Social Networks Take Up The Most Online Time

 People in the U.S. who go online spend more time on average perusing social networks than watching online video. But what else is eating up time: email.

GfK and the Interactive Advertising Bureau conducted an online survey in the U.S. as part of a digital-video report ahead of the advertising “upfronts” and the web video “NewFronts.”  Statista created the chart from the report’s data, which was published in April.

People surveyed said they spent about an average of 37 minutes a day on social networks like Facebook and Twitter in 2013, according to the survey. Emailing clocked in at a robust 29 minutes, while watching online video — everything from TV shows and movies to amateur video and shorter professionally produced clips — was 23 minutes.

The report found that while people doubled the amount of time they spent watching online video over the past four years, the overall percentage of their online time spent watching video slipped to 12% in 2013 from 13% the year before. (Overall time online is rising, largely driven by mobile.)  The average number of minutes watching video, emailing and reading newspapers online all slipped. What are people doing more of? Reading blogs, gaming and listening to the radio all saw increases.

– Brian R. Fitzgerald

10 trends tracked by JWT that will shape consumer mindset and behavior in 2014

December 4, 2013

Posted by: Ann Mack - New York in North America

Today we released our ninth annual forecast of key trends that will drive or significantly impact consumer mindset and behavior in 2014 and beyond.

In this year’s report, we see how consumers are both welcoming and resisting technology’s growing omnipresence in our lives. For many, technology serves as a gateway to opportunity and an enabler of hyper-efficient lifestyles, but those who are most immersed are starting to question its effect on their lives and their privacy. One result is that more people are trying to find a balance and lead more mindful, in-the-moment lives.

Our forecast also puts a spotlight on the growth of immersive experiences; the accelerating shift to a visual vocabulary; the new appeal of imperfection; and the rise of telepathic technology, which will enable brands to better understand minds and moods and react in a very personalized way.

The full report—in which we cover each trend in detail, highlighting what’s driving the shift, how it’s manifesting and what it means for brands—is available here.

JWT: 10 Trends for 2014 – Executive Summary from JWTIntelligence

Read more: http://www.jwtintelligence.com/2013/12/10-trends-shape-consumer-mindset-behavior-2014/#ixzz2nwsQhCcw

How Consumers Are Using Their Phones, And What It Means

By: Josh Luger

dMobile is no longer a communications utility, but a media distribution hub. According to eMarketer, mobile now accounts for 12 percent of Americans' media consumption time, triple its share in 2009.

Where is this consumer attention being focused?

The biggest beneficiaries have been mobile apps. Time spent on apps dwarfs time spent on the mobile Web, and smartphone owners now spend 127 minutes per day in mobile apps.

In a recent report from BI Intelligence, we analyze the main mobile usage trends developers and publishers should consider to be successful in mobile, detail how users are consuming content on their mobile devices, take a look at the most popular mobile activities, and examine how mobile usage is an additive activity.

Here's an overview of the four usage trends developers and publishers should consider: 

The rise of gaming: Games are the largest mobile app category and the biggest money-maker in the app stores, accounting for 70% of Apple's top-grossing apps. However, even with the most addictive games, consumers' attention is fleeting and companies run the risk of becoming "one-hit wonders." 

Mobile-social synergies: Social networking apps are the second largest time bucket for mobile users. 39% of mobile users access social networks. This includes mobile versions of desktop favorites, as well as mobile-first networks like Instagram. Mobile holds promise for the social category, but monetization is far from a sure thing. 

The piggyback rule: The only tried-and-true way for a mobile success is to take a popular usage category and build a product that piggybacks on that activity to provide a unique mobile-native experience. Instagram did it with photos, "Angry Birds" with games, but other usage categories — news, weather, travel, video etc. — are waiting for a similar hit.

Portal erosion: Mobile is a fragmented space, and consumers seem to like it that way. No one has succeeded aggregating services via a single app or mobile website. The desktop portal is fading with the advent of mobile. Yahoo Mail Traffic declined 12% in the 12 months leading up to December 2012. Carrier attempts to build mobile portals have failed miserably. 

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-consumers-are-using-their-phones-2013-5#ixzz2UDokhvuB

Why more brands are rethinking their online ad strategies

LISA OSTRIKOFF 

Special to The Globe and Mail

 

As digital media consumption continues to increase – whether it be online, mobile, tablet or smart TV – it’s obvious brand marketers (and their ad dollars) are following suit.

A recent study by Nielsen shows that advertisers, big and small, are turning to the Internet to push their brands. Though many respondents said they still plan to use online advertising for direct response, more and more are spending money on digital brand advertising to promote their company, product or service.

But these digital branding dollars aren’t coming at the expense of direct response. The funds are coming from offline or traditional ad budgets, with 48 per cent moving away from TV this year.
 According to the study, nearly three-quarters (70 per cent) of brand marketers plan to increase their use of social media in 2013, followed closely by mobile advertising (69 per cent) and video advertising (64 per cent).

