Twitter Inc. (TWTR) In 2013 : The Complete Story [Study]

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December 30, 2013

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The global digital printing market is estimated to grow from $131.5 billion in 2013 to $187.5 billion in 2018 – a compound annual growth of 7.8%. As the technology is shifting many of the business process, traditional style of digital printing is going through a reformed version of execution. The explosive adoption of internet and technology has paved the faith of Web-To-Print and the buzz surrounding it is growing day by day.

The technology has a business opportunity on offer, worth $100 billion in the next five years and just about every printing business that’s not already offering this service to its customer wants to use this technology. Even online retailers are implementing this software to allow shoppers to personalize products they are shopping for. This technology is bolstered by a growing awareness of the internet and the fact that more people, businesses and their customers alike are willing to leverage its potential for improving their shopping experience.

Why use Web-to-Print Solutions?

If one was to put it very simply, the reason web-to-print has become so popular is that it promises something that every business wants – improved profitability. But at the heart of this technology’s popularity is the fact that it has improved the printing process by dramatically and made it more even more accessible for the customers. It’s also taken some pressure off printing service providers and allowed them to focus on better revenue generation activities.

Even in developing countries like India, the technology is growing by leaps and bounds. This business model is considered as the one of the most in-demand services in future. Consequently, Indian start-ups, the likes of printbindaas.com have amalgamated e-commerce and the web-to-print model and investors are snooping around the opportunities.

Let’s take a closer look at reasons why more businesses are using web-to-print solutions:

The Printer’s Perspective

Simplifies Print Ordering

This technology has simplified the process of ordering prints and the whole business of proofing and designing a print order. The reigns of this process are solely in the hands of the customers, which gives them a highly personalized printing solution. Customers can choose from the many templates on offer to customize their product designs before giving the print order. The printer doesn’t come into the picture at all. This is good news for the printer as he can utilize this time to explore new lines of business and improve strategic business growth.

Increases Productivity

In the good old days, a printer and a client wasted endless amounts of time working out the design of the print order, proofing and doing everything else that was part and parcel of processing a print order. As can be imagined, this was a time consuming process and was never straightforward. There was a lot of friction between the client and the printer, mistakes were made and rectified, miscommunication was rife and this adversely affected the productivity of the printer. The emergence of web-to-print means that everything is done online. The only physical process conducted is the processing of the print order and its delivery. This has improved the productivity of business by a long way, and improved productivity means increased profits.

All in all, the use of web-to-print has improved the workflow, provided great online visibility to printers and simplified client-printer transactions.

The Customers Perspective

Convenience

No long meetings with printers are required to get the prints you need and have them delivered to your home or office. All you need to do is open the printer’s website and use the web-to-print software to create your own design, proof it and give the print order. You get access to your prints quickly and conveniently from the comforts of your home or office.

Get What you Want

You get the benefits of a personalized printing experience. Your design choices are no longer limited to what the printer has on offer, but you could create your own design for the print. Most online design tools are very easy to use and allow you to come up with some amazing designs that are just what the doctor ordered for your needs. You are in charge of the kind of print solutions you get. The fate of your print solutions is in your hands and not that of the printer. Most customers make the most of this opportunity.

These are just some of the many benefits that you the customer can experience from web-to-print technology, but in order to experience them, you need to understand how this technology works.

Understanding Web-to-Print Technology

The many diverse benefits that this technology brings to the table mean, that they are good enough to satisfy your printing needs. But it’s also important that you are able to make an informed decision in this regard. So, let’s try and understand this technology a little better and some of the things it brings to the table.

An Essential Software that Must be Navigated

When you’re using this technology, you’re actually using a piece of turnkey softwares/applications, developed by companies like Design ‘N’ Buy, that have been specifically built to facilitate an online printing job. What’s more, what you will see is the front end of the software and the software is managed and your order processed from its back end, which can be accessed by the printer.

You Should Be More Aware of Aspects like Font, Color and Quality

If you’re using an online design tool to create your own print designs, you must understand that you’re not designing for the web, but for print, meaning a physical product. So, while making use of the various font choices offered by the tool, make sure that you keep this fact in mind. You need to make sure that the font, color and the images you choose will look as good on your product as they do when they’re staring at you, out of your screens.

What you need to focus your attention on is high quality prints and this is where the DPI (Dots per Inch) comes into the picture. A 300 DPI is ideally suited for all printing jobs, something that you need to keep in mind while using a web-to-print software.

There is a Real, Print Shop Behind All Such Software

Some people have this wrong belief that because they are designing their own print products, they are the be-all and end-all of the print process and there is just somebody at the end, giving an order for print and delivering them to your doorstep. Yes there is somebody at the other end and that is the printer. At the end of the day, it’s the reputation of the printer who you decide to work with that determines the quality of the print. The equation is very simple. If the printer who you choose to work with uses high quality printers, you get the benefit of high quality prints.

This is just a small overview of the web-to-print technology and some of its important aspects will help you use it better and to your advantage.

In The End..

Web-to-Print is here to stay and why not? It’s well on course to revolutionize the business of printing for both the printer and the user. As technology evolves, there will be perceptible improvements in this technology as well. This means that both the tangible and intangible returns on investment for the printer and the user will keep heading northwards for a long time to come.

Facebook Marketing: Fans Are More Likely To Buy From Previously Engaged Brands [REPORT]

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December 30, 2013

The social media titan Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) with its massive 1.189 billion user base has done pretty well as a connector between brands and their followers. People widely engage with their favorite brands in a vivid manner, due to the large number of brand fans available on the platform to discuss and share opinions. Although, more than 42% of Facebook brand followers like brand pages expect coupons or discounts, but their loyalty factor is still quite significant as they actively exchange views, place opinions, take part in contests and remain updated with upcoming products and gather information about other products from a large pool of views posted by users of the largest social media network. Brand advertisers are increasingly using the custom audience feature to re-target (on Facebook) the existing customer base due to the higher possibility of driving further business from them.

