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It might have seemed impossible before the invention and inception of social media for any ad campaign to receive a 100 per cent response rate but this is exactly what industry experts are now witnessing.

Those who are achieving success say that there is a distinct difference between digital marketing and marketing in a digital world and it is being able to tell this difference that is paying dividends for certain companies.

One of the companies who have recently experienced a 100 per cent response rate to one of their campaigns is Kimberly Clark, and their Digital Marketing Director, Eran Sion, had this to say, “Our digital campaigns are designed and tested to achieve a precise emotional reaction, and leverage crowd sourcing to reach a broader audience. Before running this, we did a trial, focusing on 5 people in my personal Facebook network. I would recommend running a trial.”

Kimberly Clark identified users who had posted online about feeling unwell and obtained their addresses from friends.  The end result was for a cost of only $5,750 exactly 100 per cent of people who received a ‘Feel Good’ care package sent out by Kleenex, owned by Kimberly Clark, to these unwell people posted a picture of it online using Facebook, in turn, generated 650,000 impressions.  The overall cost of this campaign was around one third of the cost had Kimberly Clark paid Facebook for the same number of impressions. This is the perfect example of a non-digital campaign that had great results in the digital world.

The engineering director for Google Inc. has spoken about how he wishes to see mobile internet speeds increase significantly in order to help small businesses and unlock billions of dollars in additional online advertising and e-commerce potential.  Avrind Jain pointed to the fact that slow load speeds on mobile devices often caused people to abandon purchases altogether with research showing that people who are accessing the internet via their mobile phone are more than twice as likely to abandon a page should it prove to be slow to load.

Faster mobile speeds would also equate to more ad revenue becoming available with experts saying that a speed increase of 30 per cent could lead to a 15 per cent rise in ad sales.  Already mobile advertising is expected to push past the $2.5 billion mark this year, which represents an increase of almost $1.5 billion in 2011.

Chief strategist for Akami, Lelah Manz, said, “The effort could help mobile speeds catch up with desktop rates by 2014. Mobile has to catch up.  Your shoppers are more distracted on a mobile device, and the performance is more important. This realization has just started to hit in the last six to nine months.”

This call for faster loading speeds is seeing a number of companies, Google in particular, tweaking their mobile software in a bid to give it a leading edge over competitors in what is becoming an increasingly competitive market.

Source http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/enterprise-it/strategy/Why-Google-wants-faster-mobile-internet/articleshow/12731990.cms

In a week that has seen mobile start-up Instagram sold to Facebook for $1 billion, the question is now being asked ‘why should companies need the web?’  Previously, the agreed process was that a company should establish a presence on the internet first before coming up with a version of that website in a mobile app form but with the success of Instagram, this is now being challenged.

Speaking on this subject, former Microsoft employee Georg Petshchnigg said, “For decades, the centre of computing has been the desktop, and software was modelled after the experience of using a typewriter, but technology is now more intimate and pervasive than that. We have it with us all the time, and we have to re-imagine innovative new interfaces and experiences around that.”

With a rising interest from venture capitalists who are eager to get a foothold in the mobile market the market is being pushed forward at a rapid pace.  A report from US research firm CB insights highlighted that ten per cent of investment from venture capitalists in America in last year’s fourth quarter was made with mobile apps and their parent companies, while 12 per cent of all deals were mobile-related.

With the success of Angry Birds, which started out on the iPhone before branching out in to other, more traditional gaming areas, a trend has been set.  If a company can get the mobile app ‘right,’ then it can become the first step to huge success while the web will follow later.

Being bought by Facebook for $1 billion, Instagram made the world sit up and take notice of this app that was, until Facebook got involved, used by around 30 million people.  They had managed to get that many users in only 551 days, impressive by anyone’s standards, so how did they do it?

First off, they kept their overheads low, employing only 13 people, and kept their headquarters low key rather than splashing out on fancy offices.  This allowed the company to focus on growing and improving the app.   Next, they managed to get their timing perfect to cash in on the mobile explosion.  Starting out on iPhone they moved to Android once that had reached a 50% mobile market share.  They spent more time on their app, pretty much ignoring their website and the expense and time it would take to keep that running effectively.

Perhaps one of the keys was how they kept the interface of Instagram junk-free.  Attention was paid to the aesthetics, filling it more with emotion than buttons, allowing the image to be the star of the app.  While they were at that, they did not try to force users to post their pictures to social networking sites.

Finally, they created a new data set.  Every time an Instagram user takes a photo, they record not only the image but also the date, time and location, which was perhaps one of the biggest draws for Facebook who will now be able to quantify what people are taking photographs off.

Government ministers have been accused of making an embarrassing retreat over plans to monitor internet usage, emails, and phone calls by announcing that the new bill will only appear in draft form.

The plans, which were met with widespread derision, would allow the government to take unprecedented steps when it came to accessing electronic information. These are seen by many as an abuse of civil liberties.  A petition aimed at stopping the legislation, set up and promoted by Twitter users, reached 50,000 signatories within a short space of time showing the true depth of opposition the measures faced.

Speaking about the proposals, Prime Minister David Cameron said, “This sort of data, used at the moment, through the proper processes, is absolutely vital in stopping serious crime and some of the most serious terrorist incidents that could kill people in our country, so it’s essential we get this right.”

The news that the bill would only be published in draft form was welcomed by many, including Nick Pickles speaking on behalf of civil liberty campaigners Big Brother, who said, “The fact that it is a draft bill is a significant climb down. It means that ministers will have to take some time over and contemplate this in more detail.  These proposals are going to need a lot of scrutiny and this is what the Government should have announced in the first place.”

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has said that his party will insist on guarantees being in place that will protect civil liberties.

U2’s Bono and Edge have followed up a $270 million investment in Facebook by investing in internet storage specialists Dropbox.  Dropbox, which is still considered to be in its formative years, can already claim 50 million users worldwide and was recently described by Forbes magazine as “tech’s hottest startup” in a cover story that it ran in November.

A Tweet sent by Dropbox, said, “Dropbox is excited to welcome Bono & The Edge as investors. Thanks for the support and look forward to great things!”

Dropbox is an internet based storage system that allows users to store up to 2GB of images, documents, and videos free.  Additional free storage can be obtained by recommending friends who then go on to install Dropbox’s desktop software, which offers easy access to files.  These files can then be accessed via any device with access to the internet.

Forbes magazine estimated that Dropbox profits are expected to soar in 2012, with profits reaching $240 million for 2011 even though only 4% of users avail of the higher storage rates charged on a monthly basis.

The investment represents the latest in a series of moves by U2 frontman Bono and his company, Elevation Partners, which is involved with Palm, Yelp, and Facebook.  Elevation Partners’ investment in Facebook inspired the company to move towards creating a new $1 billion investment fund that will be used to invest in more start-ups when the right targets are identified.