and external.  What really stood out was the degree to which we are affected by changes in the broader world of mobile (outside of the mobile marketing ecosystem). Whether you develop platform specific apps, power mobile websites, run mobile ads, or provide text messaging services, as a marketer you cannot ignore the larger, external trends. After compiling our list and sharing it with our team here, we realized that a lot of other mobile-focused marketers would find the content interesting. So, we decided to put together a public review of 2011’s biggest stories in mobile.

Our list covers important hardware and operating system shifts, carrier takeover attempts (and failures), and important events in emerging technologies like mobile payments and location based services. This was, like I said, a very busy year, and some stories needed to be updated just this week (AT&T/T-Mobile), while others await conclusions (the fate of RIM and its BlackBerry). Other stories made our first draft, but ultimately got cut from the final list (more wireless device subscriptions than citizens) – again, showing what a wild year this truly was. So browse our top stories, read our quick bits of analysis on each event, and if you think we missed anything leave a comment here.

About Ez Texting

Ez Texting provides web-based SMS Marketing services to over 50,000 clients.  Since 2006, Ez Texting’s do-it-yourself service has been used by clients ranging from small organizations to Fortune 500 firms.  Text message marketing features like mobile coupons, keyword autoresponders, and efficient group messaging allow Ez Texting clients to reach their customers wherever they are, at anytime.  Follow the company on Twitter at @EzTexting and follow CEO Shane Neman at @ShaneNeman.

According to the latest data and corresponding insights from Nielsen, U.S. teenagers have tripled their mobile data usage in the last year – all while remaining kings and queens of texting.

Messaging remains the centerpiece of mobile teen behavior in the U.S. The number of messages exchanged (SMS and MMS) hit 3,417 messages per month per teen in Q3 2011, averaging seven messages per waking hour. Teen females are leading the charge, sending and receiving 3,952 messages per month versus 2,815 from males.

Aside from messaging, Nielsen announced, data heavy activities such as mobile internet, social networking, email, app downloads, and app usage are the most popular mobile activities.

“Teenagers have officially joined the data tsunami,” the report reads, “more than tripling their mobile data consumption in the past year while maintaining their stronghold as the leading message senders.”

Using recent data from monthly cell phone bills of 65,000+ mobile subscribers who volunteered to participate in the research, Nielsen has analyzed mobile usage trends among teens in the United States. In the third quarter of 2011, teens aged 13-17 used an average of 320 MB of data per month on their phones, up 256 percent over last year and growing at a rate faster than any other age group. Much of this activity is driven by teen males, who took in 382 MB per month while females used 266 MB.

“The explosion in data usage is being driven by an increase in the popularity of media-rich activities – like music, video and the use of apps – which themselves are being fueled by higher smartphone penetration,” says Nielsen managing director Telecom Europe, David Gosen. “As data usage increases, operators need to work out how to maintain the speed and quality of their service and how to charge appropriately. In the US, different operators have tried different options, from tiered data plans to actively targeting consumers who use the most data. Customer segmentation will become increasingly important for operators, as the pressures on profitability challenge the viability of all-you-can-eat data plans.”

Is the information above truly a revelation about American teens, or a no-brainer reality that will probably grow more pronounced over the next twelve months?