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As Social Media Grows, What Will Become of the Plain Old Banner Ad?

via www.poynter.org

Dorian Benkoil
Founder, SVP
Teeming Media
DorianB

As Social Media Grows, What Will Become of the Plain Old Banner Ad?

Posted by Dorian Benkoil at 2:50 PM on Oct. 6, 2010

"The death of display advertising has been greatly exaggerated," Randall Rothenberg, CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, said last week at the trade organization's MIXX conference.

True, rectangular "banner" ads, in-stream video commercials and other so-called online "display" advertising accounted for more than a third of the nearly $23 billion spent on Internet advertising last year, according to David Silverman in a PricewaterhouseCoopers report prepared with the IAB.

But there was another 800-lb gorilla in the room at MIXX. Social media such as Twitter and Facebook are rapidly becoming venues where marketers connect with customers and spend dollars that previously may have gone to more traditional Internet ads.

Dick Costolo, who was just named Twitter CEO, talked about the power of the platform and its new advertising efforts, such as Promoted Tweets and Promoted Trends. Investor Yossi Vardi, who helped launch the ICQ chat standard, likened the future of social media to "the future of civilization," quoting Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos as saying the likelihood you'll buy a car is 500 percent higher if a friend recommends it.

Even as Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, touted the ways that display ads can be used on Facebook, many at the conference discussed how social interactions on fan pages and through its Open Graph (formerly Facebook Connect) get consumers to buy at a much higher rate than advertising alone ever has.

So is social media killing display ads?

Display ads growing, but...

A closer look at the Pricewaterhouse study shows that while display ads ticked up to a 35 percent share of ad spending in 2009 (from 33 percent in 2008), search grew by the same 2 percentage points but a higher dollar amount (from 45 percent to 47 percent). Search's share has risen sharply over the past four years while banners have been essentially flat.

Plain old banners, too, are declining in relevance. The money spent on ads sold on an "impression" basis -- that is, based purely on someone seeing them -- is down sharply compared to "performance" ads that require an action, such as a click. That trend is likely to continue.

YouTube executives at the conference introduced their new "cost-per-view" advertising format, in which a viewer is given a choice of which ad to see in a video, or given a choice to skip an ad after five seconds. The marketer pays only for a video that's been shown.

The effectiveness of these ads, said the executives, can be 10 times as high as for interruptive ads (the term for any type of ad that delays the user from accessing the content he seeks).

New startups from high-profile entrepreneurs are also offering to help advertisers get into the social stream, promising higher effectiveness than from display ads.

Two days after MIXX and a few blocks away at the Web 2.0 conference, Jonah Peretti, a cofounder of The Huffington Post, showed off new startup BuzzFeed, which in May closed an $8 million second round of venture capital financing. The company, now in beta, uses some of the same technological and editorial techniques of HuffPo to inject conversations prompted by marketers into the social stream while trying to score viral hits.

Social media as salvation, too

Whether or not BuzzFeed or YouTube's initiatives succeed, they're clearly part of a trend of marketing dollars moving away from typical banner ads and toward user interaction and social media.

Publishers earning revenue from display ads priced on impressions will find themselves competing over a shrinking pie. Hearst Corp. CEO Frank Bennack Jr. noted at MIXX that there is "no longer an inventory shortage" for advertising as there once was in magazines and newspapers, and that his companies' online publications need more than just advertising revenue to survive.

There is some hope for display ads, though -- and it's based on social media and the ability to customize ads based on user interaction.

Showing off new display ad products still being tested, Barry Salzman, Google's managing director for media and platforms for the Americas, said that by 2015, 75 percent of ads will be "socially enabled."

His colleagues showed new "dynamic display advertising" formats that allow on-the-fly customization as a user interacts with a site, as well as the ability to change ads via the social stream. In one case, as someone types in a ZIP code on Google Maps, a rectangular display ad next to the typing is customized to that region. Other ads, some of which exist today, allow companies to put live Twitter streams and comments into a banner.

This means publishers will have the chance to make money from their visitors by enabling them to interact with ads in the same way they are now encouraged to interact with a site's main content. (Publishers still will have to maximize revenue for each ad placement by serving the highest-value ad in each spot and by creating other revenue streams.)

As marketers become more savvy and demand more proof of user engagement, publishers will likely have to offer marketing formats that show clients that they have gotten users to engage not only with the site, but also the brands that are advertising on them.

