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Yahoo Quickly Puts Summly Buy to Use with Updated iOS App

Late last month Yahoo acquired news app Summly for the underlying technology, developed by SRI. It was just the latest in a series of mobile startup acquisitions (mostly for talent) Yahoo has been making.

Today the company rolled out the fruits of the Summly acquisition: a new iOS (iPod Touch, iPhone) flagship app. This follows last week's release of Yahoo Mail for the iPad and a new Yahoo weather app. 

The Yahoo blog, in a post by CEO Marissa Mayer, announced the new app this morning:

The new Yahoo! mobile app is also smarter, using Summly’s natural-language algorithms and machine learning to deliver quick story summaries. We acquired Summly less than a month ago, and we’re thrilled to introduce this game-changing technology in our first mobile application. And, with the immersive imagery of our virtually endless newsfeed, the new Yahoo! app has both great technology and beautiful design front and center. Because searching for great content is also core to the Yahoo! experience, we’ve also improved the search experience with better video and image search.

The app offers essentially two views of stories, a kind of list view with thumbnail images (top left) and a more immersive (Summly like) visual view of stories (top row right and below left):

Yahoo enables personalization of news content in the app. If you're signed in each story allows users to select "more" or "less" news about the topic (lower right images). That personalization will also be reflected in the stories presented on the Yahoo PC site. However personalization is far from obvious in the new app and its not clear how many people will notice let alone use it. 

The "visual" dimension of the experience is not as engaging or successful as Yahoo's new weather app (images below). However it's quite a bit more challenging to duplicate the experience of the weather app with news content, whose stories and images are constantly changing. In addition the list view of news is kind of flat and uninteresting. 

Yahoo is making good progress in updating and mobilizing its user experience under Marissa Mayer. Things are definitely on the right track. However with the new Yahoo flagship/news app it will probably take a few more "iterations" to get things right.

Nokia Q1: Lumia Sales Up though Brand Dead in US Market

Nokia released Q1 earnings this morning. They were mixed. The company said that it sold 5.6 million Lumia handsets, which is up from 4.4 million in Q4 2012. Overall shipments of Nokia handsets were down more than 20% however. Sales also fell 20% YoY, to 5.9 billion EUR ($7.7 billion). As a consequence Nokia shares were down 12% this morning.

The roughly 25% improvement in Lumia sales was encouraging but far from a turnaround. Nokia's lower-end device sales were down, offsetting the Lumia gains and depressing overall sales figures. 

Since turning to Windows Phone in 2011, Nokia has sold 19.9 million total units. While this isn't outright failure -- and there's growth projected -- Windows isn't going to save Nokia or make it competitive with Android and iOS (enough time has passed to draw that conclusion). Nokia will have to turn to Android to diversify in the near term.

Nokia reported Lumia sales increases in all geographic regions except the US/North America. That's largely because Nokia's brand remains relatively strong in Europe and other places. However its brand is effectively dead in the North American market. Qarterly shipments of Lumia devices were down 33% vs. Q4 (400K vs. 700K) in North America. 

This not only reflects the weakness of the Nokia brand but equally the indifference of much of the US public to Windows Phones. Not only will Nokia have to aggressively discount it will need to develop new devices for the US market and may still fail (absent an Android strategy). 

During its Q1 earnings call Nokia was dismissive of Android. However if the company hopes to compete again in North America and indeed globally in the top tier of OEMs it will have to develop Android handsets beside Windows. In the US Windows Phones are driving less than 2% of mobile internet traffic; their US market share is roughly 3%. 

IAB: US Mobile Ad Revs $3.4 Billion in 2012

Consistent with what could be projected from the 1H numbers the IAB released, the trade group reported this morning that mobile ad revenues in the US for 2012 were just under $3.4 billion. This number is below what many other firms had projected but still represented more than 100% growth.

Overall, mobile ad revenue constituted 9% of total internet ad revenues for the year, which were $36.6 billion. Retail and financial services are the top two ad categories. And over time more of that digital retail ad spend should migrate to mobile. Within a few years, we should probably expect that about 20% to 25% of the overal digital spend should go to mobile. That will still lag consumer behavior but be more in line with it. 

The following are the breakdowns by category and format for US online advertising as a whole: 

There was no sub-category breakdown provided by the IAB for mobile. However search dominates, followed by mobile display. The full report, which isn't yet out, may provide further insight into the division of revenues. 

Low Awareness, Lack of Interest Plague BlackBerry, Nokia

It turns out that despite lots of media coverage and celebrity personality Alicia Keys as "creative director" most North Americans don't know about the launch of BB10. That's according to a survey commissioned by MKM Partners. The poll of 1,500 adult consumers (conducted during the past three weeks) asked about device adoption and future purchase intentions. It found, consistent with other data, much higher recognition and interest in Apple and Samsung. Others generally fared poorly.

