DIY Mobile Website Crea...

NY-based mobile web startup bMobilized , which bills itself as a competitor to the well-heeled new Google partner DudaMobile , has just closed its Series A round of funding to the tune of $1.5 million. The funding was raised from two early stage European VC firms, Alliance Venture and Investinor. Like DudaMobile, bMobilized is focused on enabling SMBs to convert their existing websites into HTML5-enabled mobile sites that work on any device, OS, or web browser. According to CEO Ben Seslija, nine out of every ten small business websites don’t have mobile versions of their sites today – and yet, Americans are poised to spend an estimated $115 billion in goods and services on mobile devices by 2015. So yes, there’s clear market need for services operating in this space. As for bMobilized, its core offering is a lot like DudaMobile’s, competing feature-by-feature with many of DudaMobile’s key advantages, including automatic sync, templating, speed, customizable widgets and more. bMobilized says it uses 300 different algorithms to identify and analyze the different parts of the website, and then coverts that site to a mobile-friendly version in under 30 seconds. Also offered are over 30 features designed to improve the mobile experience, including things like a contact bar, maps, social sharing buttons (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, and LinkedIn), support for a product promo window on the homepage, and more. That contact bar is especially helpful, as it can be customized with widgets like “click-to-call,” “click-to-email,” “click-to-SMS” and more, which allows visitors to instantly connect with the business they’re researching. Support for ad products is available, too, including text, image and video ads from Google AdWords, QR Code, and in-app ads. And again, like DudaMobile, the mobile sites automatically sync with the company’s main website when changes are made. Pricing is competitive with DudaMobile’s product, for the most part. Although DudaMobile offers a free level of service, bMobilized’s monthly fees of either $5/month or $9/month (with support) are comparable to DudaMobile’s $9/mo. middle-of-the-road plan. So why choose one over the other? Well, obviously each company thinks their own offering is the better choice. Seslija just says customers should try out bMobilized for themselves to be convinced. bMobilized, now a team of fourteen, was founded in 2005 in Oslo, Norway, but only relocated to NYC in 2010. Prior to this round, bMobilized had taken investment from European and U.S. firms, Tomas AS, Magnus Invest AS (the personal investment company for Birger Magnus, bMobilized chairman), Spring Capital, Redwood Partners, and Ignitas AS.

E-Commerce Confusion: M...

Apps may be all the rage, but a new study from Nielsen shows that it’s mobile websites that are getting all the attention from shoppers. This past holiday season, Nielsen monitored the smartphone shopping habits of 5,000 volunteers. They concentrated on five big sellers — Amazon, Best Buy, eBay, Target and Walmart — and found that, combined, they reached nearly 60 percent of those shoppers. In spite of all the hoopla around holiday shopping apps, the majority used the mobile websites to complete their purchases. Though all of the retailers had a usage bump around Black Friday, Amazon was the overall winner when it came to reach. You could look at these stats and say that people don’t want to shop with apps but it’s more likely a case of e-commerce confusion. Back in November, I downloaded Amazon’s mobile app for the iPad. Like many tablet apps, it relies heavily on graphics which was fine when I was browsing for ideas. But when I began looking for specific items, the app fell flat. Navigation beyond the top levels is near impossible and it’s hard to refine searches for items with similar titles. I gave up and used my tablet browser to shop at the full site. As an experiment, I pulled out my iPad as I wrote this and searched Amazon for Numb3rs Season 1 on DVD. The mobile website returned a list of options with photos and details, one of which was the item I was looking for ( Numb3rs The Complete First Season ). The app pushed me to choose from a text drop down. I chose Season One and the only thing I was given was a streaming episode I could download for $1.99. It perplexes me why the mobile website and the mobile app don’t return the same results. Another point of e-commerce confusion lies in the promotional app vs. a full shopping app. For example, Old Navy had a very prominent app over the holidays that led customers to their big sale items. It was an excellent companion for the in-store shopper but not really built for buying clothes for the family. As the Nielsen chart above shows, a shopping app combined with a mobile e-commerce site is the way to go. The app is perfect for people who want to hone in on deals or browse for popular items and gift ideas. For the more detailed shopper, mobile web is the way to go. No matter which way you go, as a marketer, it’s your job to make sure that your branded apps and mobile sites are error free, easy to navigate and offer a balance between drill-down details and one-click (or as close as possible) check-out. The 2012 holiday season will be on us before you know it. Are you mobile ready?

Survey: 88 Percent of M...

