Cannes Launches Another Award Category: Mobile Lions
The number of award categories just keeps on expanding at the Cannes International Festival of Creativity. Come next summer, agencies will have to ponder setting aside funds to enter yet another new awards section: a separate category for mobile creative work. The latest category follows the debut of an effectiveness category and a holding company award at Cannes 2011. “Mobile has been part of the Lions for some years, within other sections such as cyber and film; and a large number of winning campaigns in sections like media, design, direct and outdoor have made significant use of mobile technology,” said Cannes Lions CEO Philip Thomas in a statement. “By carving it out of the other sections, we are simply reflecting the importance of mobile in the media mix.”
Mobile Web Africa 2011 – Driving Africa’s booming mobile market
Now that Africa has been identified as one of the biggest and fastest growing mobile markets, industry leaders and experts gathered in Johannesburg for the five day Mobile Web in Africa 2011 conference to discuss, among other topics, the best way to exploit the booming industry.
Indian mobile handset sales to touch 231mn units in 2012: Gartner
The mobile handset market is expected to show steady growth through 2015 when end user sales will surpass 322mn units. Mobile device sales in India are forecast to reach 231mn units in 2012, an increase of 8.5% over 2011 sales of 213mn units, according to Gartner, Inc. The mobile handset market is expected to show steady growth through 2015 when end user sales will surpass 322mn units.
Print Publishers Cultivate Mobile Presence
85% of US and Canadian print publishers say they currently have mobile content for smartphones, e-readers, or tablet computers, representing a 12% increase from 76% in 2010, according to [download page] a study released in November 2011 by the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC). Data from “Going Mobile: How Publishers are Maturing and Monetizing Their Offerings” indicates that newspapers (88%) are the most likely to have mobile initiatives in place, followed by consumer magazines (83%) and business publications (79%).
MOBILE Internet usage in the Philippines is growing rapidly on the back of the rising popularity of smartphones, tablets and other non-computer Web-enabled devices. Mobile Internet revenues of Smart Communications, Inc. doubled from half a billion last year to P1.1 billion as of September.
China becomes the world’s largest smartphone market
It was to be expected: in the third quarter of 2011, China became the largest smartphone market in the world, ahead of the United States and Europe. China has for a long time been the world’s largest mobile phone market – and what a market! With the 1 billion mobile phone subscriptions mark to soon be broken. The country did take longer to see 3G arrive though (the Chinese government reorganised their telecom market around their three major players
Paramount shifts from branding to conversion-focused mobile strategy
LOS ANGELES – A Paramount Pictures executive that spoke at the Mobile Marketing Forum revealed that his company is moving from using mobile advertising as a branding tool to using the channel to drive actual conversion via ticket sales. Paramount uses mobile advertising in conjunction with other marketing channels for each and every movie premier. The movie studio has been in the mobile marketing space for about 4-plus years now.
Mobile Advertising Space Worth US$32B Dominated By Japan, Asia Pacific And United States
The mobile advertising market is expected to be valued at US$32 billion by the end of 2017. A number of factors are driving growth including the increased number of consumers with mobile phones, the availability of high Internet bandwidth and the increased penetration of smartphone usage. Mobile advertising is expected to expand strongly in Latin American and Asian markets.
Marketers Seek More Resources to Improve Strategies
Almost 1 in 5 marketers say the most important factor to elevating their current marketing strategy is increased resources such as staffing and funding, according to a November 2011 white paper from the e-tailing group sponsored by Bronto. Data from “Surviving the Current Marketing Mania with a Solid 2012 Plan” indicates that this is the top factor to almost 40% more respondents than the second- and third-ranked factors, customer behavior insights/CRM/data, and reporting/analytics, both at 13%. Rounding out the top 5 were SEO, search – paid, local (8%), and segmentation, targeting (8%). Digital strategies such as social (6%), mobile (5%) and email (4%) were relatively less important to the marketers surveyed.
Efficient Frontier clients currently allocate approximately 6-7% of their total online search advertising budgets to mobile search, representing almost triple the share from just one year ago, according to a November 2011 report from the Macquarie Group. Macquarie insight also predicts an even greater acceleration of this growth in the next year, with mobile phones and tablet search spending potentially accounting for 16-22% of search advertising budgets by the end of 2012.
Asia’s mobile tech-driven healthcare market seen at $7 billion
HONG KONG (Reuters) – Mobile technologies will be increasingly deployed to enable people in Asia to monitor and manage their health, with the market expected to hit $7 billion by 2017, an industry official said. In parts of Europe and the United States, diabetics can now have doctors monitor their blood sugar levels by punching daily readings into their mobile phones and doctors can provide answers to expectant mothers via short message services (SMS).
