Ad Operations Online » Social Media Advertising

Socialbakers Appoints James Bodha as CFO

Otilia Otlacan — Fri, 24 May 2013 17:16:44 +0000

Strengthens team by bringing outstanding track record and deep expertise as a successful CFO of dynamic technology businesses

PRAGUE – Socialbakers, the global provider of analytics platforms that allows brands to measure, compare, and contrast the success of their social media campaigns, today announces the appointment of James Bodha as Chief Financial Officer.

Bodha joins Socialbakers from Myriad Group AG, a leading provider of global social messaging services listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange. He will report to Jan Rezab, Socialbakers’ CEO, assuming responsibility for all financial, commercial and legal operations.

Bodha brings to Socialbakers over twelve years of experience in senior financial leadership roles within global, growth technology businesses held in public, venture capital and private equity ownership. During his time at Myriad Group, he oversaw the consolidation of three substantial businesses to create a market leader in social messaging, including the acquisition of Synchronica Plc., an AIM/ TSX dual listed mobile social platform provider.

Prior to joining Myriad Group, he was Chief Financial Officer at Aircom International, a mobile network software provider and Magic4, a mobile phone messaging software provider.

“James brings to Socialbakers an outstanding track record and deep expertise as a serially successful CFO of dynamic technology businesses,” said Rezab. “In particular, his knowledge of establishing and growing profitable and sustainable global, multi-site operations will be invaluable in helping Socialbakers accelerate its growth worldwide.”

“Socialbakers is a truly international company with a market leading social media analytics platform and an outstanding client base of the world’s biggest brands,” adds Bodha. “I am excited to be joining such an ambitious, highly talented team and look forward to helping the company scale operations to achieve its aggressive growth strategy.”

About Socialbakers:

Socialbakers.com is a user-friendly social media analytics platform, providing the only global solution that allows brands to measure, compare, and contrast the success of their social media campaigns with competitive intelligence.

Since 2009 Socialbakers has continuously developed innovative tools for companies to measure and maximize the effectiveness of their social marketing campaigns across all major social networks. With more than 160 employees located in 10 offices worldwide, Socialbakers is one of the world’s fastest growing social media and digital analytics company.

Nanigans Expands to Europe with New London Headquarters

Otilia Otlacan — Mon, 20 May 2013 16:00:50 +0000

Leading Facebook® Strategic Preferred Marketing Developer to accelerate Facebook performance advertising in key market

LONDON - Nanigans, Inc., the lifetime value based advertising technology company, announced the opening of a European headquarters to support their rapidly growing international business. The expansion reflects the company’s passion for unparalleled customer service as well as its interest in pursuing growing opportunities from companies operating in the region.

“We’ve gained valuable insights into our customers throughout the path to purchase, which has enabled us to better understand the impact of our Facebook advertising investment.”

“With our industry-leading position in the United States, expansion into Europe is a natural progression,” said Ric Calvillo, CEO of Nanigans. We’ve seen strong demand from clients across multiple sectors in the region, from retail to gaming. Of course it is very important to Nanigans that we provide the same level of expertise and support for our European customers, which has been at the core of our success in North America.”

The London office opening follows a series of key milestones for Nanigans since its inception in 2011 including a recent round of $5.8 million in Series A.1 funding, a 120%, increase in headcount, a doubling of its customer base and a 6x expansion in revenues.

Nanigans is offering its unique Facebook advertising platform to marketers across all European countries. The company has scaled complex global Facebook advertising campaigns with spend as high as one million dollars a day. The London office will enable the company’s ad operations and client services teams to provide in-person platform training and optimisation expertise to help clients focus and scale on revenue. Nanigans manages Facebook ad campaigns for more than 200 companies across the globe including Fab, Social Point, Vistaprint and Wooga.

“Nanigans’ Facebook advertising solution allows the Vistaprint team to effectively find and acquire profitable customers at scale,” said Matthew Trattles, head of online display and social media at Vistaprint. “We’ve gained valuable insights into our customers throughout the path to purchase, which has enabled us to better understand the impact of our Facebook advertising investment.”

