Christopher Ratcliff says, “Digital marketing and customer experience management are hard enough when targeting a single region and language.  The challenges grow exponentially as marketers contend with the nuances of multiple geographies, peoples and cultures. How do brands tell stories and engage with customers across these borders and languages? What are the strategies, tools and processes necessary to balance an organization’s marketing priorities with local relevance? These are the questions we asked in our latest survey, The Global Conversation: How international brands manage customer... [...]

Christopher Ratcliff says, “Direct Line redesigned its website last year, putting a larger focus on the rapidly growing number of mobile users wishing to access traditionally difficult to obtain information. Just a few years ago the idea of obtaining a home or car insurance quote on the mobile web seemed at best a pipe-dream, at worst a massive hassle not worth attempting. Now things are very different, and this focus on giving consumers exactly what they want, wherever they may be, means putting mobile at the heart of everything they do. Direct Line is making this very claim and things have... [...]

Patricio Robles says, “Google’s Mobilegeddon forced many companies to evaluate their mobile strategies, and while Google’s mobile updates aren’t perfect, the message to companies is clear: provide decent mobile experiences, or else. With mobile usage continuing to skyrocket, it’s no surprise that Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, is also looking at ways to ensure that the search results it delivers to mobile users are capable of delivering the information and answers they’re looking for. Recently, it began displaying a “Mobile-friendly” tag... [...]

CPA has been around for a long time, but sending CPA offers to mobile phones is relatively new. But it is growing rapidly. That’s because: 1. There is almost an infinite number of potential CPA visitors (and networks that can send you traffic). 2. You can reach them quickly and very cheaply. 3. Once you hit your stride and start making money, you can scale up instantly. Joey Babbs has put together training, based on his successful process he has used for 3 years to bring in a good living. He says some of his students (not typical, probably) are “generating over four and five figures... [...]

Lindsay Kolowich says, “It’s official: In certain parts of the world, there are now more Google search queries on smartphones than on desktop computers and tablets. This week, Google’s Jerry Dischler wrote in a post on the official AdWords blog that “more Google searches take place on mobile devices than on computers in 10 countries, including the U.S. and Japan.” Google declined to name the other eight countries. We also know that their definition of “mobile devices” doesn’t include tablets — instead, Google groups tablets with desktops.... [...]

Greg Sterling says, “The US smartphone market seems to have reached a kind of homeostatic equilibrium. According to many months of comScore data, Android hovers at around 52 percent penetration, while the iPhone has a 42 percent share. Windows Phones own just over 3 percent of the market and “other” is just under 2 percent. It seems unlikely that Windows will make further gains in the absence of a significant breakthrough of some kind. And BlackBerry continues its painful slide into the abyss. Absent radical developments, platform loyalty is such that only a small percentage... [...]

IM NewsWatch warned you about MobileGeddon. On April 21, 2015, Google changed its ranking algorithm to give preference to sites that are mobile friendly. All other sites have dropped in the rankings. In recent months there have been a lot of things webmasters have tinkered with, hoping to improve their rank, things like on social media, Instragram photos, retweets and shares. But as of April 21, none of this matters unless the site is first friendly for mobile devices. If you are not prioritizing support for your mobile visitors over all other tweaks and updates, you are behind the curve and need... [...]

Greg Sterling says, “You might still think of Opera as a browser company. However a number of strategic mobile advertising acquisitions over the past few years have transformed the company into a global advertising business that also happens to make a browser. Opera says it works with “90 percent of the Ad Age Top 100″ and reaches a billion mobile uniques monthly. It also claims that “17 percent of the global [mobile] advertising spend [is] driven by Opera Mediaworks.” Challenging a similar claim by InMobi, Opera says it’s the largest independent mobile advertising company globally“. Mobile... [...]

Jim Williams says, “As marketers, we have nearly 2,000 marketing technology products to choose from across 43 different categories. The staggering number of vendors available to us hasmore than doubled since last year. We can email, tweet, track, engage, predict, analyze, attribute, optimize and more. There is now a layer of technology (or even multiple technologies) between each and every interaction we have with the buyers we’re nurturing through the purchasing process. Yet despite the proliferation of these technologies, the marketing stack is still largely disconnected from critical... [...]

Greg Sterling says, “In a blog post today Google reported that “more Google searches take place on mobile devices than on computers in 10 countries including the US and Japan.” Google declined to provide more color or detail beyond this statement — other than that “mobile” here means smartphones only. While there have been many conference presentations, predictions, articles and discussions that have anticipated this moment, it has finally arrived. Simultaneously the company made a range of announcements about new mobile ad units/formats, new automation tools and improved... [...]