For that reason, last Thursday Mobile Marketing Watch, along with our sister sites mHealthWatch and mGamingWatch, hosted an emergency webinar for marketers and related professionals across numerous industries who must urgently educate themselves on a variety of emerging issues related to consumer privacy, location based services, and the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA).

Attorneys Ross Buntrock and Michael Hazzard of Arent Fox, Rip Gerber of Locaid, and Jared Reitzin and Darren Withers of mobileStorm participated in the webinar, which is now available to view online.

To better understand the new intricacies of mobile compliance from the valuable insight of leading experts in the field, check out the webinar below.

The post VIDEO: MMW’s Emergency Webinar for Mobile Marketers appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

In fact, U.S. companies are investing $135 billion this year in online video to market products and services.

The research, from Magisto, hailed as being the world’s most popular smart video storytelling application, is part of a new report released today entitled “Video’s Payday: Part 1: The Modern Marketing Dilemma and the State of Business Video.”

We’re told that the report is the first release in a three-part series and examines the rapid rise of online video, resulting, according to the report, from new rules of marketing engagement that have tilted markedly in favor of authenticity.

The research examined the digital video spend among U.S. businesses and found that over the next year, American businesses will spend an estimated $135 billion on digital video. The figure takes into account the entire video ecosystem, including production, tools, people and media, painting a contrasting picture compared to existing predictions for the market. As a point of reference, advertisers this year expect to spend $83 billion on digital ads and $71 billion on TV commercials. This new research points to the digital video spend nearly equaling the combined spend of digital and TV advertising in the U.S.

“The traditional, linear mode of communication, dominated by advertising and controlled by legacy marketing, simply doesn’t work today. It is more white noise at a time when signal is the scarcity,” said Oren Boiman, CEO of Magisto. “The enormous influence of social media and the bottom up culture of millennials have led to a new marketing condition where the consumer is in control, word-of-mouth is a medium unto itself, and authenticity is paramount to engaging customers.”

To review the complete report, click here.

The post Report: Companies Making $135B Bet on Online Video Marketing appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

Now new research suggests that viewing such ads improves a variety of metrics, from recall to intent to purchase.

“In a study conducted by Opera Mediaworks and comScore, a group of U.S. mobile users was shown a mobile native video ad — the kind of ad created specifically for a mobile feed environment,” reports eMarketer. “When compared to a control group that hadn’t seen the ad, the mobile users who watched a mobile native video ad were 5 percentage points more likely to want to buy the product.”

Of course, advertisers strive to develop creative that’s a “thumb-stopper,” convincing people to stop scrolling long enough to let the sound and motion begin.

Native seemed to work best.

“The ads produced a 4-point boost in favorability, a 7-point increase in likelihood to recommend, and a 6-point increase in mobile ad recall,” according to eMarketer.

eMarketer estimates that US advertisers will spend $2.78 billion this year on mobile video ads on all platforms. Its research indicates that U.S. spending on mobile video ads will more than double by 2019.

The post When It Comes to Mobile Video, Native Content Shown to Improve All Metrics appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

If the popularity of SXSW-related videos last year is any indication, this year’s bastion of branded video content will similarly be a marketing gift that keeps on giving.

Overall, few elements in digital marketing today are hotter than brand videos.

“Brand videos are an area being explored more and more by marketers and companies alike, with over eight billion views being clocked up on brand videos in 2013, an increase of 7000 per cent from 2006,” writes The Drum‘s Ishbel Macleod.

Macleod’s recent report cites new data from a ContentedLondon study, which points to the fact that three in five consumers will now spend at least two minutes watching product videos, as long as the branded content is well done.

“Perhaps unsurprisingly,” Macleod notes, “it was discovered that videos are shared 12 times more than text on Facebook, and that over half of 25-54 year olds share video content online.”

To learn more, check out the insightful infographic shared below.

The post SXSW: Branded Video is The Marketing Gift That Keeps on Giving appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

NOOK Media LLC has just launched a suite of free NOOK Video Apps for iOS, Android and Roku devices.