Custom Audience With Ad Creative Increases Conversion Rate By 3.87X Than Category Based Ad-Targeting!

Facebook has rolled out numerous ad options in the form of dark posts, custom audience, cookie based advertising and a whole lot more to make the brand engagement experience worthwhile for users and more promising for advertisers. According to a survey of over 100 clients managing Facebook programs with active campaigns tracking impressions, clicks, conversions and revenue between April 1 and October 31, 2013 across advertisers and agencies representing the retail, travel, B2B, Technology, Finance and Healthcare verticals by Marin software, reported a number of advertisers using the Custom Audience feature increased by 82% from Q2 to Q3, 2013.

Custom Audience is one of the most effective tools used by advertisers whenever they are looking to launch any new product or promotional offer, deals to existing customer base. Advertisers must design effective content with rich media and other ad creative strategies to gain traction of existing customers via Custom Audience and convert them into repeat customers. In the graph below we can see that Custom Audience with ad creative strategies had conversion rates 3.87X higher than category based targeting (with ad creative). Custom Audience targeting has a 14% lower CPC (cost-per-click) and 64% lower CPC (cost-per-conversion). These figures must be assimilated and utilized to re-target audiences as 49% of Facebook fans (in the U.S) like big brands out of loyalty (According to a study by Syncapse).

“Facebook advertising has become less about targeting a specific type of person and more about targeting a specific type of buyer. Custom Audiences has allowed us to retarget website visitors and customers with amazing efficiency and accuracy.” Chase Wells, Director of Performance Marketing at Webtrends, Open Universities

Dark Posts Followed By Custom Audience (With Ad Creative) Can Boost Sales Through Existing Customers!

Advertisers must wisely use the ideal combination of various ad options by Facebook to optimize investments on ads and drive more returns. Once the customers buy certain products, brand advertisers must focus on collecting their feedback or drive an ad campaign to check satisfaction levels via Dark Posts or unpublished posts, based on the results of the unpublished posts, proper ad creative strategies could be designed and an appropriate audience must be targeted via the Custom Audience feature.

If a newbie buyer at Flipkart orders items from 4-5 different categories, Dark Posts must be sent to check on which category item was most satisfactory to the customer. Based on the result, the customer’s contact id must be included while launching the Custom Audience ad-campaign for that particular category. This will help in optimizing the ad spent and produce better returns for advertisers. More than 50% of the AdAge 100 use Custom Audiences in their campaigns to re-target their existing customers as they are well acquainted with brand names and other features, and might opt to engage again with the brand.

Users who have totally stopped visiting the website after the first visit can be tracked using the cookie based ad-targeting method, FBX and they can be consistently reminded via the Custom Audience ad campaigns. Advertisers must effectively frame plans to utilize the user data gathered to target their friends and close peers as there are likely chances of communication pertaining to brand experience between customers and their friend circles.

Source: Marin Software

Blackberry Ltd. (BBRY) Metamorphosing Into A Giant or Fading Into History ?

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Anshul Srivastava

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December 30, 2013

Nearly a year back people, including me, were writing posts on chances of Blackberry Ltd. (NASDAQ:BBRY) (formerly known as RIM) striking back and gaining it’s market back from the likes of Apple and Samsung. There were high hopes from the soon to be launched BB 10 Operating system and BB 10 Smartphones. Alas a name change and newly launched Smartphones and OS couldn’t help the Waterloo based Smartphone maker.

The recent Q3 reports for Blackberry were quite disappointing, even the change of CEO from Thorsten Heins to John S. Chen couldn’t turn the tides for the company. Revenues for the company were down by 24% on Q-O-Q basis and by 56% Y-O-Y basis. Results would have been more dismal if the $4.4 billion losses were not supported by $4.6 billion charges arising from the restructuring. Blackberry’s share in the world of Smartphone market fell to 1.5% (Source: Yahoo News). While Blackberry is no longer counted among the top 10 Smartphone makers, the number of users in its eco-system fell to number 4, behind Windows OS. Chinese Smartphone makers – the likes of Huawei and ZTE have leapfrogged Blackberry in Smartphone shipments.

It is not as if Blackberry has not been trying to salvage back both its position and reputation. According to a numbers of rumours, Blackberry tried re-shuffling their top management by replacing Thorsten Heins with John S.Chen. After replacing the CEO, the company also reshuffled it’s CFO, COO and CMO in a bid to rejuvenate the company. But that also appears not to be working.

Blackberry’s current decline of fortunes has made it a perfect case for investment bankers and financial institutions. Number of acquisitions and merger options were floated in the market for Blackberry. But none of them saw the light of the day.

In September this year Toronto based investor and former board member of Blackberry, Prem Watsa signed a letter of intent for acquiring the telecommunication company for $4.7 billion. But the deal did not work out and by the end of October, it was clear that Blackberry was still on sale. On the side, there was another attempt by private equity firm Cerberus, Qualcomm and Goldman Sachs Group but those also didn’t materialise.On November 6, Prem Watsa who is still bullish on Blackberry announced another deal which infused a cash of $1 billion into the company coffers, pulling away the ‘For-Sale’ sign and making corporate vultures call foul.

On December 20, Blackberry announced a major policy change, in a 5 year deal with Taiwanese manufacturer Foxconn to jointly make and design the new BB phones. This deal means that Blackberry would be exiting from making Smartphones and will be more focused on software technology. Another important outcome of this deal is that Blackberry would be more focused on the emerging markets and not the high end developed markets. So in short it would no longer be competing with Apple or Samsung, but it will be competing with Chinese manufacturers
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Blackberry, after washing its hands off its hardware section, would focus more on corporate business. The company is also bullish on its BBM messaging service and intends to capture the messaging and communication market. But the problem is that BBM is a later entrant in Android and iOS market which already has many well established competitors like Whatsapp and Viber. Blackberry is trying to introduce features like BBM Voice, BBM Channels and BBM Voice notes. If these features work well, there would be no stopping Blackberry. These features would establish a foundation for new revenue streams for Blackberry. The only catch for Blackberry is that if these features don’t click, Blackberry would have a crueler ending then that of Nokia.

