Internet TV – The Battlefield of Google, Apple and… Advertisers

Did you hear the news? The Internet is coming to your TV. Internet television has been a minefield for the most developing and creative technology leaders in the world. With the recent unveiling of Google TV and rumours about Apple TV, it believes that there will be soon a revolution in the industry, which is pushing a new generation of Internet-connected televisions and home entertainment devices

Viewers are much excited about the launch of Internet TV products from these two giants. A large number of consumers said they wanted to connect their computers to their televisions to watch online video. Judging from the initial marketing impact, Google TV has a slight edge at this point, in comparison with Apple TV, although this can change with the fluctuations of the market.

What are the concepts and differences?

Conceps and Strategies

For Google, it tends to be searching and information. Google is attempting to aggregate all of the content from a wide range of places into one simple list of search results. From that view, Google TV is all about giving users the ability to find the content they want across a wide variety of mediums including broadcast TV, YouTube and anywhere on the Internet. With a built-in web browser, Google TV is also pushing the concept of web browsing on your television, that would enable viewers to quickly pull up Web content on their TVs, including photos, video and music, using an on-screen search box like the one on its website, from anywhere.

For Apple, it tends to be entertainment. Apple’s strategy has been to provide content that people want, but holding that content to a high-standard quality mixed with a simple interface usage. Apple TV doesn’t support interfacing at all with broadcast TV, nor full Internet access. Nevertheless, it still offers similarities such as acessing YouTube or photos from sources like Flickr or MobileMe. Its best-selling approach is maybe the power of the connection to the iTunes Store and the App Store, that’s something Google cannot compete with at the moment.

Technologies

Google TV is backed by Sony, Intel, Logitech, Best Buy and Dish Network, and built on Android, featuring their Chrome browser with a full version of Flash Player 10.1. Its primary goal is to integrate the web into the home TV viewing experience as seamlessly as possible. It is a platform that is expected to run on many products, from TVs to Blu-ray players to set-top boxes and provides additional content and allow users to access content from the Internet and various other pay and non-pay sources.

Apple TV, based on iPhone OS, seems to be an entirely closed system, directing users into interaction with Apple formats in movies and music through iTunes. Only Apple is able to modify its software. 

The difference between the two devices is that the Apple TV is both a hardware device and a piece of software, while Google TV is essentially a platform that you can build on. This means that Google TV will potentially allow users to add on various other products to the basic feature set

What are implications for advertisers?

Google or Apple has been succesful with its advertising strategy in terms of shifting significantly ad spending from traditional medidum to the Internet and mobile phones. However, television advertising is still dominating the market. That’s why these giants are planning to expand their market by digging more in this goldmine.

Keeping the strategy of “making TV ads more relevant to viewers and delivering more value to advertisers” in mind, Google TV may hold a key advantage due to their dominance in the advertising space, targetting more on behaviours and demographics. Its model will allow TV advertisers to target specific keyword searches as well as the demographics of the audience. 

Google's advertising business is all about targeting and delivering at low cost. Google could now offer advertisers better flexibility in integrating ad campaigns across media categories. With the Internet TV device, Google now has ambition in delivering search and advertising to mobile phones, PCs and TVs. It is similar to Apple in terms of advertising.

Internet TV also creates other advertising opportunities including:

- Redirecting traffic towards internet-based video

- Enabling intelligent advertising inserted around the television program

- Developing the marketplace for TV applications

- Building up a more detailed picture of user preferences for the benefit of advertisers

At the end, there is still a long way ahead the marriage of a 50 year-old technology and a pretty much “teenaging” technology. The contrast is that web surfers have never left their desktops for the living room and television watchers have kept their remotes pointed toward familiar territory for years. Could they come closer and sit together in a “two become one” magic? The answer is still openning. In any case, this fall is going to be an interesting time for web-savvy consumers who are looking a new way to watch TV, movies and other entertainments.

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The Underwater Iceberg of Location-Based Mobile Services

Last time I have mentioned about the concept of location and geo-fence as one of the expected trends in mobile marketing this year. It becomes hotter with more competitors, including established services, emerging businesses and big online companies. All of them are joining the geo-location battle.

Currently there are two most popular location-based mobile apps, Foursquare and Gowalla, working as both a social network and a game, built on GPS function and user-generated contents. Basically, they two all allow users to share their location with friends. So, when you walk into a bar or restaurant or mall, you probably "check-in" on your cell phone, and your friends will see where you are. You get rewarded for frequent check-in activities. That’s quite simple!