The apps enable customers to watch movies and TV shows from NOOK Video instantly on a wide variety of mobile devices, including iPads, iPhones, Android tablets, Android smartphones, as well as on a TV through Roku streaming players.

NOOK Video delivers a fairly expansive catalog of HD movies and TV shows from all the major studios, as well as many independent studios.

In addition, customers with the NOOK Tablet and NOOK Color will now have access to NOOK Video through a specially designed app that will automatically appear in customers’ lockers starting today.

“With the new NOOK Video Apps, customers can now easily access the thousands of movies and TV shows available from major studios and content partners on their TV and mobile devices,” said Jonathan Shar, Vice President & General Manager of Emerging Digital Content at NOOK Media LLC. “Combined with the built-in NOOK Video offering on the critically acclaimed NOOK HD and NOOK HD+, and NOOK’s seamless UltraViolet integration, we are offering customers one of the most dynamic and accessible movie and TV show stores available.”

The post B&N Looks to Give NOOK a Nudge with Free Video Apps appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The following is a guest contributed article from Chris Hayes, Co-founder & CTO of flik.

In life, it’s said that a picture is worth a thousand words. On the Internet, though, pictures have their limitations and videos tend to be overlooked as a functional utility. Why is that?

Countless hardware and software advances have increased our ability to capture and share video by orders of magnitude. Texting is quick and effective but limited to alphanumeric characters. Picture sharing can be beautiful and artistic, yet it ultimately becomes a simple snapshot of one angle. Video can be the ultimate communication tool by showing many angles while the user speaks exactly what he or she wants to convey.

Today’s technology infrastructure has developed in a way to support rising network speeds and increased data limits. The stars are aligning for social mobile video to become the preferred method of online sharing. Users thus face a new dilemma: the issue isn’t a matter of whether or not to use video, but which method to use?

For video to be a true online sharing utility, an app needs to be purposeful and useful for both the sharer and the sharee. Many publicly uploaded videos on YouTube, Vimeo, and other platforms contain extra footage that fails to get to the point quickly. This is fine for longer-form videos that are created for artistic or entertainment purposes. However, it doesn’t quite work that well as a simple communication tool.

Utility or artistic — those are essentially the two paths online video can take. Depending on what a user wants to do, different options can better suit their needs for video sharing. The newest innovators across the online video space include:

flik: Using a maximum of eight seconds, flik takes a slightly different approach to social video sharing. Rather than open things up to general social status updates or commentary, flik video subject matter focuses on user opinion or micro-reviews on products and places.

Vine: Twitter’s video-sharing module provides a means for quick communication or video snapshots. At just six seconds, Vine is the video equivalent of Twitter’s microblog messaging with subject matter covering whatever the user wants.

Keek: With 36 seconds available to record, Keek offers efficient ways to post video status updates. Keek is designed to start or continue a conversation through video snippets, along with offering live chat functionality.

Instagram: Instagram is already successful as a photo-sharing platform for social networking. Many Instagram users post artistic photos (hence, their popular filters), and the recently added video option continues this. At a maximum of 15 seconds and with 13 possible video filters, Instagram video enhances the platform’s artistic possibilities.

Pinterest: In May, Pinterest added video sharing to its online pinboard platform. Unlike Keek, Instagram, or Flik, Pinterest acts as a hub to post videos from other service such as YouTube. That means that there are no limitations to Pinterest video length; instead, videos pinned come with all the good and bad of the original creator’s quality.

In many cases, the more specific a platform’s purpose, the more effective it is for the user. For example, flik acts as a go-to source when user’s want to provide video commentary on a product or place, essentially becoming a video-driven means for ratings and reviews. Similarly, Pinterest’s pinboards are dedicated to specific topics and categories, allowing users to search for what other people have found to be relevant on a subject.

