TV is no longer the epicenter of information broadcast, today the marketing agenda is to reach consumer at their context and relevance that asserting the need for broadcasting their information across media devices to cash-on every second of online media time spent.

Integrating Mobile with Television – Understanding Cross-platform Consumer Behavior; TELiBrahma has enhanced their Augmented Reality App POINT, to recognize the video on the TV screen and provides relevant engagements on mobile. This throws up multiple opportunities to the broadcasters; bringing in instant connect to browsing, shopping, opinion polls and social media interactions to their audiences’ personal device based on the context. Thus accentuating an immediate action-reaction to the content consumed on TV.

Here is an interesting infographic that substantiates the same.

Source: http://ssl.gstatic.com/think/docs/multi-screen-world-infographic_infographics.pdf

Stardust, the largest selling film magazine, sought to offer Bollywood news and gossips in an innovative way. The magazine, which is perceived as an institution wanted to deliver deeper and better engagements to its readers, thus driving more subscriptions. Considering the mindset of their target readers, mobile was an obvious choice.

Stardust integrated POINT with the March 2013 issue of the print magazine to deliver additional content of the featured models Parineeti Chopra and Sidharth. Users can capture the stardust cover page from the March 2013 issue to receive Exclusive video, uncensored wallpapers of the featured models, check out more stories, rate the hotness quotient of the model and instantly subscribe for the magazine.

The campaign is receiving great response from the readers and the same could be experience from below. Capture the Stardust cover page with POINT to find out some sizzling facts about the actors. Download POINT for free from http://pointart.mobi or look for ‘pointart’ in your app store now!

Promotions through canter vans only created visibility, but lacked creating recall or connect. The Brand had various contents, but how could the same be leveraged. These canter vans with Parle messages were powered with Buzz to distribute to Jingles and Games to audience via mobile Bluetooth.

The message was distributed in 59 cities including Tier II and Tier III category. Parle-G ‘Chalo India’ carried customized content, specific to the language of the region including Gujarati, Hindi, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Bengali, Kannada, Telugu, Tamil & Assamese. The Brand’s messages traversed India in the true sense.

The stats indicate that the interest level on understanding mobile advertising/promotions (source: Google Trends) has been on a constant low till the end of 2011, the sudden upsurge is an indicator that the significance of mobile usage has created the need to understand it better.

Introduction of new technological devices will lead to brand wars

If we can say, higher the sale of Android and iOS phones, greater the revenue will be for mobile advertising. Stipulating that this is right, the year 2013 for mobile advertising companies is bound to be very profitable indeed.

The year 2013, might see Apple sales of 300m iOS devices, and Android-based devices may reach the 1b mark. Gartner even predicts that mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common access device world-wide.

There has been an increase in the R&D spends by brands, to ensure that they capture the mobile segment; playing on the first-mover-advantage. Microsoft is building hardware; Google is marketing devices, platforms and exchanges; Amazon wants to segue via content.

Advertising will get smarter across screens

We are already familiar with the ‘second screen’ phenomenon, where people tweet, text or share the ‘Happenings in their Life’ while watching TV. This isn’t just anecdotal: in 2012 the IAB surveyed typical mobile device use and found an ecosystem, in which consumers used smartphones to text in the mornings, laptops and PCs for work, and tablets and smartphones in the evening for social media and online window shopping.

With more devices coming to market, 2013 will see a multi-screen environment in which people use a variety of devices in diverse settings. Advertisers shouldn’t see this as a challenge: it’s actually a huge opportunity to be smarter, by creating campaigns that work across the marketing funnel as well as mobile channels. Mobile could help integrate campaigns, providing those ‘stepping stones’ that enable consumers to experience the same brand messaging across channels, and moving them from awareness towards action.

Mobile Advertising will get Richer

The static banner ads are the lowest revenue producing feature in the mobile advertising segment. Advertisers are now using all the features of a phone like touch, pinch, swipe, shake and geo-location to make the experience more engaging. Mobile Advertisements use the phones features in its entirety to incorporate elements that people can interact with, turning passive advertising into active engaging advertising. Such advertisements are rich media advertisements which are demonstrably more effective in appealing to the user, generating double the average click through rates for advertisers and up to ten times the average earnings for publishers.

Rich media also acts as a better measurement tool. Far beyond CTRs, rich media also allows the advertisers to measure softer metrics such as brand awareness, brand engagement and purchase intent.

