Mobile Influences 50% Of Retail Purchases

Mobile Influences 50% of Retail Purchases

Smartphones are used by just about everyone, and they're being used to make offline buying decisions. In fact, more than 50% of all retail purchases are influenced by mobile, according to the National Retail Federation, and that's not just paid advertising. Retailers, however, are…

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On-Demand Service Urgent.ly Embeds Roadside Assistance With ParkWhiz

On-Demand Service Urgent.ly Embeds Roadside Assistance with ParkWhiz

It’s late, you’ve returned to your car after an evening ballgame to find the tire is flat. What do you do? With parking place reservation app ParkWhiz, a Chicago-based iOS and Android developer, the answer is now embedded in the same app you used to find and book the parking spot. The company has partnered with Urgent.ly, which provides roadside assistance to drivers, to offer Urgent.ly services in its app, at the touch of a button. ParkWhiz app users get immediate help and the company shares part of the revenue generated by Urgent.ly for the referral.

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The New Era of Search Has Tipped

Google has made lots of waves in tech and media worlds with last week's revelation that mobile search volume now outweighs desktop. That goes for several developed markets including the U.S. This follows recent LSA data that show mobile has…

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Payments, Screen Size and Skinny Jeans: Apple’s Local Angle

This week has been all about Apple. That’s included some decent analysis, and a whole lot of overblown adoration that “they’ve done it again.” Larger iPhone screens are great but I’m not sure they’ll fit into the skinny jean pockets of the millennial target audience.

In all seriousness as an Apple fanboy, longtime user, and industry watcher, I see implications for larger screens to jumpstart lots of cool app development. I’m bullish on what this will do for content and ad delivery, but downright skeptical about Apple Pay.

Building on our pre-launch analysis, let’s take those one at a time, putting aside the Apple Watch for another post.

Size Matters

Larger screen iPhones are important for lots of reasons. But let’s be clear that this is one of the cases where Apple isn’t leading but following. The SamDroid world is way ahead on this one. Regardless, the marketplace demands larger screens so that’s where we are.

This is also interestingly one of those times when Apple is going back on a vehemently drawn line in the sand. Few people remember Steve Jobs’ fastidious stance that 3.5 inches was the canonical sweet spot for a smartphone (size of original iPhone through the 4s).

Part of the marketplace demand for larger screens goes back to other macro factors such as better connectivity and Moore’s law-driven hardware improvements. These have converged to enable the age of social sharing through Instagram, Snapchat, etc..

Capturing and sharing multimedia via increasingly powerful optics is commonplace. So larger screens to consume that media is a natural progression that aligns. And we’ll see the app development community do some cool things to utilize a larger screen.

The Ad Angle

For the same reason, the ad ecosystem just got a lot more interesting. As we discussed in our last video roundtable, and Peter Krasilovsky’s post earlier this week, larger screens have lots of implications for ad delivery.

But importantly, this won’t just mean more real estate for larger banners. Successful ad strategies will take more of a holistic approach to delivering brand messaging in ways that are more native to a bigger screen… rather than making existing banners larger.

Read More

Payments, Screen Size and Skinny Jeans: Apple's Local Angle

This week has been all about Apple. That’s included some decent analysis, and a whole lot of overblown adoration that “they’ve done it again.” Larger iPhone screens are great but I’m not sure they’ll fit into the skinny jean pockets of the millennial target audience.

In all seriousness as an Apple fanboy, longtime user, and industry watcher, I see implications for larger screens to jumpstart lots of cool app development. I’m bullish on what this will do for content and ad delivery, but downright skeptical about Apple Pay.

Building on our pre-launch analysis, let’s take those one at a time, putting aside the Apple Watch for another post.

Size Matters

Larger screen iPhones are important for lots of reasons. But let’s be clear that this is one of the cases where Apple isn’t leading but following. The SamDroid world is way ahead on this one. Regardless, the marketplace demands larger screens so that’s where we are.

This is also interestingly one of those times when Apple is going back on a vehemently drawn line in the sand. Few people remember Steve Jobs’ fastidious stance that 3.5 inches was the canonical sweet spot for a smartphone (size of original iPhone through the 4s).

Part of the marketplace demand for larger screens goes back to other macro factors such as better connectivity and Moore’s law-driven hardware improvements. These have converged to enable the age of social sharing through Instagram, Snapchat, etc..

Capturing and sharing multimedia via increasingly powerful optics is commonplace. So larger screens to consume that media is a natural progression that aligns. And we’ll see the app development community do some cool things to utilize a larger screen.

The Ad Angle

For the same reason, the ad ecosystem just got a lot more interesting. As we discussed in our last video roundtable, and Peter Krasilovsky’s post earlier this week, larger screens have lots of implications for ad delivery.

But importantly, this won’t just mean more real estate for larger banners. Successful ad strategies will take more of a holistic approach to delivering brand messaging in ways that are more native to a bigger screen… rather than making existing banners larger.

Read More