Legal Search Marketing

Archive for the ‘Mobile Advertising’ Category

Any more proof that you need a strong mobile site?

It should come as no surprise to anyone that more people are browsing the web from their phones than ever before.  For the past few years, not only have more people decided that smartphones should play an integral part of their daily lives, but those smartphones have gotten better, faster, stronger.

The Pew Internet & American Life Project has just released a new study that shows more Americans now own smartphones than have college degrees.

According to the survey, 83% of Americans own some sort of cellphone and 35% own a smartphone – as defined as running on iOs, Android, Blackberry OS or Windows 7.

Of those that own smartphones, 87% said that they use it for email or to browse the internet.  68% said that in a typical day they use their smartphones to access the web.  And here’s the big number – A quarter of those surveyed said that they access the internet mostly on their smartphones.  That’s right, for 25% of Americans, the smartphone has virtually replaced the desktop of laptop.

These “smartphone mostly” internet users are more likely to be young, non-white women according to the survey.

And using a smartphone definitely makes it more likely that a person will use the phone for browsing the internet.  Only 28% of total cellphone users said that they browse the internet daily on their devices.

The breakdown of smartphone ownership also has definite economic, racial and generational markers.

The more financially well-off a person is, the more likely they are to own a smartphone.  Of individuals earning over $75,000 a year, 59% reported owning a smartphone.  That figure is 48% when it comes to those with college degrees.

The people most likely to own a smartphone fall into the age range of 25-34.  Race also plays a factor, as 44% of the African-Americans and Latinos surveyed said they own a smartphone.

Only 30% of the whites surveyed reported ownership.  The research also confirmed that African-Americans and Latinos were much more likely to use their devices for internet browsing, games and multimedia content.

Finally, according to the study, Android is the most popular platform, followed by the iPhone and Blackberry in a dead heat for second place.

What’s the takeaway?  Not only are people using smartphones more and more, but they are using them to access the internet.  Some are even solely using their mobile devices to browse the web.  Having an easily browsable, functioning mobile site will become even more important as this trend continues to grow.   – Source

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This is a good story and Ive been saying for awhile that your law firm site needs to also be easily readable on a mobile device.   Most sites are readable enough, but its important to have a mobile version of your site that is easy to read, navigate and contact you.

We help lawyers create mobile versions of their sites, contact us for further information on lawyer mobile.

More than 60% of mobile consumers click on mobile ads at least once a week, according to new research from mobile ad network Mojiva and InsightExpress. Of that group, about 20% are especially responsive, clicking on ads several times a day.

The study, based on a poll of 100 random users on the network, also found that about half or more of respondents would be willing to play a game, download an application, visit a Web site or watch a video as a result of seeing an ad. Less than a quarter (22%) said they would go as far as purchasing a product and only 17% would use an ad’s tap-to-call feature.

When it comes to ad units, about 21% on average indicated they would notice normal banner ads, video ads, interactive ads and animated banner ads. Surprisingly, only 2% said they would pay attention to screen takeover ads. The study suggested that’s because the aggressive approach these ads take may alienate users. But even if users find takeover ads a turnoff, how could they not notice them?

In terms of ad content, people were most likely to be receptive to ads related to retail stores, weather, restaurants and bars. That makes sense, given that people use mobile phones on the go. Among topics or industry categories queried, ads related to magazines, airlines, traffic and banks had the least interest for users.

Roughly one-third said they use their phones mostly “offline” for calling and texting, one-third use phones equally online and offline, and about the same proportion spend most of their time browsing the Web, checking email or doing other things online.

In terms of demographics, whites make up almost half (47%) of users, while African-Americans make up 26%, Hispanics 9%, Native Americans 3%, “Other” 4%, and 11% did not respond to the question.

Seventy percent or more of survey participants said they are responsible for household purchases in each of the following product categories: groceries, restaurant meals, personal items and/or electronics. For 60% of users, annual household income is below $40,000.

The Mojiva network overall had more than 100 million unique U.S. users and 471.4 million globally in April.

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Google’s mobile ad network AdMob is releasing a number of staggering statistics today as the network begins its first full year under the Google umbrella. Google says that AdMob is receiving 2 billion ad requests per day, a data point which has quadrupled over the past year. To put that in perspective, as of May of 2010, AdMob was receiving 10 million monthly mobile ad requests.