Not surprisingly, the numbers are up from projections made in 2012, indicating a continued shift toward the medium where consumers are increasingly spending the large amounts of time. This trend also falls in line with recent research from Ooyala , which found 72 per cent of online video buyers increased their budgets for the medium over the last year, with 39 per cent drawing those budgets from TV.

So what’s at the core of this shift? Metrics, which allow companies to develop meaningful analytics. When a business is able to track in real-time how many people viewed, engaged with and shared their content, whether it be a static or interactive ad or online video, there’s no questioning the effect each advertising dollar has. There’s also a certain level of satisfaction knowing exactly exactly who the ads are reaching and how consumers engaged with the content.

Brand advertising is at the core of business success, with the best companies building an emotional connection which encourages customer loyalty. Old Spice, RedBull and GoPro are great examples of brands leveraging the power and opportunity of this online world to amp their exposure.

Is your business plugged into this growing trend?

Lisa Ostrikoff is a TV journalist and anchor-turned-creator of BizBOXTV, a Canadian online video production, advertising and social media marketing agency. You can find her on Twitter and Facebook .

Posted from Challenges In Agri-Food & Supply Chain

Using Social Media To Make Offline Products More Meaningful

We may have pushed the digital image to its shareable limit, but there is still something nice about that framed desk photo (or album, or personalized tennis shoes).

By:  Kealan Lennon

With Google Street View, Yelp, Foursquare and a host of other location-aware technologies, we have successfully uploaded the world onto the Internet. It’s not enough, though, to have achieved augmented reality--the hyped tech trend that developers and entrepreneurs enthused over back in 2009. Now, as we stream the human experience 24-7, through our mobile devices and social services like Facebook and Instagram, the process is being, yet again, flipped on its head. 

Our lives are coming back offline.

When it comes to the online-to-offline conversation, we immediately think about technologies like QR and bar codes, and companies like Uber and AirbnB that illustrate this model’s ability to translate across any industry and escalate with mobile. As this category matures, other companies have sought to find the same footing.

Instead of the usual rinse-and-repeat, however, new companies like Prinstagram are taking an entirely different tack, and turning the relationships of its online customer base into the product, pushing memories, creativity, and self-expression to the forefront, and making social commerce the most tangible it’s ever been. 

First, Some Cultural Context Today’s human experience has been uploaded as a hazy, sutro-filtered snapshot, a carefully curated bite-sized moment to be easily digested and then swiped away by ever-hungry thumbs. It’s a truly unique and personalized combination of self-expression plus experience. But it’s fleeting, and it’s not enough anymore to simply tweet, update your status, pin and share. While easily consumed, none of this is meaningful or exists in our very real world.

Like never before, our lives’ content is constant, rich with memories and meaning, more beautiful than ever, and created with unheard of ease. The stage is set. 

Bringing the Feed Offline
What today’s social retailers are getting right is that the most compelling content to consumers these days is the media created by the consumers themselves. Like a photo booth or Splash Mountain snapshot, the product is compelling because it captures a story and memory. With the advent of mobile and the flurry of photo-editing apps, the media is personal, but also beautiful, stylized and ready in a snap.

Yes, people’s lives are now instantaneous and attractive--and as people can better document their real-world experiences, they’re finding new ways to bring their lives, now shared in Facebook and edited in Instagram, back off the news feed and into their surroundings. Blurb turns your Facebook photos into photo books, while Instagram has since spawned such companies as Casetagram (your favorite memories on an iPhone case) and Stichtagram (bags and pillows designed with you filtered photos), and a flood of other real-world product ideas, including this Ray-Ban sunglasses Instagram camera project. But that’s nothing compared to when a giant like Nike launches its PHOTOiD line of Instagram-customized sneakers--simply select an Instagram photo and shoe style, and you’ve got a new pair of shoes that aesthetically complement your life.

With so much potential within these social environments, these social channels are being turned into veritable flea markets letting brands and consumers complete transactions with social interactions. We’ve all seen “Facebook storefronts” but companies like Chirpify take it a step further, allowing consumers to buy products with Facebook comments and Tweets.

In the same vein, companies like Wrapp and DropGifts are Facebook-only commerce models that encourage customers to essentially forget the poke or wall post and send a gift instead--all within Facebook from selection and purchase of the gift, to a post that alerts the recipient of the surprise gift.

While the future of these companies is contingent on people continuing to trust and “live” in Facebook, they understand two fundamental components that drive companies around this model: these online social interactions are inherent in modern relationships and people have, through technology, become much more creative. If companies allow their customers to feel empowered in both aspects, the product could be as compelling and as viral as the media that personalizes it. 

Beyond the Wall
While our interactions have become increasingly casual, we’re no less sincere in our relationships and interactions. Our daily lives are chock full of traditional holidays and life milestones and the sentiment surrounding them. But up until now, brands and companies have been aiming to bring in revenue by drumming up conversations and interactions around these events instead of developing products directly from these conversations.

The ultimate goal for these and future companies is to turn these social feeds into a product and revenue source. This is the most meaningful content on the web today, and the race is on.

--Kealan Lennon is the CEO of Cleverbug. 

