Posts Tagged ‘Julie Ask’

According to a post on Facebook’s blog, the company has tripled its audience on mobile devices to 15 million over the past year, MediaPost reports. The number includes the m.facebook.com mobile WAP site as well as the various native applications available for different handsets.

“[This is] a big milestone,” said Julie Ask, a JupiterResearch analyst who covers the wireless space, in a blog post. “I think this number will only continue to grow and everyone in the ecosystem will benefit.”

The report said that Facebook, and social networking in general, will benefit from the trend toward cell phones with larger screens and full keyboards. “The more users post to the mobile site, the more often others will check in for responses, and that ‘virtuous circle’ will help social networking expand on mobile devices,” the report said.

At the Interactive Advertising Board’s Leadership Forum: Mobile seminar in New York, several mobile experts said the medium is increasingly going mainstream and is proving more effective than traditional channels, MediaPost reports.

For marketers, “the key is to figure out ‘what am I providing to the consumer that’s useful’ and they will follow you,” said Vladimir Edelman, CEO of Ansible, Interpublic’s mobile marketing agency, in the article. That means tailoring campaigns to take advantage of the specific advantages of cell phones. (And no, that doesn’t necessarily mean to get all creepy and track a user’s every move.)

Eric Bader, president and co-founder of mobile marketing firm Brand in Hand, gave an example of a mobile campaign for Tide, which offered on-the-go tips on how to treat certain stains. And moderator Julie Ask, a research director at JupiterResearch, said half of marketers surveyed by Jupiter say they are spending $50,000 or less on mobile campaigns, the report said—although Bader and others are seeing some mobile budgets in the $250k to $750k range as well.