To give you a picture of the current pace of mobile advertising, Google receives more ad requests in a single day than AdMob received for the entire month of December 2007 (a growth rate of 30 times in just over three years).

AdMob says that more than 100 million unique Android and iOS devices requested an ad each month, which is double the rate over the last six months. Google says that AdMob is seeing a significant amount of growth in international markets. Nine countries in the AdMob network generated more than a billion monthly ad requests in December 2010, up from just one country a year ago. In fact, the strongest regional growth in monthly ad requests over the past year has come from Asia (564%), Western Europe (471%) and Oceania (363%).

We know that AdMob has been steadily growing within Google, most recently serving its 300 billionth mobile ad since 2007 at a record-breaking fast pace for the company.

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Its pretty obvious now that mobile devices are for real and many people are using them. So it would make sense that you probably would want to make sure that someone who views your firms site on a mobile device, sees a version that is easy to read, easy to navigate and has your firms contact info, including your phone # readily available.

MOBILE SITES FOR LAWYERS

If you don’t have a mobile version of your site, that means that someone on a mobile device will see your site just like they would on a desktop. For some sites, its not that big of a deal because they have a basic text rich site. Yet for bigger sites that have flash animation, they can pose problems in that first most mobile devices, including the Iphone can’t read flash, so you basically have a big blank spot where the flash animation normally would be. Then also normal sites that look good on the desktop, sometimes don’t look as good and are usually harder to navigate. So some users who found the site might just give up and go find another site that is more mobile friendly!

CREATING A MOBILE SITE FOR YOUR LAW FIRM

Creating a mobile version of your site can be done in a number of different ways.  It depends on how your site is currently setup.  If your site is setup in WordPress, you have  a lot of different options on ways to get your site setup for mobile.  If you have a html regular site, then there are other ways to get a mobile version of your site.  Ive used a service called Mofuse and basically you setup a site using tools and you can add different elements to the mobile site. Then you would setup a custom domain name like M.lawdomain.com and then you would have some kind of script setup so that it would detect if someone was on a mobile device and direct them to the mobile version.

WORDPRESS MOBILE SOLUTIONS FOR ATTORNEYS

Ive found that using wordpress plugins for the mobile site is the best solution.  Another reason to upgrade your current legal site to WordPress, it just has more flexibility and makes certain tasks easier.  There are a number of different plugins you can use to mobilize your attorney site. Most of them are setup so you dont use a custom domain name and instead your URL stays the same.  You can have your posts come up on your mobile site, or you can instead redirect it to any other page in your site, including your contact page or a special page you create for mobile users.    You have a lot of options but the goal is to make it easy for the user to view the pages and posts in your site, and to also make it easy for them to contact you, including the ability to click on your phone # and instantly call you on the mobile devise they are using.

If you look at this site on a mobile device, you can see an example of how the site would look.

We have helped a number of lawyers create mobile versions of their sites, contact us today to see how we can help your law firm create a mobile site.

Youtube has upgraded its mobile presence and its now easier to use youtube on a mobile device.  If you goto youtube.com, it will then redirect you to m.youtube.com on your phone and its setup to make it easy to find videos and navigate the site, its very slick.

Its key your law firm site also has a mobile presence, so that when a user lands on your site while using an Iphone, its easy to navigate the site and contact you.

FROM THE GOOGLE MOBILE BLOG:

It’s well known that the mobile internet is huge and growing fast; what’s surprising is exactly how fast. According to a recent report, within 5 years more users will connect to the internet via mobile devices than desktop PCs. YouTube consumption on mobile devices has also grown considerably — playbacks were up 160% in 2009 over the previous year. And we’re excited to announce that YouTube Mobile now receives more than 100 million video playbacks a day. This is roughly the number of daily playbacks that YouTube.com was streaming when we joined forces with Google in 2006.

We launched YouTube on mobile devices in 2007 with about 1,000 videos available on the mobile site (m.youtube.com). While this suddenly opened up the possibility to access videos on the go, our site, mobile browsers and the hardware had limitations that prevented the mobile experience from keeping up with YouTube on the desktop. Today, more than ever, we know that you want to be able to find and access your favorite videos wherever you are. That’s why we’ve been working hard to roll out an updated version of the mobile site.