The company’s expansion into Europe will be led by Will Ashton, a 10-year veteran of digital media and social advertising platform technology companies. Will has previously managed successful operations in Europe for Google’s search advertising group and for social media advertising company, Alchemy Social, later acquired by global credit and marketing services giant, Experian.

Nanigans offers the only advertising platform that measures, predicts and optimises ad spend for lifetime ROI. By harnessing the power of lifetime value to inform more intelligent and efficient media buying, the company is moving the industry away from buying on a cost-per-click and cost-per-action basis to a true ROI basis.

To learn how licensing Nanigans’ lifetime ROI-based advertising platform can help your company acquire profitable customers, contact us.

® Facebook is a registered trademark of Facebook, Inc.

About Nanigans, Inc.

Nanigans’ Ad Engine software platform helps advertisers maximize the effectiveness of their social and mobile advertising by appointing ROI (return on investment) and predictive LTV (lifetime value) based algorithms to advertising campaigns at scale. Founded in 2010 and backed by Avalon Ventures, Nanigans manages over 9-figures of annual ad spend across 200 advertisers. To learn more, visit: http://www.nanigans.com

Consumers Responding to Social Call-to-Action in Online and TV Advertisements

Otilia Otlacan — Mon, 20 May 2013 12:00:17 +0000

Consumers, specifically women, are interacting on social media via advertising cues to show support for favorite brands

BURLINGTON, MA - Burst Media, (http://burstmedia.com), a leading online media company and wholly owned subsidiary of blinkx PLC (LSE AIM: BLNX), released the results of a survey revealing how and why web users interact with brands via social media. Conducted in March among 2,577 U.S. online adults aged 18 or older, the study found that the effectiveness of social cues in advertisements varies by the medium the ad appears in. Among respondents who recall social media prompts in advertising, digital ads (61.0%) and television ads (58.7%) are most effective at driving interaction with a brand’s social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. These are followed by print ads (52.4%), radio ads (41.5%) and outdoor ads (39.4%).

Notably, two-thirds (67.6%) of 18 to 34 year-old respondents—including 73.9% of 18 to 34 year-old women—say digital ads that feature prompts to social media assets are effective at inspiring them to take action.

“We found that marketers who use social sharing and action prompts within advertisements create authentic interactions that drive further engagement,” said Mark Kaefer, marketing director, Burst Media. “On the digital front especially, display, mobile and sponsored online content campaigns that include social media prompts can virally and exponentially extend campaign reach through consumer status updates, likes, tweets, pins and more.”

Survey Highlights

Web users interact with brands on social media for a variety of reasons.

· More than one-half (53.8%) of women and 44.1% of men who interact on social media via cues in advertising cite “to show my support for a brand that I like” as a reason for doing so.

· The gender divide is even wider with the next most-cited reason, which is to access special offers, coupons and/or promotions: 53.2% of women versus just over one-third (35.5%) of men cite this as a reason.

· Notably, two-thirds (66.7%) of 35 to 44 year-old women cite the access to offers/coupons as a reason to interact with a brand’s social assets.

The majority (65.4%) of all survey respondents have at least one social media account set-up for personal use.

· Facebook—at 53.0%—is by far the leading provider. Google+ follows a distant second, with one-quarter (25.6%) of respondents reporting they use the up-and-coming platform.

· Three-fifths (58.6%) of respondents with social media accounts use them at least once a day, and another one-fifth (22.3%) check accounts at least once per week.

Interestingly, Pinterest and Instagram—as image and photo-driven social platforms—skew towards a female audience.

· One-fifth (21.9%) of all female respondents have a Pinterest account, versus only 4.8% of men. The disparity of Pinterest use between the sexes is even greater among 18 to 34 year-olds: 1-in-4 (25.5%) women in this segment have a Pinterest account, versus just 3.6% of men this age.

· Instagram’s audience also skews more female than male—10.4% versus 5.8%, respectively. Again, the gender gap is biggest among respondents aged 18 to 34, as 20.8% of women this age have Instagram accounts, versus 8.4% of men.