Although, the future of Blackberry is still debatable, people have started taking sides. Michael Lazaridis, co-founder of Blackberry, sold off his shares on Christmas eve , bringing down his share to 4.99 %.While on other hand Toronto based investor Prem Watsa is still bullish on Blackberry.

However, the new CEO of the company looks optimistic despite all the losses and in less than a year it would be clear if Blackberry would die or whether it would metamorphose into a new communication giant.

Tell Us Your New Year Resolution And Take Away $250 [ Giveaway ]

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December 30, 2013

The new year is just around the corner and most of us are already in a party mood, waiting to welcome the first day of the year with a bang. Everybody, out there is expecting that the year 2014 will bring them luck, prosperity and success in their personal and professional lives. Every passing year most of us also make a resolution to reform old habits and achieve new goals in new year. But how long one is able to sustain with his new commitment depends on the nature of resolution and determination of the person.

One of the most popular new year resolution that every leader, entrepreneur and successful person makes is that they don’t whine. And here is why : 90% of people you tell your problem to are least bothered about it, the rest 10% are glad to know you have them.

At the same time, we also hear many hilarious resolutions that people make every year. Few of the most entertaining ones are:

I will change my Username to Password and Password to Username for all of my online accounts.

I will never blabber on phone.

I will not wear make up this year (Female)

But considering the enormous popularity and explosive growth of social media, the funniest new year resolution could be:

I will not log into Facebook for an entire year.

Today we are asking our readers – “What is your resolution for 2014?” It could be funny, inspiring or proactive. We are going to select the 10 best resolutions among all entries and give away gift vouchers worth $25 to each of the 10 winners from some of the top E-Stores.

Please follow the mandatory steps, outlined in the widget below, to ensure your valid participation. The giveaway will end on January 15, 2014 at 12:00 PM and the list of winners will be released on January 16, 2014. The winners will be notified via Facebook.

So, hurry up, and tell us your resolution now!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Apple, Facebook, Google And More : Top 10 Tech Reports You Missed This Week [23 Dec – 29 Dec]

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December 29, 2013

Another week has come to an end and we are back with the top reports, activities, happenings and debates of the final concluding week of 2013. While Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) topped the list of enterprise tablets, the NewsFeed section emerged as the most effective section on Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) for marketers. Search giant Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) is slowly turning out – to be evil – for SEO professionals out there, while the Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart is being questioned on the recent investments and is piling up losses.

Brand marketers on Facebook must burn more advertising dollars on Boost Post than Side Bar Ads to ensure higher returns on investment (ROI). NewsFeed Ads on Facebook drive 44X higher CTR and 5X higher conversion than right hand side ads. Read More

Looking for a tablet that compliments your business needs? Here is the list of top 5 tablets for the enterprises – Apple iPad and Google Nexus 10 leave Samsung Tab 10.1 behind. Read More

Nearly 37.3% of the world’s population is on the internet now. But do you know what activities they are indulged in? And how the best internet performers are utilizing their internet time for optimum results? This post highlights activities that occur every 60 minutes on internet. Read More

What makes internet shoppers click on the Buy Now button on e-stores? The visual presentation holds the key! Nearly 92% of people make a decision to buy a product based on the visual factor associated with social media brand posts. Read More

Mobile advertisers in India get a better response from mobile website focused campaigns than mobile apps. A latest trend report claims that – in Q3, 2013, 84% of mobile ad impressions were recorded on mobile websites compared to 16% on mobile apps. Feature phone led mobile ad impressions lead the market with a 62% market share against 35% by Smartphones. Read More

Are you strategizing your online marketing campaigns that are based on organic traffic from Google? Think again! A new report highlights why Google is slowly drawing the curtains on Keywords responsible for sending traffic to your website. Does Google aim to burn your pockets for traffic? Read More

Indian e-commerce major Flipkart rocked the investment industry by securing the biggest round of funding in India. But the recent exposure of a $45 million loss, which the company has suffered in FY2012 has put a big question mark on its future scalability. This has triggered a debate – Is Flipkart running out of breath? Read More

Are companies really being sold to social media presence and effectiveness? This report highlights that 45% of companies having 1 billion+ valuation and have 50+ employees managing social media activities. 87% of this staff is responsible for marketing and branding companies on social channels. Read More

In Q4, 2013, various reports stated that teens in the U.K. and the young population in the U.S. have had enough of Facebook. A few other reports challenged Facebook’s sustainability in the future, due to the unmanaged growth of Facebook – Is Facebook doomed to die or will they stand the heat ? Read More

The global leader in e-commerce industry – Amazon, has recently announced that the company sold 426 items each second during the recent holiday season. Check this out for more – Read More

Is Facebook Inc. (FB) Doomed To Die Or Will They Stand The Heat? [STUDY]

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December 28, 2013

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2013 was marked as a historic year for the social media industry with many crucial events taking place, like the social media titan Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) surpassing the epic revenue mark of $2 billion in Q3, 2013, the micro-blogging site Twitter Inc. (NYSE:TWTR) making a dream IPO debut with its share price shooting 73% higher on day-1 from the initial price of $26 (Currently, the share price is trading more than double the IPO price), Snapchat confidently rejecting pricey offer of Facebook and Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) due to its potential growth prospects and a whole lot more. The social media titan Facebook has seen 2013 as a year with a lot of hiccups – After 9+ years of constant efforts in grabbing 1.189 billion active users, they finally started collecting hefty revenues from advertisers, they even fared well in their undiscovered mobile product (Mobile Facebook), but at the same time steered the competition away from rival niche sites (Pinterest, Tumblr and Twitter), messenger apps (WeChat, WhatsApp, Viber and Line) and attracted a large number of teens, shifting to alternate platforms due to privacy and other issues.