The Internet is big enough to support numerous successful apps and platforms to service different user needs. But for videos to maximize their potential, the platform itself has to foster an environment where they can be fully appreciated. Thus, regardless of whether the platform is designed to be a communication tool or an artistic display, its purpose is the most important part. This creates an inherent trust in the user base – a trust that is necessary to organically grow into a successful industry leader.

About the Author

Chris Hayes is the co-founder and CTO of flik, a social mobile app where users share products and places they love through short videos. Chris holds a BS in computer science & economics from Northwestern University, was a national chess champion at the age of 12, and is a submarine-pitching professional baseball player.

The post Utility Or Art? The Purpose Of Online Video Sharing Apps appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

According to unconfirmed new reports, the world’s largest social network has plans to sell 15-second TV-style commercials starting sometime before 2013 winds to a close.

Based on speculation from unnamed knowledgeable sources, Bloomberg estimates that Facebook could sell the commercials on its site for as much as $2.5 million a day.

With Facebook, the idea would be to capitalize on the millions of users who actively check the site on a daily basis, including during the prime-time hours coveted by television advertisers.

As of the most recent quarter, 61 percent of Facebook members were using the site on a daily basis.

“Every night, 88 million to 100 million people are actively using Facebook during prime-time TV hours in the United States alone,” Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg confirmed last week during Facebook’s recent earnings call.

It goes without saying that if Facebook travels down this road, it could dramatically escalate competition with other leading social networks and platforms where video advertisements are fast-becoming “the norm.”

The post Facebook Poised to Launch Video Ads to News Feed appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The Video Commerce Summit (set for July 25th & 26th) is where the e-commerce industry’s front-line experts, thought leaders, and brands come together to share how they’re using video to improve their bottom line.

The organization expects a record 300 attendees this year, where YouTube’s Suzie Reider will keynote the summit.

In addition to a full track of video commerce strategy, best practices, and case study sessions, we are partnering with the renowned online video marketing guide, ReelSEO, to provide a whole other track on general video marketing best practices for brands at no extra cost. This will be ReelSEO’s first ever Video Marketing Summit.

If you’re not familiar with Liveclicker, it’s a leading provider of video commerce solutions for some the web’s top brands.

“From production through conversion,” the company says, “Liveclicker’s video commerce solutions help clients sell more with video.”

To learn more about the summit or to register to attend, click here.

The post Video Commerce Summit Set for Late July appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

Off-site digital video meetings are poised to become the norm for many inmates who will be able to connect with off-site individuals via on-site video system.

In the future, even mobile options could also be available.

For now, the speed at which digital video conferencing is growing at prison facilities is remarkable.

According to published reports ahead of the weekend, visitors at the Porter County jail in Northwest Indiana now communicate with inmates via an on-site video system.

The new system, however, will expand to off-site video visits. “It’s an enhancement, not a change,” Porter County Sheriff Dave Lain explained.

The option, however, is coming with a price tag of $20 per 20-minute visit, according to Jeremy Rohr, sales engineer with Securus Technologies of Dallas… Once up and running, which should come in about four to six months, users will be required to register with the company’s website and secure approval from the sheriff’s department.

Rohr said in a local news report that this approach “is popular among those who don’t live near the jail.”

The post Are Prison Visits About to Go Mobile? appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

With the Vine app now available on Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablets, Instagram’s new video sharing feature must now play catch up.

The lead could prove significant for Vine. After all, Kindles are now believed to represent close to one-third of all Android tablets in use globally today.

For Vine, the timing couldn’t be better. As MMW reported late last month, according to the latest analytics, Vine usage is in freefall after video arrived on Instagram in June.

“Vine sharing went into a nosedive on June 20, the day of Instagram’s announcement,” MarketingLand confirmed Friday. “Topsy shows there were almost 2.5 million Vine links shared on June 19, then a little more than 1.5 million on the 20th — a drop of almost 40 percent in one day.”

In the first 24 hours of availability, the Instagram video tool was used to upload a staggering 5 million videos.

The post Vine Lands On Kindle Fire Tablets Ahead of Instagram appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.