Download the full “Expanding the Conversation: Leveraging Social Media for Brand Interaction” Online Insights report (PDF) at http://burstmedia.com/pdf/burst_media_online_insights_2013_04.pdf.

About Burst Media
Founded in 1995, Burst Media represents thousands of independent web publishers. Through a select group of vertical channels, built around areas of specific interest, Burst connects advertisers with audiences across the web’s most dynamic communities in a social, engaging way. A wholly owned subsidiary of blinkx PLC (LSE AIM: BLNX), Burst is headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts, with sales offices throughout the United States and in the UK.

Visit us at http://burstmedia.com or call +1 (781) 852 5200 for more information.

OBJE: Mobile Ads Boost Revenue Growth

Otilia Otlacan — Fri, 17 May 2013 13:00:43 +0000

SARASOTA, Fla. - As OBJ Enterprises (OTCBB: OBJE) begins work on a new platform to help indie developers build and release fun and profitable gaming apps, mobile advertising is proving to be a crucial money maker for online communications platforms.

“That way, developers can concentrate simply on creating the best, most engaging apps possible.”

High-quality, relevant mobile ads allow Facebook and many other app developers to deliver their content to users at no charge. OBJE is hard at work creating new tools to allow game developers to inject the same business model into their gaming apps. Last month, the company announced plans to develop an innovative new crowdsourcing platform to help independent game makers build, publish and market the next wave of fun and exciting mobile apps for a growing market of more than 500 million gamers worldwide.

Facebook has called mobile applications the key to its future success—with embedded advertising leading the way. Mobile ad sales accounted for 30 percent of Facebook’s total ad revenue in the first quarter of this year, up from essentially nothing only a year ago.

“This platform should provide comprehensive services to developers, like mobile ads, distribution, marketing and other essentials an app needs to be profitable,” said OBJE CEO Paul Watson. “That way, developers can concentrate simply on creating the best, most engaging apps possible.”

Obscene Interactive is a division of OBJ Enterprises, Inc. that is working to develop innovative gaming products for the Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) App Store and Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) Play platforms alongside companies such as Glu Mobile (NASDAQ: GLUU) and The Limited (NASDAQ: NCTY).

Follow OBJ Enterprise and Novalon Games developments at www.novalongames.com.

About Obscene Interactive

Obscene Interactive, a subsidiary of OBJ Enterprises, Inc. (OBJE), is an emerging global developer of social gaming applications. OBJE’s cutting-edge technology platform enables its titles to be accessible to a broad audience of consumers all over the world, supporting multiple platforms for universal appeal. Obscene Interactive is focused on delivering the best in social gaming solutions to the mass market. For investment information and performance data, please visit www.obsceneinteractive.com/investors.html.

140 Proof Hires Sales Ace as New Director of Business Development

Otilia Otlacan — Thu, 16 May 2013 12:19:01 +0000

Kim Stiefel Arrives at Social Advertising Company 140 Proof Ready to Build Out App Developer Partnerships and Expand Tumblr Base

San Francisco, CA — The leading social advertising service, 140 Proof is proud to announce that Kim Stiefel has joined the company as Director of Business Development. In her new role, Stiefel will lead 140 Proof’s efforts to expand partnerships with app developers and Tumblr bloggers, further growing the advertising network.

Stiefel is an experienced talent in technology sales, holding senior account positions at a number of prominent companies, including: AppNexus, NetApp and EMC. Prior to 140 Proof, Stiefel became a top 5 sales performer in EMC’s US Commercial Division and closed the largest single transaction ($7.2M) to date in the Division’s history.

“We’re excited to have Kim on the 140 Proof team,” said CEO and co-founder Jon Elvekrog. “Our mission is to make what everyone sees in social more relevant by mapping the blended interest graph. As we grow our advertising network into new areas, Kim’s skills will ensure that we have the best ads and the best network available.”

“Social advertising is about expressing meaningful messages across the social universe, and adding relevance to advertising. This has big implications for developers and bloggers,” said Stiefel. “140 Proof is uniquely positioned to transform digital brand advertising and I’m thrilled to help build out the best social ad offering available.

