Mobile Fix: The verdict on Apple and the Holy Grail for Twitter
This week, Simon Andrews, founder of Addictive!, takes a look at the future for Apple now that innovation is failing to come from the hardware – as well as what might be the Holy Grail for Twitter after the purchase of adtech firm MoPub.
Despite two interesting new devices and a clever way of boosting their margins, the general reaction to the Apple launch this week was negative. Share price declined and most commentators were underwhelmed. The Daily Mail even think owners risk having their fingers chopped off by thieves.
Inevitably, new devices are going to underwhelm; we now have the same issue in phones as we do with TV – once you have maximized the screen versus the size of the device all you can do is make the phone bigger and add some colour.
The innovation will now come from the software. But there weren’t any big bold new features like Siri, Passbook or Google Now. And they quietly shut down their Postcard service.
But the new devices strengthen Apple’s position as the BMW or Audi of smartphones; premium priced but now with a (slightly) lower entry level.
The one thing that will bump up the share price is the deal with China Mobile which seems to have been delayed over some tech issues but looks almost certain to happen. But at these prices the impact may be muted. And it looks like we have definitely passed peak Apple.
Beacons
Probably the biggest potential for Apple is their use of beacons and Bluetooth Low Energy. If they can get their beacons widely used it would strengthen their position in retail and offers – and really unlock the potential of Passbook.
The company currently leading this space is Estimote and they have talked bout how they will use iOS7. The beauty of BLE is that most smart phones support it, so it’s not just about Apple. And PayPal has announced a hands free mobile payment system using BLE.
This means we now have a really viable means of connecting mobile to the physical world and if brands and retailers use it smartly, the promise of QR, NFC and AR may well be finally delivered. But consumers remember all the spam of Bluetooth and the disappointments of QR etc, so we can’t afford to get it wrong.
Social and advertising
Twitter made their biggest acquisition so far with the purchase of adtech firm MoPub. A strong player in mobile advertising, Mopub will enable Twitter to distribute their ad buys across other mobile apps and sites – dramatically increasing reach and therefore revenue.
As this informed view says Twitter are now well positioned to exploit the fact their users are logged in to deliver cross device tracking and attribution. So knowing I browsed an ecommerce site on my smartphone, the ads on my desktop browsing are now more valuable.
GAFA each enjoy this 360 degree view of their users but this move enables Twitter to follow suit and possibly deliver against it more effectively.
How does this technically work? Since you’re logged into Twitter on a desktop browser and on a mobile device, the browser cookie from your computer and the device ID from your device are joined. Twitter will join those two in a data-safe way on their back-end that allows the data to flow across user experiences, without losing control of the underlying identity.
Doing that, they have within reach that heretofore unattainable Holy Grail of marketers: a permanent, stable, and immutable key that identifies everybody online, on every device, all the time.
This is a big deal.
We have also heard this week that Mondelez have struck a deal with Twitter where Twitter staff will be embedded in the client teams to help them better action real time marketing. And they get preferential rates and a first look at new products. No mention of any agency involvement, which is interesting/ disturbing depending on where you sit.
The arms race over customer data has stepped up and Facebook have announced they will now share data on who is mentioning what in their posts. Initially this is available to broadcasters and news organisations – so they can get a better sense of their audiences behaviours. But it seems likely that this sort of data will find its way to brands and agencies too – eventually.
Facebook sibling Instagram is getting ready to take advertising – but no-one is quite sure what it will look like yet. They are getting closer to brands though – meeting with major players like Ford and Coke.
Cards
We suspect that the format Instagram will end up going with may well be based on cards. This way of delivering content is ideal for mobile and is being talked about as the future of the web.
Google is using cards – particularly in Google Now. Pinterest is using cards and so is Spotify. Ben Evans talked about how Twitter is using cards a few weeks back and pointed out that Airdrop uses them.
As well as being a great design tool, the ease of sharing this format of content means it can only grow in importance.
The best example of what cards add is Twitter where a few lines of code enable developers to add one of 7 card types to a Tweet so the content is visible to followers. Of course this is hugely valuable for Twitter in that it keeps more attention on their stream, rather than having people clicking away to see content elsewhere.
And that attention can – and will – be monetised by Twitter.
It’s all about cards, beacons and stacks.