McAfee: Mobile Malware ...

Security and anti-spam firm McAfee today reported that it saw a massive uptick in mobile malware last quarter. Mobile malware has “exploded,” the company said ( PDF ), “with a significant increase on Android devices. In addition, McAfee also found a slight increase in malware targeting the Mac, but the report notes that this trend was not “extreme.” Despite the increase in mobile and Mac malware, as well as password-stealing Trojans, the good news in today’s report is that global spam level dropped quite a bit during the last quarter, though we are still talking about a trillion messages per month. This quarter’s increase in mobile malware is partly due to the fact that McAfee improved its ability to find these threats, but it still represents a massive increase. The company collected about 8,000 mobile malware samples last month. These threats, as usual, mostly target Android. While Google and other major store have made great strides in keeping malware out of their stores, third-party stores and forums remain a problem. Among the areas of mobile malware that saw major increases in threats was mobile backdoor malware and the always popular premium-rate SMS-sending malware. The report also noted that the company found one of the first destructive Android Trojans this quarter. This piece of malware doesn’t damage apps or executables, but instead targets a user’s photos and then adds an image of the Ayatollah Khomeini to each picture. Here are a few additional interesting data points from the report: Q1 2012 had the largest number of PC malware detected per quarter (83 million) McAfee found about 250 new Mac malware samples last quarter and about 150 fake Mac anti-virus samples spam levels dropped to 1 trillion per month the United States represents the primary source of cyber attacks You can find the full report here (PDF).

Study Shows Social Medi...

IBM sat down to talk one-on-one with 1,700 CEO’s in 64 countries to discuss changes in how they do business. First, let’s marvel at the logistics behind that. All those busy people. All those languages. All that data. Seriously, I don’t think we appreciate the effort that goes into these things. Now, let’s move on to the results. To the right you see a chart with a surprising message. The CEO’s were asked how they engage with their customers. The top line represents where they are today, the bottom line where they expect to be in 3 to 5 years. Right now, social media came in dead last but it’s expected to climb to the second spot in the coming years. At a glance, I would say that these results relate to B2B companies, but the report doesn’t say one way or the other. I understand B2B being heavily face-to-face. I don’t see it in business to consumer. But again, the study doesn’t specify one or the other so I have to assume it’s a mix. Technology in general came up as the aspect most likely to impact business in the coming year. Their second choice was “People Skills.” It’s not well defined in the report, but I’m sure old school CEO’s are worried that technology is erasing our ability to connect one-on-one. Looking internally, the top CEO’s agreed that the old corporate structure doesn’t work anymore. They said they were working toward an open and honest environment where collaboration and new ideas are encouraged at every level. They also stressed the importance of values and making sure that everyone in the company is on board and working toward the same goal. But even with social media chipping away at face-to-face, the CEO’s said that personalization was still important. They believe that technology is giving us new ways to collect that data we need to listen and respond to our customers. IBM calls data a “critical new natural resource” that can be harnessed to propel a company to new heights. What do you think? Has technology made it easier to listen and respond to our customers? Or are we moving farther and farther away from personalized, customer service? Join the Marketing Pilgrim Facebook Community

Velti: In Mobile Ads, i...

Last month, mobile marketing company Velti reported that iOS had pulled slightly of Android in mobile ad impressions , after being tied at the end of last year. Now, apparently, iOS has taken widened that lead, if not by much — it accounted for 55 percent of mobile ad impressions in April, compared to 45 percent for Android. The data is based on data from Velti’s Mobclix Exchange, which serves ads to more than 33,500 apps, the company says. The iOS lead is also evident when you look at the top devices. 20 percent of impressions happen on the iPhone, 15 percent on the iPod Touch, 13 percent on iPad — only then do you get to the top Android contender, the Samsung Galaxy S2, with 2.3 percent. (That also reflects the device fragmentation within Android.) But not everything looks rosy for Apple. The report also says that impressions from the new iPad, which exploded out of the gate in March, had also slowed compared to the growth of the iPad 2 after its launch. The new iPad currently accounts for 8 percent of all impressions, while the iPad 2 had 13 percent at the same point in its release cycle. Or if you want things broken down by carrier, AT&T is dominant, with 53 percent of impressions, compared to 24 percent for Verizon and 19 percent for sprint. Finally, the report breaks down CPMs by advertising category. Women/mothers was the most lucrative category, with CPMs of $15.15, followed by finance ($10.21) and automotive ($9.51). You can read more about the report here .

Groupon’s Q1 Earnings B...

