... 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. 

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... users to send massive data files at a much faster speeds via their mobile devices, “practically without limitation.”

Fifth generation mobile networks (or 5th generation wireless systems) is a term used to denote the next major phase of mobile telecommunications standards beyond the current 4G/IMT-Advanced standards. 

The new technology will primarily appeal to phone-users who routinely send and receiving large amounts of data. With 5G networks, for example, Samsung claims that users will be able to send super-high-definition movie files in a matter of seconds.

The fastest wireless technology currently available – 4G or long-term evolution – has yet to be widely adopted worldwide. According to industry analysts, the next phase for the standard is likely to be a shift to “4.5G” networks.

Meantime, however, many networks still employ 3G.

Aligning itself with a target recently set by the European Union, Samsung has eyes on commercialising 5G technology by 2020.

Earlier this year the EU aannounced a plan to invest €50 million in research to deliver 5G mobile technology by 2020.

According to South Korea's Yonhap News Agency, Samsung has successfully tested its 5G network with 1Gbps speed (potentially up to 10Gbps), and aims to provide service by 2020. 

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

... 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.

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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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... Condé Nast, The Wall Street Journal and Univision presented ambitious slates of original programming to advertisers for the first time. 

Additionally, companies like Yahoo and Hulu, that already produce web content, announced greatly expanded offerings.

As a result, US viewers are being bombarded with an array of new internet programs — eleven from Yahoo, fourteen from AOL and a whopping thirty from Condé Nast, including one that will let viewers watch a Vogue editor, Hamish Bowles, as he shops around the world.

Advertisers and agencies, however, are less than enthused at the trend - expressing concern that audiences for individual shows will become even more fragmented and microscopic than they already are.

Says Group M's chief investment officer Rino Scanzoni of the new video offerings: “I don’t care how good your attention span is, I think it becomes all a blur.”

Karen Cahn, general manager of AOL’s online video arm, says the company monitors viewers' comments closely to see if they are uncomfortable with the video brand placements. “So far, so good,” she claims.

Read the original unabridged NY Times article.

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... marketers and the global search engine optimisation industry. 

The current Domain Name System, which performs a lookup service to translate user-friendly names into network addresses for locating internet resources, is restricted in practice to the use of ASCII characters, a practical limitation that set the original standard for acceptable domain names.

Internationalised domain names can only be used with applications that are specifically designed for such use; they require no changes in the infrastructure of the internet.

Speaking at the MediaPost Search Insider Summit this week, Jennifer Wolfe, president of Wolfe Domain, acknowledged that while this may seem a potential threat to search experts, marketers need to look at the millions of dollars that companies have invested and assume they're not doing it without a plan.

Grant Simmons, director of SEO and social product at The Search Agency, told the conference that he recognises the branding opportunity for companies like L'Oreal and Johnson & Johnson - but unless it's adopted by search engines, he doesn't see any change in SEO.

Half of the top hundred global brands who have applied for the new top-level domain names are paying (in aggregate) more than $350 million in fees to acquire the names.

Google alone has applied for 101 Top Level Domain [TLD] names - some of which are "open," which means they can resell them to businesses and consumers.

Microsoft has applied for eleven TLD names as closed systems. Amazon applied for 76 TLDs, each one a closed system to support their company and affiliates. "We expect Amazon to create an affiliate system," said Ms Wolfe.

TLDs will become ZIP codes or category regulators. Search engines will begin to weigh the TLD name as a category, and .com will become diluted in search results - less valuable.

According to Wolfe. "We will see some of those big social media companies like Facebook that didn't apply jump in during the next round."

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... 'I will never live a day without them'. 

Google's gizmo is a wearable computer with a head-mounted display [HMD] under development by Google's Project Glass research and development project, with the mission of producing a mass-market ubiquitous computer.

Google Glass displays information in a smartphone type hands-free format that interacts with the internet via natural language voice commands.

While the frames do not currently have lenses fitted to them, Google is considering partnering with sunglass retailers such as Ray-Ban and may also open retail stores to allow customers to try out the device.

The Explorer Edition can't be used by people who wear prescription glasses, but Google has confirmed that Glass will eventually work with frames and lenses that match the wearer's prescription.

The glasses will be modular and therefore possibly attachable to normal prescription glasses.

View GoogleGlass video.

Read the original unabridged Geekwire 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.”

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... financial markets before stock market falls.

According to the report's co-author, Helen Susannah Moat, a social scientist from University College London:  “Our results are consistent with the suggestion that Google Trends data not only reflects aspects of the current state of the economy, but may have also provided some insight into future [stock market] trends.”

Published in Scientific Report - a primary research journal from the publishers of Nature magazine - the report further suggests that Google Trends data and stock market data may reflect two subsequent stages in investors' decision-making process.

Postulates Ms Moat: “Trends to 'sell' on the financial market at lower prices may be preceded by periods of concern. During such periods of concern, people may tend to gather more information about the state of the market, ie, search on engines like Google". 

Read the full unabridged Scientific Reports 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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