Website Magazine just published some predictions of how mobile marketing will be an increasingly big factor in advertising. The most interesting opportunities for brands come from the closer integration between mobile devices and everything else electronic. For example, you may have started to notice TV ads that incorporate QR codes  where smartphone users scan the QR codes to get more information. Or brands that offer their own mobile app with built in loyalty programs where users can unlock deals by scanning QR codes, rewards and coupons, or by using their mobile device to unlock GPS based deals when visiting the store.

As the New Year begins, resolutions and predictions are out in full-force, and many observers are expecting the biggest year yet for mobile advertising. Below are a few predictions from global content delivery network Mirror Image Internet that may help your online and/or mobile advertising plans.

• Advertisers will use HyLoMo (hyper-local mobile) technology to offer consumers more engaging advertising options. The advertising options will be directly relevant to consumers, based on device type and user behavior, and will include interactive coupons and games.
• Interactive TVs will be an important part of an advertiser’s marketing strategy. Because consumers will have the ability to make purchases and interact with ads from their living rooms.
• Mobile devices like smartphones and tablets will interact more with home devices. And, therefore, will provide advertisers with new avenues to promote and sell their services. This will result in a shift of marketing dollars to online mediums because advertisers will rely on connected devices to reach target audiences.
• More consumers will use smart devices in real-time to find deals while they’re out shopping. This will result in advertisers taking advantage of geolocation detection to reach customers closer to the point of purchase. This will directly impact the way marketers and brick-and-mortar stores interact with consumers. 
• The growth of online videos will put a strain on websites. According to ComScore, U.S. Internet users watched an average of 20.5 hours of video online in November 2011, a total of 40.9 billion videos – more than 20 billion more videos than in November 2010. With the growth of this number in 2012, there will be an increased strain on websites, which will lead TV networks and video providers to look for new services that can deliver rich content faster and remain competitive.

From the press release:

This group is more passionate about social issues like energy (36% more than the 35 plus online population), climate change (48% more) and animal rights (24% more). However, in general they are 15% – 25% less likely to make purchase decisions based on their issues of importance. Instead they look to products for external validation, meaning they buy products that convey and reward their success and personal achievement. When compared to the 35 plus online population, 18 – 34 year olds are more likely to purchase based on the following brand attributes: innovation, looks, popularity and prestige. In fact, they are five times more likely than their elders to purchase a product that is viewed as prestigious, and over twice as likely to buy a popular product or a product that is aesthetically appealing.

Similar to the older generation they do buy products based on value, function and quality, however these products also need to fulfill their image conscious desires. Brands need to strike a balance between messaging a product’s value while also highlighting product attributes that are perceived to enhance a consumer’s image and prestige. However, while they do not initially seek products that advertise the issues that are important to them, once a product meets the value or image balance they are looking for, they will pay more for that product.  Examples of these are companies that contribute a certain percent of their revenue to rebuilding a devastated area or feeding the hungry.

“Resonate’s research reveals a tremendous amount of insight on this particular demographic, which is traditionally difficult to pin down. This group is focused on quality products that also exhibit their success to others,” said Bryan Gernert, CEO of Resonate. “In order to effectively engage 18 – 34 year-olds, marketers must understand the values and attitudes that drive their purchase decisions and develop the right messaging and ads to connect with them. Resonate not only knows what influences these consumers purchase decisions, we also know where to reach the various sub segments of this group online.”

Understanding the importance of message specific advertising based on the various product strength as well as consumer values and attitudes will help brand marketers engage 18-34 year old consumers more effectively.

Recommendations for marketers include:

Many Gen-Yers are taking the trend towards placing all TV content online for granted, and perhaps in the larger strategic sense it makes perfect sense for advertising industry and broadcasters to team up in order to take advantage of the Internets capacity to deliver more targeted advertising content. However, robust business models for incorporating profile driven advertising for TV shows do not really exist yet, and the jury is still out on if this translates into buyer behavior that would ultimately generate more revenue. In the meantime we are witnessing a retrenchment of sorts:

According to an article in the NY times today, AT&T, Comcast, DirecTV, Time Warner Cable and Verizon are among the companies exploring a subscribers-only approach to online TV.