Is Facebook Losing Its Charm Or Is The Competition From Niche Sites Too Much To Bear?

Although, this year was quite eventful (positively) for many networking sites in terms of revenue growth, stock prices and acquisition offers, still, it marked the start of a POSSIBLE decline of a major giant like Facebook. Many analysts are drawing speculations around the possible end of the social media giant in the next 8-10 years. Mark Zuckerberg’s prediction of exponential rise in sharing of stories by people in the future is hardly helping Facebook. Story-sharing is undoubtedly rising at a booming rate, but on platforms other than Facebook. If we compare engagement rate of Facebook in terms of likes and shares, both have registered a scintillating rise by 67% and 94% respectively in the last 1 year (Facebook Likes increased from 2.7 billion in May 2012 to 4.5 billion in May 2013 & Facebook Shares increased from 2.45 billion in August 2012 to 4.75 billion in May 2013). But there are a lot of other niche sites which have grown at a much faster rate than Facebook and are clinching the type of sharing and interaction which the social media giant (Facebook) would have loved to own, with its vivid range of products.

According to Facebook PMD Gigya, Facebook accounted for 41% of all social sharing in Q3 of 2013, a significant drop of 9% (from 50%) compared to Q2 of 2013. People prefer niche sites which provide a better experience and an in-depth knowledge related to their purpose of site visit. (Twitter – for news, LinkedIn Corp. (NYSE:LNKD) – for professional networking, Pinterest- brand engagement, messenger apps – personal interaction.

Facebook privacy is one of the prime concerns for teens worldwide, according to an article by Business insider, Facebook during its Q3 report release had reported that there has been a considerable drop in teenage active user base. A survey of younger teens in the U.K, outlined the fact that the presence of parents or elderly people from whom teens wish to hide, have all crowded on to the Facebook platform to keep a watch and remain connected with their siblings, hence teens don’t find it to be a platform worth hanging, due to lack of privacy. Teens prefer interacting with their friends via messaging apps and blogs on Tumblr or Twitter.

In an article on Entrepreneur.com, Jay Yarow said that – Facebook is fundamentally a broken product which is collapsing under its own weight. The rise of dedicated mobile sharing apps has created a grave threat to Facebook. Not just that, the amount of spam has increased considerably in the last one year. The amount of spam on YouTube and Facebook combined in comparison with other sites is in ratio 100:1. Spammers often use the personal data of users by posting spam links which users click unknowingly. Facebook contains highest number of phishing attacks and personally identifiable information.

Niche Sites Are Growing Popular!

Niche sites are growing famous as they consist in-depth details and requirements of a particular type or purpose with which the users visit the website. For example, LinkedIn is mainly for professional networking and serious business related discussions, hence job seekers and businessmen prefer using the network for serious discussions. Knowledge seekers and speakers raise their opinions and questions on Quora and other discussion platforms where users present are of similar interest groups.

Pinterest, although has a mere 70 million users, nearly 80% of its overall content is shared content (in the form of re-pins), which is the main essence (sharing) of any social networking site. People love engaging with their favorite brands on the Pinterest platform, nearly 92% of people claimed that their holiday shopping became less stressful due to Pinterest. Initiatives like Holidays giving guide, Holiday Gifts feed, Related Pins, soothing images of pin-boards have really attracted people worldwide to discuss and engage with people with similar interest areas about their experience, opinion and exchange ideas via images.

Although, Facebook revised its news feed algorithm to promote news media publishing firms higher in ranking, it is hardly a close match to Twitter in terms of viral spreading of hottest breaking news to nooks and corners of the planet. People across the globe post more than 5700 tweets/sec and especially during television hours, more than 263 million tweets were composed by the U.S twitter users alone.

Instagram with its attractive vintage images has attracted more than 150 million users worldwide and successfully replenished stranger-to-stranger social connector arena via photos. Photo image lovers are increasingly shifting their focus on Instagram. Yahoo Inc.’s (NASDAQ:YHOO) Tumblr has managed to create buzz amongst the teens in developed states due to better privacy compared to Facebook.

Unable To Withstand Competition From Messenger Apps?

If we consider person-to-person or person-to-group chat, messenger apps like WhatsApp, WeChat, Viber, Line and Nimbuzz have revolutionized the personal interaction front. WhatsApp (300+ million), WeChat (400 million), Line (260 million ), Viber (200 million), Nimbuzz (150 million) and other messaging apps have successfully stolen the thunder from Facebook and grabbed over a 1.3 billion user-base till now. WhatsApp, WeChat and other apps are easy to install and they have a vast collection of emoticons, smileys, videos and audio messaging feature, they consume little data for communication and moreover they are all ad-free platforms. Hence, teens are increasingly getting attracted towards messenger apps more than social media sites.

Measures Taken By Facebook To Cope Up With The Users’ And Advertisers’ Related Issues – Did They Actually Work?

Facebook has initiated crucial moves in answering sophisticated demands of advertisers by introducing specific ad targeting options based on location, age, sex, based on browsing history (cookie based ad targeting), custom audience based on contact details of consumer base and a lot more. Facebook even introduced dark posts to help advertisers test their posts before publishing on their brand page, they also improved analytics insights of ad success reports. Even in the mobile section Facebook successfully revised their mobile technology and increased referral traffic to websites by a whopping 253%, and overall referral traffic skyrocketed by 170%, according to shareaholic. Facebook also revamped its news feed to promote more relevant articles to users based on their engagement activity.

