Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen an inexorable rise in the use of mobile devices for commerce, including price comparisons, stock checking, product feature research, and actually purchasing.

Now new research has shown that mobile has truly reached the “tipping point” for mobile commerce in the UK, with over 50% of traffic to retail sites coming from mobile devices.

And what’s more, over 1/3 of all online purchases are now made over mobile as well!
more»

16 to 17 October, 2014
London, UK

Special Discount for MobiAD Readers!

WIRED2014 is the fourth two-day flagship event from WIRED. With insights from over 45 speakers, an interactive Test Lab product area and excellent networking opportunities, it aims to bring the WIRED world to life. more»

Continued rapid growth of both digital and mobile advertising means that soon mobile advertising will overtake all other media to become the top advertising channel in the UK.

This interesting forecast by eMarketer may surprise you!
more»

Every year the reach of mobile expands and impacts our lives in more ways. The spread of mobile devices is changing not only consumer lifestyles, but also business strategy.

Although the industry is immense, it is not at all homogenous, with differing devices, networks, services and consumer behaviors throughout the world. This detailed report from Deloitte provides an interesting look at the current state and important trends in the global mobile industry. more»

But NFC can be used for many purposes other than payments.

Now Guiness, the world’s number one stout, has implemented a mobile marketing campaign which simply uses NFC to engage and reward customers in the pub.

Perhaps this is where NFC will finally be successful!
more»

UK consumers who use their phones for search tend to take a longer time for research compared to US-based consumers, but their purchase intent is very high, with over half reporting they had eventually made the purchase.

This and many other interesting facets of UK mobile shopping behavior are highlighted in “Path-to-Purchase” infographic.
more»

Mobile advertising spending more than doubled globally last year, with increases set to continue for the next four years until the market is worth almost $37 billion by 2016.

The latest statistics from research firm eMarketer found that ad revenues on mobile were $8.41 billion in 2012, up from the previous year’s $4.08 billion. more»

Over the past several years, the Monday following Thanksgiving has been called “Cyber Monday” in the US, as this is the day that many people start their online shopping for Christmas.

With more and more consumers preferring to use mobile for online commerce, Cyber Monday also provides a good measure of the growth of m-commerce, and 2012 proved the importance of mobile. more»

EverythingEverywhere (EE), (the UK mobile operator formed by the combination of T-Mobile and Orange) has launched the UK’s first 4G service but the initial reaction is that pricing plans may be a problem.

A survey conducted by Thinkbroadband.com found that 72% of Brits were put off 4G by the pricing that has been announced. more»

Mobile Retail is clearly one of the hottest topics in mobile marketing today, and it is changing rapidly.

Now Velti, a leading provider of mobile marketing and advertising solutions, has released a white paper, “Mobile – The Shop in you Pocket”, that looks at some consumer attitude aspects of mobile retail, and explains how retailers can take advantage of the “trusted position” they enjoy with consumers. more»

2 to 3 October, 2012
London, UK

Apps World brings together app Developers, MNOs, Marketing Managers and Tech Providers to address the challenges of delivery, development and design of apps across multiple platforms. There are lot of things about this techie world that you can know at cheapmotorhomes. more»

According to a study by marketing research company Nielsen, mobile advertising is more effective in Europe than it is in the United States.

The findings showed that owners of tablets and smartphones in Italy, Germany and the UK were more likely to make a purchase online via their PC after seeing a mobile advert than their American counterparts. more»

Vodafone Mobile Clicks is an initiative designed to accelerate innovation in the mobile internet sector across Europe. Entrants come from seven countries, including UK, Netherlands, Turkey, Portugal, Spain, Germany, and Ireland.

After the first rounds of judging, the entries have been reduced down to 7 finalists, one from each country. You can vote now for your favorite.
more»

Sao Paulo: 18 August, 2011
London: 4-5 October, 2011
Los Angeles: 17 November, 2011

The Mobile Marketing Association Forum series has become the leading global platform for brands, agencies and publishers to share their experiences and success in mobile marketing. more»

We all know that buying a new car is a major undertaking, usually including many visits to a car dealership to see the latest models available.

But what if you could see a new car and explore its features without going to a dealer?

This is exactly what this innovative Augmented Reality campaign does, enabling British car shoppers to see and play with the new Ford C Max car – in the palm of their hand! more»

It is widely known that consumers use their mobile device in a different way to their PC’s, and according to Steve Jobs they don’t use search but go to apps. However, recent data published by Mobile Commerce has given us an interesting insight into what consumers search for on their mobile device.

