As you’ve all probably heard by now, Groupon has just raised the most venture capital in history and is well on its way to world domination of local commerce….for now at least. The fact that they now have 50 million subscribers should be a sure sign to retailers that social commerce is the new imperative for local businesses wanting to stay competitive in the recession economy. There has long been an attitude among many businesses and ad agencies  that the use of coupons serves to devalue “premium” brands while undermining the carefully nurtured notion among consumers that when you pay full price, you end up with a superior product.

A report published in The Guardian in June of 2010 indicated that 79% of people polled by UK website Save.co.uk, used online vouchers (as coupons are called in the UK) for food shopping and 47% used them for eating out.

As recently as two or three years ago, it would have been almost impossible to imagine nearly 50% of people who eat out in the U.S. bringing along a coupon – but not anymore. Europe is ahead of the U.S. in mainstream adoption of coupons, but given Groupon’s explosive growth and continuing economic pressures, we may not be far from a time when a significant percentage of consumers are more likely to choose between similar products or services based not on brand, but on the availability of a discount.

A recent article in the New York Times backs this notion up and showcases how retailers are using new tactics to get consumers to shop around in the store and stay a while instead of luring them in with the standard $10 off coupons. Granted, the article mainly covers clothing and product retailers instead of dining and entertainment outfits, but it’s a good read to get a feel for how promotions and deals are playing a big factor in our current economic climate from the perspective of retailers.

A global survey by Accenture on mobile devices and shopping highlights how the growing use of smartphone technology and the economic downturn have encouraged cost-conscious consumers to explore alternative retail channels such as mobile to secure bargains.

The Accenture survey found that 79% of smartphone users would find it useful to download money-off coupons to their phones .

“Today’s tech-savvy consumer has high expectations—a seamless shopping experience, where they want it, when they want it,” said Lisa Mitnick, managing director of mobility at Accenture, Washinton. “Bricks-and-mortar may not serve the same needs in the same way in the near future. Unlike a card sitting unseen in a purse or wallet, and unlike sales offers that come through the post or email, a mobile coupon can deliver incentives to consumers wherever they are, targeting them for timely promotions and, in the future, even reaching them when they are in physical proximity to a retail location.”

Notably, 48 percent of conventional mobile phone users plan to buy a smartphone in the next year and IDC puts that growth rate at 55 percent.

The results of the survey also indicate that smartphone technology is changing the relationship between customers and retailers.

Many smartphone users said that they prefer using their mobile device rather than interacting with a store employee for simple tasks. Even Amazon has a daily deal mobile app now where you can subscribe to specific categories of deals and shop on your iPhone.

According to the survey, 73 percent favor using their smartphone to handle simple tasks, compared to 15 percent who favor interaction with an employee.

A recession economy requires merchants to watch margins more closely, and their shoppers are also checking prices with more scrutiny, and their bottom dollar has caused shifts in loyalty as well.  For many shoppers, price is increasingly a top consideration, edging out brand loyalty and past shopping preferences. Merchants are focusing on systems that engage with and retain customers such as social media, group deals, mobile coupons, SMS marketing, and CRM software which create the backbone of any effective loyalty or promotions campaign and enable them to gain a unified view of their customers and react quickly to changes in shopping behavior.

This becomes leverage for merchants because they now have the ability to provide offers and deals through a plethora of new digital channels, and the key thing is that those channels are tied in to word-of-mouth marketing which means that the effectiveness of campaigns increases dramatically. In addition, the new channels allow for unprecedented analytics and data that allows the merchant to track effectiveness down to the demographic level. Customer relationship management (CRM) software helps retailers look for new ways to retain and attract customers, and can be used for managing marketing initiatives (e.g. discounts, promotions and loyalty programs), or to capitalize on valuable customer purchase information.

Looking ahead to 2011, Borrell Associates recently identified 3 ways for digital media publishers to grow interactive advertising revenue.

1.    Invest in mobile marketing now.

In a survey of 3,300 business owners in 2010, 15% identified that they have tried some form of mobile advertising. Looking ahead, 44% said that they would be somewhat likely to try mobile advertising in 2011. These businesses form the foundation for growth in the coming year. Mobile advertising reached $6.3 Billion in 2010 and is expected to grow to $42.1 Billion in 5 years. That is the fastest trajectory of media growth in history. Digital media publishers that can deliver a rapt audience for these business owners will stand to profit from the sale of advertising around these products.