4 Predictions for the Next 40 Years in Mobile

It is a remarkable 40 years since Motorola researcher Martin Cooper called his Bell Labs rival from New York in 1973 using the DynaTAC handheld phone and, in doing so, making what is widely acknowledged as the world's first public mobile phone call.

At nine inches tall the DynaTAC was handheld in the loosest possible terms, weighing the same as one and a half bags of sugar and would have cost consumers the equivalent of nearly $10,000 in today's money. It's worth reading this copy of the original Motorola press release.

So what will the next 40 years of mobile communications hold in store for us? Here are just four of the innovations I predict we will see.

1. Beyond touch
For years the BlackBerry QWERTY keyboard was seen as the most effective and productive way of using a mobile device for text-based tasks such as email and editing documents on the go. Apple's touchscreen iPhone with a virtual keyboard and swipe gestures changed all that and now we are starting to see even more innovation around controlling devices through eye-scrolling and gesture control as seen with Samsung's Galaxy S4 and the Google Glass prototype. Also, check out the Myo gesture control armband (https://getmyo.com/) which is shipping at the end of this year.

2. More video and data
In the early years of consumer mobile phone development, size mattered and the market produced ever smaller and lighter devices. With the arrival of the internet, 3G (and now 4G) combined with cheaper and more compact processing power the phones (and screens) got bigger and smarter. As high-speed connectivity becomes ever more ubiquitous the screen is once again becoming more important as we do more video-based tasks and consume entertainment on our devices. Indeed the GSMA predicts data will overtake voice revenues in mobile within the next five years.

3. Machine-to-Machine (M2M)
Previously 'dumb' everyday devices and sensors will become increasingly connected to the vast web we call the internet of things. Almost everything will have the capacity to become 'smart' and this will lead to a revolution in work and society as wearable devices monitor our health, cars become smarter and more efficient and intelligent city ecosystems become interconnected.

4. Graphene and new mobile form factors
The developments around graphene in particular are hugely exciting. Not only is graphene the thinnest material ever made (it's one atom thick), it's incredibly strong (300-times stronger than steel), flexible and a better conductor than copper. We are already starting to see some early prototype development around bendable and flexible super-thin mobile phones. I believe we've barely scratched the surface of what might be possible in this field, not only for mobile but wider computing and engineering.

Forty years since that first mobile call the telecoms industry is worth £800billion a year, there are almost 7 billion connected devices and the number of mobile devices is predicted to outstrip the number of people on our planet this year.

Here's to another exciting 40 years in mobile.

Photo credit: Motorola

Posted by:Olaf Swantee

15 Stats Brands Should Know About Millennials

Saya Weissman

Like all new generations, millennials are often misunderstood. The rap on them is they’re serial oversharers in constant need of acknowledgment and feedback.

And, of course, some of that is true. But it’s just as true that this newest generation is an optimistic bunch who are trying to make the best of the economic climate and tough job market.

Here are 15 interesting stats about the coveted class of consumers who are also your employees.

There are about 79 million millennials in the U.S., versus the 48 million Generation Xers (born between 1965 and 1980). (ComScore)

Millennials will make up 50 percent of the U.S. workforce by 2030. (Bureau of Labor Statistics)

23 percent of companies reported having heavy contact with parents of millennial employees. (Collegiate Employment Research Institute)

4 percent of employers involved reported parents attended their children’s job interviews. (CERI)

31 percent of employers involved reported parents submitted resumes on behalf of their offspring. (CERI)

27 percent of millennials are self-employed. (The Millennial Generation Research Review)

80 percent of millennials sleep with their phones next to their beds. (The Millennial Generation Research Review)

Millennials send about 20 texts per day. (Pew Social Trends)

15 percent of millennials, versus 7 percent of Gen Xers at a similar stage of life, said having a high-paying career is important. (The Millennial Generation Research Review)

The purchasing power of millennials is estimated to be $170 billion per year. (ComScore)

Millennial unemployment rate in January 2013 increased to the highest rate recorded for this demographic to 13.1 percent versus the national average of 7.1 percent. (U.S. Department of Labor.)

56 percent of millennials think technology helps people use their time more efficiently. (Pew Social Trends)

14 percent of millennials use Twitter. (Pew Social Trends)

31 percent of millennials said they earn enough money to lead the kind of life they want, versus 46 percent of Gen Xers. (Pew Social Trends)

41 percent of millennials have no landline at home and rely on their cellphones for communication. (Pew Social Trends)

13 Mobile Trends for 2013 and Beyond (April 2013) - see slide show

by JWTIntelligence on Apr 01, 2013

http://www.slideshare.net/jwtintelligence/13-mobile-trends-for-2013-and-beyond 

The mobile is moving well beyond its role as a communication device, becoming an enabler for a wide range of experiences from TV viewing to shopping to banking. And mobile connectivity is disrupting industries from retail to auto to finance and beyond. The consensus is that change is occurring at an astonishing scale and speed.

In this report, JWTIntelligence outlines key trends in evidence at the GSMA’s Mobile World Congress, held in Barcelona in late February, along with examples that illustrate these developments and implications for brands. The report also incorporates insights from interviews with several mobile experts and influencers.