The Clip Report

Image credit: Financial Times

It’s hard to believe, but mobile marketing didn’t really get going in earnest until Apple launched its App Store in 2008. Three years later there are now marketplaces on all five major device platforms - Apple’s iOS, Android, BlackBerry, HP WebOS and Windows Mobile. What’s more, there seems to be a constant footrace between brands not only to be first to market with their own apps, but to refresh them for a fickle public.

Some of what’s driving this is the zeitgeist. Overnight, it seems, apps have become deeply embedded in our culture. To stand out at a dinner party you better pack some apps. The New York Times now has a weekly column covering them. And even Sesame Street, arguably a mirror image of American society, posted a video ode to apps on YouTube that has been viewed nearly 750,000 times.

This columnist, too, has gone ape for apps. A year ago I posited that, as smartphone and tablet adoption rise, mobile applications could unseat the web as the primary means we interact with content. Now I am second guessing myself. Things are once again changing.

This summer, the app ecosystem started to show signs that it maybe fraying at the edge. Several major players in media and social networking including the Financial Times, Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook have all launched rich web applications. These sites, thanks to the magic of HTML5, run in any modern browser and come very close to matching the functionality of their “native” app cousins.

Now none of these companies has abandoned their Apple or Android apps. Still, the sudden interest in web apps is notable. There are arguably three factors driving it.

First, HTML5 has finally matured into a strong alternative to native iOS and Android apps. These web apps can even run offline.

Second, it shows that perhaps developers are frustrated that they need to support multiple platforms. Android devices alone come in so many shapes, sizes and resolutions, that supporting them is a difficult and expensive challenge. Web apps solve this conundrum.

Finally, there’s freedom. Apple, most notably, recently changed the way that developers can sell content from within their applications. If a developer links out to their own online store, they must also allow consumers to purchase content using an iTunes account. However, Apple takes a 30% cut of the latter.

Most content companies have reluctantly relented to Apple’s rules. However, a few, notably Amazon, chose not to provide any e-commerce functionality in their iOS ebook apps. Amazon instead responded by launching the Kindle Cloud Reader, a web application that runs in a browser across multiple platforms. It features a rich, engaging shopping and reading experience that rivals their native apps. Downloaded books can also be read offline.

To date, no major brand has made the jump to prioritize an HTML5-based web application over a native app. This is for a good reason. Most consumers are still downloading smartphone and tablet apps in droves.

However, this could change over time as marketers get more comfortable developing for mobile devices, start dabbling with new web development tools from the likes of Adobe and aspire to exert greater control over user experience.

Here are three trends to watch when considering your own strategy.

First, there’s Apple. To date, the company has backed off on some of its more draconian policies. Still, they remain strict. However, if more companies start to prioritize their web apps over iOS apps, Apple may blink to protect its ecosystem and relent further.

Second, there’s Google. While Google has thousands of native applications in its Android Marketplace, the company has also been actively promoting HTML5 as an emerging alternative, starting with its own sites. Web applications are arguably more important to Google than native apps. They encourage users to browse and search more and thus could drive ad revenue.

Finally, there’s the global economy. The fragmentation in mobile space shows no signs of abating. Marketers may decide it’s more cost effective to develop a strong web application and control the experience end-to-end, rather than support hundreds of phone and tablet formats.

Time will tell how this all shakes out. Remember that just a few years ago there were hardly any mobile applications. Today there are hundreds of thousands of them. Things can change fast if developers are motivated.

Disclosure: Edelman, my employer, has business relationships with Adobe, Blackberry, HP, Microsoft and LinkedIn.

→ Media Tops in Corporate Social Media

The following is also my AdAge column…

With all of the attention that’s being paid to Facebook and Twitter it’s easy to forget that no single company impacts media and marketers the way that Google does. Even small changes in Google’s algorithm and/or its underlying search technology can cause a massive ripple effect in consumer traffic patterns and buying behaviors.

The intentionally low-key launch of the Google+ social network - which ended up being quite strong out of the chute - is no different. It’s Google’s effort to encourage more consumers to create and share content it can easily see, index and monetize. This is critical for Google as more content slips into the “invisible web” that exists solely behind Facebook’s walls.

The Google+ launch, however, overshadowed three recent smaller announcements that are arguably far more significant. They point to massive shift in the kind of data Google is factoring into its algorithm. And these refinements come just as the search engine is being increasingly criticized for being gamed into delivering lower quality results. Together they reveal a company that is serious about social signals.

Let’s take a deeper look at each.

First, on June 7 Google unveiled a new way for authors to claim ownership of their content around the web. This allows a writer to embed verified HTML code tied to his/her Google+ profile in all content, no matter where it appears (e.g. my blog or AdAge.com). Once inserted Google then automatically includes the author’s profile image whenever these works show up in searches. Already the New York Times, CNET and The New Yorker have adopted this simple tag.

This is a significant announcement since it creates an easy way for companies to insert a mug shot into relevant search results, which arguably can drive clicks. It will put pressure on businesses to identify thought leaders who can pen bylines not only for their own sites, but for the media.

Next on June 28 Google began to make more data available to companies on the impact that tweets, Facebook likes and, most importantly, its own “+1” sharing buttons have on site traffic. (The Google+1 button, which appears next to search results, is rapidly gaining steam, according to BrightEdge. However, it remains far behind Facebook’s Like button.)

The impact here is that as publishers begin to get more data on how social networks can drive people through the funnel they will look to perhaps reorient their budgets in an effort to secure to get more retweets, likes and +1s.

Finally, Google News is starting to get more social as well. On July 14 the ten-year-old site launched a program that rewards regular users with social badges of authority for reading lots of news stories in a given subject matter. At launch Google rolled out badges for more than 500 topics.

The impact of these reading badges remains unclear. However, what it does show - especially in context with the new author markup tag - is that Google is serious about identifying subject matter experts, whether they publish or not.

If all of this isn’t enough, sandwiched in between these announcements Google urged publishers to think beyond the almighty PageRank number that SEO types historically pay much heed to. In a June 30 blog post, Susan Moskwa, Webmaster Trends Analyst, suggested that site owners look more deeply at other metrics such as conversion rates, bounce rates (how quickly users abandon a site) and search click-throughs.

These events, while seemingly quite technical, are not coincidental. In fact, they’re incredibly strategic.

While the press and pundits focus on Google’s effort to compete with Twitter and Facebook with its own social network, there’s a far bigger story here. Google is slowly reinventing the core of its business by refining the quality of what people turn to it most for - search results - by favoring explicit and implicit signals of authority.

These shifts in search signals, over time, may revolutionize how marketers think about their visibility in a world of infinite content choices. Some will encourage their employees speak for the brand. Others may not be as liberal. However, all will be impacted.