Broadcasters “went out and did deals to put content on broadband without a whole lot of thought about the long-term financial model,” said Jeffrey L. Bewkes, chief executive of Time Warner and a principal supporter of the new subscriber-only Web video plan. “If people aren’t subscribing to the programming, you probably shouldn’t put it online, because then half of the financial support goes away. That isn’t good. It hasn’t been good for the newspaper industry.”

Image by JB Photo via Flickr

While a younger web-savy generation is thinking about concepts like trading their google searches and twitter activity to advertisers, in exchange for fewer and more targeted ads, the mechanics for this do not exist yet, and the aggregation platforms (like HULU and Boxee) that could deliver such business models are viewed with deep suspicion by network executives.

A friend today reminded my that old business models are easily destroyed, and die far more quickly than new and successful ones are born.

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• Some Online Shows Could Go Subscription-Only (nytimes.com)

All seriousness aside:  Why use technology in such a limited way?

Let’s discriminate more broadly and democratically:  Why not dynamically display different ads based on how much you weigh, for example “Hungry Jack” TV dinners for the underweight, school supplies for those under 40lbs,  funeral services special offers for those over 275lbs etc.?

Or how about adding one of the new facial recognition enabled cameras to detect a person’s hair color and outfit and suggest makeovers, hair-styling products, shoes and the like, complete with photo-shopped before and after “mock up” for the entertainment of those “unlucky” enough not to get a seat at the bus stop?

Bus Ad Shames You Into Joining a Gym by Showing Everyone Your Weight

Technorati Tags: advertising, interactive media

I think we could all use help in moving forward with the meta projects in our life.

Marketing veteran Cindy Gallop and software developer Wendell Davis are on a quest to make the world a better place, with a crowdsourcing project to motivate people to do big things by taking small bites. Their theory: Small, good intentions can bring about great leaps.

Gallop is the former global marketing chief and U.S. chairman for the BBH marketing behemoth that ran campaigns for Levi’s, Axe Body Spray and other brands. She’s joining with former Splice and Zooomr CEO Davis (pictured) to accomplish this lofty task one piece at a time. They’ll encourage corporations to work with the customers they seek, as the community tackles a user-generated database of large and small causes.

Their unlaunched site, IfWeRantheWorld.com, should succeed in giving online activism some sorely-needed teeth. Rather than raising awareness, the site is set up to convert intent into action, to get things done. As a side effect, it could reinvent advertising as a transparent interaction between corporations and individuals.

“The single largest pool of untapped resource in this world is human good intentions that never translate into action,” said Gallop, who founded the company with Davis two years ago after digital guru Esther Dyson introduced them. Gallop says current do-gooder networks make it too hard to find achievable, concrete tasks that fit one’s skill set, time and budget — and that offer instant gratification.

“For a large amount of the world, doing good is fundamentally very, very boring,” explained Gallop. “If you go to the homepage of something like DoSomething.org, or any one of the many [like it], there is an instant yawn factor -– ‘I know this is really good stuff, I should be doing it, but I’m half asleep already.”

“There is no Google of action,” she added.

IfWeRantheWorld.com breaks even the largest goodwill projects (“feed Darfur”) down into discrete tasks, which it distributes to members through a commercially supported, socially networked environment. When people have the urge to act on something that irritates them about the world, they can actually do something. Their plan (more below) not only impressed us, but also Dyson, who said it will create “a liquidity of goodness.” Former Google executive Katie Jacobs Stanton, who joined the Obama administration as “director of citizen participation,” heard about the plan from Gallop at the TED conference last month.

Here’s how it works. A simple, Google-like search box on the site will greet first-time visitors with the partially-completed sentence, “If I ran the world I would….” Their entries join a database of action platforms, which platform originators and community members break down into discrete tasks — irreducible atoms of action. Members complete these tasks, assign them to friends, offer kudos for jobs well done and offer advice to various action platforms. Completed tasks and kudos appear on your profile page, which lists everything you’ve done — a little different for most people than everything you say you support.