Above mentioned measures are undoubtedly vital, but they have backfired on Facebook in many ways. Although we say that people do love to interact with their brands on Facebook but very few of them visit the site for the same purpose, people seldom love interacting with cheeky and over the top entertaining ads, a majority of their time goes in uploading their photos, counting likes, shares, stalking others’ pictures, and status updates. The news feed revamp has created a fear amongst advertisers regarding the ranking for their paid ads. Another major concern for Facebook is UVR factor (User base Versus Revenue Factor) – Advertisers from developed states (the U.S and Canada) are spending in bulk and they account for nearly 46% of Facebook’s revenue, whereas the active user-base tally from these states is just 16.7%. Hence, this factor is likely to cause hindrance to advertising investment from brand marketers in future.

Conclusion

A social networking site having over 1 billion active users, which consumes 15.8% of total minutes spent on the internet, is not easy to tackle or bring down. Somewhere down the line, maybe within a decade or so, Facebook might face – doomsday. The competition and trend prevailing is out claiming the fact that users are looking for a CHANGE. Down the line in 9-10 years, the social media titan might vanish from the list of top networking sites unless they come with a earth shattering move to bring back the lost user-base and attract new ones.

Lastly, one important point which we have observed in the recent past is that web users around the globe are frequently switching to different networking platforms. Especially, whenever the social media sites start monetizing their hard-earned efforts of gathering users and providing them innovative ways to connect with people worldwide. Not just Facebook, every social media site must work on the fact to balance between monetizing initiatives and user experience. Else no social media site might sustain longer than a decade.

Mobile Ad Market In India For Q3, 2013 : Mobile Websites Win Over Apps, Apple Doesn’t Exists!

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Neeraj M

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December 27, 2013

Smartphone shipment is estimated to reach 1 billion in 2014 while sales of feature phone are dipping. That’s the global phenomenon but in India the scenario is apparently the exact opposite. According to the latest report from InMobi on Mobile Advertising Market Q3, 2013, Smartphone users are still confined to old school device usage and mobile website is predominantly the main adopted mechanism to access the internet.

Smartphone shipments in India grew to 12.8 million in Q3, 2013 though, the overall ad impressions in the Smartphone market dived to 35.4%, registering a negative growth of 2.9% compared to Q2, 2013. Tablet and connected devices performed fairly well in comparison as they contributed 1.8% of total ad impressions in India on mobile devices. Surprisingly, feature phone emerges as the biggest gainer in mobile ad impression market despite the fact that sales of Smartphone leapfrogged feature phones for the first time ever in history. 62.8% of total mobile ad impressions in India during Q3, 2013 originated through feature phones – a 3.1% improvement in its market share was observed compared to an earlier quarter.

In most countries mobile apps (Smartphone + tablet) are recording an astounding exposure and adoption, mobile users in India are far from joining the global bandwagon. Nearly 84% of ad impressions in India were recorded through mobile websites as compared to a mere 16% on mobile apps. The finding further strengthened the claim that the mobile app market in India is still at a nascent stage which is forcing Indian app developers to focus on developing countries.

Due to the widespread lead of feature phones in mobile ad impression, Nokia and Samsung have emerged as the leading manufacturers that delivered the maximum number of mobile ad impression in Q3, 2013 in India. While Nokia handsets contributed 34% to total mobile ad impressions in India, Samsung almost equalled Nokia. The 4% mobile ad market share of homegrown Micromax depicts that the company is able to poach only the price conscious first-time Smartphone users who are yet to open up to mobile internet and its usage.

While distributing ad impressions based upon mobile OS, the Nokia OS emerged as the favorite with 26.4%, beating Android’s 25.7% market share in Q3, 2013. Smartphone OS from Google, Android is pacing up to catch Nokia in overall mobile ad impressions race to become the top OS in a market, largely driven by feature phones.

Apple is yet to find a sizable share in India, be it Smartphones, tablet or mobile advertisement in India. Despite of offering a higher CPC, CPM and RevShare to developers, the iPhone and the iPad are failing to fascinate Indian mobile users in large numbers.

The above insights depict the mobile ad market trend in India, which is based upon millions of mobile ad campaigns that run on the InMobi network during Q3, 2013.

Source: InMobi

Amazon Inc. (AMZN) Recorded Epic Sales Figure Of 426 Items Per Second On Cyber Monday! [REPORT]

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December 27, 2013

This year’s holiday shopping season witnessed some of the biggest sales days for top brands worldwide. Customers widely followed couch commerce, as the retail brands had provided all possible ideal deals and offers to drive online sales, which increased by 18% compared to last year (on Black Friday). More than 66 million Americans opted for online shopping via various mobile devices and desktop. As mentioned by BGR, PayPal reported that 16% of all purchases processed via well-known online payment services were registered from mobile devices (Smartphones and tablets). Interestingly, 1 in 10 e-commerce dollars is spent using a Smartphone or a tablet and m-commerce growth is outpacing traditional e-commerce by 200%.

Ron Josey, an analyst at JMP Securities Inc. in New York, said in an interview- “The results thus far from an e-commerce perspective have been very strong — certainly strong relative to brick-and-mortar stores. This is the first holiday season where mobile is absolutely having its mark on overall retail sales, whether that’s from a smartphone or a tablet. It’s not going away.”

Major online stores like E-Bay Inc. (NASDAQ:EBAY) and Amazon Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) recorded some of the year’s largest shopping days, successfully attracting shopaholics to sit back at home and shop rather than visiting brick and mortar stores. Amazon has recently covered the entire e-commerce news section of all major publication firms due to record may day button response time of 9 seconds, booming sales figures, Amazon Drone, latest version of Amazon Kindles, Washington post acquisition and a lot more.

Amazon Announced Sales Of Record 36.8 Million Items On Cyber Monday!

Amazon is undoubtedly attracting a majority of online shoppers worldwide using a variety of attractive offers and deals. It announced sales of a whopping 36.8 million items on Cyber Monday which meant 426 items per second, a majority of which were Kindle e-readers and Kindle Fire tablets. Amazon Prime is one of the major reasons behind robust sales figure and revenue flow for the e-commerce giant, as Amazon Prime members shop on an average $1340 per year compared to non-prime shoppers’ spent of $650/year.