They have published a list of the top 100 most searched terms of 2010 on their mobile search platform. Mobile Commerce handles around 40 million searches a month, so this gives us an interesting insight into what users are looking for on the mobile handset. more»

Starbucks and UK mobile operator O2 have announced the start of a 6-month trial of O2’s new location-based mobile advertising platform.

Global cosmetics company L’Oreal will also participate in the trial.

The pilot will allow the two brands to send marketing messages to opted-in O2 subscribers when they enter certain selected locations. more»

As more and more brands get used to using mobile for marketing and CRM, the next logical step will be to move into mobile commerce.

Brandbank has conducted an in-depth survey into the attitudes and expectations of consumers around mobile commerce. They found that smartphone owners are already well advanced, but the rest of the market has a long way to go.
more»

21 to 22 September, 2010
London, UK

The latest in the ad:tech series of conferences returns to Loneon on September 21 and 22. more»

A recent study published by the IAB-UK and PricewaterhouseCoopers has showed that during 2009, total spend in the UK mobile advertising market grew by 32% to a new high of £37.6 million.

Among the specific formats of mobile advertising, mobile search increased the fastest with a 41% growth.
more»

The MMA has released its latest “Consumer Briefing” report into mobile donations in the UK, French and German markets.

The report shows that in some countries, mobile is already the most popular way for people to donate to a charity. more»

Orange have released their latest “Digital Media Index” report for April 2010.

This report looks at consumer behavior related to digital media, and in this particular edition highlights the differing usage patterns that men and women have on the Orange mobile network. more»

The Guardian iPhone app, which was released in December 2009, managed to pass the 100,000 downloads mark within 10 weeks of its launch.

This number of downloaded apps should continue to grow as there are nearly half a million Guardian readers that access the Guardian mobile site each month via an iPhone or iPod touch. more»

The IAB-UK (Internet Advertising Bureau) has released their second annual Snapshot of the UK mobile advertising market.

Based on information from over 100 experts working in agencies and advertisers, this new study shows that the UK market has made major progress over the past 12 months in areas such as development of expertise and fit with selected product categories, though it still represents a small part of the overall advertising industry. more»

Adidas knows a lot about athletes – not only professionals but also serious amateurs such as weekend marathoners.

And one thing Adidas has found through research is that marathon runners don’t achieve their goals alone – it requires a lot of support from family and friends to make their personal dreams a reality.

To promote their their sponsorship of the 2009 London Marathon, Adidas decided to use mobile technology to help the runners and spectators stay connected during the race, by providing the Mobile Marathon Tracker, and Personalized Runner Messages. more»

Mobile Applications are becoming more and more popular, and ever larger numbers of brands are coming out with their own “mobile app”.

The IAB UK recently recently worked with its members to put together a “Top 10” list of things brands and agencies should be aware of when designing mobile applications. more»

Last week at the Mobile Advertising UK Conference, a new study was presented that took an in-depth look at the progress mobile advertising is making in the UK market.

As well as looking at overall spend and comparison among media channels, the study examined consumer attitudes towards mobile marketing and found that 70% of UK consumers would give permission for mobile ads if they were in control and received some sort of incentive!
more»

Market research firm GfK has released its latest quarterly “Mobile Advertising Report“, which shows that awareness of mobile ads in the UK has dropped since the last quarter.

However, awareness continues to grow in the US, as does the breadth of mobile advertising channels. more»

The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) have just released the first independent study of the UK mobile advertising.

They found that despite the current economic crisis and the widely reported reduction in advertising, mobile ad spend actually doubled in 2008 compared to 2007.

Investment in mobile advertising grew at a faster rate than predicted as more UK brands invested in the medium due to its exceptional targeting, immediacy and return on investment. more»

The results of a recent study by Orange on consumer mobile media habits shows that mobile has now become mainstream for consumers.

The survey followed more than 2,000 mobile media users from across all UK mobile networks, and focused on consumer consumption of mobile media and attitudes towards mobile when used as a marketing channel. more»

Youth focused MVNO Blyk has partnered with Velti to launch a content service in the UK. The new service, named “On Blyk“, will be based around a messaging paradigm for content discovery rather than expecting consumers to find content by browsing. more»

Just last week we saw the true power of advertising and social communities.