Stiefel received a Bachelors degree from The Ohio State University, and recently made the move from New York City to San Francisco for this opportunity.

About 140 Proof
140 Proof is the leading social advertising service, providing brand advertisers an effective way to reach millions of consumers primed to discover and share. The company delivers relevant, native, sharable ads across millions of social sites and apps connected via the Blended Interest Graph. 140 Proof’s Blended Interest Graph targeting matches ads to audiences based on public social cues such as who a user follows and keywords that a user sees. The solution is optimized for social and includes native social, IAB standard, and rich-media ad units. 140 Proof is headquartered in San Francisco and has additional field offices in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas and Detroit.

New Topsy Engagement Features Turn Social Insights into Business Impact with One Click

Otilia Otlacan — Thu, 09 May 2013 11:00:48 +0000

Ability to post and engage directly from Topsy Pro lets users break down the barriers between analysis and action and capitalize on real-time marketing opportunities; from reacting to emerging PR crises to promoting the most viral content

SAN FRANCISCO – Topsy, the real-time social analytics company, today announced that users can now act immediately on insights they uncover in their analysis by engaging directly with their audience through Topsy Pro.

Topsy Pro already gives users the best way to spot trends, track sentiment, and identify key influencers relevant to their business; Topsy’s new functionality allows users to also reply, retweet or favorite key Tweets surfaced in an analysis. Topsy Pro customers can use these features to react in seconds to emerging PR crises, find and promote the most viral content, identify and engage with local customers and generally be one click away from taking action the minute they see an opportunity.

Topsy Pro customers will now be able to:

React immediately to a PR crisis. Customers can already monitor for negative tweets with live statistics, and analyze how much traction a crisis is getting; now, they can engage and reply directly to influencers to mitigate the crisis.
Deal with customer service issues faster. As customers track negative tweets about their brands and products, and sort by relevance to surface the most important tweets, they can now respond quickly to the most pressing issues.
Amplify ad and marketing campaigns. Customers can watch conversations during an ad or marketing campaign and engage with audiences, helping an ongoing campaign gain more traction. They can quickly identify and retweet content from key influencers and other top content (tweets, links, photos and videos) being shared around the campaign.
Get in on the second-screen conversation. During a sporting event, TV show, conference or other live event, customers can use Topsy Pro to find and retweet content being shared by their audience.
Better engage audiences with viral content. Using discovery features, customers can create a broadened topic based on terms people are using for that area of interest, and engage and retweet around the broader terms in the topic.
Get ahead of the competition. With Topsy Pro, customers can also track a competitor’s conversation and quickly respond to negative tweets, offering up an alternative solution.

“I help to manage the digital profiles of celebrities with millions of followers like Jamie Foxx, John Stamos and Chris Bosh, and being equipped with the remarkable tools and information Topsy is rolling out can literally equal money and virtual power for my clients,” said Cat Schwartz, founder of The DGTL NTWRK. “Topsy not only helps me understand what the most influential people are saying, but also allows me to determine who my clients should engage with and when, and which words they should choose to assure they knock their messages out of the park. No joke, choosing the right 140 characters keeps my clients in movies, at the top of the charts, on Wheaties boxes and off of TMZ.”

“We are continuing to expand the functionality of Topsy Pro to better serve the needs of brands and media organizations as well as the agencies that serve them. For the first time, Topsy Pro customers will be able to not only monitor conversations and identify breaking news and trends, but also engage directly in these conversations right from their Topsy Pro dashboard,” said Jamie de Guerre, vice president of product at Topsy. “This new functionality will help customers move seamlessly from social insights to business impact with a single click.”

Lithium Launches New Analytics Product for Measuring and Improving Social ROI

Otilia Otlacan — Wed, 08 May 2013 11:00:00 +0000

Lithium Social Intelligence™ Provides Deep Insights into Customer Engagement across Communities and Social Networks

Lithium Network Conference

SAN FRANCISCO - Lithium Technologies, the leader in Social Customer Experience, unveiled Lithium Social Intelligence™ a next-generation analytics product designed to help brands measure social ROI and improve the performance of social customer programs. Lithium Social Intelligence uses a unique combination of social science, real-time performance metrics and native web analytics to give brands unprecedented insight into customer engagement across both online communities and social networks.