Just in case you really still have no idea about what they are, or for further information, here are the summaries of FourSquare and Gowalla on CrunchBase

What are their differences?

Here is a brief comparison done by Mashable:

What do users get? 

• Connecting with friends, knowing where they were and getting tips from other people for each location

• The fun of earning badges and various perks from the places where they check in.

• Accessibily to your check-in history, giving you a snapshot of “What, Where, When, Who”

Let’s talk business!

The clever part here is that you get points for checking-in. But the really cleverer part is more about business. These geo-social networks are certainly capturing marketers’ attention. Through smartphones that signal someone’s location, stores and brands like Starbucks, Tasti-D-Lite, Macy’s and Pepsi are getting live information about when and where people are shopping. Some companies are turning Foursquare or Gowalla into a virtual loyalty-card program, while others are creating their own location applications, customers discounts or other rewards for shopping.

So basically, Foursquare and Gowalla are rolling out free analytics programs that will give participating businesses detailed information on who is checking-in to their locations, and give them the ability to communicate with the visitors. That’s what set these services apart.

The risky side

While some may find interested in sharing their location, the concept of automatic geo-location a little hard to accept, especially in terms of privacy concerns, Are people ready to share their personal locative information? Probaly. Or not really.

A recent poll on some reasons more people aren’t using check-in services revealed privacy and security concerns as a number-one reason.

The future

• Giants get into the game with motivation of the true value which comes from targeted advertising based on locality. The only question for these businesses to answer now is whether or not location-based rewards are the killer feature or if location can stand alone.

1. Facebook has been actively testing multiple location products and considering various implementations of some form of location feature.
2. Twitter has announced their official plans for location. “Twitter Places”, the product enables users to “tag Tweets with specific places Additionally, the product integrates with Foursquare and Gowalla. However, Twitter isn’t implementing a badges service right now. 

• Database of consumer behaviors and lifestyle can be built from location-based services. For instance, insurance companies can start tracking this data to have a more accurate way of determining risk and rates.

• Companies and retailers will have more creative approaches, incentives and campaigns to encourage consumers using these check-in services.

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The Latest Hits in Mobile Marketing

The mobile market is exploding. Cell phone penetration has been surpassing cable TVs and home PCs in many countries. Mobile marketing expenditures are expected to exceed $2 billion in 2010. Thirty-eight percent of youth already claim that mobile is more important to them than their wallet! Click-through rates on mobile ads are even higher than online. Mobile advertising is beginning to show a track record of results, both on click-through and in leading to purchase.

So marketers surely see the potential of mobile marketing. But what are the latest hits and take-aways for them to get on the current market? Here come four highlighted trends to think of

1. Smartphone market's growth

Smartphone ownership increased to 17% of mobile users in 2009, according to Comscore. Smartphone penetration is estimated to reach 50% of the market by the middle of 2011

• Smartphones change mobile users behaviours, leading to more entertaining usage (music, games) and mobile web activities (internet, email). As a result, mobile web will reach more people and mobile sites will be significantly invested in the upcoming years. 
• Smartphone owners continue to be predominantly male, most likely between the ages of 25 and 34
• Mobile platforms for smartphones are enhanced with social media apps, such as Twitter and Facebook, which just announced a 54% increase in mobile use in the past six months. 

2. Change in SMS campaign tactics

There is a lot of potential with SMS campaigns and a number of companies have shown real success with them. 

• Previous SMS campaigns shown that the key to success is to integrate the SMS campaign into the rest of the marketing campaign; highlight the shortcode across other forms of advertising. SMS is highly measurable, so the results should be tracked and campaigns should be modified over time
• SMS campaigns are now built not simply based on one-way messaging but consumer-created content and active participation. 
• CRM databases tend to be linked into mobile marketing. Retailers can apply this into their SMS campaigns.
• Mobile coupons through SMS become popular

3. Increasing mobile apps

Mobile apps differ from standard WAP banner ads, location-based text ads and mobile video by engaging consumers and immersing them into a branded environment in which users will be more receptive to brand messages in a far more interactive and viral platform. Mobile app downloads across all handsets are estimated to climb from over 7 billion downloads in 2009 to almost 50 billion in 2012. Advertising contributed almost 12% of the overall apps revenue in 2009 and is expected to more than double to over 28%. Games are most downloaded apps, coming next Entertainment and Social Networking

• Supply will exceed demand in mobile apps. Discovery of apps is now an issue with the massive increasing number of apps. Launching a new app becomes a challenge and requires more innovations and investment. Apps markets are evolving differently worldwide, indicating a need for creating different apps business models instead of a "one size fits all" approach.
• The battle of the app stores becomes more intense. In 2009 the number of app stores leapt from 8 to 38 and is expected to further increase in 2010. It signifies a battle for survival of the fittest among app stores worldwide, with app revenue and growth opportunities growing significantly.
• Apple still dominates the app market. Though Blackberry has a huge number of handsets,  low awareness of the app store and complicated app installation are a pain for them. 
• Most of the current mobile marketing campaigns request a mobile app development.

