Mobile Advertising's Battle of the Sexes

Leslie Horn writes in PC Magazine Men aren't from Mars, and women don't hail from Venus. But it appears men prefer Android and women tend toward BlackBerry, according to a new infographic from Inneractive that analyzes the differences in mobile advertising among males and females.

Inneractive reports that men tend to click on ads more frequently than women. Men have a click through rate (CTR) of 2.73 percent versus a CTR rate of 1.65 percent for women.

The company also takes a look at the top app categories used by either sex. The top three apps for women are entertainment, social, instant messaging apps, and brain and puzzle apps.

For men, the top three are sports, arcade, and action, and card and casino apps, Inneractive's infographic shows.

"It is understandable that men and women prefer different types of apps," the graphic reads. "What is even more interesting is the different return that developers generate based on the app category."

For example, women are almost six times more likely to click on ads within entertainment apps than in social and IM apps. This means the eCPM (effective cost per thousand impressions, or how much it costs to show an ad 1,00 times in an app) is higher for entertainment apps.

Men, however, click through ads at the same rate in the top two app categories for their gender, making the eCPM the same for these categories as well.

Inneractive also broke down the different operating systems each gender favors.
"When analyzing the gender of our users based on OS, we found that most platforms were split down the middle," Inneractive says. "Most, but not all. Android, we found, has a dominant male user-base and BlackBerry was just the opposite, mostly female."

Apple was found to be very close to an even split, with 49 percent female users and 51 percent male. Symbian reported the same stats.

Android, however, is 39 percent female and 61 percent male, and BlackBerry is 59 percent female and 41 percent male, Inneractive says.

The 7 Social Media Marketing Essentials for Brands and Companies

Social media is changing in front of our eyes. It can be easy to become distracted by all the new technologies and some people don’t know where to start or how to make a difference with their social media marketing.

With that in mind, Niall of Simply Zesty agency, created a list of seven key areas that we think all businesses and brands should be spending their time on. Yes the headings are broad and there are a hundred things you could be trying within each section but if you improved your company’s performance across these 7 areas you would start to see real tangible results. It can be easy to get caught up in all the hype and move from one platform to another trying to follow the trends but have a little focus, hone in on these clear goals and you will be in a far better place…

Internal Communications
The tools are available to help improve how you talk to each other within your company. Companies that communicate well internally will more often than not have far better results. Try out Yammer, Convofy, SocialCast, Campfire, Facebook groups or instant messaging tools like Skype or Google chat to get the best out of your company. The smart companies are adding a social layer to their entire business and putting as big a focus on internal communications as external comms. Make sure that your company has excellent social media guidelines to allow staff to talk about where they work and the benefits of working there. The days of control where upper management decided what was projected in to public domain about your company are long gone and every single one of your staff now have a voice thanks to social media.

Branded Content
It’s not enough trying to create engaging updates or throw up the odd picture on social media channels. If you are really serious about engaging with a community you’ll need to start thinking about branded content and how to seed it within the communities that you have access to. This could be anything from videos and websites to blogs or podcasts and the most important thing about branded content is creating something that the consumer has genuine interest in. We all know how to filter ads out these days and the savvy consumer is looking for new ways to engage with brands. Content should be at the very center of everything you do and spending time and money developing branded content is a route most brands and businesses should be going down. Now you won’t have their budgets for creating content but it’s an important part of social media now and one your company should be trying to engage with.

Stunning Customer Service
There is no reason why you should’t be talking to your customers in this day and age. The tools are there from Twitter and Facebook to Linkedin or forums and the smart brands are talking to their customers and solving problems to build positive word of mouth. The businesses doing this well are actually being proactive via social media channels and finding the problems and putting out the fires before they go any further. The upside of creating advocates through stunning social media customer service is that they all have the power to tell 100s of friends about their positive experiences. Being proactive and engaging with your customers on 3rd party channels rather than waiting for them to come to you is the key.

Ignore Facebook At Your Peril
Websites come and go. Look at Myspace and Bebo as classic examples. Many think Facebook will have a similar fall from grace one day and that we will move on to the next big thing but to think like that would be foolish. You need to think of Facebook not as a website but as a platform which will become as important as the internet or Google itself. Facebook is starting to force its way on to websites, it’s being built in to the core of mobile phones and soon you’ll be buying stuff through there and it will influence search results. Facebook is not going away any time soon and while you should always have a broad approach and not have all your eggs in one basket, spend a decent percentage of your time and money marketing via Facebook. It’s only going to get bigger and more important.

