And now that smartphones and tablets are becoming widespread, app usage is seeing a massive jump there, too.

The trend we’re referencing comes from a new eMarketer report, “UK Mobile App Market: Apps Dominate Mobile Usage, but Attention and Retention Aren’t Givens.”

“eMarketer estimates that UK adults spent an average of 2 hours 24 minutes per day with non-voice mobile activities in 2015, a tally topped only by time spent with traditional TV,” according to the eMarketer report. “This figure is all the more remarkable considering that non-voice mobile use accounted for just 18 minutes of UK adults’ total daily media time in 2010.”

Many mobile behaviors in the UK have been changing (as they have globally), but one of the interesting phenomena is the split between mobile app vs. mobile web usage.

“The advent of smartphones, primarily the iPhone, brought with it the introduction of a carefully curated digital experience, in which users no longer needed to open a web browser and then navigate to a site each time they wanted to get somewhere online,” explains eMarketer. “Instead, their “go-to” digital destinations could be, essentially, bookmarked and placed on the home screen via apps. The battle for smartphone screen real estate had begun.”

How goes the battle?

In fact, comScore MMX MP and Mobile Metrix discovered that mobile apps accounted for a much greater proportion of time spent with the mobile internet than mobile browsers in the UK—fully four-fifths of total time, according to March, 2015 data.

“UK consumers are clearly big mobile app users,” concludes eMarketer. “Moreover, smartphone usage is particularly high in the region. We estimate that 38.3 million individuals, or 58.7 percent of the population, were expected to use smartphones at least monthly in 2015. Tablet usage wasn’t far behind, with 32.8 million users or 50.3 percent of the overall population.”

But the war goes on.

User numbers are set to grow further, according to eMarketer projections estimating there could be 41.4 million smartphone users and 35.0 million tablet users in 2016.

The post In UK, Consumers Are Eating Up Mobile Media, Especially Apps appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

Instagram advertising is going through the roof — and fast. The company that Facebook purchased for $1 billion in 2012, and which had no ad revenue at all at the start of 2015, is on track to get to the $1 billion ad revenue finish line by the end of the first quarter of 2016.

“Marketing software company Brand Networks, LLC, an advertising partner for the app, has revealed in a report that since Facebook launched its Instagram advertising API mid last year, the number of ads served through its platform displayed in the app has exploded from 50 million ad impressions in August 2015 to 670 million by December,” reports Duncan Riley at Silicon Angle. “It further expects to be serving 1 billion ads a month by the end of the first quarter.”

During the run-up, the costs of ads did fluctuate; the global average cost per thousand impressions (CPMs) jumped from $5.21 in September to $7.20 in November, arriving at $5.94 in December.

“What was paid depended very much on what product was being advertised, with consumer packaged goods (CPG) averaging $4.92 during the holiday shopping season versus fashion at $16.93 for 1,000 impressions,” noted Riley.

The presence of video ads is no surprise. They accounted for 22.52 percent of ads served in December, up from 9.54 percent in September, coming in at a cost per engagement (people who actually watched some or all of the ad) of $1.40 in fashion and $3.91 with CPG.

“We anticipated that pent-up demand for programmatic, native advertising solutions on Instagram would drive rapid adoption and eventually scale. However, the pace and scale of investment from our clients in key verticals exceeded our expectations dramatically,” Brand Networks Founder and Chief Executive Jamie Tedford said about the numbers. “This year, we expect brands from a wider variety of industries to invest heavily on the platform and experiment with a variety of ad formats — especially video — to stand out in the Instagram feed and reach valuable audiences.”

The post From Zero to Zoom in a Year: Instagram on Track to Serve a Billion Ads by Quarter’s End appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

This week, the non-profit organization with the mission “to enhance online trust,” shared the report’s findings with MMW.

The guide, in a nutshell, provides prescriptive advice to help businesses optimize online privacy and security practices, and detect, contain and remediate the risk and impact of data loss incidents.

As part of the report, OTA analyzed key cybersecurity and online privacy trends.

“Much like surge pricing for taxis, cybercriminals now target and calculate their ransomware pricing based on company size, market value and much more,” says Craig Spiezle, Executive Director and President of OTA. “Cyber-surge pricing of corporate data is becoming widespread, increasing the impact and costs for businesses and their employees worldwide.”

Astonishingly, OTA found 91 percent of data breaches that occurred from January to August of 2015 could have “easily been prevented” by, for example, patching a server, encrypting data or ensuring employees do not lose their laptops.

OTA also announced that when analyzing over a thousand breaches involving the loss of personally identifiable information (PII) in 2015, it found actual hacks accounted for 34 percent of all incidents, while 30 percent were caused by employees—accidentally or maliciously—due to a lack of internal controls. The balance of incidents can be primarily attributed to lost or stolen devices (7 percent) and social engineering/fraud (8 percent). Lost, stolen or misplaced documents accounted for 9 percent of all incidents.

“As companies amass larger quantities of diversified data and increase their reliance on third party service providers, every business must have safeguards in place and be prepared to react strategically in the event of a breach,” said Neil Daswani, Chief Information Security Officer at LifeLock. “Cybercriminals aren’t just targeting companies that collect consumer data, they are going after confidential high-value data from legal, accounting, architecture and engineering firms.”

To learn more, check out the  2016 Data Protection and Breach Readiness Guide.

