Editors' Blog | Journalism.co.uk » mobile advertising

US newspaper apps adopt iCircular smartphone coupons

Sarah Marshall — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 10:25:20 +0000

Associated Press has teamed up with 40 newspapers in the US to roll out advertising on the papers’ phone apps and the mobile versions of their websites, according to paidContent.

The rollout of iCircular, a coupon system which focuses on driving customers into their local retail stores, begins today (19 September).

This post on paidContent states:

The iCircular feature will be found within newspaper mobile apps on the iPhone. The feature will be available on other formats, such as Google’s Android, later on. It’s HTM5-based, so that will also be available on newspapers’ web and mobile wap sites and ultimately ease iCircular’s transfer to other operating systems. The app will be situated within a special “deals” section on each of the newspapers’ apps and mobile sites.

“It’s essentially an app within an app,” said Mary Junck, chairman of AP’s board of directors’ revenue committee and CEO of Lee Enterprises. “We didn’t want to create an app separate from the newspapers. We wanted something that would be as integrated into the newspapers as a Sunday circular is in the print editions.”

There is more on iCircular in this AP press release published in February.

Similar Posts:

Ofcom report: 30 stats on smartphones and internet use

Sarah Marshall — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 12:26:51 +0000

Ofcom today (4 August) released its TV, radio, broadband, telecoms and mobile industries report, noting significant changes over the “digital decade” since 2001.

Here is the 341 page Communications Market Report boiled down to a list of 30 facts and figures that are relevant to publishers.

Smartphones

1. More than a quarter of adults (27 per cent) own a smartphone;

2. Almost half of teenagers (47 per cent) own a smartphone;

3. Nine out of 10 people (91 per cent) own a mobile phone;

4. Three in 10 mobile phones are smartphones;

5. Most people with smartphones (59 per cent) acquired their device in the past year.

Internet use

6. More than a quarter of people use their mobile phones for internet access. In the first quarter (Q1) of 2011, 28 per cent of UK adults claimed to do so;

7. Those aged 16-24 are more than 10 times more likely to go online via a mobile than those aged 55+;

8. More than three quarters (76 per cent) of homes are now connected to the internet;

9. For the first time household internet take-up (78 per cent) exceeded computer ownership (77 per cent) as a small proportion of households went online using mobile phones only;

10. More than two-thirds (67 per cent) of households have a fixed broadband connection and 17 per cent have a mobile broadband (dongle) connection. In Q1 2011, 26 per cent of over-75s had home internet access, as did 55 per cent of 64-74 year-olds;

11. Consumers use a wide range of devices to access the internet at home. In 2010, 69 per cent said they accessed the internet at home via a laptop or PC, 31 per cent via a mobile phone;

12. Wifi routers were used by 75 per cent of broadband using households in Q1 2011;

13. More than half of all UK households are passed by super-fast broadband;

14. Google has more than three times the user base of any other search engine;

15. The leading blogging site is Google’s Blogger, which reached 8.2 million users in April 2011.

Facebook and other social networking

16. Social networking accounts for more than a fifth of all time spent on the internet;

17. People spend more than five times as much time on Facebook than on any other site;

18. More than 90 per cent of social networking time is spent on Facebook;

19. The most popular claimed use of the internet on mobile phones was social networking services (used by 57 per cent of mobile phone internet users);

20. Mobile users of Facebook spent an average of 5.6 hours on the site in December 2010 (11 minutes a day);

21. In Q1 2011, 46 per cent of UK adults claimed to use social networking services on a home internet connection. There are signs that the growth of social networking may be reaching saturation point: total time spent on social networking sites was just 1.3 per cent higher in April 2011 than in April 2010.

Smartphone brands

22. The Apple iPhone is the most popular brand of smartphone, but BlackBerry handsets are a favourite choice among younger consumers;

23. Apple’s iPhone has a 32 per cent share among adults. This is the brand of choice among ABC1s (37 per cent) and is even higher among ABs alone (44 per cent). But BlackBerry handsets have also taken a significant share of the market (24 per cent) and are particularly popular among younger adults and teens (37 per cent each).

Advertising and commercial

24. More than a quarter of all UK advertising spend is on the internet. Advertising spend on the internet grew by 16 per cent in 2010, to more than £4 billion, accounting for 26 per cent of total advertising spend in the UK, marginally ahead of television;

25. Mobile advertising increased by 121 per cent in 2010 to reach £83 million;

26. In 2010, the mobile advertising market was only 2 per cent the size of the internet ad market. However, driven by increasing use of internet services on mobile phones, together with more sophisticated business models (for example, fully or partially advertising-funded mobile applications), mobile advertising revenue more than doubled during 2010. Search-based advertising increased by the greatest amount (172 per cent) and increased its share of mobile advertising from 54 per cent to 66 per cent;

27. Nearly three-quarters of internet users shop online. Visitors to coupon and reward sites increased by 25 per cent in the year to April 2011, when nearly 40 per cent of internet users visited at least one such site.

