ZenithOptimedia

I know there have been a tonne of trends documents and reports flooding the airwaves this year already, so i thought I'd take the time to present the key ones on the ZO radar in a Prezi format.

Ive been using this as a bit os a test for the tool too, and besides the constant crashing and server connection issues I have experienced, I have found the experience pretty good.

I'd strongly recommend the following steps in creating a prezi though;

1. write the text based material first
2. save all the images and video links you are going to embed in a file before you start
3. plan out a concept or theme for your prezi before you begin adding slides
4. don't even touch the 'paths' button to create the prezi flow until you are all done

Link

Panasonic recently released an augmented reality iPhone app called "3D Viera AR Greeting" that promotes the new 3D Viera tvs in Japan.

With augmented reality displays, users are required to print a special pattern out on paper, and then hold it out in front of a webcam to display an augmented view.

This campaign is similar, but Panasonic has made this special pattern available on t-shirts as well. Using your iPhone as an augmented reality lens, you can see amazing 3D displays emerging from a virtual Viera TV which appears mounted on your chest. The fun continues when you can take pictures of this 3D display and share it on twitter from your iPhone.

Video explanation with plenty of Engrish below:

Nielsen recently released data on the US smartphone market, and here are a few key learnings.

• Close battle between Android OS and Apple OS
• In the last 6 months, there were more new subscribers getting Android phones. Google's Android OS has increased US market share to 27%, beating iPhone's 23%.
• Blackberry remains dominant in market with a 33% market share. However, this has steadily decreased since Q2 2009.

• Amongst current mobile phone owners who are thinking of switching devices, the iPhone remains the most desired phone for current users with 89% of users wanting an iPhone as their next mobile device.
• On the Android platform, 71% of current users would want an Android phone next. 21% of these users would like to switch over to an iPhone.
• However, less than half of current Blackberry users want a Blackberry as their next phone. 29% of current Blackberry users want an iPhone next, and 21% of these users want an Android OS phone.

Given this trend in the US, and also in the context of recent social gaming acquisitions, it would be pertinent for brands to have a long term mobile strategy that encompasses both the Android and iPhone operating systems.

 Recent numbers being bandied around penetration of these devices in the AU market are a little bit of guess work, but we've recently been told a few numbers that appear pretty close - so we're going to put them down here:

iPhone - predictions are 2.4m - that's just over 10% of all mobiles in AU
iPad - the numbers are a bit harder but is suggested to be in the region of 350-400K devices

The other little nugget we got thanks to AdMob was the stat that the majority of iPhone and iPad impressions are actually originating from Wi-Fi. Incidentally AdMob claim to be ale to reach about 50% or 1.3m of the iPhones in this market.  

The troubled iPhone 4 launches in Australia this Friday, so expect numbers to swell further.

This months the ZenithOptimedia Moxie Trends video focuses on one of the most talked about social media topics this year: Location Based Services (LBS).

Nicola Smith, Kimberly Davis, Nick Burcher, Adam Hemming and Nicholas Tay are your guides as ZenithOptimedia Moxie take a trip around the globe from the USA, Europe and Asia looking at the big location players and latest developments in LBS. It's not just Google Latitude, FourSquare and Gowalla - we look at local trends in Europe and Asia too.

Nielsen has completed its first month of measuring a trial group of Australian mobile publishers in Market Intelligence, its site-side audience measurement tool. This is the first cohesive attempt at measuring off-deck mobile websites (non carrier related - i.e. Vodafone Live! or Optus Zoo).

The results look interesting, and will require some scrutiny in terms of calculating cookie deletion and unique audience - but is interesting to analyse nonetheless. The numbers are consolidated between devices (i.e. sites optimized for different handsets like Nokia or iPhone), they are not de-duplicated and the advertisers are currently limited to News Ltd, Fairfax, NineMSN (and Premier Media Group owned FoxSports).

I have summarised the first batch of monthly data below: ranked by monthly audience size and highlighting the stickiest or most engaging sites.

News.com.au gained the largest audience for April, with just over a million unique browsers. However on average Fairfax news sites The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age had more user sessions per month for a longer average period of time. FoxSports is the stickiest mobile site, clearly catering to sports nuts who spent an average time of 42 minutes a month on the mobile site (though there are only 33,000 of them per month currently using the site). There could be some debate as to why Fairfax's news sites are stickier than News.com.au (audience or content or user-experience) and why people spend much more time on NineMSN than News.com.au (more video content?). At this stage we can only speculate and watch the monthly data roll in and average out a bit more.

View the image gallery below for today's screenshots from the largest sites.

There are obviously some big publishing names missing from this dataset, some who have large audiences (Google, ABC, Bigpond, CarSales.com, RealEstate.com.au) and some that are lagging behind in their mobile product in general (Yahoo!7). But it is a good starting point, and might surprise some people in terms of the size of audience and time spent with media some of these sites are not commanding.

Let's hope that that more sites get on board over the coming months so we can start to get a less fragmented view of mobile audience measurement and invest appropriately in the medium.

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Much has been written in the past two weeks in the local marketing media about Apple's foray into mobile advertising. Most pieces were barely more than transcripts of Steve Jobs keynote presentation (see video at bottom of post) instead of comparing the upcoming release of iAds against the current market offering. Note For the discussion below, I am only comparing advertising in-applications and not mobile websites, SMS/MMS, mobile search or carrier-based offerings.

Some background information: There are many mobile ad networks that provide advertising inside smart-phone applications (in-app ads), the largest of these is AdMob which agreed to be acquired by Google late last year for USD $750 million in a strategic move by Google that gave it global leadership on mobile search and banner advertising on mobile web and applications. It also fitted in nicely with their ever growing and improving Android mobile operating system (currently on over 35 different mobile phones, with another 18 soon to be released).

Not to be outdone Apple Inc announced on January 4 this year that they had acquired another American mobile ad network - Quattro Wireless - for a rumoured USD $275 million, in an escalating game of one-up-man-ship.

In Australia, AdMob currently dominates the in-app advertising landscape with reach of over 66% of all iPhone users (whether they have apps that carry advertising or not). Whilst they claim reach of 50 million mobile users worldwide, Quattro's reach in Australia is not currently disclosed, and is estimated to be very small. 

So, how do they stack up against each other?

With the announcement of their new iAds, Apple is effectively activating a superior ad format on an existing network - with the aim to increase the networks reach (get developers preference over AdMob/Google) and increase their advertising revenue yield (charging advertisers more per ad for a superior format and user experience). It is a bold and welcome move.

On the other side, AdMob has a much larger network reach across different phones, flexible buy models (i.e. cost per click) and will likely have Google's global sales team if they get FCC approval of the acquisition. But rumours persist that Apple might restrict developers choice of ad partners, and exclude AdMob, which a real possibility if their past efforts of setting up a closed network against Google's open approach continue.

Would this have a big affect the industry in Australia it it happens? Yes.

93% of all in-app advertising occurs on an iPhone in Australia. And though Android, Ovi (Nokia), Blackberry and Samsung are making some inroads on the app market abroad, most applications consumed, used and developed in Australia occur on an iPhone. AdMob/Google would still own mobile search and a significant portion of mobile web advertising, but the richer and more brand friendly in-app advertising would be dominated by Apple.

Thus, it is important, despite the hype, that local marketers and media interesting in engaging mobile consumers watch this two horse race play out.

Also - if you haven't yet watched the video demonstration of the iAds it is well worth seeing what possibilities will soon exist.