The post Online Trust Alliance Exposes How Rash of Ransomware Could Have Been Avoided appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

So how can your business or brand capitalize on the big game? Check out the visual below and see for yourself.

The post Super Bowl Infographic: How Brands Can Reach Fans During Super Bowl 50 appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

All told, the numbers are pretty scary.

Almost half of all small businesses – 47.3% – are not yet offering their customers or prospects a web experience that transcends the mobile device revolution.
“The implications for small businesses – their customers and the communities they operate in – are significant. Customers and prospects are using their mobile devices more and more to find, discover and purchase goods and services. The shopping experiences that the world’s largest eCommerce companies offer, e.g. Amazon, are defining the new standards that consumers expect. Unfortunately, small businesses who today only deliver a web 1.0 experience, will continue to fall behind and lose market share,” the report summary reads.

BuzzBoard’s Mobile Readiness Index (MRI) is a dynamic platform that analyzes the mobile readiness of 314 US cities and measures the readiness of local city businesses in attracting mobile-savvy consumers.

“It’s amazing to see how few small businesses are prepared for today’s mobile-first consumer,” said Greg Sterling, Local search expert and VP of Strategic Insights for the Local Search Association. “The BuzzBoard index is a comprehensive barometer of local ‘mobile readiness’ and stands as a call to action for communities across the US.”

The post BuzzBoard: Millions of US SMBs ‘Failing to Keep Pace with Digital Savvy Consumers’ appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

With less than a month to go before the most romantic day of the year, it’s time for marketers to kick their efforts into high gear and maximize a host of opportunities afforded by a holiday that always manages to spark consumer spending.

The post New Infographic a Reminder of the Marketing Magic of Valentines’ Day appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

SXSW 2015 runs March 13-22 in Austin, Texas.

The annual SXSW Music, Film & Interactive festival brings together tens of thousands of influential and innovative people worldwide for cutting-edge technology presentations, top film premieres, and one of the world’s largest music festivals featuring nearly 2,000 acts.

“We are very excited to have Brightcove as a technology partner for SXSW 2015,” said SXSW Director of Technology, Scott Wilcox. “Brightcove Video Cloud and Brightcove Gallery will allow us to advance our online video delivery capabilities, and we look forward to utilizing all the platforms have to offer.”

According to a statement provided to MMW, Video Cloud enables SXSW to seamlessly deliver high-quality live and on-demand video across any device, helping SXSW fans interact with and view video content from around the world.

The post SXSW Banks on Brightcove for Live and On-Demand Video Experiences appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The company has been blasted for “using a persistent numerical identifier that Verizon attaches to the Internet traffic of its mobile customers to recreate a history of a person’s web browsing traffic even if a person has deleted the record,” according to Reseller News. “However, Turn maintains there’s nothing wrong with using Verizon’s UIDH header to recreate cookies.”

The beef? While Verizon uses the tracking number — known as a UIDH (Unique Identifier Header) — for two advertising programs, the company has been criticized for “labeling” internet traffic that allows third-parties including Turn to use it for marketing.

“Turn uses the UIDH to recreate its own cookie, which is a small data file that records information such as web browsing, even if a person has deleted that file,” the report explains. “The practice — which has been referred to as a “zombie” cookie — isn’t illegal. But privacy advocates contend users may be unaware that they are still being tracked.”

Turn had come under sharp rebuke by media including ProPublica, which echoed the criticisms of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) which demanded that Turn stop using Verizon’s identifier immediately. Turn is slated to retire the tracking in early February.

For its part, the EFF also called on Verizon to stop tagging mobile web traffic since it “enables any company to use the identifier in similarly abusive ways, some of which may not be visible to users,” according to the foundation’s senior staff technologist Jacob Hoffman-Andrews.

AT&T stopped assigning UIDHs to its mobile traffic in November.

In the meantime, users who want to stop online marketers from tracking them can use special software (AdAway, AdBlock, AdBlock Plus, Disconnect Pro, etc.), said the EFF.

The post Advertising Firm Turn Will Now Turn Away from Using Controversial Verizon Mobile Tracking appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

During 2014, mobile internet use grew 26%, and is forecast to grow 23% within the first 6 months of 2015. When looking at rural users, growth is also steadily on the rise and is expected to grow an additional 18% during 2015.

“Nearly one quarter of school-going children and one fifth of non-working women use mobile internet on pay-per-site basis,” reports Warc. “Nearly 40% of young men, working women and older men have plans which entail limited internet access.”

Consequently, mobile web use is increasing the average monthly mobile phone bill. To boot, mobile internet prices are also on the rise, which means hardware makers and mobile operators stand to make big profits in India this year and beyond.

Fortunately, the growth within the mobile industry has led to more competitive pricing for “unlimited” mobile data and download plans—with 33% of mobile user’s opting for unlimited options.

The post Mobile Internet on The Rise in India appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

“That will be up 16.7% over 2014 usage levels, and double-digit growth will continue through 2016. In 2018, growth will have slowed to 7.4% for a total of 435.5 million tablet users in China,” eMarketer reveals.

Dominating tablet usage in the APAC region, it is now projected that within three years, some 435.5 million Chinese will be active tablet users. Putting those numbers into perspective, it is believed that by 2018, China will be home to more than half of all the tablet users (715 million people) in the region.

What’s more, says eMarketer, The average person in China is about twice as likely as the average for the region to use a tablet monthly this year, and the average internet user is 40.4% more likely to do so.”

The post China Now Dominates Tablet Usage in APAC appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.