Apps

28. Just under half (47 per cent) of adult smartphone users have ever downloaded an app, with one in five (20 per cent) doing so regularly;

29. Regular apps downloaders are skewed male and age 25-34. Just over half (54 per cent) of apps downloaders have paid for an app – with their mean average maximum spend on a single app being £3 – £3.99;

30. Apps downloading is higher among teens than adults; around two-thirds (63 per cent) of teen smartphone users have ever downloaded an app, with one in four (28 per cent) doing so regularly. Six in ten (60 per cent) have paid for an app. The average maximum amount of spend among teens is £3.70 and the median is £3 – £3.99.

See a further 10 facts on mobile media.

All graphs taken from the Ofcom report.Similar Posts:

FT.com: Online consumers will accept ads for free content, says survey

Laura Oliver — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 08:15:18 +0000

Study by KPMG suggests UK consumers will watch online or mobile advertising if they are given free content in return.

Full story at this link…Similar Posts:

Andrew Bagguley hired as consultant for Guardian mobile drive

Laura Oliver — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 15:04:47 +0000

Former head of mobile strategy for News International (NI), Andrew Bagguley has been hired as a consultant for Guardian News&Media (GNM), as the title begins its move into the mobile market.

Bagguley left NI in August following a reorganisation of the publisher’s digital arm. He helped The Sun and News of the World launch mobile websites and implement QR codes for mobile advertising.

After two years at NI Bagguley has just started at GNM, a spokeswoman for the group confirmed to Journalism.co.uk.

“We want to benefit from his experience launching mobile for News International so he’ll be working closely with our in house teams to formulate our plans,” she said.

GNM currently offers news alerts via text message and a version of Guardian.co.uk for PDA, SmartPhone and BlackBerry devices.Similar Posts:

WAN Amsterdam (audio): Mobile is not emerging: it’s here and we know how to monetise it, say speakers at Digital Revenue Goldmine

Judith Townend — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 06:42:55 +0000

A range of mobile experts at the WAN World Digital Publishing Conference gave a more optimistic picture than at the AOP summit earlier this month, where speakers, including ITV’s head of mobile, said that we are still waiting for the year of mobile.

But in Amsterdam, just a few weeks later, that sentiment was turned on its head. That next year will be the year of mobile is what people have said each year for five years, said Ilicco Elia, head of mobile for Reuters. No, ‘it’s here’, he told the assembled range of newspaper experts at the World Digital Publishing Conference 2008.

Where as Elia once was employed in ‘emerging media’ for Reuters, he now very much part of the mainstream product: “mobile has since emerged,” he said.

Elia certainly objected to one of Martha Stone’s slides during her presentation on online media, which said ‘mobile advertising to become a real business in a few years’. ‘My boss will shoot me, if he sees that’ he said. Elia’s been telling him that is already the case for a while; it is a real business.

While Elia stressed that he did not think “you should be going into mobile to make a lot of money immediately.” He said, “you can make more and more money slowly, slowly. Integrate into the rest of your products and it will come.”

His presentation touched on examples where Reuters have successfully monetized mobile: in the IBM ‘Stop Talking, Start Doing’ campaign (a slogan that should be applied to mobile, Elia said); by using Nokia phone cameras on for fast and effective reporting, and for widgets on iGoogle.

To think about search engine optimisation (SEO) is “a complete and utter given,” he said.
“You have to do it – SEO and SE marketing – and it is a cheap way to send people to your site,” he said.

The other mobile speakers sharing the stage, Jorma Härknönen, the senior vice president at MTV Media in Finland, responsible for internet and consumer businesses said were of similar opinion and Fredrik Oscarson, the founder and VP new business director for Mobiento, a Sweden based mobile marketing agency, were of similar opinion.

“Give it five years time, and I think people will choose to surf news on the mobile, because the mobile will have functionality [e.g GPS] that the internet doesn’t,” Fredrik Oscarson told Journalism.co.uk.

A short interview with Oscarson can be listened to here. He talks about mobile content for newspapers and different ways of advertising on mobile.

Similar Posts:

WAN Amsterdam: Mobile advertising to become a real business in a few years…

Judith Townend — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 14:42:15 +0000

Plenty more blog action to come as I file back from Digital Revenue Goldmine, WAN’s 3rd World Digital Publishing Conference. In the meantime, here’s a nice pic from Martha Stone’s (Director, Shaping the Future of the Newspaper, at WAN) talk which looked at US advertising trends. We’re currently in the monetizing mobile session – hope lots of productive hints will come out of that.

Similar Posts:

Sun’s mobile barcodes attract 11,000 users

Laura Oliver — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 12:50:49 +0000

The Sun’s mobile barcode service, which allow users to scan barcodes in the paper to access extra information on their mobiles, has received 11,000 subscribers, according to a report by Mobile Today.

The ‘quick response’ (QR) technology requires users to download software onto their mobiles from The Sun’s site – though Nokia handsets have this pre-installed.

“There is an educational process that needs to be done. In the next few months we’re looking to do another pull-out [supplement in The Sun] to further inform people on how to use QR codes,” Ian Samuel, group head of mobile advertising for News International, says in the article. Similar Posts: