eMarketing Trends|Verbal Acrobatics & Graphic Gymnastics

Now you can check in quickly, from anywhere, and monitor what is happening in your Adwords account. Google just rolled out AdWords for Mobile with a new interface for Android, iPhone, and Palm Pre devices.

AdWords for Mobile provides mobile access to your account, key alerts and statistics as well as a facility to make quick changes to your AdWords settings even while on the move.

You have to customize your experience for your mobile device. To do this you should first log in from your desktop computer and choose the parts of your account that you want to monitor closely. You are able to set up custom alerts for key account events such as when your campaing reaches a certain threshold of your daily budget or to monitor when traffic drops significantly.  You can also set “saved filters” to flag your most important keywords and campaigns.

The interface was designed to access the essentials in your account by viewing and making basic edits to campaigns and keywords. If you need access any other areas of your account then you can switch to the desktop version of AdWords through a link at the bottom of the screen.

AdWords for Mobile is now the default mobile interface for a small percentage of English language advertisers, and Google will be enabling the feature for additional advertisers and languages in the coming weeks.

To try out AdWords for Mobile immediately, simply direct your Android, iPhone, or Palm Pre to http://adwords.google.com/dashboard/Dashboard

The growth in the Mobile Industry over the last decade has made it paramount for all businesses to have Mobile Sites in order to reach this growing new target market.

Current local (South Africa) trends show that:

• There are ten million mobile Internet users in SA (Five million PC Internet users in SA)
• One in six Google searches in SA originates off a mobile device.
• In South Africa about 40 percent of mobile phone users have WAP-enabled phones.
• The top Mobile Applications currently in South Africa are: Mxit – with 15 million+ users – and Facebook.
• Mobile search and eCommerce will be a large area of growth in 2010.

In short, this indicates an importance for businesses to target mobile searchers and users of mobile applications.

Some of the best Mobile Site examples I can give include BBC, the Goal mobi site, and College Humour (N/B: “these examples obviously look better on your mobile phone – feel free to suggest your favourite mobile sites below“).

However, when creating a Mobile Site it is also imperative to build and optimise the Mobile Sites so it is user-friendly and accessible on the Mobile Web.

Mobile Design and SEO Best Practices
When designing a Mobile Site one aspect to consider is that one must understand that mobile searchers/users are different from PC searchers/users. In order to cater for Mobile users designers must:

• Provide an elegant experience by considering whether individuals possess a smart phone (for example an iPhone with fully featured web browsing) or a standard mobile phone (with stripped site features).
• Consider that phones are not used like PC’s – users are usually on the go therefore the site should be more goal oriented – Relevancy and Simplicity is key.
• Mobile designs are to conform to the new W3C standards in order to create mobile-friendly style sheets (CSS).
• Mobile Sites must be small, lightweight and fast-loading site – (< 20kb / page).
• Consider User Agent Detection –  this is another form of transcoding which takes into consideration the type of mobile phone an individual uses to search and provides more uniform browsing experience for various device types.

Once the Mobile Site has been built, Mobile SEO steps can now come into play. These include:

1.    Validating the page with the .Mobi Validator or the W3C Validator
2.    Following ‘traditional’ on-site  SEO Best Practices such as:

• Major keywords in the title tagging
• H1’s and body text
• Rich keyword Meta Titles and Descriptions
• Keyword-rich anchor text for internal links

3.    Mobile Search results tend to reflect ‘Local Search results’ – your site must be optimized for local type searches. Also submit your business info to local directories making sure your site is verified and included in sites like Google’s Local Business Center.
4.    Get the Mobile Site spidered and indexed – submit to major search engines:

• Google Sitemaps
• Yahoo! Submit Your Mobile Site

In short, the above Mobile Design and SEO factors are to be strongly considered when building a Mobile Site. These aspects help provide a solid Mobile Site foundation for your Mobile Campaign or Strategy. For further Mobile Campaign or Strategy enquiries, visit our Virtuosa website.

Little has been said about the Nexus One since Google gave the device to its employees last month for final testing, but now it is official, Nexus One is the first phone designed by Google’s own engineers and many speculate that while this is a much anticipated new arrival, it may not be a BlackBerry or iPhone killer, just yet.

Google is calling the Nexus One a super phone, obviously trying to set the device apart from the other players, saying that the Nexus One represented the next frontier in the company’s $20bn (£12.4bn) core business – selling advertising through search.

The dictionary definition of Nexus is ‘point of convergence’, simply explained as ‘a means of connection’. Nexus One is where web meets phone.

This is perhaps not earth-shattering news, but Google, like many in the industry, recognises that more and more people are accessing the web via their mobile phones rather than through their desktop or personal computers.

2010 will become more about the mobile web, and therefore companies like Google, who make their money by advertising online, is shifting paradigms. According to David B Yoffie, a professor at Harvard Business School, “This has the potential to change the economics of the internet business and to redistribute profits yet again.”

It may still be early days but Apple may have their work cut out for them to stay ahead of the game.