“Amazon Prime membership continues to grow, and we now have tens of millions of members worldwide. They benefit from all-you-can-eat free two-day shipping on millions of eligible items and our members have a voracious appetite. We are extremely grateful to our customers around the world and wish everyone the very best for the coming year.” said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com.

This holiday season which is expected to better the estimated sales mark of $78.7 billion (According to Forrester) is swaying in favor of online stores due to increasing usage of Smartphones and tablets, followed by lucrative deals offered by retailers, specifically to online shoppers or social media brand fans. Retail brands started releasing offers and deals very much prior to the actual holiday shopping days. According to Baynote, Amazon recently saw 42,000,000 mobile monthly unique visitors with conversion rates of 13.5%. Amazon created several milestones this holiday shopping season, details of which are listed in the press release below.

Here is the link to complete PR form Amazon: Amazon Press Release

92.6% Of Shoppers Make Their Buying Decisions Based On Visual Factors Associated With Social Media Brand Posts! [Infographic]

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December 26, 2013

Usage of rich media content like images, videos, infographics is on a steady rise, as marketers and content makers are trying to convey messages in more convincing ways and increase engagement rates. Social media titan, Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) recently introduced video ads, thumbnail images were made wider and bigger thereby saving the users’ efforts of clicking the image and traversing to different browsing pages for a magnified view. Micro-blogging site Twitter Inc. (NYSE:TWTR) also introduced visual tweets which facilitate viewing of images and videos links well within the tweet. Niche networking sites like Pinterest and Instagram are increasingly gaining in popularity due to soothing and attractive images and videos posted by users across the globe. Usage of images is vital to gain more attention and traffic to brand websites.

Well-known free marketing tips provider SMW (Social Marketing Writing) had compiled interesting facts, figures and tips pertaining to usage of images in social media brand posts. A few key findings are listed below.

Nearly 92.6% of shoppers make their buying decisions based on the visual factor associated with social media posts.
About 65% of all people are visual learners. Hence, it is vital to have a significant amount of visual factor in the social media brand posts.
Photos on Facebook get 53% more likes than an average post and visual tweets on Twitter receive 150% more re-tweets.
Pinterest, a photo sharing website worth $3.8 billion has more than 70 million users and it has more than 80% of shared content on its site (Re-pins). Users consider it as sticky platform and spend hours together, due to the attractive image content on the site.
Another fast-growing photo sharing app Instagram has over 150 million users who actively post photos and generate engagement in form of comments and likes.
Light tall images with multi-dominant colors and 50% saturation are most popular on Pinterest, whereas Instagram, which is known for sharing of images with vintage look, low saturated, high textured images with single dominant color, is most engaging for users.
Nearly 70% of Pinterest users are women and 58% of Facebook users are men. About 64% of Google+ users and 54% of YouTube users are male. Hence brand marketers must effectively utilize the relevant platform based on their target audience.
Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram and Twitter are dominated by users in the age group of 18-29 years. Whereas Pinterest has more users in the adult age group under 50.
Cooking, Nutrition, Food and Fitness are among the topics most searched on Facebook, whereas tech and social media are the top most searches on Twitter.
Marketers must focus on involving more of infographics quotes, humorous cartoons and run contests based on images, as they are more engaging for users.
Blog posts, links within the post and web pages must be accompanied with quality images to increase traffic to websites.
Almost 85% of the reason, people decide to buy something is the color, hence one must make use of attractive and appealing colors like red, orange and royal blue.

Source: Social Marketing Writing

Amazing Social Media Facts 2013: Of All Minutes Spent On The Internet, 15.8% Is Spent On Facebook Inc. (FB), Every 8 Seconds, A New User Signs Up On G+!

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December 26, 2013

The social media industry saw an exuberant growth in 2013 in terms of revenue, acquisition, user-base, features and a lot more. Social media sites have changed the lives of many and have helped them easily connect to the outside world. Progressive social media sites which were in talks this year are – The social media titan Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:FB), micro-blogging specialist and historic IPO debutant Twitter Inc. (NYSE:TWTR), the largest professional networking website LinkedIn Corp (NYSE:LNKD), search giant Google Inc.’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) social networking arm Google Plus, the Pin board style photo sharing website Pinterest, the largest photo sharing app Instagram, Vine, Snapchat and others. Social media which was once considered as an upcoming trend and followed by only teens or very niche users is now a daily go to website for more than 1.5 billion people across the globe.

Interesting Facts About Social Media!

Top internet marketing service provider Nowsourcing, has compiled interesting facts and figures of the social media arena which occurred in the last 12 months. Few note worthy ones are listed below.

World’s largest micro-blogging site Twitter recorded a dream IPO debut and broke all records, by marking a 169% increase (currently trading at $69.96) from its initially set share price of $26.

The San Francisco based 140 character service has over 232 million monthly active users of which more than half (59%) are actively tweeting users, whereas the rest just browse through interesting tweets.

Twitter also included images and videos within its tweets which is likely to gain 150% more re-tweets. Users on an average spend 170 minutes per month on Twitter.

Twitter’s video sharing app, Vine videos has more than 4X chances of the video being viewed than a branded video. Currently, Vine has over 40 million users worldwide.

Social media giant, Facebook crossed revenue marks of 2 billion in Q3 of 2013 and has over 1.189 billion monthly active users on the site. Nearly 95% of them log into their accounts daily.

Of all minutes spent on the internet, 15.8% are spent on Facebook, mainly due to its improved adaptability on the mobile platform, which has led to an increase in active mobile users’ count, up to 874 million or 73.5% of total MAUs.

World’s largest professional networking site, LinkedIn has more than 259 million users on their site, of which 40% pay for LinkedIn Premium. LinkedIn had recently revamped its design for iPad and introduced LinkedIn Intro.

Search giant Google’s social networking wing Google Plus had set a new milestone by adding 25,000 new users every day, which means a new sign up is registered every 8 seconds.