Transparency
It’s getting harder and harder to spin a story about your company that is not accurate or glosses over the truth. Brands and businesses have to be more transparent than they ever have in the past. Consumers and the man in the street have as much say in a brand as people working within the company. It’s a seismic shift away from the days when control was key and the message could be tailored to suit the goals of the company. There have been countless social media disasters and many of them arise from companies trying to bend the truth or cover something up. Social media is bringing a whole new level of transparency to business and for the consumer that can only be a good thing.

Adapting To Technology And Being Nimble
Trends change in social media circles quicker than you could imagine. While it is important not to jump from trend to trend without achieving anything it’s also important to be nimble and have your marketing strategy evolve over time. In the past placing an advert in a newspaper was always pretty much the same process but marketing on Facebook can change from week to week as the platform evolves. Twitter doesn’t even have an effective ad platform yet but chances are you could be using it next year. You need to look at new platforms like the tablet computer which, although less than 2 years old, is creating a seismic shift in our online habits. These new technologies and platforms seem to come out of nowhere and they can change entire industries within a year so be nimble and evolve your strategy because consumers might not always be in the same place.

Mobile Mobile Mobile
If you don’t have some sort of mobile strategy for your business or brand then you better start moving fast. Consumers are moving away from newspapers and magazines and embracing smart phones and tablets. Have a look around at other people on the next bus or train you are on and you’ll see people peering in to their mobiles. People are finding deals on the go and they are researching products on their mobiles. We’re only at the very start of this journey and as tools like location aware advertising and local deals take hold over the next year it’s clear that you would be a fool if you hadn’t at least started to put some thought in to the area of mobile.

NASCAR and the Pentagon: As American as Apple Pie

The battle over spending continues to rage on Capitol Hill and while Republicans are keen to take an axe to the budget, one interesting item was spared: The Army’s sponsorship of NASCAR. The House gave the green light for that sponsorship to continue, rejecting an amendment that would have blocked the Pentagon from using taxpayer dollars for NASCAR ads.

The Army spends more than $7 million a year to sponsor NASCAR Sprint Cup driver Ryan Newman and several million more as part of a partnership with NASCAR. It says the prominent ads on the car and presence at the track help attract recruits.

Over the last decade each branch of the military has had a partnership with NASCAR. But now just the Army, Air Force and National Guard continue to sponsor teams - the Marines, Navy and Coast Guard dropped their own NASCAR sponsorships in recent years.

Perhaps the ads are working. Military recruitment is surging - the waiting lists to sign up are currently longer than they have been in recent years which could be a result of several factors: the still-struggling economy, high unemployment rate and the post-9/11 GI Bill, that pays for education and housing for family and service members who have served at least 90 days and were honorably discharged.

Recently NASCAR revamped its business and marketing model to reach new and younger audiences hoping to increase track attendance and TV ratings. NASCAR's audience had steadily eroded over the last four years due to a variety of circumstances, not the least of which was alienating its longtime, hard-core fans with a variety of changes: later starts to appease West Coast viewers; altering its rules that made for safer, albeit less exciting racing; as well as a tepid economy, rising ticket prices and skyrocketing gas prices.

The new integrated-marketing communications department has focused a good part of its attention to the critical 18- to 34 year-old demographic, using social media to help organize college viewing parties; developing a dedicated youth website; and promoting young drivers such as surprise Daytona 500 winner Trevor Bayne (age 20), Joey Logano (21) and, starting with the Nationwide Series Kroger 200 race this Saturday, action sports star Travis Pastrana (27). It is also expanding its outreach for branded entertainment in TV, films and music videos, and taking a deeper dive into the burgeoning Hispanic market with the creation of more Spanish-language content.

The Army saw an opportunity to leverage NASCAR’s strategy into a recruiting tool so it sank some serious advertising dollars into drag racing. They wanted a driver to be all he could be for them, personable with a heavy foot on the gas, as passionate for what the Army represented as he was for squeezing every nano-second out of his Top Fuel dragster. The Army’s sponsorship places an impetus among young fans that sharpens the focus and dedication, the idea being that a military branch active in a foreign theater provides more of a motivation than, say, selling auto parts.

The Army has maintained a presence in NASCAR since 2000, through direction from Congress itself. NASCAR, of course, is one of the most popular spectator sports in America, and if the Army wants to attract more people, then—stereotypes aside—there aren’t many better places than stock car racing.