Global click-through rate on standard banners stopped declining in 2009 and 2010

http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/agency/archive/2010/11/16/ctr-for-standard-banners-hit-bottom.aspx?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter

MediaMind has released a report which shows that the global click-through rate on standard banners stopped declining in 2009 and 2010 and has remained fixed at around 0.09%. 

The study titled “Standard Banners –Non-Standard Results" reveals that one of the main reasons for the drop in CTR is the success of online display advertising as the increase in the number of online ad impressions outpaced users’ rise in clicks. This as you might imagine resulted in lower CTR. The study also found that users who are exposed to relatively few ads are more likely to have a high CTR as compared to users who are exposed to a high number of ads. 

“The new findings are an encouraging sign for advertisers,” said Gal Trifon, CEO and co-Founder at MediaMind. “Although CTR is only a partial measure of online success, the leveling of CTR shows that online advertising has reached a level of maturity and that advertisers have become more sophisticated in luring users’ interest.”

New Chart: SEO Tactics for the B2B Marketer

From www.marketingsherpa.com

New Chart: SEO Tactics for the B2B Marketer

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SUMMARY: We wanted to learn more about the SEO tactics B2B marketers were using and why. So we asked more than 900 B2B marketers which SEO tactics they used, which were the most effective, and which required the greatest level of effort. Results will be analyzed in this week’s chart.

by Jen Doyle, Senior Research Analyst

B2B organizations focusing on highly-effective SEO tactics


Click here to see a larger, printable version of this chart

The size of the spheres in this chart indicates level of usage for each SEO tactic. As the spheres move to the right hand side of the chart -- indicating level of effort required -- most of the spheres tend to become smaller.

Exceptions to this case include new content development and on page content optimization. These two exceptions however are higher along the Y axis of this chart, indicating a high level of effectiveness. This indicates that B2B marketers are only willing to contribute a high level of effort towards SEO tactics that are highly effective.

Keyword research is an essential component to any successful SEO campaign and as a result, this tactic has the greatest percentage of B2B organizations currently practicing it. Without sound keyword research, an organization could target keywords that drive little traffic, drive traffic that doesn’t convert, or drive no traffic at all as a result of an inability to get ranked in a competitive environment.

It’s surprising that respondents did not indicate that keyword research required a high level of effort. In order to conduct effective keyword research that will drive results of SEO campaigns, a considerable amount of effort in research is required. This may be an indication of organizations executing incomplete keyword research.

Facebook Deals Service Takes on Foursquare, Groupon - Advertising Age - Digital

Facebook Ads Provide 'Deals' for Local Merchants, Marketers

As Users Share Their Locations, a New Way for Marketers Like Gap, Starbucks and McDonald's to Reach Them

by Irina Slutsky
Published: November 03, 2010

 

via adage.com

SAN FRANCISCO (AdAge.com) -- Facebook has a new offer for users willing to share their locations in status updates: deals from nearby merchants or big-brand marketers such as Starbucks, Gap or McDonald's.

 

Facebook is launching the Deals service with 22 big brand partners -- Starbucks, McDonald's, H&M, and Gap -- and 20,000 small-to-medium-sized businesses can start creating Deals on their Places page inside of Facebook.

The social network announced "Deals," an extension of its Places mobile feature, which allows users to check in at locations such as bars, coffee shops or malls. Users will be able to claim those deals by walking into a merchant and checking in on their phones or other mobile devices, giving marketers the ability to reach consumers and potentially attracting them into a given store.

The new service combines two of the hotter trends in local marketing: location-based check-in services such as Foursquare, and local group deals services such as Groupon or LivingSocial. "There are many changes in mobile, and there's a revolution in the social space," said Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, which has 200 million mobile users. "Mobile is as big as that -- when you combine mobile and social, industries can get disrupted."

But like everything Facebook does, it has the potential of taking a niche phenomenon now exploited by a coterie of small startups and turning it into a mass phenomenon. "While businesses have been able to use other geolocation services to incentivize customers to some extent, Facebook Deals allows global brands to do so at massive scale," said Michael Lazerow, CEO of social marketing firm Buddy Media.

Facebook announced the Deals Platform and another feature called "Single Sign On," which allows users to log into any app on their iPhones and Android phones, eliminating the need for remembering passwords and typing on tiny mobile keypads. There are 550,000 games and applications available on Facebook, and developers can now build the single sign-on into any of them or build new apps with the feature.

