The Official blog of Dark Matter, Inc.

TeleNav today released interesting usage data on which brands mobile users are searching for using the company’s many mobile GPS navigation applications.

Of its more than 17 million subscribers, TeleNav analyzed how frequently its users entered brand names as a keyword searches, and found that select brands in a variety of vertical industries are beating out the competition for their share of mobile, local searches.  ”Our GPS navigation users are in their vehicles, actively looking for a specific service or business to drive to,” explained Ky Tang, director of marketing for TeleNav.  ”Our analysis of the businesses our users are actively searching for helps brands understand the behavior and preferences of on-the-go consumers.”

For example, fast food is obviously searched for more than others, with the data showing six of the top ten most searched restaurants in the Nation being fast-food locations.  McDonald’s tops the charts as the number one searched restaurant, with more than twice as many searches as second place Subway.  Taco Bell, KFC and Burger King round out the top five, respectively.  Hotels are another highly searched vertical, with Holiday Inn being the number one searched for hotel with nearly twice as many searches for its properties than second place Marriott.  Hampton took third place, followed by Motel 6 and Hilton.

In terms of shopping, TeleNav analyzed data to determine which large retail stores consumers search for most while on the road.  Interestingly, the results found that Walmart tops the list by far, with more than three times as many searches as second place Target.  Even more surprising, Walmart also holds the distinction as being the top searched keyword overall among TeleNav users.  Of course, this data was released to show the immense marketing potential TeleNav’s new mobile advertising platform can provide.

The company recently launched its navigation-based mobile-ad platform to enable businesses, such as restaurants, hotels and retail stores, to place a sponsored listing at the top of the search results located in its mobile navigation applications.  When users click on the sponsored listing, the advertiser can provide additional information to the user such as a coupon or menu information.  The user can then choose to call, map or receive turn-by-turn directions to drive to the business location, all of which are actions TeleNav measures and reports as metrics to advertisers.

“This usage analysis demonstrates the wealth of data and insights we have into what drivers are searching for when they’re on the road,” said Tang. “If a brand is not a top searched destination, they can use our ad platform to place their listing at the top of the search results list, giving them more visibility with our users. If the brand is already frequently searched by our users, our ad platform can be used to include deals or coupons within their listings, rewarding consumers for being loyal to their brand and helping to increase the number of users who choose to visit a location after conducting a search.”

A recent mobile advertising campaign for Audi’s new A1 model in Spain achieved impressive results in a matter of days using a rich media video ad unit recently introduced by TAPTAP Networks and GoldSpot Media — two leading mobile video solution providers in Spain.

The new format used in the Audi campaign is the result of a recent collaboration between the aforementioned companies, including interstitial video and video banners ads.  At the heart of the solution is a way to re-purpose TV commercials into mobile video campaigns for mobile apps and the mobile Web.  Both video solutions allow users to watch a commercial on their mobile device while loading at app startup or while navigating through apps.

The campaign in question was ran in Spain’s leading iPhone sports application AS.com, and engaged users with a full-screen video interstitial upon starting the app. The campaign quickly saw huge success, garnering more than 50,000 impressions in just a few days and achieving more than eight seconds of average viewing time per user.

“We’re extremely happy with the initial campaign results.  Many more top tier brands are interested in trying these new video formats in the short term,” said Alvaro del Castillo, CEO of TAPTAP Networks.  “Advertisers are looking for new ways to stand out in a fragmented media landscape and we’ve found that mobile video provides the best opportunity to generate great awareness and strong brand recognition with the mobile audience.”

As of August, only 4 percent of American adults who used the Internet also used location-based services, which allow people to “check in” to physical locations via their cellphones to earn coupons or keep up with friends, the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project reported last week. And only 1 percent of Internet users are on such services on any given day, an indication that those who do use the services still have not integrated them into their daily lives.

On any given day, 1 percent of adult Americans use a service that allows them to share their location, according to the report. Four percent of adult Internet users use location-based services at all, down from 5 percent of Internet users who said they used such services in May. Only 6 percent of people who use social networking sites also used location-based services.

People using location-based services fit the profile of any early adopter of new technologies, said Kathryn Zickuhr, the author of the report.

Men were twice as likely as women to use location-based services, and people between 18 and 29 years old were more than twice as likely to use them as any other adult age group. The Pew report did not include data on teenagers.

Ten percent of Hispanics reported using location-based services, compared with 5 percent of blacks and 3 percent of whites.

Ms. Zickuhr said she was surprised at how companies building location into their business plans seemed to be far ahead of people using such services in their day-to-day lives.

Still, companies like Foursquare and Gowalla, two of the leaders in the location-based services market, have had no trouble raising money from investors. Advertisers are on track to spend $1.8 billion on location-based marketing in 2015, according to ABI Research, a technology market research firm.

And last week, Facebook announced that it would allow retailers to offer coupons and special deals through its own location-based service, Places, which it introduced in August.

How did businesses get so far ahead of consumers on this idea? And will consumers ever catch up?

In order to answer this question, it helps to understand how technology companies make money by providing free services. When a customer buys a toothbrush from a drugstore, she pays with cash; when the same customer creates a social-networking profile on Facebook, the currency she uses is her personal data.

Specific user data is valuable to advertisers because it allows them to target their marketing efforts more effectively. With social networking, hundreds of millions of people are willing to provide access to that data in exchange for a service they find useful, even while many express concerns about their privacy.

