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MobileMarketingWatch (@MobileMW) reports on the findings of a new Greystripe (@Greystripe) study that says better than 66% of moms are plugged into their mobile devices while engaged in the act of shopping:

• 57% search for mobile coupons via their mobile device.
• 45% of connected moms use their smartphone to locate stores.
• 36% utilize some form of price comparison app or service.
• 31% use their smartphones to research products, read reviews, and check product availability.
• 91% prefer free apps with ads over paid apps without ads.

Read the MMW report.

Also see our April 14 blog post, “Motherhood Sends Moms to Smartphones.”

And see Marketing Charts' "1 in 3 Smartphone Shoppers Often Accesses In-store Coupons."

What are you doing to publish content that will reach these moms? Let Somersault help.

This Infographic (#Infographic) by Ad Age (@AdAgeStat) displays social media demographics based on actual user profiles, not just Web traffic. Also see detailed tables of the age breakdowns of Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn.

This article in Internet Retailer (@IR_Magazine) says Facebook is today for marketers what ABC, CBS, and NBC TV networks were in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s: mass media that could reach practically all US consumers with a sweeping marketing message.

Today, the way to market to the masses is through Facebook, where 135.7 million US consumers spent time in March, according to market research firm Nielsen Co.

And consumers don’t just click on Facebook and leave — they spent on average more than 6 hours and 35 minutes on the social network in March, nearly 5 times the one hour and 21 minutes the average Web user spent on Google, Nielsen says. What’s more, while on Facebook they share information about themselves, interacting with the site 90 times in an average month — posting photos and updates, commenting on friends’ posts, Liking products and articles, and more.

In short, millions of shoppers are constantly telling Facebook Inc. about themselves, what interests them, where they live, what they buy and who their friends are. That’s a treasure trove of consumer information. And in the last year or so Facebook has regularly been introducing innovations that enable retailers and other marketers to use that detailed information to precisely target the consumers they wish to reach.

Read the article and its examples in full.

How are you using Facebook to advance your brand?

Writing at iMedia Connection (@iMediaTweet), Brian Monahan (@brionic), EVP, managing partner, at IPG Media Lab (@IPGLAB), succinctly describes and analyzes 5 trends converging at the “crossroads of technology, consumer behavior, and marketing effectiveness:”

·         The identity of things: The proliferation of smart mobile devices are allowing consumers to access information and content tied to objects via various means like bar code scanning, 2D tags, near field communication, or visual search. The digital industry has already seen two waves of content development. The first was anchored to URLs. The second was anchored to social profiles. We are about to witness the third wave of digital content development anchored to objects.

·         Mobile is infused: Mobile has become so critical to consumer behavior that it has progressed beyond being a “feature;” it’s now a necessity for all hardware devices and services.

·         Life is a game: Game design principles are clearly being woven into all we do. As mobile devices are built with location and context aware technology, the world is being turned into an arena in which consumers enjoy playing. For retailers and brands, this means creating advertising that recognizes users and knows their preferences, delivering messages of value and experiences in the form of rewards, rankings and other game-derived forms of incentives and virtual currency.

·         The rise of content marketplaces: To serve the propagation of tablets (which now number 82) and other popular hardware, brands are focusing attention on creating recurring, billable, and easily accessible content. (For example, see Warc’s (@WarcEditors) article, “Tablets lure media owners.”)

·         Continuous partial attention: The continued fragmentation of consumer attention is being driven by changes in the device, media, and distribution landscapes. To compete for consumer attention in this complex media environment, brands must develop immersive, empathetic communications to fully engage their audience.

Read this in full.

Do you agree with this summary and analysis?

Trendwatching.com (@trendwatching) has coined “The F-FACTOR” to describe the power and reach social media has on commerce and branding.

• The F-FACTOR is currently dominated by Facebook, as over 500 million active users spend over 700 billion minutes a month on the site. (Source: Facebook, April 2011)
•  And its impact isn’t just on Facebook itself. Every month, more than 250 million people engage with Facebook across more than 2.5 million external websites. (Source: Facebook, April 2011)
• The average user clicks the ‘Like’ button 9 times each month. (Facebook, 2010)
• Three-quarters of Facebook users have 'Liked' a brand. (Source: AdAge/ Ipsos, February 2011)

Here are 5 ways the F-FACTOR influences consumption behavior:

1. F-DISCOVERY: How consumers discover new products and services by relying on their social networks.
2. F-RATED: How consumers will increasingly (and automatically) receive targeted ratings, recommendations and reviews from their social networks.
3. F-FEEDBACK: How consumers can ask their friends and followers to improve and validate their buying decisions.
4. F-TOGETHER: How shopping is becoming increasingly social, even when consumers and their peers are not physically together.
5. F-ME: How consumers’ social networks are literally turned into products and services.

Read further explanation of the above points.