Facebook is launching the Deals service with 22 big brand partners -- Starbucks, McDonald's, H&M and Gap -- and 20,000 small- to medium-sized businesses can start creating Deals on their Places page inside of Facebook. Merchants create a Facebook page where there is an option for choosing the kind of deal they would like to offer: individual, loyalty, friends or charity. Individual and loyalty offers are digital versions of the traditional coupon and loyalty cards, where a customer gets a punch hole for every coffee or sandwich purchased. The friends offer is a strictly Facebook style deal, where if a user checks in his or her friends, they get a discount. The charity deal is where the merchant will donate $1 for each check to a charity.

"The Deals concept solves the long term," said Facebook's director of local, Emily White. "For a long time, merchants have been told to get online. This solves that problem for them and turns the fans into real dollars."

Gap decided to immediately participate in Deals, offering 10,000 pairs of jeans for free to all users who check into one of the 900 Gap stores nationwide. "It's important for us to connect with our customers where they are," said Olivia Doyne, a Gap spokeswoman on hand at the event at Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto. "This can be used in so many ways. If a store has too much inventory, we can use Deals for that. We can tailor the deals to our customers' locations."

Facebook does not earn money in the Deals promotions, and Ms. White said this project is very much in a beta state. But inadvertently, by having more businesses create pages on Places and having more people checking into those businesses, there will be a natural increase in Facebook traffic.

Marketers have long seen mobile phones as a powerful means of reaching consumers while they're out shopping or physically close to a given store. "This is continuing Facebook's empowering of small businesses," said Dave Marsey, senior VP of Digitas digital media. "We're gonna see the biggest response with small local businesses that can more directly and electronically manage attracting new customers and rewarding loyal customers."

Mr. Zuckerberg said that, as always, Facebook's focus is to make things better for users. "Whether the deals platform turns into something more commercial, or we choose to monetize something else -- though we have no plans of doing that any time soon -- that works for us too."

 

 

Industry Execs: Multiple Media Plan, Brand-Oriented Model Key to Driving Ad Sales - 2010-11-03 21:42:03 | Broadcasting & Cable

From Broadcasting and Cable -www.broadcastingcable.com

Industry Execs: Multiple Media Plan, Brand-Oriented Model Key to Driving Ad Sales

Panelists see joint ventures, re-branding key to future of TV By Andrea Domanick -- Broadcasting & Cable,

11/3/2010 5:42:03 PM

With DVRs and multiplatform viewing options, television industry leaders have been hard pressed to pin down the best ad strategy to drive sales -- and whether advertising is what's lifting sales at all.

This issue and other ad business-related topics were addressed at the "Hits, Misses and Looking Forward" panel at ThinkLA's National TV Summit Nov. 3 at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif. The panel featured Donna Speciale, president, investment & activation for Mediavest; Rick Rosen, board member and head of TV department for William Morris Endeavor Entertainment; Discovery Communications President, Advertising Sales Joe Abruzzese and Fox Broadcasting Company Entertainment President Kevin Reilly.

Speciale suggested the most successful advertising strategy is in the multimedia forest, not the trees. "We keep talking TV, but we need to start talking screens...it's not ‘or' anymore, it's ‘and,'" she said. "It's hard to test what has really lifted sales, and also because there's a lot of different media happening at the same time. It's going to be even more challenging just to decipher what is really driving it, but I don't think it's one thing. It's a multiple media plan that has to drive sales."

Coming off Discovery's quarterly earnings report Tuesday, Abruzzese echoed this sentiment. He admitted it was hard to pinpoint what specific platforms affected sales growth or decline, but that Discovery's success can be attributed to approaching media as a whole, rather than focusing on those individual platforms.

He is also stressed the importance of a brand-oriented model. "All of our shows go through the filter of Discovery," he said. "Sometimes you wander off, but I think our brand is about what we wouldn't put on the air. I'd condemn Jersey Shore, we'd never put it on Discovery. That's destroying your brand."

The panelists generally agreed that brand identity plays a defining role in the future of new business models for the television industry, including joint ventures. Abruzzese noted Discovery's ventures with Oprah and Hasbro to launch the OWN and Hub networks, respectively. "I think it comes out of a little bit of necessity," he said, explaining that while networks like Health and Discovery Kids were doing well, they were only breaking even. Abruzzese said Discovery instead opted to combine popular brands with the robust real estate held by those channels "[Now] we had this great brand with great distribution," he said.

