... an important part of the media landscape, especially as mobile-friendly "native ad formats" fuel growth in the market.

Here's an overview of some major players in the mobile advertising ecosystem:

• The lure of social media advertising is massive: As brands look across a fractured media landscape, social networks offer them an interesting proposition. Social networks have scale - enormous user bases and deep databases. They have high engagement - Americans were spending an average of 12 hours per month on social networks as of July 2012, with 18-24 year olds averaging 20 hours. And potentially, social media offers brands a uniquely captive audience for their content.
   
• Guaranteed placement is getting advertisers to pay up: Brands are paying to get their content or copy in front of a quantifiable audience, an increasingly rare feat in an era of scattered consumer attention. This desire for guaranteed attention also helps to explain social media's move away from traditional display ads — like Facebook's right-rail ads — and toward so-called "native ads" that surface in a user's stream, either as a Tweet or a Facebook post. A consensus seems to be forming around in-stream advertising as the most promising social advertising format.
• Social media advertising is set to explode: it is a young market and, so far, it represents only 1% to 10% of ad budgets for a wide majority of advertisers. There's significant opportunity for that share to grow. BIA/Kelsey recently published a study that offers one view - forecasting $11 billion of social ad spend in 2017, up from $4.7 billion last year. That estimate is large - but still seems pessimistic, because ...
   
• Increased mobile usage will be a huge driver of advertising growth: The BIA/Kelsey prediction calls for mobile to account for only $2.2 billion of that in 2017 - a 20% market share. This could easily be surpassed. Both Twitter and Facebook have passed the 50% mobile usage mark and, given the continued growth of mobile devices, it will only rise. Mobile accounted for 11% of Facebook's ad revenue last year even though it didn't release mobile ads until the tail end of the second quarter. By the fourth quarter, it was up to 23%. And now, Twitter is reporting that its mobile ad revenue regularly outpaces its desktop ad revenue. Social media advertising is therefore uniquely positioned to grab an increasing share of the fast growing mobile advertising market. 

Read the original unabridged BusinessInsider article.

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... smartphone featuring a screen that enables three-dimensional images without glasses.

Using retina-tracking technology, images on the smartphone seem to float above the screen like a hologram and appear three-dimensional at all angles. Reporting from within the Amazon bunker, staffers claim that spectacle-wearers may be able to navigate through the phone's content by using just their eyes.

Reports the WSJ: "Some elements of Amazon's hardware push have previously become public. Last year, news surfaced about Amazon developing one smartphone. And last month, The Wall Street Journal and other media outlets reported that Amazon also was developing a set-top box for streaming movies and TV shows."

As ever with the canny Bezos behemoth, there's more to this than meets the eye.

With smartphones - 3D or otherwise - Amazon could collect new data on its users via maps, phone-call tracking and app downloads, then offer users shopping recommendations. There is also the potential for new services like mobile payments.

Read the original unabridged WSJ.com article.

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... set of guidelines for using HTML5 to create and run digital advertising. 

Released earlier this week for public comment, HTML5 for DigitalAdvertising 1.0: Guidance for Ad Designers & Creative Technologists aims to provide best practices and formal ad formats for HTML5 technology.

It addresses areas such as HTML5 display ads, file and ad unit size, code compressions, in-banner video advertising, efficient ad creative packaging, and ad server compatibility. The guidelines also include an HTML5 Wiki.

Avers John Percival, senior creative technologist at PointRoll, and member of the IAB’s HTML5 Working Group: “With multiscreen advertising growing at such a continued rate and increasing in demand daily, it's mandatory that we (as an industry) demonstrate how marketers can strategically and effectively bring HTML5 ad development into the mainstream.”

The deadline for public comment on the HTML5 guidelines is June 10. Following that period, the IAB’s Ad Operations Council and Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence will evaluate comments, make any needed changes and issue a final version.

Read the original unabridged MediaPost article.

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... a product of the imagination.

But with $3.25 million in initial financing from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, change is afoot.

Mr Kaplan will join the Lear Center's director of research, Johanna Blakley, as a principal “investigator” for the new enterprise.

Kaplan spoke last week about the futility of counting page-views, “likes,” and retweets when trying to figure out whether an opinion piece, a documentary film or a television show actually moved anyone.

“Those measure how many people saw something,” he said. “That’s not the same as an outcome.”

Read the original unabridged New York Times article.

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... Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. 

Google, said Sorrell, is currently the second-largest recipient of WPP's digital dollars, billing around $2 billion for the quarter, but that it will soon overtake NewsCorp. In an interesting turn of phrase, Sir Martin described Google as “a media owner masquerading as a tech company.”

He added that at the moment AOL and Yahoo are each receiving around $400m-$500m in adspend via WPP. Facebook, despite its size and current popularity, is only around $270 million. Twitter, said Sorrell, is “much smaller.”

Comments techcrunch.com analyst Ingrid Lunden: "With a lot of interest in media spend focused on video content — TV viewing is still the most popular format for media consumption — you can see how significant YouTube is for Google’s wider strategy.

"You can also see some of the logic behind why there have been so many reports about Yahoo eyeing up an acquisition of Dailymotion, a smaller but persistent rival to YouTube."

Read the original unabridged Techcrunch.com article.

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... single big acquisition that "wouldn’t fit Bertelsmann’s risk profile”.

The company, which last year benefited from the best-selling book Fifty Shades of Grey, currently relies on Europe for 80% of its sales. Rabe, who took office at the beginning of 2012, is overhauling Bertelsmann’s portfolio with a push into music rights, education and emerging markets. 