Also see Marketing Charts (@marketingcharts) “Consumers Tap into ‘F-Factor’”

Keep in mind, according to a March 2011 survey by RetailMeNot.com and Harris Interactive, search engines are still the most popular online means of finding deals (67%), outpacing retailer emails/ads (30%), coupon websites (23%), and price comparison sites (22%).

Let Somersault help you optimize the F-FACTOR for your brand.

Publishing’s competitors are not only other books vying for consumers’ time and attention. Average Americans have increased their TV watching by 2 minutes, to 34 hours, 39 minutes per week, according to State of the Media, Trends in TV Viewing—2011 TV Upfronts (pdf) from The Nielsen Company.

Heaviest TV watchers are adults 65+ (47 hours, 33 minutes per week), followed by 50-64 (43 hours, per week). Trailing all other age groups, teens age 12-17 watch the least amount of TV (23 hours, 41 minutes per week).

Emerging trends:

·       Timeshifting continues to be a significant factor in how consumers watch TV. 38% of all TV households in the USA have a DVR.

·         Mobile Video viewing has increased 41% from last year. The heaviest users of mobile video are teens ages 12-17 who watch 7 hours 13 minutes of mobile video a month.

·         Viewing video online also continues to increase. In January 2011, 144 million Americans viewed video online.

·        The audience overlap between visitors to network and broadcast media sites and social networking & blog sites is significant. In January 2011, 49% of social networking & blog site visitors also visited TV network and broadcast media sites

Read this article.

Today’s the Big Day for the UK’s Prince William & Catherine Middleton (@ClarenceHouse).

How does royalty market itself? By following the same marketing principles as any other successful entity (including having its own YouTube channel). Attention to branding is key, as is the proper logo. For Prince William, his “logo” is his coat of arms

And Catherine now has one as well

Companies are taking advantage of the festivities to market themselves. For example, T-Mobile's viral video has more than 13 million views:

Read Ad Age's "How T-Mobile Won the Royal Wedding With Video Stunt."

An article in The New York Times (@NYTimes) describes the solution for authors who want to sign their book on someone’s ereader.  Autography LLC is a media technology firm in St Petersburg, Florida with a patent-pending method for inserting an autograph or other salutation into an ebook. This personalization can take place at the time of purchase or any time afterwards.

Here’s how an Autography eBook “signing” will work: a reader poses with the author for a photograph, which can be taken with an iPad camera or an external camera. The image immediately appears on the author’s iPad (if it’s shot with an external camera, it’s sent to the iPad via Bluetooth). Then the author uses a stylus to scrawl a digital message below the photo. When finished, the author taps a button on the iPad that sends the fan an email with a link to the image, which can then be downloaded into the ebook....

[W]ithin the year consumers should expect to see a variety of advances in digital signing, including ebooks that are sold with blank pages for that purpose. Some devices already have their own solutions, like Sony’s Reader, which enables authors to use a stylus to sign a page on its screen.

Read the article in full.

Four in 10 US consumers interact with retailers through social networking sites, according to a new survey from Deloitte (@DeloitteBA). Data from the 2011 Spring Consumer Pulse Survey (pdf) also indicate out of this consumer subset, 63% interact to find out about promotions and 56% browse products on retailer social networking pages. In addition, 38% of shoppers who interact with retailers through social networking sites review recommendations. And 43% of smartphone owners surveyed say they've used devices in stores to assist in their shopping.

Read the article in full.

These statistics reinforce the strategy of using QR codes on product packaging or in-store merchandising to communicate with consumers. But how you do it makes all the difference. In his MobileInsider column, Steve Smith critiques brands’ mobile marketing from a real-world perspective in the article Down the QR Code Rabbit Hole.

[I pull out my phone] in the aisles of Barnes and Noble [to click a QR code:] a Microsoft Tag was on back of an historical thriller Stardust that looked intriguing. Again, it kicked me over to a very attractive trailer — that wanted to go on for 7 minutes. Seven minutes! “Stop that,” my fiancée said. “Would you bring a TV to watch in the middle of a bookstore?” Worse, am I really going to sit in a bookstore and watch a 7-minute video in order to find out what the book is about?

Read this article in full.

You’ll also want to read The New York Times article, “Retailers Retool Sites to Ease Mobile Shopping.”

Let Somersault help you create an effective mobile strategy for your brand.

Initial findings from Project Reconnect, an ongoing survey based on a global poll of parents and teenagers, found a “remarkable” level of agreement across territories and age groups over which features of online ads are acceptable - and which are not.

The researchers, who questioned consumers in four key territories - Brazil, China, the UK, and the US - found that ads offering a “tangible benefit” for users are acceptable - as are ads that are “different, fun, engaging, and/or offer something extra.”

But the survey also revealed that people “instinctively” describe online advertising in potentially negative terms – “pop-ups, banners, and spam.”

Generally, there is a shared belief there is a “time and place” for online ads, and that advertisers should not overstep boundaries and “pester” consumers.

Read this report in full.