“We mine insights for our customers from more than 10 years of historical data, and we capture new information each month from nearly 100 million active monthly users”

“Many brands struggle to measure the true business impact of social customer engagement, leading to missed opportunities and ineffective strategies that don’t move the needle for their business,” said Lithium President and Chief Executive Officer Rob Tarkoff. “Lithium Social Intelligence is the first product that gives brands the tools they need to prove the value of their social customer investments.”

Dozens of major global brands are already using Lithium Social Intelligence to gain accurate insights and achieve real business results including Autodesk, Cisco, TomTom and many others.

Autodesk Vice President Customer Service & Support Creighton Hoke said: “The mission of Autodesk’s Global Customer Support and Operations team, is to help people imagine design and create a better world by providing rapid, accessible, and relevant support to a rapidly-expanding, passionate, global audience of designers, architects, engineers, and ‘makers.’ Lithium, as a Best in Class technology platform for engaging and hosting our global community, is central to this effort. Enabling and supporting thousands of community conversations every month, Lithium helps us engage key contributors inside the company and beyond it; recognize their efforts, and identify, amplify and share the trusted content that their conversations create and shape.”

Advanced Capabilities, Unmatched Insights

Lithium Social Intelligence uses a state-of-the-art big data architecture that allows brands to analyze billions of monthly social interactions, delivering results in seconds. It operates in the cloud at web scale, using advanced algorithms developed by in-house social scientists to help brands focus on the key metrics that matter.

“We mine insights for our customers from more than 10 years of historical data, and we capture new information each month from nearly 100 million active monthly users,” said Rob Tarkoff. “No one is better positioned to provide leading brands with the knowledge they need to develop effective strategies for driving real ROI through social customer engagement.”

With Lithium Social Intelligence, managers are able to drill down into detailed metrics for individual conversation threads and analyze real-time performance data for each employee who engages customers on Twitter and Facebook. Data can be delivered anywhere, anytime in a variety of formats tailored for desktops, mobile devices or command center displays.

Dozens of capabilities in Lithium Social Intelligence enable companies to prove business impact and increase social engagement. Key features include:

Community Health Index™ – advanced technology developed by Lithium’s in-house team of social scientists provides a unique measure of community health through a single index value –comprised of six key engagement factors and similar to a credit score.
Native Web Analytics – Lithium is the first provider of online communities to combine traditional web traffic metrics with community engagement metrics for deeper insight into the highest performing content and authors.
Benchmarking – Lithium aggregates more than 10 years of data from hundreds of Lithium Communities™ customers to help brands compare performance on key metrics.
Mobile Metrics – brands can measure the increase in reach and impact that comes from interacting with Lithium Communities over mobile devices.
Monitoring – tuned for insights that help brands determine where and how to engage, Lithium provides historical data on customer conversations across social channels.
Role-Based Engagement Reports – designed to maximize productivity, Lithium provides each member of a social engagement team with personalized reports on performance against SLA targets.

Lithium Social Intelligence is designed to work in combination with Lithium Communities, Lithium Mobile™ and Lithium Social Web™, and is a key part of the Lithium Social Customer Experience Platform™ –the first integrated suite for engaging customers through on-domain and public social channels.

About Lithium Technologies

Lithium helps companies unlock the passion of their customers. Lithium software powers amazing Social Customer Experiences for more than 400 iconic brands including AT&T, BT, Best Buy, Indosat, Sephora, Skype and Telstra. Lithium helps companies grow brand advocacy, drive sales, reduce costs and accelerate innovation to create social communities that redefine the customer experience. For more information, visit lithium.com, or connect with us on Twitter, Facebook and our own community – the Lithosphere. Lithium is privately held with corporate headquarters in Emeryville, Calif. and offices in Europe, Asia and Australia.