"Hasbro...look at themselves not as a toymaker but as a company that controls intellectual property," Rosen added. "[The stoy] Stretch Armstrong is going to be a movie that could spin into a television series that's going to help their toy brand. It's about what you do [with your brand] and looking at intellectual property differently." Reilly countered that while such a strategy is appealing, this shift would be difficult to navigate. "It's really hard to reverse engineer these things. I think that is going to be a part of the future. You have [so many different products and kinds of intellectual property out there] that the problem is that most of these [products] things stink," Reilly said.

Rosen said that network shifts away from programming and towards a strong brand identity will soon be crucial to driving sales. "The great unanswered question in the industry is ‘What is the value of the 30-second spot?' A few years down the road that value is going to be less and less. We should be creating shows based on brand values," he said.

GSD&M Idea City Co-founder & Chairman Roy Spence moderated the discussion.

MediaPost Publications Consumers Still Not Convinced They Should Check-In 11/04/2010

Location, location, location. As many tech watchers, entrepreneurs, and investors insist, location-based services may represent the next frontier for digital media. Yet, according to new findings from the Pew Research Center, few consumers know it yet.

"The number of people using location-based services like Foursquare and Gowalla remains small, and does not appear to be growing," writes The New York Times, citing Pew's data.

On your average day, a measly 1% of adult U.S. consumers are presently using location-sharing services, according to the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project. Perhaps more disconcerting, the number of adult consumers who report using location-sharing services at all is down to 4% from 5% in May. (Just 6% of social network users - considered to be the tech savviest consumers -- report having ever used location-based services.)

Under the headline, "Will Location-Based Services Ever Go Mainstream?" GigaOm's Matthew Ingram writes: "The biggest issue for many users, including some friends I have spoken with, is that sharing one's physical location breaches a personal privacy barrier that many people are uncomfortable with, even if it is only being broadcast to one's friends -- and the fact that your friends can tag you at a location through Facebook Places just adds to that uncomfortable feeling."

Finding that nearly twice as many men as women are using these so-called "geo-social" service, Pew's findings suggest that women are especially concerned about safety issues.

According to ReadWriteWeb: "There are a still a good many women out there with safety and privacy concerns regarding these services and two, that fewer women see the value in using these apps."

"With such miniscule numbers, it makes you wonder why companies like Facebook, Yelp, and others are scrambling to get into the location-based check-in scene," writes VatorNews.com. Thought, "The study's author, Kathryn Zickuhr, makes the point that location-based check-in services are similar in some respects to status-updating sites like Twitter, which also had some pretty miniscule numbers only two years ago."

Also, as The Times notes, "The report's findings may mostly serve as a baseline from which to measure the impact that Facebook will have on location-based services." The top social network, if you hadn't heard, only recently debuted a location-tracking "check-in" feature named Places.

"It is possible that Facebook will help bring location into the mainstream," Kathryn Zickuhr, author of the Pew report, told The Times.

Read the whole story at Pew Reseach et al.

via www.mediapost.com

4% of online Americans use location-based services | Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project

I recommend you follow the link and get the full report!

Greg

 

Overview

In its first report on the use of “geosocial” or location-based services, the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life project finds that 4% of online adults use a service such as Foursquare or Gowalla that allows them to share their location with friends and to find others who are nearby. On any given day, 1% of internet users are using these services.

Location-based services such as Foursquare and Gowalla use internet-connected mobile devices’ geolocation capabilities to let users notify others of their locations by “checking in” to that location. Location-based services often run on stand-alone software applications, or “apps,” on most major GPS-enabled smartphones or other devices.

Key findings include:

• 7% of adults who go online with their mobile phone use a location-based service.
• 8% of online adults ages 18-29 use location-based services, significantly more than online adults in any other age group.
• 10% of online Hispanics use these services – significantly more than online whites (3%) or online blacks (5%).
• 6% of online men use a location-based service such as Foursquare or Gowalla, compared with 3% of online women.

http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Location-based-services.aspx#

Social Media Increases Small-Business Exposure - eMarketer

Social Media Increases Small-Business Exposure - eMarketer.