Groupon just published its second quarterly earnings report after going public in 2011. The Chicago-based company made $559.3 million in revenue during the first quarter of 2012, up 89% year-over year. Groupon also announced that the total amount of money it collected from customers for Groupons sold (excluding taxes and estimated refunds) increased 103% from $668.2 million in the same quarter last year to $1.35 billion in Q1 2012. Overall, though, Groupon still reported a net loss of $0.02 per share. Non-GAAP earnings, however, showed earnings of $0.02 per share. The overall consensus among analysts was that Groupon would report about $530 million in revenue and the company itself had predicted revenue somewhere between $510 and $550 million. For the next quarter, Groupon expects revenue to be between $550 and $590 million. After its IPO, Groupon’s shares famously lost about 50% of their value. Today, the stock is up more than 12% in after-hours trading . Update : The stock is now up more than 17.76% in after-hours trading. That’s on top of an 18.54% gain throughout the day while the markets were open. That’s the biggest one-day increase in Groupon’s stock price since it went public. More Highlights From Today’s Report In its report, Groupon also highlighted that its revenues in North America grew 75% year-over-year “and accelerated sequentially faster than they have since the first quarter of 2011.” For the first time, Groupon also served more than 100,000 merchants per quarter in Q1. The company also reported that 50% of the offers it ran in the first quarter were with merchants who had previously run on Groupon. These merchants, Groupon also noted, continue to quickly adopt the company’s Groupon Rewards program. More than 30% of eligible merchants in the cities where the company is piloting this program have signed up for it now. Another interesting number from the report: 30% of transactions in North America were completed on mobile devices in the last quarter. That’s up from 25% in December 2011.

Crowdfunding: $1.5B Rai...

Well, it’s been quite a year already for the crowdfunding industry. With the JOBS Act becoming law , the tech industry (and the economy at large) are headed for some big changes. Namely, the legalization of crowdfunding in startups for non-accredited investors has come to pass. Yes, now even your mom can invest in your startup. While many of the consequences (positive or negative) of the legalization will play out over the next few years, the most well-known crowdfunding platform has been busy racking up a blockbuster season . If it weren’t there already, Kickstarter hit the tipping point in February, as it saw a number of record-breaking projects and landed squarely in mainstream consciousness thanks to a slew of media coverage. Yet, as crowdfunding prepares for its stampede, many have been asking just how active the industry has been to this point, collectively, especially as it may indicate what’s in store. Luckily, Massolution , a research firm that specializes in crowdsourcing and crowdfunding, is today providing an answer with the first-ever Crowdfunding Industry Report . Having compiled data from more than 170 crowdfunding platforms (about 38 percent of the total number of platforms), Massolution found that, collectively, these portals raised $1.5 billion and successfully funded more than 1 million campaigns in 2011. It also seems that North America is the geography that is most cuckoo for crowdfunding, representing the largest market for fundraising at $837 million. As for the snapshot of the industry, as of April 2012, there were 452 active crowdfunding platforms worldwide, a number that the research firm expects to increase to 530 by the end of 2012. And, if I may interject, if my inbox is any indication, I would say it’s not unreasonable to expect that number to be higher. In terms of its compound annual growth rate (CAGR), the crowdfunding industry is growing at a rate of 63 percent in terms of the total amount of funds raised. To break the crowdfunding market down into bite-sized chunks, the research firm has identified and grouped the industry’s platforms into four major categories. Equity-based platforms grew at 114 percent CAGR, with the largest growth primarily taking place in Europe. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the equity-based category also raised the largest sums per campaign, as over 80 percent raised over $25K+. The second category, donation-based platforms, defined by philanthropic or sponsorship incentives, raised the most funds at $676 million but were the slowest growing of the categories at 43 percent CAGR. Lending-based platforms, or person-to-person, person-to-business, and social models were the second largest category, raising $552 million and growing at 78 percent. Lastly, reward-based platforms, or non-monetary rewards portals, grew by a staggering 524 percent CAGR. However, the base from which lending-based platforms started (as these platforms are, of all, youngest) was fairly low, beginning at approximately $1.6 million in 2009. The report gives a very solid indication of just how much the crowdfunding industry has changed over the last few years (and will continue to change). It’s now more true than ever that these portals are being used to raise large sums of money, as crowdfunding itself has become a viable alternative for capital formation for new commercial ventures, said Carl Esposti, the CEO of Massolution and founder of Crowdsourcing.org. Driven in particular by equity-based and reward-based crowdfunding, he said, the firm is projecting that the total amount of funds raised will double in 2012. Naturally, there is little doubt that, with the passage of the JOBS Act, this growth is just beginning and that the new legislation will have, as Esposti says, a “profound effect” on the nature and incidence of crowdfunding in the U.S. With the SEC currently working out how it will regulate crowdfunding under new JOBS Act Era, Massolution expects securities-based crowdfunding to increase significantly in 2013 and will begin creating a host of new funding sources for many startups and early-stage businesses over the course of next year. In this kind of report, it would obviously be very interesting to see how the various crowdfunding players stack up against each other, and it leaves one jones-ing for some comparative analysis. Sites like KickStarter, RocketHub, IndieGoGo, Kiva, MicroVentures, buzzentrepreneur, and many more contributed to the report, so it would interesting to see what percentage of the total each represent, especially for the bigs like Kickstarter. But, in order to entice these platforms to participate, the research was conducted under strict non-disclosure rules — the reason why no company-specific data is mentioned. Perhaps next year… For more on Massolution’s research methodology, or to view the report in full, click here . Check out an abridged version of the report below: View this document on Scribd