A new survey conducted recently by AT&T shows that nearly 90% of marketers at large companies in the U.S. plan to increase spending on mobile marketing initiatives as we head into 2012. Conducted during September, the survey included 501 marketers at U.S. companies with 1,000 employees or more.  While a majority of those surveyed indicated they planned on increasing mobile spend in 2012, it looks like mobile barcodes were the most popular mobile campaign type in terms of interest.  A full 66% of respondents in the survey agreed that mobile barcodes will “drive the most innovation in 2012.” Looking at other mobile campaigns of interest by survey respondents, mobile apps took the top spot (cited by 43% of respondents); followed by mobile barcodes (41%); banner ads on mobile devices (40%); mobile websites (35%); and SMS messaging (34%).  Survey’s like this reinforce the demand for mobile marketing on behalf of nearly any  organization and show that adoption of mobile continues to rise. At mobileStorm we understand that brands want to start reaching their audiences via mobile devices, but we also understand that many brands don’t know where to start.  That’s why we’ve taken a service-approach to the art of mobile marketing where we work with each and every client to take a hard look at their business, what they’re trying to accomplish, and how mobile can help.

Cost-Per-Action Mobile ...

Moolah Media , a recently launched mobile ad network that uses a cost-per-action and cost-per-lead model, is rolling out a new performance optimized ad units for advertisers and publishers with the launch of its new SmartMoolah layer. The network launched last year allowing advertisers to drive inbound calls directly to a call center, collect signups and registration leads, while also tracking conversions. Moolah promises higher payouts and 100 percent fill rates for publishers, and ads can be placed within apps, on the mobile web or within text messages. Earlier this year, the startup added a number of new ad formats for display or in-app advertising. Currently, Moolah reaches 20 million users and serves a billion ad impressions in the U.S. per month on its network. The newest ad unit, which is being unveiled today, aims to measure consumer actions beyond the click, subsequently, helping serve more relevant ads for each consumer. The startup compared the relevance technology to a Pandora-like experience for the consumer. Unlike traditional cost-per-impression, cost-per-click, or cost-per-download advertising, SmartMoolah measures actions after the click. SmartMoolah ads are mobile display units measured on a cost-per-action basis. Actions include download, form submit, click-to-call, and interactive SMS. Actions that occur after a click show publishers when a consumer makes a purchase, clicks on content, or shares the experience with others. Based on a consumer’s actions, Moolah can serve up more relevant ads to that consumer in the future. SmartMoolah ads can be deployed in Android and iOS mobile apps through the company’s SDKs, and within mobile websites using standards-based APIs. The startup says that a campaign optimized by SmartMoolah ads performs eight times better than a campaign that is not targeted, resulting in $0.96 eCPMs over just $0.12. SmartMoolah ads also promise to double click-through rates.

Placecast Brings Locati...

Placecast’s ShopAlerts service , which delivers retailer and merchant offers and discounts to consumers via their mobile phones, is announcing new functionality today—integration with mobile smartphone apps. As we’ve written in the past, ShopAlerts is a white-label geofencing platform for businesses that want to deliver geo-triggered offers to their customers on their mobile phones. Consumers can opt-in to receiving text messages in a variety of ways—at the store, online, via text-message, mobile websites or on Facebook. Geofences are virtual areas set around physical locations; when an opted-in consumer is inside a geofenced area, she receives a message from a business, including a discount, notice of a sale, directions to a store or other content. With the new feature, retailers deploying mobile apps can allow consumers to receive a location-based message from the retailer’s nearest store or other relevant location, without the app being open Just as ShopAlerts programs work on any phone, this new feature works on any smartphone platform. After a retailer integrates with ShopAlerts, customers (who are opted into receiving alerts) will receive location-based push notifications when they are in a geofenced area. Retailers can also leverage preferences expressed by the consumer, such as loyalty or past purchase data to increase the relevance of the message or deal. Time of day and weather can also be taken into account to create added relevance, and brands could also enable a location-based notification when a specific product is available at a nearby store. Placecast says that it will work directly with retailers to integrate ShopAlerts into their apps, helping them to design a program and create a messaging strategy, select the number and size of geofences and activate locations. The integration with retailer smartphone apps makes a lot of sense for Placecast. With the growth in online to offline commerce, Placecast is giving retailers another way to target consumers and offer relevant deals and information. The goal is to bring the consumer into the store, and messages sent via a smartphone app can help accomplish this. Placecast is already being used by a number of high profile brands such as The North Face , and even AT&T.