Initiatives like YouTube comment revamp, Google City experts program and others have contributed to increase its user-base count.

LinkedIn acquired SlideShare.net for $119 million, which accounts for 30% of social media traffic. SlideShare is increasingly being adopted by marketers for advertising their brand.

Well-known messaging app, Snapchat turned down an acquisition offer of $4 billion and $3 billion from Google and Facebook respectively. As the networking platform is slowly developing or rather shifting towards messenger apps, both the tech giants realized the need for smart messaging services (result of failure in acquisition – Instagram Direct).

One of the fastest growing social media platforms, Instagram, recorded more than 35 million #Selfies Post this year.

Pin board style photo sharing website of over 70 million users, Pinterest’s most followed board is L.L. Bean’s WOODLAND CREATURES with 4,689,706 followers.

Pinterest recorded a 41% share in traffic to e-commerce sites and an average of $140-$180 per shopper, whereas Facebook drove 37% of traffic to e-commerce websites and registered an average shopping budget of $60-$80.

Usage of infographics by brand marketers, content analysts and media publishing firms is on the rise. It received engagement levels (in the form of Likes) which were 4X more than presentations and 23X more than documents on SlideShare.

Via AllTwitter

Social Media Staffing: 45% Of $1 Billion+ Companies Have 50+ Employees, 98% Of Retail Firms Use Marketing And PR To Shape Social Programs! [REPORT]

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December 26, 2013

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Social media staffing is one of the most important aspects for any progressive business firm. More than 1357% increment was observed in the demand for social media professionals in the last 3 years. Companies are increasingly investing on social media activities and hiring expertise to provide prolific online coverage across various dominant networking sites to their fan base. Close to 45% of 1 billion+ companies have 50+ employees for monitoring social media activities. Lack of know-how (infancy stage), fast-changing trends/results on social networking sites/ad campaigns and lack of highly knowledgeable social media experts are increasingly preventing business firms from achieving desired results. More than 85% of marketing professionals claim to have learnt the latest digital marketing techniques by on-job experience.

Nearly 27% Of Surveyed Companies Have 50+ Employees Managing Social Media Activities!

Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) owned Wild Fire partnered with Ad Age and conducted the largest survey of its kind in which more than 500 enterprise marketing managers and executives were asked about their approach to social marketing and discovered certain key facts and figures. More than 27% of respondents reported that they have engaged more than 50 employees to manage their social media activities. Businesses are increasingly showcasing their presence on various social media websites as their user base or followers are likely to pertain discussions or expect brand updates on various networking sites (both famous and lesser-known ones).

About 45% of companies with over $1 billion+ valuation have engaged over 50 employees for their social programs. Social media activities require a fair amount of investment in hiring professionals with better acquaintance and decision-making skills. Social media is a highly fluctuating marketing method and its frequency of change is not easy to grasp. Most of the social media professionals are unable to decide the amount of time, investment and possible ROI from a networking site’s certain advertising options/methods while running ad campaigns.

Involvement Of Marketing And PR Departments Is Crucial!

Although, firms are stressing on dedicated social media teams to meet and greet their customers in an innovative way through various ad formats or activities on different social media sites, but the involvement of other teams like marketing, PR, customer service, sales, legal and production management in aiding the social media teams with data and suggestions is a must. Nearly 98% of retail companies use PR and marketing to shape social media programs of their firm. Marketing and PR team are more aware of various online and traditional marketing strategies. Hence, their suggestions and data points can prove to be crucial for social media teams in framing their advertising activities.

About 48% of tech companies stress on the involvement of the sales teams for designing social media programs, as they have a better idea of how consumers react to a sales pitch on a different platform. They can assist social media teams in framing informative and engaging content, according to the type of users on a particular networking site. Analysis of sales, report/data on a periodic basis via different networking platforms can help social media teams in allotting their marketing investment for different social media platforms.

Customer service support is quite vital, as most of the users these days prefer raising queries and complaints on social media platforms. Nearly 53% of Twitter Inc. (NYSE:TWTR) users expect response within 1Hr for brand queries. About 38.1% of companies involved customer service departments for framing social media strategies for efficient management of followers. This figure is likely to rise as users are increasingly placing queries on a brand’s page or account, due to better chances of receiving quick response as many followers view the same. Legal teams must also be involved to evoke any warnings or alert messages pertaining to copyrights, patents and other issues on social media sites.

About 50.6% of all companies use in-house and external agencies for managing their social media activities. Close to 65.5% of $1 billion+ companies use external agencies and in-house resources for managing social media brand accounts. Social media is at an infancy stage and very few external agencies that have dug in deep-rooted facts, related to it are specialized and able to manage social media activities. External agency support is required for a growing business firm until their own dedicated team is able to catch up with the changing trends and make key decisions to drive anticipated results.

CPG (Consumer Packaged Goods) Firms Have The Highest Social Media Marketing Budgets! Tech Firms Invest Less On Social Media Activities.

Nearly 45% of Consumer Packaged Goods Firms (CPG) invest more than 5% of their marketing budget on social media programs. Businesses which are of B2C type are observed to have spent more on social media marketing, as it is the place where their customers are. Comparatively, firms of B2B type, invest less on social media marketing, 80% of tech firms invest less than 5% of their marketing budget on social media programs.

If we compare the retail section, about 58.3% invest 1-5% of their marketing budgets on social media and about 16.7% invest 5-10% on interacting with customers on networking sites. In media and entertainment sections, close to 53.2% of respondents were found to invest 1-5% of marketing investments on social media and 20.7% invested about 6-10%.

Social media engagement is quite vital and bound to increase in future, as consumers are spending more and more time on various social media platforms. Social media sites like Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:FB), Twitter, LinkedIn Corp. (NYSE:LNKD) and Pinterest are driving a significant percentage of referral traffic to social media sites.