Says Mr Rabe: “It is our clear objective to grow the company in the next couple of years. Assuming a little bit of tailwind from a recovery in Europe, we expect to grow to €17bn this year and €18bn in the next.”

Bertelsmann’s total global sales grew 4.5% to €16bn last year, Rabe added, although his forecast doesn’t include potential acquisitions.

Operating earnings before interest and taxes from continuing operations will remain at more than 10% of revenue in coming years even as the company invests in new digital products and reorganizes its legacy businesses such as printing.

Read the original unabridged Bloomberg.com article.

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... who recalled seeing the last ad remember seeing it online.

The survey conducted in December 2012 analyzes responses from US-domiciled consumers of all genders, ages, income and education levels. The study's key findings indicate that:

• Relevance remains a key challenge, and 36.5% of respondents who remembered the last ad they viewed did not remember the context.
   
• About 80% felt the last ad they saw was not relevant to them.
   
• Only 2.8% of respondents said they thought the ads they saw met their needs, either to answer a question or provide more information.
   
• The findings also reveal that only half of users ever click on online ads, while 35% click on less than five ads per month.
   
• Among online ad viewers, 75% saw the ad on their computer, while the remainder viewed the ad on their phone or tablet.

The study notes:"There are similarities between the way the US Transportation Security Administration's airport security screeners glaze over liquid-filled bottles in carry-on luggage and the banner ads that consumers searching for information never see.

Infolinks ceo Dave Zinman believes improving the 0.1% click-through rates on banner ads requires choosing nontraditional and memorable ad locations to increase the recall by consumers typically bombarded with messages.

Read the original unabridged MediaPost article.

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... low conversion rates driven by lack of timeliness and engagement. 

According to B2B blogger and marketing guru Paul Dunay, back in the mid-twentieth century new media such as radio, TV and film enabled brands and their ad agencies to dynamically demonstrate product benefits in ways unachievable by earlier static advertising.

Fundamentally, however, says Dunay: "The way we communicated never changed. We were always talking at consumers and never with them. For a long time, that was all we could do. It was all the technologies allowed. Fortunes were made by pushing ads into every conceivable media channel, trying to lure consumers into buying the advertised product. And it worked."

But with the advent of the internet era, and later the the mobile-to-app era, there is a fundamental a change in the relationship between brands and their audiences.

Almost overnight people are no longer tethered to a static terminal and consumers are empowered to interact with brands via advertising, products and packaging at the moment of their interest. No longer do they have to wait until they arrive home or log-in to the office computer. They can do it right here. Right now.

We have entered the 'Age of the Consumer', an era in which, avers Forrester Research, control has shifted from advertiser to consumer.

Behavioral studies show that when an individual seeks information about something and is able to act upon it, the conversion of that intent will be 70% more efficient than a classical push ad. It becomes even more so if marketers add the ability to engage the user in a conversation about a product in which he/she is interested or likes.

Innovative companies, like Vine and mobile marketing platform smartsy, have latched-on to this wave by creating apps and software that enable a dialogue between a brand and its audience, when and where the consumer wants.

Such technology opens a realm of near endless possibilities of content creation, while increasing conversion rates dramatically.

Evangelises blogger Dunay: "Audience participation isn’t just allowed; it’s encouraged. Hell, it’s necessary. By not only providing consumers with information in the moment of their interest, but also engaging them in conversation and empowering them to create their own content, we can drastically increase the relevancy of messaging and its authenticity."

Read the original unabridged Forbes.com article.

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... channels will seemingly vanish, sit in the background, thus compelling advertisers to focus on new formats. For example, on-demand realtime delivery and/or the ability to preposition content on a consumer's DVR.

Internet-connected TVs will also play a role. Citing a technology similar to Microsoft's Xbox Kinect controller, some experts predict TVs will acquire the ability to suggest programming by sensing a person walking into a room,

Two Cisco Systems' executives - Internet Business Solutions Group's Scott Puopolo, vp and global head of the service provider practice, and Leszek Izdebski, director of the media and entertainment group and service provider practice - recently presented a research paper on the Future of Advertising in year 2020 and beyond.

Some of their predictions may seem far-fetched, but progress is already under way.

According to the Cisco duo, branded entertainment will continue to grow, fueling the need for higher quality content. The focus will be getting consumers closer to the product.

This, according to Mr Puopolo, means bringing tactile feedback technology into the living room, smell and taste in TV advertising through new remote control apps or hardware.

Read the original unabridged MediaPost article.

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... mobile operators will generate larger profits from data traffic than voice usage.

Mobile technology will also have significant public health implications in the fight against deadly diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis. Also the ongoing battle against HIV will increasingly be aided by the greater use of mobile connectivity.

The GSMA report makes other spectacular claims.

It cites the fact that every year around 240 tonnes of food spoils during transit and in storage. But the use of mobile technology to track trucks and monitor the temperature of storage facilities could save enough food to feed 40 million people in 2017 - equivalent to the entire population of Kenya.

The GSMA also claims that the use of mobile handsets, e-readers and tablets could put 1.8 million more children into education by 2017.

Says Michael O'Hara, GSMA's chief marketing officer: "Mobile data is not just a commodity, it is becoming the lifeblood of our daily lives, society and economy, with more and more connected people and things."

The association also predicts that the UK and USA will see data revenues overtaking voice by 2014.

Argentina will reach that goal even earlier, avers the report, with that nation reaching the milestone this year, while Kenya - one of Africa's most connected countries - will hit the target in 2016.

It is not just the developing world that will benefit, says the GSMA. It estimates that by 2017 mobile health services will shave $400bn (£265m) off the OECD nations' annual healthcare bill.

Factual data only is sourced from the original attributed article. The data is then enhanced by additional research and comment.