2.    Get your deal-on and start leveraging promotions.

The daily deal phenomenon rocked online advertising in 2010, and consumers netted $4.4 Billion in savings from these deals alone. These deals have added a new dynamic to the relationship between the publisher and the small business. The deal is a partnership between publisher and advertiser and an opportunity for each party to participate in revenue. Daily deals, to be successful, must be selective and the publisher must be willing to say no to a deal if it isn’t sweet enough.

3.    Use an integrated marketing approach with your clients.

Advertising can be used for lead generation or for branding, but most small business owners focus on leads. How many clicks did they get? How many people visited a store? One way to satisfy this desire for leads is to provide services to help small business owners build a database of prospects. E-mail, social networks, and SMS lists can be connected to traditional or digital media advertising to add more interesting and actionable metrics to any campaign.

In some ways I think this is the big hurdle for NFC:  hardware. The incentive for software is there, especially with companies like Google, Apple, Groupon, and Facebook aiming to capture the consumer side of the market with content. Hardware will be a different story, and it seems like the leader there would most likely be Apple because of their strengths in consumer electronics. If Apple can come up with a cheap solution that adds real value to small businesses and retail outlets, then NFC will really take off, and Apple will take the cake.

Schonfeld notes that mobile offers that are tied in with the NFC swipe at the retailer will drive consumer usage and I definitely agree. The use of the mobile coupon, if done right, provides for detailed data and analytics for merchant users. Mobile coupon campaigns could be personalized and targeted to consumers based on their preferences.

When Zoomerang surveyed US mobile phone owners on behalf of mobile marketing firm Hipcricket in October 2010, more than a third of respondents said they would be interested in a mobile loyalty program from a trusted brand.

There was even greater interest in a loyalty program members could join via a brand’s page on a mobile social networking application like Facebook. But a majority of respondents said their favorite brands did not market to them at all on their mobile phone, suggesting companies may be leaving valuable opportunities on the table. Shoppers already involved in mobile loyalty programs were highly satisfied: 90% said they had gotten value from being a member.

Overall, interest in mobile loyalty programs was about the same as Hipcricket found in 2009, but respondents’ desire for mobile coupons had gone up over the same period.

A September 2010 survey of US shoppers by the In-Store Marketing Institute found a similar level of interest, with 34% of respondents interested in mobile coupons—likely somewhat lower because the survey included consumers who were not mobile users.

Mobile advertising and ad optimization company Smaato is released a new whitepaper yesterday with some huge projections for the mobile advertising industry.

According to Smaato, the US is the second largest mobile advertising market globally in terms of spending, falling just behind Japan. In 2010, Smaato says US mobile advertising spending is expected to be worth $797.6 million. For the US, this equates to a little under 8,000 mobile advertising campaigns, and an average of 21.8 new campaigns per day. Smatto says that the U.S. mobile ad market will move closer to Japan (more than $1 billion in 2010) next year with a forecast of $1.24 billion for 2011 and $5.04 billion for 2015. eMarketer released similar findings a few weeks ago, but Smaato’s finding are more bullish on projections for 2015.

Here’s the reasoning. The company says that US has over 300 million active mobile subscriptions, of which, almost one-third use their mobile phone to browse. This number is only expected to grow in the next few years. Because of the high number of mobile users, the average mobile advertising campaign spend is between $75,000 – 100,000, which is much higher than in other countries.

And the report contends that the mobile advertising market is is still young and has not fully matured. Smaato says that mobile has yet to penetrate over 50% of the US mobile population in terms of advertising. As smartphone usage increases, interact rates will increase and advertisers will be more willing to shell out ad dollars.

A new survey and report out by JiWire aims to shed some light on how mobile users engage with location-based services and what types of advertising they prefer to interact with.  Looking at the most popular LBS applications, the report shows that Google, Yelp, Facebook and Foursquare are the most popular.

What’s interesting is that coupons and discounts placed second only to maps, and out-ranked reviews, status updates and check-ins when users ranked the most valuable features of location-based apps.  As the so-called “check-in craze” continues in the LBS world, it’s interesting to see mobile coupons and other offers outrank the concept in terms of features users deem most important.

