Independent mobile ad tech company Big Mobile has announced its acquisition of Made Media, a New Zealand mobile display advertising business.
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It was over five years ago QMS NZ launched the first local outdoor measurement tool and now, it’s delivering its smartest insights yet, with the addition of mobile data to its Datalab products.
As the number of screens we own rises and content that was once limited to the TV spreads its way across new platforms, it appears ye olde faithful television is remaining resilient with Kiwis yet to avert their eyes entirely according to the latest New Zealand multi-screen report by Nielsen.
The technological wizardry of contactless payment technology is gaining momentum, and ANZ is looking to draw further attention to it with a new campaign showing that even a confused dad, encumbered by a mountain of nappies, has the nous to make the magic swipe.
Sometimes I wonder why we download mobile news apps and allow oft depressing and sensationalist headlines to be zapped to our phones to give us bursts of misery and existentialist angst throughout the day. But we’re suckers for it, we want to know what’s going on when it’s going on, and the major news outlets know this (they also know our phones are practically glued to our hands or pocket insides). Which is why MediaWorks has wasted no time in launching a dedicated Newshub app with all the bells and whistles, which, 18 hours after it launched became the most popular app downloaded from the App Store.
In some ways, smartphones are a strange product. We all use them differently, and have different expectations as to their performance, yet most of us buy one of just a handful of models that all do pretty much exactly the same thing. But what if you want something different? What if you want something distinctly you? Well, here are some phones for particular people that fulfill a particular need.
Talk of the cashless society has abounded at least since the beginning of this century, but a surge in contactless payments suggests cash may not be king for much longer. And cards could be on the way out too, because, following on from the launch of Semble earlier this year, ANZ has announced the release of its goMoney wallet, which lets customers to pay with their smartphones.
Mimi Gilmour’s restaurant chains Burger Burger and the newly opened Fish Fish have adopted the no-reservations policy increasingly used overseas. But as queues form, she is planning technology to take the agro out of waiting for a table.
We’re quite partial to the Monster Detector app here at StopPress, which lets kids (and maybe a few adults) rest easy after a quick scan of the bedroom. And to promote the Halloween launch of indie New Zealand film The Deadroom, Centron Pictures and Stun have employed some similar technology, creating a ‘paranormal investigation’ app that shows ghostly activity in your photos.
Opt-in ad serving platform Postr has teamed up Skinny Mobile to create a new android app called Skinny Collect, which allows Skinny customers to earn free data or minutes in return for allowing ads on their lock screen. It’s taken off pretty well and in the first fifteen minutes after launching it had a download per second. We spoke to Postr CEO Milan Reinartz to find out more on the new app and Postr’s partnership with Skinny.
That shiny rectangle in your pocket is an amazing piece of technology. But there’s a growing sense that we’re becoming far too attached to our phones, to the point where we seem to be happy to sacrifice real human interaction for a poke, a scroll and a quick game of information pokies. And Hallertau Brewery in Riverhead has taken a stand against the use of these magical cubes of distraction at its establishment and is aiming to promote actual conversation.
For the last 16 years, Serato has been at the forefront of DJ culture and technology. Its ground breaking Pitch ‘n Time time-stretching algorithm and flagship audio mixing software product Serato DJ are industry standards. Kanye West rapped about them on one of his tracks. Eminem did the same. And now it’s releasing its first mass-consumer app, Serato Pyro, a music player that beat-matches and mixes song playlists. Chief executive AJ Bertanshaw explains the company’s evolution—and its Kiwi style marketing approach.
Seeing someone smile at you is one of life’s great pleasures. And those who can see take that completely for granted. But Listerine and JWT London wanted to find a way to give those who can’t see warm fuzzies (and sell more mouthwash), so it created an app that plays a sound or vibrates when it detects a smile.
Humans regularly pay for having their photo taken (when it’s horrible and it gets posted on social media, or when looking back and wondering why you ever thought that hairstyle was a good choice). But, following on from a tease at its I/0 event, Google decided to let people pay with a photo to promote the enhanced search functionality of its upgraded Photos app.
Since the heady days of 2013, when Uber and Airbnb started blossoming (or spreading like weeds) around the globe and raising millions of dollars in funding, ambitious app designers have been looking for problems that could be solved by combining smartphones and financial incentives.
As Paul Catmur wrote last year, the marketing bit often seems to be forgotten in the world of digital marketing. But here are a few that combined the two and were deemed worthy of a place in the interactive marketing category at the Best Awards.
Humans are becoming increasingly attached to their smartphones and these days they’re often seen as lifelines—sometimes quite literally. Here’s how technology is trying to keep us safe.