“Many people are in a more ‘transactional’ frame of mind” when it comes to their personal information, said Lee Rainie, the director of the Internet and American Life Project. “They will share information if they think they can get something of value for it.”

Data about a person’s physical location would be immensely valuable to marketers and retailers, say analysts. But sharing information about where you are can seem creepy or, worse, dangerous, as the Web site Please Rob Me showed earlier this year when it demonstrated how easy it would be for potential thieves to use social networks to find homes whose occupants were away.

Meanwhile, the upside of the transaction is unclear to many people, said Melissa Parrish, an analyst at Forrester Research. None of the efforts so far have reached the “sweet spot of coolness and utility” that will get people to share their data, she said.

Josh Williams, a founder of Gowalla, agreed, describing the way that location-based services are pitched as “nerdy and often off-putting.”

Mr. Williams said Facebook’s efforts would show people an upside to location via special offers on shopping through its Deals program. His company and others are working on less tangible benefits, like providing an opportunity to connect with friends in the physical world. He acknowledged that the companies still had to show people the point of all this.

“As an industry, it behooves ourselves to look for more human ways to explain what we’re doing,” he said.

Millennial Media has published its S.M.A.R.T report for the month of September, detailing stats from Q3 as seen from its unique audience reach of 73.5M users — or roughly 8 out of 10 mobile Web users.

Starting with general stats, Millennial reports the US mobile Web increased by approximately 3% since its last report, growing from 80M in August to over 82M in September.  Other quick stats include 12% of advertisers on Millennial’s network used rich media elements in their campaigns during Q3 — up significantly from the start of the year — showing advertisers are broadening their strategy as smartphones and more capable devices continue to proliferate.

With October being Breast Cancer Awareness month, advertisers are focusing on how to reach women.  As such, this month’s report details findings from InsightExpress’ Q2 2010 Digital Consumer Portrait, which focused on moms and how they engage with mobile.  The findings show 32% of moms own a smartphone in 2010, a surprisingly high number if you ask me, which is up significantly from the 20% reported in 2009 — a 60% increase year-over-year.  Thirty-two percent of moms also said they use the mobile Web at least once per week in 2010, compared to just 20% in 2009 — again, a 60% increase.

In terms of the verticals represented on Millennial’s network, several continue to see substantial increases.  Six advertising verticals saw triple-digit year-over-year growth, and surprisingly, the verticals that have experienced this tremendous growth were all in the Top 10 AdvertisingVertical Ranking in Q3 2009 as well.  For example, entertainment claimed the number one spot in Q3, showing growth of 315% year-over-year.  The finance vertical has seen explosive growth as well, posting a whopping 800% growth year-over-year, while retail and restaurants showed an impressive growth rate of 745% as well.  In all, nearly all verticals being represented via mobile advertising have grown significantly, with no signs of slowing down any time soon.

As usual, much more information, data points and visual representations are available in the actual report, which can be downloaded here.

Today Placecast announced the release of their second wave of research conducted by Harris Interactive that dives deeper into consumer receptivity to opt-in mobile marketing and the potential impact for retailers. Overall, consumer receptivity to opt-in mobile marketing is growing, as is its ability to increase intent to visit stores. One-third of Americans who currently have signed up for mobile marketing alerts indicate that such services impact their decision to go into stores and 27% report that mobile programs have impacted their decision to buy products in physical retail locations. (Please click here to request more information covered in this study).

During the summer of 2009, we conducted the first survey on location-based mobile marketing and advertising, which forms the baseline for this research. Since that first survey, we have seen that overall consumer interest in such programs increased with ‘somewhat interested’ consumers growing by 2 percent to 28% of all cell phone owners.  As in the first survey, interest is most pronounced among the youngest cell phone owners: 42% of those ages 18–34 are at least somewhat interested. Interest grew 6 points to 40% among women ages 18–34 from the survey conducted in 2009. Interest levels between men and women are now about equal overall.

Consumers vote with their stomachs Groceries (68%), national restaurant chains (64%), and fast-food items (50%) took three of the top four most popular segments for those who are at least somewhat receptive to overall opt-in mobile marketing, with a host of other categories also seeing strong interest.

Women skewed higher than men when it came to interest in offers/promotions for groceries and apparel, while men skewed higher in interest for electronics and sporting goods products:

Texting significantly more valued than app-based services One of the most interesting data points in this study across all cell phone owners is the importance of texting: it is still an overwhelmingly popular activity on mobile vs. other activities. An average of 40% of all cell phone owners say that texting is “extremely” or “very important” to them. Even with the buzz of services like Foursquare and Gowalla, only 7% of men and 3% of women showed the same level of interest in these types of social networks

With check-in services only available on smart phones (which comprise roughly 21% of all mobile phones in the U.S.), reach for marketers through these platforms is still a question. Furthermore, both consumers and marketers see texting as similar mechanisms to email, which has made a substantial impact on purchase behavior— both online and in brick-and-mortar stores. Incorporating location—the ability to make messages even more relevant based on where users are and when they are there—is consistently seen as a valuable service by consumers and is easy for marketers to execute at scale.

Methodology This survey was conducted online within the United States by Harris Interactive on behalf of Placecast from May 17–19, 2010 among 2,046 U.S. adults ages 18+, of whom 1,710 own a cell phone and/or a smartphone. For complete survey methodology, including weighting variables, please contact us here.