Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

The amount of money that Australian banks are spending on social media strategies is the equivalent of a “rounding error” when compared to the squillions they spend on advertising, delegates at a banking and finance conference heard on Friday. But the banks understand that although there isn’t yet a credible business case for much additional investment in the area, they can’t afford not to develop a presence on sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Speaking at the FST Media Technology and Innovation conference in Sydney on Friday Michael Weeding, head of digital banking for Citibank said that “We are probably not going to have a business case at this point in time” for heavier investment in social media bank. But he reminded delegates that the same once held true for mobile phone investment.

In a very short period of time mobile banking has moved from novelty item to mainstream banking platform, and social media could well follow.

Mobile ad network Millennial Media is announcing an expansion to the Asia-Pacific region. Millennial is one of the largest remaining independent ad networks after AdMob was bought by Google and Apple acquired Quattro. There’s no doubt that many technology companies have eyed Millennial as an acquisition target, but the company has managed to remain independent despite the increased consolidation taking place in the mobile ad space.

So why Southeast Asia? Gartner forecasts that the mobile advertising industry in Asia Pacific will grow from $1.6 billion USD to $6.9B in 2015 and Millennial wants to be in a position to capitalize on this. The company is also eyeing Korea, Japan and China as other expansion areas.

In May, Bloomberg reported that Millennial was talking to bankers about an IPO, which could come in the Fall or in early 2012 and would value the company at a whopping $700 million to $1 billion (AdMob was sold to Google for $750 million). And the company is now seeing $50 million in revenue.

Energy drink brand Lucozade had teamed up with seven different British artists and the augmented reality (AR) app Aurasma, to create a new AR campaign which lets you scan cylindrical objects for exclusive content.

A number of artists including Tinie Tempah, Plan B and Calvin Harris have designed their own bottles which, when scanned, produce videos and animations featuring that particular artist.

The app achieves a first by integrating cylindrical mapping into AR, that is allowing the app to recognise the 3D surface of the bottle and augment it with video content. Once you download the app for your smartphone, pointing it at either the Plan B or Tinie Tempah exclusive bottles will showcase an animation before loading up a video of the artist. They will then direct you towards content exclusive to the AR app.

HANOVER: O2 is to introduce new services in the UK in the coming months, including a wallet application and direct-to-bill and peer-to-peer payment facilities, as the company looks to take advantage of mainstream smartphone use.

The services are already available in countries such as Germany and Kenya, and will be made available to UK customers soon, according to Matthew Key, chief executive of O2 parent company Telefónica, during his keynote at CeBIT.

"We see ourselves being an aggregator of services and payments. As a mobile business we are uniquely positioned. Telefónica across the world has 190 million customers, and we know everyone's payment history and credit references."

As of today, FB has a new privacy setting called "Instant Personalization" that shares data with non-facebook websites and it is automatically set to "Allow." Go to Account > Privacy Settings > Applications and Websites and uncheck "Allow", then repost this to your profile.

We're working closely with these partners so you can quickly connect with your friends and see relevant content on their sites. These sites personalize your experience using your public Facebook information. When you arrive on these sites, you'll see a notification from Facebook at the top of the page. You can easily opt-out of experiencing this on these sites by "No Thanks" on the blue Facebook notification on the top of partner sites.

We are a generation constantly terrified by the idea of someone, somewhere, effectively advertising to us by way of glancing at our "data" and knowing whether or not we like country music or alternative 1990s rock. But is it really so terrifying to have annoying banner ads offering deals on some product you might actually enjoy?

nterested? The backbone of Conversational Currency ™ is whatever social medium a person likes using. Where one takes it from there is the value this community provides

Amplify’d from www.conversationalcurrency.comThis community shares  tactical applications with community members on a one-to-one basis. We do not share the ‘secret sauce’ on a static website since there exists a myriad of customized solutions which can be developed using the fundamentals and vehicles being invented.Since we based all communications using the power of social media, we ask viewers to start with a very general engagement opportunity:Here we invite the world of bloggers who want to discuss, and propagate their knowledge about, and need for “Conversational Currency ™ “. A special invitation goes out to brands who can advertise their “conversations” on our site, and ultimately learn about our ‘solution’ one-on-one.Selected blogs (and particularly brand implementation plans) will be inserted into Business Week…drawing national attention and exposure to your demonstrated ability to turn ‘Conversation into Currency’…and perhaps be the 1st!!Read more at www.conversationalcurrency.com

A new way to measure word-of-mouth marketing Assessing its impact as well as its volume will help companies take better advantage of buzz. APRIL 2010 • Jacques Bughin, Jonathan Doogan, and Ole Jørgen Vetvik

Exhibit 1: Word of mouth is influential throughout the consumer decision journey. Exhibit 2: By looking at impact as well as volume, marketers can measure the effects of word-of-mouth messages more accurately.