“I deplore Facebook causes,” said Gallop. “I absolutely don’t deplore the people behind them and what they’re trying to do, but all too often, they allow people to affiliate -– not to act, but to affiliate.” She and Davis believe their site’s reality-based user profiles will lead to merit-based online dating, real reputation building and other phenomena not found on other social networks. On IfWeRantheWorld, it’s not enough to claim that your awareness has been raised — you’ll have to prove it.

An example of an action platform would be something like “plant a garden to feed the local homeless.” One person might secure the site, another might convince a local nursery to donate seeds, someone else might know a graphic designer with the time and inclination to create promotional leaflets, another participant could print those, while volunteers plant, harvest and distribute crops — and so on. These tasks appear will in a zoomable timeline with photos, videos and blog-style updates, putting each step into context so individuals can see the effect they’ve had.

There’s no shortage of sites dedicated to online activism, but this one lets individuals contribute time, ingenuity and other resources with greater efficiency, while exerting a sliding level of control. Davis and Gallop studied World of Warcraft to create a structure in which a rotating cast of leaders might direct a given project at different stages — the same way WOW teams self-organize around different people, depending on how their areas of expertise stack up to the task at hand.

Many in the digital generation will prefer this to writing a check, dropping it in the mail and assuming someone somewhere has put it to good use.

Davis and Gallop hope to make money on this humanitarian enterprise — and why not? Corporations will participate in the system for an annual fee ($200 to $10,000, depending on their size), in order to build action platforms or encourage their employees to help out with certain platforms.

Commercially, the site’s special sauce is an ability to match corporations and causes. If Coca-Cola wants to target 18- to 25-year old males, it could use the site to determine which action platforms that demographic supports, and lend financial or employee support. This would let it interact with a targeted audience in a positive way, with relative transparency — no greenwashing allowed.

Or, they could offer product giveaways as task completion incentives that double as a marketing technique. “Coca-Cola’s Consumer Social Responsibility agenda is ‘bring fresh water to the world,’” explained Gallop. “Coca-Cola might say, ‘for this period of time, we’re going to reward everybody working on this agenda above a certain level activity with Coca-Cola points.’ The cause wins, because it galvanizes action, people win because they get something of value for doing something they were doing anyway, and the brand wins, because you’re bringing people into the brand franchise.”

If We Ran
th
e World would let corporations demonstrate verifiable social responsibility while reaching a public that has grown increasingly resistant to traditional strains of marketing. “It’s really about bringing individuals and businesses together on a completely level playing field,” said Gallop, “where both are judged by one thing and one thing only, which is, ‘What are you doing?’” Gallop calls this “action branding,” and says it will work as well for corporations that want to improve their reputations as it will for individuals looking to define themselves and impress potential mates.

Rarely — if ever — has an idea managed so neatly to fuse the do-gooder instinct that appears when an individual is frustrated by a disagreeable reality, companies’ corporate social-responsibility and marketing budgets, and worthy causes.

Soon, we’ll find out if it works. Gallop and Davis explained the site to me at length, showing off several well-thought-out wireframe mock-ups. They’re seeking individuals and corporations willing to fund the site’s launch in return for charter member status.

Once they’ve funded the site’s launch, Gallop and Davis say they’ll use web 2.0 to propagate it: A Twitter account (@IWRTW) will let people participate without ever going to the main site, SMS messages will assign tasks to friends and monitor action platforms, a Facebook widget will display members’ profile information and contain a fully-functional version of the main IWRTW site and mobile apps (for iPhone, Android and others) will encapsulate the site while adding a local component. If you have an extra 45 minutes to spare, you might shake your phone for a list of micro-actions in your immediate area.

The founders of If We Ran the World have each found success in their previous ventures. If this action-oriented, accountable, commercially viable operation gets off the ground, it’s not hard to see how it could make the world a quantifiably better place.