I’m not suprised at all by this. To me, the thing about LBS apps like Foursquare and Gowalla is that they’re more of a novelty experience instead of a utility experience. When I set out to create iCouponBook, I did so specifically because I saw an opportunity to go beyond the typical novelty experiences found in apps like Foursquare, and create something that could become incredibly useful. To me, the most amazing thing about mobile advertising is the utility.

I’m a busy person, and I don’t really have time for games. Foursquare is a game to me, and my prediction is that there’s a lot of other people out there who are equally as busy as I am, and they’re going to appreciate a straight-forward user experience that focuses on being useful and simple. That’s how iCouponBook was made.

Other interesting tidbits from the survey show men are more interested in sharing their location than women, and those in the 25-34 and 35-44 age categories indicated more openness than younger and older age groups.  Responses also showed that mobile users are nearly as likely to use location-based services in their homes as they are while on the go.

What the data shows is that users are undoubtedly open to the idea of LBS, as long as the services and integrated advertising remain relevant and provide value for the user.  LBS startups are still trying to find the “magic sauce” so-to-speak in terms of bringing the two concepts together, but it’s only a matter of time before a winner emerges.

I believe that iCouponBook has this magic sauce. It’s a win-win-win like no other mobile app on the market is. It serves the needs of consumers, non-profits, and merchants — and creates a user experience for these groups that is simple, straight-forward, and useful.

PS — Our Website is currently being loaded onto our servers. Please excuse a few of the bugs while we get everything working, and look out for some exciting announcements coming in the next month or so.

Cheers,

~Brinkley

Founder/CEO of iCouponBook

To me, some of the important things to notice are….

1.  Mobile Devices are the baby in the trifecta, and whereas social media and email are more concrete in terms of how a marketer would “use” it to increase brand awareness and drive sales, mobile is a bit more blurry. SMS is probably in there, as are mobile browsing and of course native apps…..the question is….what of these uses will prevail? Similar to social media, there’s probably a different use-case for each brand and for each distinct situation and goal.

2.  I found it interesting that many marketers are integrating social media with their email campaigns. Will mobile be next? What will this integration look like? Will it be a link to download an app or open up a new kind of messaging on the mobile device?

3.  I found it interesting that marketers are using social media primarily for brand awareness instead of driving sales. It seems like social commerce is built to drive sales and word-of-mouth, and to me this proves that the social commerce game is still a bit new with marketers. Look for that 13.8% figure to increase in the coming years.

Click below to see the really nice infographic:

Repeat:   Apple has hired an expert in near field communication technology as its new product manager for mobile commerce.

Benjamin Vigier has been working on NFC technology since 2004 and has been responsible for NFC activities at both French mobile network operator Bouygues Telecom and flash memory manufacturer Sandisk.

Most recently Vigier was product manager for mobile wallet, payment and NFC at US mobile payments specialist mFoundry. There he conceived and managed both the PayPal Mobile service and Starbucks’ barcode-based mobile payments service and was also responsible for the development of mobile wallet applications for two top US mobile network operators and an NFC wallet application for a top three US bank.

A barrage of NFC-related Apple patent applications have been published over the last few months. They cover a wide range of potential NFC application areas and include:

• An NFC-based mobile payments service that lets consumers make payments to merchants and other consumers via a credit or debit card, directly from their bank account or using credit stored in their iTunes account.
• The ‘iPay, iBuy and iCoupons‘ patents, describing a comprehensive mobile payments, mobile commerce and mobile marketing business based around an NFC-enabled iPhone.
• Products+, an NFC-based product marketing and promotions application.
• An airline ticketing and boarding pass application that describes an unmanned, automated airport ticketing and baggage counter kiosk and introduces the concept of an automated security checking process where users of the iTravel app could process themselves through the security clearance system and check themselves in at the boarding gate.
• The Grab & Go patent, designed to make it easy for customers to transfer files between devices such as the Mac, iPhone and Apple TV.
• An NFC-enabled iPod, games controller, TV and iPhone.
• An NFC-based concert, entertainment and sports venue ticketing application that includes exclusive bonus features for users of Apple’s service.

Exactly what mobile commerce products Vigier will be working on at Apple are, of course, not yet in the public domain — and Vigier declined to comment about his new role when NFC World contacted him today. Given that he has had so much experience with mobile money applications, however, the choice of Vigier to product manage mobile commerce does, at least, point towards a continued interest at Apple in taking at least some of these patent applications from concept to commercial reality.

