E-Mail Gets an Instant Makeover

December 20, 2010

E-Mail Gets an Instant Makeover

By MATT RICHTEL

SAN FRANCISCO — Signs you’re an old fogey: You still watch movies on a VCR, listen to vinyl records and shoot photos on film.

And you enjoy using e-mail.

Young people, of course, much prefer online chats and text messages. These have been on the rise for years but are now threatening to eclipse e-mail, much as they have already superseded phone calls.

Major Internet companies like Facebook are responding with message services that are focused on immediate gratification.

The problem with e-mail, young people say, is that it involves a boringly long process of signing into an account, typing out a subject line and then sending a message that might not be received or answered for hours. And sign-offs like “sincerely” — seriously?

Lena Jenny, 17, a high school senior in Cupertino, Calif., said texting was so quick that “I sometimes have an answer before I even shut my phone.” E-mail, she added, is “so lame.”

Facebook is trying to appeal to the Lenas of the world. It is rolling out a revamped messaging service that is intended to feel less like e-mail and more like texting.

The company decided to eliminate the subject line on messages after its research showed that it was most commonly left blank or used for an uninformative “hi” or “yo.”

Facebook also killed the “cc” and “bcc” lines. And hitting the enter key can immediately fire off the message, à la instant messaging, instead of creating a new paragraph. The changes, company executives say, leave behind time-consuming formalities that separate users from what they crave: instant conversation.

“The future of messaging is more real time, more conversational and more casual,” said Andrew Bosworth, director of engineering at Facebook, where he oversees communications tools. “The medium isn’t the message. The message is the message.”

The numbers testify to the trend. The number of total unique visitors in the United States to major e-mail sites like Yahoo and Hotmail is now in steady decline, according to the research company comScore. Such visits peaked in November 2009 and have since slid 6 percent; visits among 12- to 17-year-olds fell around 18 percent. (The only big gainer in the category has been Gmail, up 10 percent from a year ago.)

The slide in e-mail does not reflect a drop in digital communication; people have just gravitated to instant messaging, texting and Facebook (four billion messages daily).

James E. Katz, the director for the Center for Mobile Communications Studies at Rutgers University, said this was not the death of e-mail but more of a downgrade, thanks to greater choice and nuance among communications tools.

“It’s painful for them,” he said of the younger generation and e-mail. “It doesn’t suit their social intensity.”

Some, predictably, turn up their noses at the informality and the abbreviated spellings that are rampant in bite-size, phone-based transmissions. Judith Kallos, who writes a blog and books about e-mail etiquette, complains that the looser, briefer and less grammatical the writing, the less deep the thoughts and emotions behind it.
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Rhythm NewMedia Raises $10M, Sees 425M Monthly Mobile Video Ad Impressions

From Mobile Marketer

Mobile video advertising provider Rhythm NewMedia has announced a series C round of funding valued at $10, while indicating its interactive video ads average over 425 million monthly impressions as of Q3 alone.

The company was founded in 2005 and says its the largest mobile video ad network around, even though it’s continued to fly under the radar. A reason for that is that it tends to only work with big-name brands and publishers, and actually counts over 100 Fortune 500 companies as clients. Publishers include CBS and Fox; and advertisers include Best Buy and FedEx, to name a few.

The company focuses on pre-roll interactive mobile video ads, and is responsible for many of the ads you already see on iOS and Android applications. The ads served by Rhythm are interactive in the sense that users can tap on something during the pre-roll ad to visit another website, or view a longer video clip like a movie trailer for instance. Serving over 425 million monthly video ad impressions, which the company says is up 30% over Q2, Rhythm has found the sweet spot of mobile video advertising.

As part of its “Q3 2010 Mobile Video Ad Report” released last month, Rhythm covered data showing completion rates for interactive pre-roll video ads remain high at 87%, exceeding online video and even television. In addition, CTRs are 79% higher on display ads that mention “video” as a call to action vs. other similar ads, the company said, and iPad CTRs for pre-roll video ads are 2x or higher vs. iPhone, iPod Touch and Android.

The mobile video ad space will continue heating up, and we’ll likely hear a lot more from Rhythm going forward. Rhythm CEO Ujjal Kohli said his company was “a bit early” entering the space, but that things have really taken off since the iPhone launched.