Adobe Social Unveils Predictive Publishing for Facebook

Otilia Otlacan — Mon, 06 May 2013 16:00:53 +0000

Powerful New Capability Predicts Social Content Performance to Maximize Engagement

LONDON - Adobe Summit EMEA, The Digital Marketing Conference - Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq: ADBE) announced a powerful new predictive publishing capability for Adobe® Social, which predicts social engagement on individual pieces of content and automatically suggests ideal timing to improve how that content will perform. The initial version offers Facebook integration, and additional social platforms will be added later this year. Adobe Social, a key element of Adobe Marketing Cloud, enables marketers to scale social marketing across their organizations, listen and respond to customer conversations, and connect the dots between social interactions and business results.

“Now we can smarten up social by unlocking the power of predictive analytics.”

Traditionally, social posts are composed without a measurable, data-driven connection to how they will be received, and many marketers release big news or compelling content through social channels only to find that it falls flat in terms of engagement. Social marketers are left wondering if they posted at the wrong time or if the wording somehow discouraged participation.

The new predictive publishing feature in Adobe Social helps social teams deliver content that will best resonate with their audience. The tool makes engagement predictions and timing recommendations using advanced sentiment analysis and predictive text mining algorithms based on historic data around engagement, post time, and sentiment. And because the solution learns as it goes, it continually refines recommendations and gets smarter with each action.

“Social marketers have largely had to rely on instinct to uncover not only what resonates but what will maximize future engagement on social platforms,” said Bill Ingram, vice president, Adobe Social and Adobe Analytics, Adobe. “Now we can smarten up social by unlocking the power of predictive analytics.”

Adobe Social Demonstrates and Delivers Business Results

Marketing leaders cite ‘increasing engagement’ and ‘proving social ROI’ as two of the most important objectives of social marketing strategy. Adobe Social now provides insight into the projected performance of social content and recommendations to boost that performance, giving marketers a tool that allows them to improve content engagement, increase valuable customer interactions and conversions, and maximize the value of their social efforts.

“As a company with a significant global social presence, including more than 20 European markets, it’s a daunting task to effectively manage our fans and followers across the various languages and countries. Adding a social predictive publishing capability to our Adobe Social workflow is a welcome feature that will make our jobs easier and save loads of time. More importantly it will help achieve our social engagement goals while maximizing the value of our social efforts,” said Simon Nicholson, Social Media Manager, Honda Motor Europe Ltd.

Availability

The new predictive publishing capability in Adobe Social is currently in beta and is expected to be available this summer. The initial version offers Facebook integration; other social platforms will be added later this year.

About Adobe Marketing Cloud

Now there’s a place that puts everything digital marketers need in one spot. It’s called Adobe Marketing Cloud. It includes a complete set of analytics, social, advertising, targeting and web experience management solutions and a social-enabled UI that brings together everything marketers need to know about their campaigns. So marketers can get from data to insights to action, faster and smarter than ever. Visit www.marketing.adobe.com to learn more.

About Adobe Systems Incorporated

Adobe is changing the world through digital experiences. For more information, visit www.adobe.com.

DabKick Releases Feature-Rich Update to Its Free Live Video and Photo Communications App

Otilia Otlacan — Thu, 02 May 2013 16:48:08 +0000

New Functionality Allows Users to Listen to Music Together and Easily Find and Connect Live with Friends and Family

San Francisco, CA – DabKick, the company that is changing the way people communicate remotely, today announced a major update to its iPhone, iPad and iPod touch app, DabKick, available now on the App Store. With DabKick, users and their friends and family can watch videos and show photos together at the same time while they talk and chat live on their iOS device. Developed to facilitate a more interactive, “live” mobile experience, DabKick users feel as though they were physically looking at the same screen together at the same time.

DabKick allows friends to chat live within the app and talk like they are on a walkie-talkie while showing photos and videos instantly. The app is simple to navigate as users easily swipe through videos and photos on their iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, which glide across their friend’s screen at the same time. Plus, the friend can swipe through the user’s media (via the app) and show other web videos or pictures from their own device. What’s more, users can show their photos even to those that do not have the DabKick app installed on their device. And, if friends or family are not available for a live session, users can send offline messages to them along with any media they want to share.