Social Media Increases Small-Business Exposure - eMarketer

This article quotes ItzBelden's current report on the ad  spending patterns of small businesses. Call me for a copy.

Greg

Many small firms still hold back from social media marketing efforts

According to the American Express OPEN fall 2010 “Small Business Monitor,” small-business owners have dramatically upped their usage of social media for marketing in the past year.

While just one in 10 business owners reported using social networking for marketing last year, 39% indicated they did in September 2010. The impetus is driving sales by connecting with consumers. Facebook was the clear leader among small-business owners, with 27% using the site to attract new customers, vs. 9% using LinkedIn, 8% using Twitter and 5% maintaining a blog.

American Express found that among businesses that use social media marketing, 39% said it increased the exposure of their business. But the second most common response, selected by 17%, was that social media tools had not helped them.

“For business owners, social media ultimately should be a two-way street. It’s about business owners connecting with customers and customers connecting with businesses,” said Susan Sobbott, president of American Express OPEN, in a statement. “More than 10% of consumers we surveyed reported posting a review of a small business through social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, and of these posts, two-thirds say the reviews have been positive.”

But many small businesses still feel social media marketing has nothing to offer them. More than three in five reported not using social media at all, and the biggest reason they gave was that it did not apply to their industry.

A September survey of small businesses that have advertising relationships with local newspapers by ITZ Belden and the American Press Institute (API) similarly found that 40% of respondents used social media marketing. Just 20% said it was a leading source of new business, compared with 77% who cited referrals from customers and 65% who selected referrals from friends and family.

Facebook Gets Serious about Location with Deals

Facebook Gets Serious about Location with Deals.

Facebook Gets Serious about Location with Deals

When Facebook launched Places, the social network’s long-awaited location-sharing feature, in August, it was accompanied by a couple of key assumptions. One was that 800-pound gorilla of the social networking space, with its 500 million total users and 100+ million mobile users, would take the check-in mainstream. As my colleague Debra Aho Williamson sagely put it in an eMarketer blog post:

Right now, checking in is a fairly niche activity. Places will introduce a lot more people to the concept. Facebook has already shown that it can drive big changes in people’s behavior—just look at the popularity of status updates. Checking in is another one of those behaviors that Facebook can easily push toward mass acceptance.

Another was that the launch of Places signaled the death knell for foursquare and other location-sharing services. But as it happens, the reports of foursquare’s death have been premature. In fact, since the launch of Places, foursquare’s user base has continued to surge, growing from 2.6 million on August 12th (according to a tweet by CEO Dennis Crowley) to 4 million on October 21st. If it continues at its current pace, foursquare is projected to top 5 million registered users by the end of November.

In addition, while Places has built-in scale, it doesn’t necessarily top foursquare in engagement. According to some recent (and admittedly rough) calculations by Silicon Alley Insider (SAI), a large number of people (a reported 30 million) have tried Places, but more people check in on foursquare on a more regular basis. Blame a lack of compelling features, such as game dynamics, that give foursquare a lot of its appeal. On the other hand, engagement and usage metrics, even the somewhat speculative data assembled by SAI, that disproportionately favor the smaller foursquare over the much larger Facebook, serve as further evidence that two can peacefully coexist.

The big question is: what would make Places more compelling? With yesterday’s launch of its Deals program, Facebook is betting the answer is commerce.

Why Places + Deals is important to Facebook:
First, the opportunity to save money will give Facebook’s base of mobile users, now 200 million-strong, a reason to use Places to check in. The success of group-buying services such as Groupon and flash sale sites like Gilt has demonstrated that consumers will jump at the chance of a good deal. The fact that Deals is launching with a roster of 22 national brands, including the Gap, H&M, McDonald’s, Starbucks, Macy’s, American Eagle Outfitters, JCPenney and Chipotle, proves that Facebook is serious about driving adhesion. In many cases, the inaugural deals mean discounts, but Starbucks and McDonald’s, for example, are offering donations to charities in return for checking in, reminiscent of a successful program non-profit Earthjustice has run with foursquare.

Facebook also recognized the need to include a mechanism to drive ongoing usage. In short, Deals is not about the one-shot deal. Rather, merchants have the option of using the platform as a virtual loyalty program or punch card to reward repeat buyers. This is a smart move that could counter some of the criticism leveled at services such as Groupon and one that will make Deals more compelling for users and businesses alike.