Yahoo’s latest messenger app replaces audio with text messaging for a Skype-meets-TXT-with-the-sound-off platform that might just revolutionise the way we use our phones.
For better or worse, the gravitational pull of the mobile phone has become remarkably strong. That has its drawbacks, of course, and, in a recent US study on nomophobia, the clinical description for the fear of being out of mobile contact, 63 percent of respondents said they checked their phone for messages or calls once an hour, nine percent said they checked their phone every five minutes and 63 percent said they would be upset if they left home without their smartphone. Now Spark is ensuring that those tethered to their phones don’t have to shower without them either after announcing a prototype dock designed to work with Sony’s new waterproof Xperia M4 Aqua.
“Everyone is selling audience,” says Mobile Embrace’s Sarah Kavanagh. And this means that ad tech providers constantly have to tweak what they’re offering in order to make it attractive to advertisers. She recently chatted to StopPress about how the mobile industry is evolving and how ad tech players are responding to that change.
Nomophobia is rife. And Google’s Tony Keusgen says the advent of mobile phones is changing the way we behave, so it’s critical that marketers consider the implications for their own brands.
An Interactive Advertising Bureau survey of mobile video viewers in 24 countries shows we are now watching longer-form videos on our mobiles, we regularly stream video on our mobiles while watching TV and the majority surveyed in each country favour the tailoring of mobile advertising. The report also shows New Zealand and Australia prefer ‘comedy’ clips, which we think is in direct correlation with our great sense of humour.
Accenture recently showed that 87 percent of individuals watch TV with their devices within arm’s reach, meaning that a smartphone can quickly become a medium by which to escape the advertising that punctuates a television show. Add to this the fact that Google’s recent Consumer Barometer report showed that 72 percent of Kiwis own a smartphone and that almost a quarter of the population now access the internet more often via a smartphone than any other device and it becomes clear that smartphones are a place where brands should be. This is not to say that television, which continues to reach 92 percent of the population, should be abandoned as an advertising channel, but that it should rather be used in conjunction with other available channels. Snakk Media has just launched a way for Kiwi advertisers to do this.
It’s no secret that smartphone usage has proliferated rapidly over the course of the last few years. The rectangular glow of these devices provides ambient lighting for virtually every stretch of our nation. And while the ubiquity of these devices is evidenced by their presence in the pockets of Kiwis of all ages, this anecdotal observation doesn’t provide enough accuracy to drive media decisions. This week, Google released its Consumer Barometer report, which provides a breakdown of the media consumption habits of people across the world. And contained within this report was a section dedicated specifically to the Kiwi market.
Standing for input/output and “Innovation in the Open”, the annual Google I/O developer conference explores the latest in technology, web, and mobile. Held at San Francisco, this year’s event sees some major upgrades to Google’s Android platform, new projects from the ATAP team, and some nifty VR.
Technology has a history of subversion. Apple’s classic 1984 ad showed its beliefs very literally. Streaming and internet-enabled piracy are changing the media and entertainment business. Google changed the way we advertise. And now businesses like Airbnb, Uber and many others are fighting against powerful incumbents and antiquated regulation to give consumers better services. While the confiscation of a few cowbells from a rugby game at Westpac Stadium in Wellington certainly isn’t in the same category, MEA Mobile and app partner (and Chiefs sponsor) Deosan have showed their subversive side by developing a digital substitute for Chiefs fans.
After one accelerator programme, a spell in a start-up incubator and a tonne of two minute noodles, digital venture Mish Guru, which has developed software designed to help businesses get bang for their marketing buck on Snapchat, has a springboard of nearly half a million dollars to break into the US market.
As Mary Meeker’s presentation showed, modern consumers have become accustomed to getting what they want, when they want it—and modern businesses are using technology to cater to that need. Young Male Entrepreneur of the Year, law student and New Zealand representative in business strategy, Jesse Medcalf, gives a personal account of why retailers that don’t keep up to date with technology might fall out of favour with millennials.
Ad-blocking software company Adblock Plus claims that its software has already been downloaded over 300 million times across the world, and WARC wrote a story last year showing five percent of all internet users used the technology (in the US, 41 percent of 18-29 year olds claimed to use adblock software). This means that millions of ads served throughout the world on desktops and laptops do not reach their desired targets. Now the German company has announced that it is currently trialling an update of its ad-blocking software that enables Android users to block ads on their smartphones. So what’s the industry doing about it?
For many, it was disappointing to see the Auckland Harbour Bridge return to its standard gun-metal grey hue after 2degrees, Special Group and Gladeye added some colour—and musical interactivity—to the landmark during the seven week Play The Bridge campaign. And bringing “New Zealand’s largest lightshow” to life was an impressive feat of digital production problem solving and creativity.