In an imitation of a popular T-Mobile ad, a flashmob dance was organized on Facebook, with the result being that one of London’s biggest train stations was closed down during a busy Friday evening! See the videos of here. more»

People in London now have a new way to get information while they are out and about. BT and the City of Westminster, in conjunction with io global technologies, have launched BT MyPlace, a service which provides location targeted, sponsored services and advertising through the BT OpenZone network of wifi hotspots. more»

FirstPartner, a UK based market research firm, has released the latest version of their UK Mobile Market Map.

The map provides a 360 degree view of the mobile marketing industry, covering the essential UK facts, figures, players and trends. Download a copy here. more»

Player X, which recently was chosen to be the exclusive aggregator of mobile games for O2’s new UK portal, has signed up with off-portal mobile ad giant AdMob to help bring more traffic to the game site, and help content companies improve the effectiveness of their advertising. more»

Blyk launched their youth-oriented, ad-funded MVNO into the UK market just over a year ago with much fanfare. Since then it has generated a lot of discussion in the industry about the viability and potential success of the “Blyk Model”.

As a year has now passed, we took the opportunity to talk with Shaun Gregory, CEO of Blyk UK, to hear about their first year of operation, what they’ve learned, and to get some insight into the new products that Blyk is working on. more»

According to a report in NMA, mobile operator O2 has launched a global media sales division, known as the O2 Media Group. The purpose of the new group is to provide advertisers the ability to reach O2’s 18.7 million subscribers by placing integrated campaigns across mobile, email, online, in-store, direct and experiential channels. more»

itsmy.com just released what is probably the largest ever survey in the area of mobile social networks. More than 15,000 users took part from the US, UK, Spain, and Italy. Looking at consumer usage patterns, preferences, and statistics, this report really shows how deeply involved some consumers are with mobile social networks. more»

3UK has launched a new phone into the UK market, the INQ¹, which it calls the “world’s most advanced social networking phone”.

Features to access Facebook are integrated into the heart of the phone, as well as other communication and music services. more»

3G mobile operator 3UK has announced that it will begin offering a variety of ad-funded video content later this year. Mobix will manage the content relations and serve the video and ads, while 4th Screen Advertising will sell the advertising. more»

Recent research from the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) indicates that both clients and agencies believe that mobile advertising will become a mainstream part of marketing plans over the next 2 years. The IAB’s Mobile Council surveyed 115 agencies, media planners, creatives and advertisers to uncover the state of the mobile market, their level of understanding, perceived barriers to entry and how to plan best for the future. more»

A new survey in the UK, commissioned by Mobixell Networks, reveals that a sizable opportunity exists among the 16-34 year-old demographic to offer ad-funded mobile content via rich media services like multimedia messaging or mobile video services. Download the full survey results. more»

Ad-funded mobile content is a hot topic – many companies are now basing their business plans on the ad-funded model. The Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF) recently published a report that takes an in-depth look into the impact of ad-funded mobile entertainment (AFME) on the on-portal mobile entertainment market in the UK. Download an extract of the key findings. more»

M:Metrics has released the first set of statistics using M:Ad in the United States. The results show that online retail companies like Ebay, Glu and Electronic Arts are placing the majority of ads (39%) tracked by M:Metrics. more»

Over the past 2 years, Nike has run a number of campaigns using bluetooth technology from Hypertag to communicate with their athlete customers. In April, Nike ran a bluetooth proximity marketing campaign at the London Marathon.

more»

Honda has begun a mobile advertising campaign for this F1 season that will use advertisements running on ITV1 to bring fans to a specially created mobile site. more»

Interview with Richard Saggers
Head of Mobile Advertising

In the previous MobiAD News newsletter, we ran Part One of our interview with Richard Saggers, where he discussed Vodafone’s view of the mobile advertising opportunity, their overall strategy, plus details of key partnerships with Yahoo! and Google (if you missed Part One, you can see it HERE). This is Part Two of the interview. more»

Ford has signed a deal with Channel 4 to run ads in front of the mobile video content on the Channel 4 mobile site.

Channel 4 has added expanded their mobile site to include a range of ad-funded video content, including clips from Desperate Housewives more»

Telephia and comScore released the latest results from their study of mobile vs. PC based internet usage. The study shows the number of mobile internet users in the UK in January to be roughly 5.7 million. This is about 20% of more»

HSBC, one of the world’s largest banks, has been trialling a new kind of location based advertising in London recently. more»