Why location-specific deals make sense for marketers:
Location information, which provides insight into not only place but also context, enables marketers to deliver a compelling offer or reward when consumers are at the point of decision. In yesterday’s geo-location sessions at the ad:tech New York conference (coincidentally scheduled at the time same time as Facebook’s Deals announcement), WHERE CEO Walt Doyle noted that reach, relevancy and redemption are the key factors in the location game.

Cracking all of those nuts simultaneously and with the same degree of success is challenging. Facebook can do its part by offering scale and ease-of-use for the business owner, whether a national brand or single proprietorship. But platform and scale alone are not sufficient. Ultimately, the success of Deals depends on, well, the deals that merchants offer. Unless they’re consistently attractive, consumers will lose interest or not sign on at all.

Will Deals alter the dynamics of the marketplace?
The answer is yes, but the impact of Deals will be felt differently throughout the geo-location ecosystem. Although foursquare was absent at yesterday’s launch, Groupon and Loopt, two companies that are farther along than Facebook in marrying location and offers, were present. The single-click sign-on feature that Facebook announced as part of the enhancements to Places will enable deeper integration between Facebook and other location services, which, in theory, at least, will give Facebook more appeal as an aggregator, a value proposition that will likely extend to commerce as well.

Could Facebook, with its reach and resources simply blow its erstwhile competitors out of the water? Given the inclination, the answer is probably yes. But Facebook understands a) the value of the ecosystem (a lesson perhaps learned from Google, now Facebook’s primary competitor in the digital space); and b) its limitations in being all things to all people and all companies. Fast Company described the post-Places opportunity for services such as foursquare and Groupon in the following terms:

Their long-term sustainability will probably rest on the same thing that enabled the Mac to survive in a PC world: A decision to eschew the urge to be everything to everybody and instead to focus on a customer segment they will always be able to serve better than the big boy.

Deals may not be perfect, it may be “cruder,” in Fast Company’s estimation, than similar offerings, but assuming that Facebook is on to something here, Deals could have a significant impact in the marketplace. It could also offer a big boost to mobile-assisted commerce and make mobile not only a more viable but also more necessary channel for reaching consumers.

 

Industry Trends Spur Big Mobile Ad Spending - eMarketer

Industry Trends Spur Big Mobile Ad Spending - eMarketer.

Industry Trends Spur Big Mobile Ad Spending - eMarketer

New devices and formats boost marketer outlays

US mobile ad spending is set for dramatic growth, with eMarketer forecasting more than $1.1 billion in spending next year. Although cautious corporate optimism about economic recovery will play a part, growth in 2010 will be spurred primarily by the injection of a new dynamic in the mobile space.

Much of this new dynamic is attributable to the entrance of Google and Apple and the ways both companies have sought to redefine the mobile device and advertising markets.

“Apple and Google have introduced new devices and ad inventory into the marketplace,” said Noah Elkin, eMarketer principal analyst and author of the new report “Mobile Advertising and Marketing: Past the Tipping Point.” “In so doing, they have given mobile advertising new legitimacy, reflected in increased spending estimates from most research firms and investment banks.”

Spending projections continue to span a wide range, however, reflecting mobile's status as an emerging channel. eMarketer forecasts spending this year to reach $743.1 million, up 79% from 2009.

This estimate falls toward the middle of the pack, with 2010 spending forecast as high as $6.1 billion by Borrell Associates, and as low as $242 million by the Yankee Group.

eMarketer predicts steeper growth in display spending—banners, rich media and video—accompanied by a sharper drop in messaging's share of total mobile ad spending.

"These shifts reflect the evolution of mobile from a channel associated primarily with direct response campaigns to one marketers will increasingly use for branding purposes," said Elkin. "In short, the continued development of devices, browsers and mobile networks, combined with the availability and marketer awareness of richer ad units, will significantly enhance how marketers will be able to use mobile to interact and engage with consumers."

---

The full report, "Mobile Advertising and Marketing: Past the Tipping Point," also answers these key questions:

• What is the outlook and growth trajectory for mobile advertising and marketing?
• What formats are available to marketers, and which show the most promise?
• How is the mobile marketing landscape changing as a result of high-dollar acquisitions by leading technology companies such as Google and Apple?

To purchase the report, click here. Total Access clients, log in and view the report now.