Consumers have always valued opinions expressed directly to them. Marketers may spend millions of dollars on elaborately conceived advertising campaigns, yet often what really makes up a consumer’s mind is not only simple but also free: a word-of-mouth recommendation from a trusted source. As consumers overwhelmed by product choices tune out the ever-growing barrage of traditional marketing, word of mouth cuts through the noise quickly and effectively.Indeed, word of mouth1 is the primary factor behind 20 to 50 percent of all purchasing decisions. Its influence is greatest when consumers are buying a product for the first time or when products are relatively expensive, factors that tend to make people conduct more research, seek more opinions, and deliberate longer than they otherwise would. And its influence will probably grow: the digital revolution has amplified and accelerated its reach to the point where word of mouth is no longer an act of intimate, one-on-one communication. Today, it also operates on a one-to-many basis: product reviews are posted online and opinions disseminated through social networks. Some customers even create Web sites or blogs to praise or punish brands. Register to read this article.

Nearly one in five smartphone users are tapping into check-in services like Foursquare and Gowalla, according to a ComScore report released yesterday. A total of 16.7 million mobile-phone subscribers used location-based services on their phones in March. That amounts to about 7.1 percent of the entire population of mobile users. But among smartphone users specifically, 12.7 million checked in with such sites during the month, representing 17.6 percent of all smartphone owners, ComScore said. For the purposes of its study, ComScore included such location-based check-in services as Foursquare, Gowalla, and Facebook Places.

Compared with most smartphone owners, those who used location-based sites on their phones also proved more likely to access other types of mobile content. More than 95 percent of them used their mobile browsers or mobile apps. Almost 62 percent grabbed the news on their mobile devices. And in a stat that will make retailers happy, almost one third of the users browsed to online retail sites on their phones, while one fourth accessed online shopping guides. Users of check-in sites also got a heavier dose of advertising. Almost 40 percent of respondents said they remembered seeing an online ad during March, compared with just 27.5 percent of all smartphone users who said the same thing.

While tablet computing may in future transform the whole computer industry, it is already changing the way we look at augmented reality. And this is not only because of the big display. More and more different devices for multiple OS platforms are expected to appear on the market, equipped with advanced sensors such as high-resolution cameras. The cost of data roaming is likely to drop and considering the millions of people expected to buy such a device in the next few years, there are incentives enough for optimizing augmented reality (AR) tablet software and to start creating really useful and fascinating applications taking full advantage of the promising, new capabilities. metaio, with its junaio 2.6 release, a junaio plug-in for third party app integration, and the revised mobile AR SDK Unifeye 2.5, is well prepared and ready to go for the next generation of AR applications. If you want to learn more about mobile AR in general and on tablets, everything is summed up here: http://www.metaio.com/specials/augmented-reality-on-tablets/ And here you can find a movie with almost everything we´re working on: 3D tracking, markerless 2D tracking and image processing, virtual manuals, interactive TV, smart packaging, advertising as a service, context sensitive product visualization, AR gaming and so on. By the way: to my knowledge it´s the first AR demos running on the Android 3.0 based Xoom!

The Meaning of Being There is Related to a Specific Activation in the Brain Located in the Parahypocampus

Social Presence in Virtual World Surveys

Moderating Effects of Social Presence on Behavioral Conformation in Virtual Reality Environments: A Comparison between Social Presence and Identification

Developed for McGraw Hill Higher Education Education UK, PRACTICE Marketing is a 3D turn-based Serious Game intended to teach college kids the principles of product marketing and competition. In the game, players are able to fully experience the seven underlying principles upon which to base marketing strategy and efforts: Image, Differentiation, Repeat Business, Ease of Doing Business, Networking, Likeability, and Emotion. Gameplay You’ve been selected to manage a company’s new entry into the backpack market. Your first step in the game is to create a strong product that appeals to a specific market segment and price it appropriately.

You are upfront presented with the info you need to analyze the market, provided by market research, who has narrowed the backpack market down to five potential segments for you to consider targeting, selecting the one that looks the most promising.

Once you have selected a target market, you can use the backpack builder to design a pack that meets the needs of its particular demographic.

appending real-world purchase information to its treasure trove of online behavioral data will vastly increase the value of customers’ profiles and increase the rates Google (NSDQ: GOOG) can charge its advertisers. It will be a way for Google to increase its local presence. NFC (near-field communications) is too often equated simply with payments, but Google understands that NFC tags have broad application (working like Quick Response [QR] and other 2D barcodes do today). Google can help retailers use NFC tags for in-store promotions and check-ins, augmenting the understanding of customer behavior for ad targeting.

Numerous players—from Internet pure players to operators and retailers—are embracing the mobile/social/local combo. Unifying the online and offline worlds via mobile will create long-term market disruption. There are plenty of new opportunities opening up if you center your approach around the notion of context, trying to invent new product and services that will tie together places, brands, and consumers. Think about mobile augmented reality. At the end of the day, it is all about facilitating the discovery and understanding of information around you.

The European Union's data protection advisory body will reportedly recommend that location data about cell phone users be subject to strict privacy protections, a move that could challenge technology company practices

The panel will recommend that the location data that the mobile industry collects about users to provide location-based services and target advertising should be subject to the same protections as people's names, birthdays and other highly personal data.

d not only need consent to collect the information, but should have to delete it after a certain amount of time and keep it anonymous, according the panel.