Facebook’s share of referral traffic to brand websites skyrocketed by 170% recently, and it drove about 60% of shopping traffic to retail brands during the holiday shopping season. Pinterest, with more than 80% of shared content by 70 million active users on the site, has taken the e-commerce arena by storm and drives an AOV (Average value order per session) of $199.16. LinkedIn drives about 64% of referral traffic to corporate websites.

Source: Wildfire app

Top 5 Tablets Of 2013 For Enterprise: Apple iPad Air, Google Nexus 10 Rule !

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December 25, 2013

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Before we jump directly to the list of Top 5 Tablets of 2013 For The Enterprise, it’s important for us to understand why the world (as well as vendors) is going crazy to own a tablet device. It is well-known that tablets are gaining immense popularity these days. And why not? They’re extremely convenient for computing. It’s estimated that by 2017 tablet shipments will peak to 386 million annually and Android powered tablets will control more than 50% of the total tablet market. It’s no wonder that tablets are steadily surpassing PCs in terms of sales and large-screen tablets are slowly but surely taking a bite out of the laptop market. According to the latest rumours, Apple is considering to replace the 11-inch MacBook Air with a 12.9-inch iPad Pro, which could be launched by October next year.

Tablets And The Enterprise

In the days gone by, PCs were considered the only practical choice for the enterprise. The corporate world has made extensive use of personal computers, but rarely ever considered the prospects of supplementing the use of PCs with something that could be more convenient, especially in terms of mobility.

Ever since Apple came out with the iPad in the year 2010, tablets have been steadily gaining popularity across sectors. Even in the corporate sector, tablets are now being used more than ever before, and for a variety of purposes.

Top 5 Tablets Of 2013 For Enterprise

It has been observed that the enterprise is warming up to the idea of using tablets for work. This accounts for a steady increase in tablet deployment in enterprises, in the past year. Good Technology has discovered that about 27 percent of the total mobile activations in the enterprise are from tablets, and this figure is steadily on the rise.

Having said that, there’s one thing you should know. Only a few tablets can be beneficial to the enterprise. This is why it is important for you to have a closer look at what each tablet has to offer, before buying one. Last week we showcased the list of Top 5 Android Tablets 2013 and today we are going to have an in-depth look at the Top 5 Enterprise tablets for 2013.

The Apple iPad Air

Apple is the obvious trendsetter when it comes to tablets. When Apple launched its first iPad in the year 2010, people never imagined that this device could be as beneficial for the enterprise as it is today. The iPad Air is one of the recent launches by Apple and comes loaded with the latest version of Apple’s operating system, the iOS 7. The 9.7-inch display of the iPad Air makes it rather convenient for extensive hours of viewing.

Whether you need to browse online or read text, the iPad Air is an apt choice. The Air weighs just a single pound, which makes it convenient to carry around. The iPad Air functions on the new Apple A7 ARM. The 16 GB Wi-Fi variant of the iPad Air tablet is price tagged with $499 (Rs. 35,900) while the 3G version with same storage is priced at $629 (Rs. 44,900).

Apple iPad Mini With Retina Display

The 7.9-inch Apple iPad Mini with Retina Display is an impressive new launch by the fruit-logo company. The famed Retina Display is one of the major highlights of this device. Even though it is considerably smaller in size than the iPad Air, it offers excellent screen clarity. The iPad Mini comes with a pixel-density of 326 pixels-per-inch that makes it ideal for long hours of usage.

The weight of this device is just 0.73 pounds, which makes it lighter than the iPad Air. Running on the latest Apple A7 ARM, the iPad Mini is definitely in the list of tablets that are ideally suited for the enterprise.

The iPad Mini tablet with Retina display price starts with $399 for the Wi-Fi only version.

Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 – 2014 Edition

As the name suggests, this tablet comes with an impressive 10.1-inch display and excellent multitasking benefits. The new Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 (2014) tablet has a stylus, which makes it very easy for corporate users to quickly write something down. This is one of the many features that make the Note 10.1 stand out from the other tablets in the market.

What is also beneficial for the enterprise is the fact that you can do a lot more with the stylus than the device offers. You can add notes to a screenshot of what you see, and you can also access tools rather easily with it.

The fact that you can write on the screen and then have the handwriting converted into a contact entry is also commendable. On the flip side, the Galaxy Note 10.1 tablet price burns quite a deep hole in people’s pocket.

Google Nexus 10

The 10-inch display of the Google Nexus 10 makes for convenient viewing and so does its rubberized back, that feels rather snug when you hold it. It runs on the latest Android 4.2, making it an ideal choice for anyone who doesn’t want to go in for a much costlier device, such as an iPad.

The Nexus 10 has been made available from Google, making it beneficial for those who are already using many Google services. Google’s Cloud Services are steadily gaining popularity among the masses, making the Nexus 10 an ideal choice for those who want to avail of these services.

Cloud-based programs are the biggest selling point for the Nexus 10, making it a good choice for the enterprise. The company has price tagged the device with $399.

Asus Transformer Pad Infinity

This tablet by Asus might not be grabbing as many eyeballs as the latest of Samsung’s and Apple’s tablets, but it’s definitely a good option for the enterprise. One of the biggest benefits of the Transformer Pad is the fact that it can be connected to a physical keyboard. This makes it highly beneficial for corporate users who need to type a good deal of text.

The Asus Transformer Pad comes with a powerful quad-core processor and has a sturdy metal rear. Its 2560×1600 pixel IGZO IPS screen is really sharp, making it apt for long hours of viewing.

Tablets Are Here To Stay, In The Enterprise

Going by the increasing demand for mobile computing devices in the corporate world, it seems like tablets are here to stay. They give corporate users the chance to research and store information on the go. The iPad is by far the most popular choice for the enterprise.

However, given the rise of various other tech companies such as Samsung and Asus, it seems that the enterprise will have many more options to choose from, in the very near future.

Email Marketing : A Majority Of Promotional Mails Were Sent Between 7-9 AM On Thanksgiving Day! [Infographic]

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December 24, 2013