The mobile advertising sector is expected to be the advertisers focus to reach to specific consumer audiences. The data involved in mobile is unlike any other medium, and the combination of interest data, social data and more, can give multi-dimensional view into audience profiles that will allow them to reach the right consumers at the right place and time, and really move the needle with the campaigns.

The sector is expected to be better understood by advertisers with more exposure, experience and experiments over the past year. Currently mobile ads account for only two percent of the ad market, but the use of mobiles is fast changing and accelerating. The mobile is used often to fill small bored spots during the day, smaller screens making it too easy to accidently taps ads users aren’t interested in, annoying the consumer and bringing too less a value to the advertisers. Bigger screens, higher touch sensitivity leading to making the advertising a better experience.

The supreme turn around point for mobile advertisers was in the higher acceptance by the marketers embracing mobile in a big way.  Marketers have stopped asking the importance of being available on mobile and have now shifted their focus on maximizing their mobile efforts.

Sources:

http://www.mobilemarketingmagazine.co.uk/content/2013-predictions-adfonics-victor-malachard

http://www.mobilemarketingmagazine.co.uk/content/what-will-2013-hold-mobile-industry

The strategy of coupons has existed as long back as business has existed and was used for the same purpose as the mobile coupons are used now.

Mobile coupons were ideally used for businesses to access new markets and customers and also to fill in during the lean periods. Initially, due to the speed of the industry’s growth both the coupon companies and the businesses that used the coupons had to see pitfalls. Here are a few reasons and learning’s we can gather:

• Customers arrived at the store only on the first day the offer opened or on the last day of the offer
• The restaurant staff were disappointed as the coupons did not calculate the tips at the full price
• The coupons were used more by the existing consumers than the bringing in new customers
• Business did not set a logical limit to the number of coupons that could be distributed and hence faced operational nightmares
• The timeline and merchant payment terms were not clear

In spite of these drawbacks faced by a few businesses, a few companies had great success in the coupon strategy where businesses follow location-based coupon delivery. Consumers also are now more aware of the working of the coupon and have the flexibility to sign up with a particular retailer to receive coupons. Coupons through social media websites have also gained much popularity, giving the consumers the opportunity to see how many of their peers also approve of the same activity thereby adding credibility.

A few trends for 2013 around the coupon industry

Expanded Localized Deals

• Increase in awareness of the coupons facility thereby increase in end users and merchants
• Increased awareness in  the local merchants , easily targeting customers in the surrounding areas
• More niche verticals from both nationwide and local coupon companies

Focus on Increased Online Commerce

• Companies specializing in the coupon sector will increase procuring goods directly from producers to the customers
• B2B services that offer self-serve couponing tools will also increase

Consumer Flexibility in Customizing Deals

• Today the coupon is valid for a specific time after which the monetary value of the coupon is redeemable
• Offering different redeeming models will make this a better experience for both merchants and customers
• Option of offerings where the customer can buy a coupon redeemable when the merchant sends a text or a tweet when the business is less busy

Sources:

http://smb.turcott.com/articles/share/551023/

Star TV desired to gain extra reach on the release of their new serials, to be aired in the network’s prime channels like Star Plus, Star Movies, Star Gold, Star World, Channel [V] and Life OK. The brand ensured that their fans would not miss out on shows and hence preferred to allow them a peep into the trailers and promos of these shows.

Mobile; a device present across classes was used by STAR to reach out to their wide-ranging audience. BUZZ, the location based solution provider enabled a miniature STAR channel which delivered content from the prime channels onto audiences’ finger tips. The content included exclusive trailers and promos of the upcoming leading shows, generating interest & curiosity even before it was aired. Show-timings of these programs were an ad value which was shared alongside the trailers.

BUZZ hotspots delivered content highlights of their prime stations like Star Plus, Star Movies, Life OK, Star World, Channel [V] and Star Gold. BUZZ is present over 2000 locations across India in 18+ cities which are placed across outlets like Café Coffee Day, Barista, Spencer’s , leading restaurants, theaters ,malls and even at the railway station.

• Over 3,30,000 engagements were achieved in a month, which exceeded the brand’s expectations
• On an average each user experienced 7 different content
• 25% of the users were repeat users, showcasing the interest level in the content
• Coffee Day outlets were recorded to be the popular hotspots where information on BUZZ was accessed

Through BUZZ the users’ engagement level with the brand was measurable, which is otherwise not possible in the other forms of media.