With a fast growing community of highly engaged members, DabKick’s update delivers the ability to listen to music together with friends and interact live at the same time, as well as to find, discover and connect live with friends and other DabKick members without revealing any personal information. Perfect for users of all ages, DabKick delivers a greatly enhanced, feature-rich experience every time.

The app’s new “Music Layer” allows users to:

• Listen to free music from YouTube together while looking at photos and videos in a live session.

• Access friends’ songs and listen to them together.

• Invite friends to listen to songs while they also voice chat and message at the same time.

• Listen to music by themselves while showing photos to a friend.

• Join their friends and listen to what they are playing.

• Listen to your music collections or other’s music collections even when not in a live session. Create a playlist instantly with free songs from YouTube.

• Play songs in the background using the standard music player controls from the lock screen.

When using the app by themselves, people can search and discover songs (from YouTube) and create audio playlists in seconds. Users can also access playlists created by other DabKick members and special playlists curated by the editorial team at DabKick.

With the newly integrated “Social” features, users can:

• Add friends and interact with them live using “DabName” (without revealing their personal information – phone number and email).

• Distribute their unique “DabName” so anyone can “friend” them and then start connecting live.

• See the streams of their DabKick friends to explore what their friends are “Dabbing” (whatever the friends are comfortable sharing publicly, otherwise everything is kept private).

• Discover new people from the “Recent Dabbers” section to see what is trending and add friends.

• Browse through the users within DabKick and add anyone as a friend and “Dab” them to interact live and watch media together. Remove anyone from the friends list anytime.

• Browse through the ‘Dabbed’ media created by others in DabKick and “ReDab” them to friends.

“DabKick changes the way people communicate via their iPhone, iPad and iPod touch,” said Balaji Krishnan, founder and CEO of DabKick. “With DabKick, people can easily enjoy media together and interact live with anyone around the world, even with those that don’t have the app. And, with the new update, users can now listen to music together with their friends and connect in a more engaging way than ever before possible via mobile.”

The DabKick App is available for free from the App Store on iPhone, iPad and iPod touch at www.AppStore.com or https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dabkick/id540258308?mt=8

About DabKick
Founded by Balaji Krishnan, DabKick touts itself as the company changing the way people communicate remotely. Stemming from challenges Krishnan saw with how friends and family were unable to show and share media when not together, DabKick was created to facilitate a more natural, “live” Smartphone experience as though users were physically looking at the same screen together at the same time. The app itself is feature-rich, both in its “live” and “offline” modes, even allowing users to communicate with others who do not have the app. For more information, visit www.dabkick.com.

New IRI DigitaLink™ Study Demonstrates Increasing Importance of Effective Online Strategies to CPG and Retailers

Otilia Otlacan — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 13:19:42 +0000

IRI Expands 2012 Study to Include European Shoppers’ Online Profiles

CHICAGO & LAS VEGAS - More than double the number of U.S. shoppers turned to online social networking in 2012 to follow companies or brands as compared to a year ago, IRI’s new DigitaLink™ segmentation study reveals. In Europe, U.K. shoppers are most likely to compare prices online before making a purchase, buy a CPG product online and purchase a used item from another person online, when compared to both other European shoppers and U.S. shoppers.

“Social networking has impacted the shopping experience like no other influencer in the past”

IRI completed the new DigitaLink study as part of its ongoing analysis into how shoppers research, purchase and use CPG products, where they purchase them and what factors drive shopper decisions. DigitaLink applies IRI analytics capabilities to information from the company’s Consumer Network and MarketPulse™ research to segment shoppers based on their use of online resources, and then assist CPG and retail leadership teams to optimize their social networking strategies.

This year’s DigitaLink study also includes for the first time information about the online habits of French, German, Spanish and U.K. shoppers.

