Mobile

FORT LAUDERDALE — Google’s YouTube announced last month it would switch from Flash to powering its video player in HTML5 by default. But the video site wasn’t the only property to have gone in that direction. The New York Times went to HTML5-first a few years ago now, out of a “toolbox” that has been […]

LAS VEGAS — Networks technology vendor Ericsson has a conception of the media world in five years’ time. “The Networked Society… our vision for the year 2020 – everything that can benefit from connection to the internet will indeed will be connected,” Ericsson content delivery marketing head Lisa Skelton tells Beet.TV. “Of those 50bn connected devices, 15bn will, at […]

LONDON — Mobile video heralds a chance for advertisers to reach consumers who may appear to be distracted or in the outdoors – but who are actually highly engaged and watching TV, according to Weather Channel international yield and programmatic Daniel Young. “It’s personal,” Young tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “They’re watching it not only […]

In the age of smart glass everywhere, what’s the difference between a TV and a phone anymore? Comcast Cable wants to give its subscribers value by offering them content from their home TV on devices out of home. In this video interview, the company’s video services SVP and GM Matt Strauss tells Beet.TV how the […]

LONDON — Apple’s latest, larger smartphone will ignite the market for mobile video – but content has to fit the size of the device and the time of consumers who use it, says an ad exec. “The demand is obviously there,” ZenithOptimeda Group strategy director Chris de Cruz tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “The ways […]

COLOGNE — The Weather Channel hopes its recent deal to dethrone Yahoo as the supplier of weather data to Apple’s iOS operating system will lead to more downloads for its own suite of apps – and more eyeballs on the ads it’s selling programmatically inside those apps. “We’ve been preloaded on the Nokia Lumia for […]

COLOGNE — At the recent DMEXCO advertising conference, mobile real-time bidding exchange Nexage told Beet.TV mobile media were “still in the early ages”. Today, the company took a step forward, by agreeing to be acquired by mobile ad group Millennial Media  for $107.5 million. Announcing the deal, which MediaPost also reported, Millennial says it hopes to “create […]

CANNES, France — Ads on a mobile phone have to pull off the twin feats of being both smaller and more engaging than their desktop forebears. MediaCom’s global media head Ben Phillips tells Beet.TV mobile ad formats have moved on significantly over the last decade: “We’re seeing a lot more branding opportunities come in, like […]

SAN FRANCISCO — The Disney/ABC Television Group says it has increased kids’ engagement with its mobile apps by refreshing the line-up through adding games to video last month. “We’ve already seen some of the stickiness increase,” the group’s video products and technology VP JR Grant tells Beet.TV. “(They place) an emphasis on getting more content types […]

LONDON — Research commissioned by BBC Worldwide shows the top 20% highest earners are fully engaged and readily reachable by mobile advertisers. “Senior executives – do they look at their mobile phones all the time? The answer is ‘yes’,” says Tom Bowman, VP Global Strategy & Sales Operations, BBC Worldwide. “Amongst affluent consumers groups, the mobile […]

LONDON — UK consumers are spending insane amounts of time on their phones. So why aren’t advertisers putting proportionate amounts of money in to the devices? “Because the mobile marketplace has been relatively fragmented, it has made it feel a little bit difficult and risky for people to get executing on phones in the way […]

LONDON — The Guardian will reboot its mobile app with a new design in the next few weeks after spending the last year re-thinking its mobile web and mobile app strategy, says chief digital officer Tanya Cordrey. “Probably within the next month or two, the new Guardian app will be hitting your local app store […]

The popularity of editorial video amongst mobile web users is growing fast at Time magazine’s website. “About 20% of video views on Time.com are happening on mobile web,” GM Craig Ettinger tells Beet.TV. “That’s up from just over 10% a year ago.” Ettinger credits the site’s recent responsive redesign, which makes the site more attractive […]

Mobile ad company InMobi says it is trying not only to encourage advertisers to use more data but to do so for years ahead. “Most of the media that I see spent – not a hell of a lot of data is actually being gathered,” says the company’s north America GM Francisco Cordero. “That could […]

In a digital media world that is 25 years old, it’s no wonder the relatively recent upstart of mobile is still considered a single new channel for planning against. But now ad group Starcom Worldwide‘s mobile SVP has an unusual goal – to kill her job. “If my job exists in six months in its […]

BARCELONA — The so-called “native advertising” opportunity, which sees straight-up display ads replaced by sponsorships that look like content, may be young – but mobile ad network InMobi is moving aggressively in its direction. “We’re going to break up the banners,” InMobi global strategic partnerships VP Pankaj Bengani tells Beet.TV. “Instead of showing banners to users, […]

BARCELONA — How often is too often for developers to update their mobile apps? “We know companies doing updates at least on a weekly basis just to keep you live,” says Bruce Beckloff, corporate development head at Marmalade, a London agency whose technology helps developers deploy across multiple platform standards. “Everybody sees a little bit […]

BARCELONA — Audio-identifying mobile app Shazam is trying to create a business selling data to advertisers by encouraging users to tag content other than music. “We’re now able to target advertising based on Shazam activity,” CEO Rich Riley tells Beet.TV. “We can do that on Shazam and off Shazam. We can follow a device ID on […]

BARCELONA — Freemium has become the super-dominant app store monetization method, with some 94% of App Store revenue coming from free downloads supporting in-app purchases, according to Distimo’s 2013 Year-End Review. But that doesn’t mean app developers can guarantee success just be deploying in-app goods, says former Guardian News & Media strategy head James Cooper. […]

BARCELONA — If you want to understand apps, you need to understand app users. That’s according to one mobile advertising technologist. “The core of the search era was the keyword, the core of the social era is the stuff you share on social networks,” says InMobi‘s product director Abhishek Bapna. “In the app ecosystem, neither of them are […]