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Coca-Cola drives product awareness with cross-platform ad buy on CBS

From Mobile Marketer:

Brands such as Coca-Cola, Mars Inc.’s Snickers, Home Depot, Ford Motor Co., the Discovery Channel and Capital One are driving brand engagement and raising product awareness with advertising across CBS’s mobile sites and applications.

Coca-Cola Zero, Home Depot, Capital One and the Discovery Channel’s “Storm Chasers” have all run ad campaigns with the CBS Sports application, while Snickers and Ford are cosponsors of the CBS Sports Pro Football application. The majority of these are cross-platform buys that include online and television as well as mobile.

“One of the tent poles of our business is to make it easy to buy across CBS Interactive’s inventory,” said Rob Gelick, Los Angeles-based general manager of CBS Mobile and senior vice president at CBS Interactive. “Advertisers can now buy on air, online and mobile as a bundled package that extends reach and allows brands to follow an audience as it migrates from one platform to another.

“For example, Ford and Snickers are both running campaigns in our online sites, and are also both lead sponsors within our Pro Football mobile apps,” he said. “On the mobile front, we’re able to create unique, rich-media experiences like expandable ads and video units that we see as excellent points of connection to our audiences.

“We have a huge amount of products getting released in the mobile space, especially in the sports category, we’re running a lot more rich-media ad units and we’re seeing a lot more brand partners leveraging our mobile inventory"

Mobile advertising boom
Coca-Cola Zero, Home Depot and Capital One are all advertisers within the general CBS Sports iPhone application.

Coca-Cola is sponsoring the SEC Live Game of the Week feature within the application, which features live streaming video, including Coke Zero mobile video ads.

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Mobile Marketing and Coupons

Elevating the Mobile Love Affair With Coupons

Written on Apr 8, 2010
Author: Meaghan Schaefer

The number of mobile coupons redeemed in North America is set to increase more than tenfold in 2010, followed by triple-digit increases in both 2011 and 2012, according to Yankee Group. All in all, some $2.37 billion worth of mobile coupon transactions will take place in North America in 2013, up from just $5 million this year.

Typically text messages or images sent to people’s mobile devices offering a discount redeemable in-store, mobile coupons are a win-win for everyone. Consumers get deals targeted to their current interests, past purchases and/or current location sent right to their phone, while marketers succeed in directly spurring purchases that can be tracked and measured through to the point of sale.

Many marketers have experienced great success with targeted and measurable online discounts and affiliate programs, and mobile coupons are a powerful way to extend the capabilities of online marketing offline.

From a consumer perspective, mobile coupons deliver not only a discount, but more importantly, a positive shopping experience. They don’t need to flip through circulars and clip coupons or search for promotion codes online, since mobile coupons are pushed to consumers’ phones.

Today’s mobile applications also can glean understanding about a customer’s product preferences and current location from GPS, CRM, and credit card systems, then match data with brand marketers’ promotions so that offers sent to phones are truly targeted. Mobile coupons are relevant, timely and easy… and they have the ability to dramatically alter the way people shop.

Brands and retailers are eager to adopt mobile coupons to reach consumers in a unique way. By sending relevant offers to people via their very personal, always-on mobile device, marketers can essentially speak right to a potential customer in a one-to-one dialogue.

This channel not only improves sales and loyalty, but the in-store experience. Mobile coupon alerts can also serve as an influence point when someone is in the vicinity of a store, providing a timely and targeted call to action.

One of the most effective reasons marketers like them is that mobile coupons are very measurable — marketers see not only how many coupons were redeemed, but which type of customers or segments responded to which offer.

Marketers can leverage this analysis to accurately understand customer behavior and target future offers. In addition, marketers can eliminate lengthy and expensive reconciliation processes that are standard with paper coupons. If consumers opt in to offers from brands to their mobile phones, marketers can wisely develop an intimate level of customer engagement.

Mobile coupons hold the promise of both direct marketing and one-to-one marketing. By delivering highly personalized incentives to a person’s mobile phone, marketers are promoting their brand right into the pocket of their target audiences at key influence points. The mobile commerce and coupon ecosystem will be one to watch as brand advertisers capitalize on this innovation.

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