4. Geographic and behavioral targeting

Targeting people based on location and using behaviours is the biggest opportunity for marketers in mobile. Location and behaviour data will begin to be mined as a rich new source of insights that marketers can harness to improve the effectiveness of their efforts. By knowing the location of the phone, SMS campaigns can be directly targeted. 

• Foursquare, a geo-social network, allowing people to share location with friend, is capturing marketer’s attention. 
• Geo-fence, a virtual field around any location that is used to trigger a mobile marketing message to a user when they enter or exit the area, is forecasted to become part of marketers' vocabulary.
• Retailers and businesses are offering coupons, promotions and sales for consumers checking in through location-triggered application on their mobile phones.
• The evolution of search is also moving to mobile platforms with more emphasis on the local and social, as well as behavioral targeting. Mobile search will continue to grow in 2010 and beyond. More localization and businesses will be expected to relate to mobile search. 

All in all, three key drivers of mobile marketing in 2010 and perhaps in upcoming years have been predicted as Location, Relevancy and Immediacy. Advertisers will be increasingly drawn to mobile's unique opportunity to reach and engage consumers with immediate and location-specific content at the most relevant content to different consumer groups. And privacy is another critical issue for advertisers to consider in order to protect personal identification information.

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Tweeter Tiptoes into Advertising - Opportunity for Businesses?

By announcing its advertising model called Promoted Tweets, Twitter officially moved to the paid advertising world. So have a look at its features, operation and benefits to corporations.

What is it?

Unlike traditional PPC advertising like Google AdWords, Twitter’s pricing strategy involves bidding on keywords based on one thousand views. This allows marketers to place their 140-character message at the top of the estimated 50 million tweets displayed on the website each day.

Promoted Tweets will allow advertisers to buy keywords to link to their ads, which will show up when users search for those keywords and later in users newsfeeds. Twitter promises they will be targeted for relevancy. The ads will also be monitored for resonance, which is determined by factors such as the number of retweets. replies, clicks on the links, etc. Promoted Tweets with low resonance will be dropped.

How does it work?

The ads will let businesses insert themselves into the stream of real-time conversation on Twitter to ensure their posts do not get buried in the flow. Starbucks, for instance, often publishes Twitter posts about its promotions, like free pastries. But the messages quickly get lost in the thousands of posts from users who happen to mention meeting at Starbucks.

The ads will also be a way for companies to enter the conversation when it turns negative. Several companies have created tools to measure sentiment on Twitter, but until now, businesses can do little with that information. Even if they write a post in response, it also quickly gets lost in a sea of complaints.

At first, companies will pay per thousand people who see promoted posts. Once Twitter figures out how people interact with the posts, it will figure out alternate ways to charge advertisers. In the next phase of Twitter’s revenue plan, it will show promoted posts in a user’s Twitter stream, even if a user did not perform a search and does not follow the advertiser. For example, if someone has been following people who write about travel, they could see a promoted post from Virgin America on holiday fare discounts.

How do companies approach the new model?

Corporate marketers can use promoted tweets to accomplish a variety of goals such as receiving customer input to streamline product improvement or to start a conversation which leads to greater brand recognition. It helps to enhance the communications that companies are already having with customers on Twitter. Since marketers do not pay for re-tweeted advertisements, this program gives marketers the potential to reach a large audience.

In order to tailor advertising to Twitter, marketers need to step up to the plate and take it upon themselves to create value-driven Twitter ads. Advertisers need to sit down and think about how content is used and shared on Twitter, and, importantly, what makes a Tweet (paid or not) successful.

However, let's see:

- The acceptance of Twitter’s users with the new ad program

- The balance between user experience and website benefit

- The effectiveness if the model in execution

(Sources: NYtimes, Twitter's Blog, Mashable, E-commerce Services Suite)

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