“Social networking has impacted the shopping experience like no other influencer in the past,” says Srishti Gupta, executive vice president and general manager, New Media Solutions, IRI. “However, the level of impact on households varies tremendously. For CPG and retail decision makers to develop and execute social networking strategies with the highest ROI, it’s critical to understand how different households harness online resources. DigitaLink provides this assessment and forms the basis through which CPG and retail leaders can build more effective social networking strategies.”

DigitaLink divides shoppers into five broad segments, based on their opinions and use of digital devices and social networking tools. These include “Show Me the Money,” “Digitize Me!,” “Wired for Work,” “Socializers” and “Technophobes.” Definitions of these segments are available in the press release announcing last year’s DigitaLink findings.

In the United States, “Digitize Me!” Category Nearly Doubles in Size

In addition to the doubling of shoppers following companies or brands on online social networking, other key U.S. findings of the new DigitaLink study include:

The “Digitize Me!” segment, those most plugged into online social networking, nearly doubled in size, representing 22 percent of shoppers in this year’s study, as compared to 12 percent of last year’s
Shoppers are increasing their use of online social networking to follow retailers for learning about deals, coupons and news at dramatic rates; led by dollar stores, which witnessed a nearly four-fold jump, club stores with a 270 percent increase and drug stores with a 250 percent increase
Among the online activities that have grown the most in popularity include using social media sites, such as Facebook and LinkedIn (50 percent state they frequently use these sites versus 37 percent in the 2011 survey), uploading photos (21 percent in 2012 as compared to 11 percent in 2011) and using Twitter (11 percent in 2012 versus 5 percent in 2011)

The new DigitaLink report devotes a section to analyzing the Digitize Me! category, since this group is most likely to tap the capabilities of digital devices and online resources. The report found Digitize Me! shoppers typically access the Internet from more than four devices, spend more time online than the other groups, often simultaneously from multiple devices, personify the concept that mobile is a “behavior,” not a technology, and have fully integrated the Internet into their lives, using it for a broader variety of tasks than any other segment.

“IRI’s new DigitaLink study underscores the need to understand in minute detail all digital influences on shopper behavior and activities,” Gupta continues. “Some segments, such as Digitize Me! shoppers, represent an outstanding opportunity for CPG and retail marketers to impact shoppers with well targeted messages, while others, such as Technophobes, will never generate a digital campaign ROI worth the investment.”

European Shoppers Rely on Online Resources Less

European shoppers generally rely on online resources less than their American counterparts, but with some notable exceptions. U.K. shoppers are more aggressive than Americans about comparing prices online before making a purchase (37 percent versus 34 percent), buying a CPG product online (36 percent versus 24 percent) and buying a used item from another person online (10 percent versus 5 percent). And, they are generally more open to buying a variety of CPG categories online.

Spanish shoppers are more likely to share something they have created themselves, such as artwork, than both their European brethren and U.S. shoppers (12 percent for Spanish shoppers versus 10 percent for Americans). They also tend to tell friends about their online purchases more than other shoppers (9 percent among Spanish shoppers versus 6 percent for Americans).

Shoppers in surveyed European countries are generally less wed to use of the Internet and digital technology than their American counterparts. Fifty-eight percent of surveyed U.S. shoppers agree with the statement, ”It would be difficult for me to give up access to the Internet,” as compared to just 37 percent of Spanish shoppers, for example. Similarly, 42 percent of U.S. shoppers state, ”It would be difficult for me to give up my cell phone,” whereas responses were in the mid-20 percent range for shoppers in most European countries.

Anders Rave, director of analytics and shopper knowledge for IRI in Europe says, “Europeans may spend more time online than American shoppers but when it comes to using online as part of their shopping mix, the U.K. is ahead of the curve. Shoppers across Europe spend more of their online time on the path to purchase looking for information and comparing prices than they do purchasing online compared to American shoppers.”

About IRI

IRI is a leader in delivering powerful market and shopper information, predictive analysis and the foresight that leads to action. We go beyond the data to ignite extraordinary growth for our clients in the CPG, retail and over-the-counter healthcare industries by pinpointing what matters and illuminating how it can impact their businesses across sales and marketing.

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