At the moment, the Nexus One is only available in the US but will be sold in Europe, Hong Kong and Singapore in the spring through Vodafone. Google said it hoped to add other devices and carriers for sale in the future. It won’t be available in South Africa for some time to come.

For more in-depth news and technical specifications, read Google’s new phone to protect mobile advertising base and Liveblogging The Google Nexus One Phone Launch.

1989 the year that changed the world – the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Tiananmen Square disaster, Mandela and De Klerk meet and, I suppose, most importantly for us in the digital arena the emergence of the internet – who would have thought that 20 years on we would be accessing internet sites on our mobile phones! Thought this article was very interesting.

The bright eyed bushy tailed crowd (who apparently rode bikes up a mountain early in the morning of day 2) and the red eyed party bunch (need I say more) gathered for the last day of the symposium. Admittedly, the weather was much better than the day before and after the previous day’s socializing it was almost difficult to concentrate. Read the rest of this entry »

Most marketers know that December is normally an unpredictable period as the year winds down, and the festive holiday season puts the consumers in a another mind space. This causes consumers to use the internet differently. But how different?

Read the rest of this entry »

I read an interesting article this morning and discovered that the number of mobile phone users in the world soared to over 3.3 billion by the end of 2007. Based on the report by the International Telecommunications Union, these numbers are equivalent to a penetration rate of 49 percent.

What was truly interesting to me was that Africa showed the strongest gains over the past two years and more than two thirds of all mobile subscribers were from developing countries by the end of 2007.

Mobile subscription growth stood at 39 percent annually in Africa between 2005-2007 which is “a positive trend that suggests that developing countries are catching up”, the report said.

The report further highlighted that “Mobile phones are eclipsing traditional fixed lines” and that “in Africa they account for nearly 90 percent of all telephone subscribers”.

Fascinating stuff indeed. For me, that means that 9 out of 10 people who have a phone use mobile technology to communicate. Perhaps people in developing countries use a mobile phone mainly for phoning and keeping in touch, but just think about it, this remains a huge target market for online marketers to look at.

Mobile vs. Fixed Line
When comparing the growth in the mobile sector to fixed telephone penetration, it is not surprising that fixed-line usage is stagnating (based on the report). The report shows that growth is just under 20 percent globally for the last years and has been below one percent between 2005 and 2007″.

In the fast paced world of today, we are required to be available and stay connected, 24 hours a day. More people “connect” using mobile phones, mainly because it is more affordable and it means we can indeed be more “mobile”. The end result will be that the trend is going to continue and that mobile user numbers will continue to grow.

Is Mobile the way of the future?
Well, that seems to be a no-brainer! Past reports on such trends have already shown that, so nothing new there. But, does this mean that mobile is the only medium to look at? My opinion is no, but one can certainly not overlook the fact that as more and more people are making use of mobile phones, this market is wide open.

So, are you looking at mobile solutions and mobile marketing as part of your marketing strategy for your business?

Something to think about!

For more on this and also broadband penetration in high-income and low-income countries, read the full article at iafrica.com.

What is .Mobi?
Is it a whale? Is it a mini car?

No! .Mobi (pronounced, Dot Mobi) is the all new revolutionary tool being used by mobile phone users to access a mobile version of a brand.

Do you wish you could check your mail on Yahoo! without having to go to an internet café or all the way to the office or do you wish you could scan a concert ticket for entrance to a concert without having to carry an actual ticket around with you? Wish granted! .Mobi has accomplished this task and is rapidly becoming the most inexpensive, versatile and popular way of advertising one’s brand.

Imagine being able to access an entire website with your cellphone.
Stop imagining, it’s being done as we speak!
So far Google, Microsoft, the entire Vodafone Group and Nokia have all jumped onto the .Mobi bandwagon.

Believe it or not, but South Africa is actually a forerunner in developing .Mobi sites and are currently trying to extend their services aside from being able to access a website but also being able to make internet purchases via ones cellphone!

If you want stats, let us ponder this. It was estimated that in 2006 that 986 million cellphones were sold meaning that the market is expanding exponentially. This number is being compared to the 900 million internet users as well as 1 billion television sets.
We will let you do the math.

Mobi sites are the answer to the internet via a PDA/cellphone. The DotMobi domain was launched late last year and is the answer to the frustrations that users, who have been trying to access the internet on these devices, have had over the past few years.

A DotMobi site is customised to make for easy viewing on a cellphone. The content is primarily text-based with limited use of images and animation, and the layout/navigation is simple.

Riaan Groenewald, Multimedia Solutions Operations Director, says that since the launch of the DotMobi domain in October last year, over 600 000 domains have already been registered.

According to the 3 cellphone networks in South Africa there are over 36 million registered subscribers. With the ongoing issues about the internet becoming a mass market medium due to accessibility, Mobi sites are the answer.

We, as marketers, need to create awareness of the advantages of this channel and continuously highlight the importance of lowering costs so that it does indeed become accessible to all.