Mobile marketing and technology company Nellymoser creates these types of ads for magazines and conducted the research, so the company obviously has skin in this game, but its findings are interesting for showing how marketers are changing the ways they use these action codes. (The report doesn’t focus on how well action codes are actually, you know, spurring action but I’ve asked for some follow-up data.) Some findings:

—Mobile action codes are much more likely to be used in ads than in editorial content—the ratio of advertising codes to editorial codes was 25:1 by December 2011. Editorial codes were primarily used to run sweepstakes.

—Most action codes were used to showcase a video (54 percent), often a video created specifically for mobile use. 30 percent were used for data capture and list building, especially sweepstakes. “While sweeps can be run with one action code, there is a growing trend towards sweepstakes that span an entire publication with multiple advertisers and editorial sections participating, each with its own code,” the report says.

—Nearly 40 percent of codes were created by the beauty, home and fashion industries and the codes were especially likely to appear in women’s magazines.

 Interesting story today from DigiDay on online ad forecasts entitled "Lies Damn Lies, Ad Industry Growth Forecasts"

Jack Marshall - the author points out some of the gross overestimates that are routinely made. It is worth keeping in mind when you hear the huge numbers often thrown around for new media.

Here is a portion of the story:

In March 2008, for example, eMarketer predicted U.S. mobile ad spend would reach $5.2 billion by 2011. By October 2011, however, the company had downgraded those estimates by a whopping $4 billion and, instead, suggested total spend would reach just $1.2 billion that year. In eMarketer’s defense, it probably didn’t foresee the economic difficulties that kicked in later that year, but that fact just helps illustrate the point: It’s impossible to predict the growth of such immature markets.

“There are known knowns and there are also known unknowns,” said eMarketer analyst Noah Elkin, quoting Donald Rumsfeld. “The issue with the unknowns is that there are more of them in an emerging market like mobile compared to relatively more mature markets such as TV or print. As a result it’s always possible some forecasts will be off, but you do your best to predict the future with the knowledge you have today.”

This is all true and a general guard against taking any economic forecast as gospel. After all, imagine all the data sitting in front of the Federal Reserve about the housing market in 2006. The foremost stewards of the U.S. economy saw nothing but growth ahead. Instead, the market lost trillions of dollars in value. Oops.

Online advertising is small potatoes in comparison, yet it’s hard to predict with the accuracy of, say, the TV upfronts. Too many changes from year to year. It is still a young medium. And yet there’s a heavy demand — from journalists, venture capitalists, publishers, agencies and others — for forecasts in the most nascent of industries. In 2007, for example, eMarketer estimated 2011 U.S. video ad spend would reach $4.3 billion. By June 2011, that prediction had been reduced by 50 percent to $2.16 billion. Oops again.

By no means is it just eMarketer’s estimates that appear inaccurate, either. In October 2007 Forrester Research forecasted U.S. video ad spending would reach $7.1 billion by 2012. Last week the company expressed very different views, stating it now expects the market to generate $5.4 billion in revenues in 2016. Might want to check in sometime in 2014 for an update.

full  story here

Marketers More Bullish Than Agencies on Traditional Media Spend

A greater proportion of marketers than agencies believe that spending on traditional media such as direct mail (25% vs. 17%), print (22% vs. 8%), and radio (18% vs. 3%) will increase this year as compared to 2011, with the proportions expecting spend to increase on TV relatively on par, according to a survey released in January 2012 by RSW/US. And although the survey shows that increases in digital media spending will outpace that of traditional media, marketers’ planned increases do not appear to match agency expectations: a higher proportion of agencies than marketers expect spending to increase in social media (89% vs. 63%), mobile (72% vs. 46%), SEO (66% vs. 48%), and banner advertising (55% vs. 30%).

According to December 2011 figures from Kantar Media, outdoor (3.2%), TV (3.2%), and radio (1.1%) led all media in Q3 2011 year-over-year ad spend gains, while internet and newspaper ad spending declined 2.9% and 3.7%, respectively.

Associated Press Teams With 40 Newspapers On Mobile Coupons

from www.paidcontent.org

The new mobile initiative, dubbed “iCircular,” will start rolling out on Monday within the mobile sites and apps of the 40 newspapers.

The iCircular feature will be found within newspaper mobile apps on the iPhone. The feature will be available on other formats, such as Google’s Android, later on. It’s HTM5-based, so that will also be available on newspapers’ web and mobile wap sites and ultimately ease iCircular’s transfer to other operating systems. The app will be situated within a special “Deals” section on each of the newspapers’ apps and mobile sites. 

“It’s essentially an app within an app,” said Mary Junck, chairman of AP’s board of directors’ revenue committee and CEO of Lee Enterprises (NYSE: LEE). “We didn’t want to create an app separate from the newspapers. We wanted something that would be as integrated into the newspapers as a Sunday circular is in the print editions.”

Interestingly, the program is open to all newspapers, not just AP members, Junck told paidContent in an interview. “This is meant to address a problem and promote an opportunity for all newspapers,” she added.

Launch partners include the New York Daily News, The Philadelphia Inquirer, the New York Times (NYSE: NYT) Company’s Boston Globe, Hearst’s San Francisco Chronicle, Cox Media’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution, AH Belo’s The Dallas Morning NewsTribune Company’s Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune,  and other representatives of nearly every major newspaper company. (The whole list of iCircular newspaper launch partners.)