Here’s what’s new about the new mobile site:

• It’s really fast.
• The new user interface incorporates larger, more touch friendly elements, making it easier to access videos on the go.
• It incorporates the features and functionality you’ve come to expect from the .com site, like search query suggestions, the options to create playlists,the ability to designate “favorite,” “like,” or “unlike” videos directly from your device.
• As we make improvements to Youtube.com, you’ll see them quickly follow on our mobile site, unlike native apps which are not updated as frequently.

Visit Google Mobile Blog

Today, the Federal Trade Commission cleared Google’s acquisition of AdMob, a mobile advertising start up.

We’re excited to work with Omar Hamoui and his talented team at AdMob to develop new mobile advertising solutions for marketers, mobile app developers and mobile publishers.

The decision is great news for the mobile advertising ecosystem as a whole. This was reflected in the widespread industry support for our acquisition.

Throughout the FTC’s review process, it’s been clear that mobile advertising is growing rapidly.

As mobile phone usage increases, growth in mobile advertising is only going to accelerate. This benefits mobile developers and publishers who will get better advertising solutions, marketers who will find new ways to reach consumers, and users who will get better ads and more free content.

We’re very excited about the possibilities in this field. As an immediate matter, we’re now moving to close this acquisition in coming weeks. We’ll then start work right away on bringing AdMob’s and Google’s teams and products together. This industry is moving fast, and we’re excited to be part of the race!

Mobile advertising is going to be HUGE and its a good idea to start looking into creating a mobile version of your law firm site and also into advertising via mobile device. Who doesnt have a web enabled phone these days, everyone!

Apple has announced it is launching an in-app mobile advertising product, dubbed “iAd,” which it says will enable advertisers to provide far more “engaging and emotive” experiences to users, while more successfully remunerating developers. The ad formats will function on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and newly launched iPad product.

Speaking at a press event in California this afternoon, Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the new ad platform, which he said will be “built in” to the new iPhone operating system, OS 4, which is due to be released this summer, and rolled out to the iPad in the Fall, according to live reports.

Apple will sell and serve the ads itself, with a simple 60/40 split in favor of the application developer. The platform is likely to make use of technology from mobile ad network Quattro Wireless, which it acquired in January. Ads will apparently make use of HTML5, but the company did not provide any details on how ads would be sold, tracked, or measured.

During the event, Jobs demonstrated a range of example ads from brands such as Disney, Nike and Target. Clicking through on banner-like placements embedded in a news application launched the advertiser content, which essentially took the form of mini branded applications in their own right, featuring video, games, and other interactive content.

Jobs continued by saying the company’s intention is “to change the quality of the advertising” currently available on mobile devices such as the iPhone – which he said “sucks.” He also said he aimed to provide ads with greater “emotion,” while retaining the interactivity that has become synonymous with digital and Internet advertising.

According to Jobs, the average user spends 30 minutes a day using applications. He suggested therefore that serving an ad every three minutes would result in a billion impressions a day, creating “an incredible demographic.”

The announcement could have big implications for existing mobile advertising providers and networks such as AdMob and Millenial Media, which have built businesses on serving ads into iPhone applications. If developers can monetize their products more effectively using Apple’s platform, they’re more than likely to do so. Apple would therefore be afforded a huge amount of power in the mobile space, even against competitors such as Google.

Google itself announced that it was acquiring mobile ad network AdMob in October in order to kickstart its mobile advertising aspirations. Jobs conceded that Apple had attempted to purchase AdMob, but was beaten to it by the search giant. That purchase is still pending approval following scrutiny from the FTC and Congress.

Apple gave no indication of the pricing model for its iAd platform – for instance, whether it will be sold on a cost-per-click or CPM basis. Apple didn’t immediately respond to a press inquiry.

This is BIG and I think lawyers should be thinking about mobile advertising because its getting bigger and bigger and every one has a mobile device these days. So its key that your site can be viewed in a mobile device for starters and having a separate mobile version of your site is a good idea.

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