Also interesting in all of this is the question of hardware:  Could Apple be thinking of providing payment processing hardware to merchants to own the entire payment process? This merchant hardware is currently produced by companies such as Vivotech but a move into this market by Apple could be just the right prescription for completely overhauling mobile commerce.

I feel both excited and nervous:  excited because of the new technology and the possibilities, nervous because Apple is huge, and they have tons o’ lawyers who can probably find chinks in my patent apps and methods. Alas, I feel the rising tide will indeed float all boats…..

Stay tuned on these developments, I’m sure they’ll be making waves in the ol’ Blogosphere soon enough; probably after the first NFC-related post by Techcrunch or ReadWriteWeb.

A recent study (commissioned by Placecast) reveals that the user profile of those who download mobile coupons has shifted. Whereas just last year, the majority of mobile coupon users were young males, mobile coupons are now being downloaded primarily by the same demographic that’s traditionally known for clipping them offline. As Ad Age reports:

A study conducted by Harris Interactive found adults with children at home are more likely to be interested in text alerts about sales and promotions than those with no kids at home. Of people with kids younger than 6 in their household, 35% are at least somewhat interested in getting opt-in text alerts from favorite businesses, compared to 32% of households with older kids and 25% of homes with no children.

[And] the balance has tilted away from men, as adoption of smartphones such as the iPhone and various Android devices has become more popular.

So as smartphones approach critical mass, they’re pulling mobile coupons along with them and LBS advertising might not be far behind.

LBS Advertising: Today and Tomorrow

Simply put, LBS is using a user’s geo-location to provide any kind of service (from driving directions to restaurant recommendations to advertising). The marketing opportunity is clear: LBS could easily be used to drive foot-traffic through geo-targeted ads.

But as much we’ve always been able to pin-point triangulate the location of a mobile phone user, LBS has never really taken off. W

LBS ad technology remains in its nascent stages, and as smartphone adoption proliferates, LBS will come into its own.

Coupons offer both advertisers and publishers clear benefits. While coupons let advertiser better measure the performance of their promotions, they also provide an opportunity for publishers to receive commissions on every redemption, and increase conversions by virtue of the coupon being an incentive, and by virtue of the GPS-enabled phone being the medium of coupon transaction. Atlanta-based company Scoutmob is a clear example.

Mobile coupons are  starting to gain traction as big players like Google and Facebook ramp up their efforts.    Through the proliferation of location-based startups like ours — iCouponBook, as well as more established players like Yelp, Foursquare, MyTown and many others, mobile coupons are a central aspect to the consumer rewards and loyalty programs each are perfecting….good thing I have a 55 page patent on that

Check out the pic below, pretty great…

Online retailers are quickly understanding the potential of engaging a mobile advertising strategy to supplement their efforts, according to a new report published by Forrester.

Nearly three-quarters (74%) of online retailers either already have or are developing a mobile strategy, and one in five boasts having a fully-implemented mobile strategy in place already.  Interestingly, the report forecasts $170,000 per online retailer is expected to be spent on mobile sites this year with larger retailers spending much more.  ”Mobile investment is modest now, but we see that it will pick up in the future, especially among the biggest brands that have already invested significant amounts in their mobile operations,” said Sucharita Mulpuru, Vice President, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research, and lead author of the report.

Forrester noted that search advertising will continue to command the largest portion of US online retail budgets this year, coming in at 40 percent, while email and affiliate marketing will also command large portions, the report notes.  Social marketing is also fast coming to the forefront, with 80 percent of online retailers planning to invest- but ROI “remains murky.”  The same can’t be said about mobile advertising, where ROI is easily measurable and obtained.

Digital marketing in general is quickly becoming centered around the art of “integrated communications,” whereby numerous channels are utilized to work off the strengths and weaknesses of one another.  With mobile coming to the forefront, Online retailers need to quickly diversify their strategy to maintain relevancy.

The study of integrated communications is thought of as a science in the academic world, but the problem is that it’s based off of research that was done in the 1990s, and today’s digital media environment is outpacing research in this regard. Hopefully the mobile internet will get people thinking about integrated approaches as an art instead of a science, and hopefully this will open up creative opportunities for advertising and marketing firms.