The survey found that 51% of respondents owned smartphones, with 39% saying they bought their in the last six months.

Ownership breakdown by handset OEM: 

1. 33% Apple
2. 28.3% Samsung
3. 9.9% LG
4. 9.3% HTC
5. 9.3% Motorola
6. 4.4% other
7. 3.4% BlackBerry
8. 1.6% Nokia 

Current mobile OS:

1. 55.1% Android
2. 31.3% iOS
3. 6.4% Windows Phone (higher than other surveys)
4. 3.4% not sure
5. 3.1% BlackBerry

Future purchase intentions:

1. 44.5% “not sure” of next phone
2. 19.6% said Samsung (Android)
3. 17.7% iPhone
4. 5.9% BlackBerry
5. 4.4% Motorola
6. 3.7% HTC
7. 3.1% LG
8. 0.7% Nokia

Asked about BlackBerry 10, 83% of respondents indicated they weren't aware of the launch. Asked about Windows Phones, 61% lacked awareness of the OS. When asked about interest in BB10/BlackBerry or Windows Phones the majority of respondents indicated indifference.

Not interested:

• 68% not interested in BlackBerry
• 63.9% not interested in Windows Phone

Separately investment firm Piper Jaffray conducted another wave of its research among US teens about device ownership and future intentions.

Notable findings include the following: 

• 51% of surveyed teens owned a tablet
• 50% owned smartphones

In both cases iOS was dominant. However Android has made slight gains in both smartphone and tablet categories since the previous survey was conducted last fall. And aggressive pricing, especially in the tablet category, may drive Android penetration up vs. iOS among younger users.

Mobile Display Ad Estimates: Social Sites Beat the Networks?

A week ahead of the actual mobile ad numbers from the IAB IDC has released its estimates of 2012 US mobile advertising, as well as projections for 2013. The company says that mobile ad revenues were $4.5 billion in 2012 and will reach $7 billion this year. Our view is that the actual 2012 number will come in just under $4 billion. 

According to IDC, search advertising represented 61% of mobile ad revenues in 2012 or $2.8 billion, while display brought in $1.7 billion or 39%. Directionally those numbers are right though the precise proportions may be off. For example, IDC's estimates of Google's share of search advertising is 79%, which is too low. It's more like 94%. 

The most interesting part of IDC's figures and analysis is its juxtaposition between social networks (publishers) and mobile ad networks. Here are IDC's 2012 mobile ad revenue estimates for the major social networks/publishers (Pandora isn't a social network obviously):

1. Facebook: $234 million
2. Pandora: $229 million
3. Twitter: $117 million

And here are the IDC-estimated mobile display ad-network revenues:

1. Google: $243 million
2. Millennial Media: $151 million
3. Apple: $125 million
4. Jumptap: $90 million

The argument is that publishers/social networks have beaten the mobile ad networks. Online publishers essentially lost out over time to the ad networks on the PC internet because of traffic fragmentation and limited reach of most publisher sites vs. networks. The question is: will this happen again as real-time bidding and mobile exchanges become established? Or will major sites/publishers retain their ability to capture and control significant mobile ad dollars? 

One point to be made here is that sites like Facebook and Twitter offer a multiplatform solution (and so does Google) that enables marketers to reach users on the PC and mobile simultaneously and usually with a single buy and single ad creative. That represents an efficiency advantage over most ad networks. 

Will It or Won't It? Microsoft's iOS-Office Dilemma

Microsoft is in a tough spot: Windows Phones aren't selling well outside of a couple of EU markets and data indicate that neither is Windows 8. Windows RT and Surface tablets have so far been a major disappointment as well. While it's way to early to "count Microsoft out," clearly the company is in trouble as mobile internet access and mobile computing accelerate at the expense of the PC. 

There have been persistent rumors that Microsoft was bringing a version of Office to iOS and specifically the iPad. You can use Microsoft's Office 365 cloud-based product on the iPhone or iPad. (I have not.) But the experience will not be as rich as with a native app. 

There are two theories about why Office has not come to iOS as a native app: Microsoft won't pay the 30% "tax" to be in the iTunes App Store and, perhaps more significantly, if Office came to the iPad (or Android tablets) it would undermine the sales outlook for Microsoft's own Surface tablets -- currently the only tablet that offers Office. 

Microsoft's compromise may be to offer Office 365 through the browser to iPad users. However by not offering a native app it risks ceding the centrality of  Office to a range of apps. Offering a native-app Office would potentially cloud the future of its own tablet devices, which may not be so bright anyway.  

Assessing Dueling Mobile Ad Forecasts: $27B vs. $16.8B

Two mobile ad forecasts were released last week almost on top of one another: one from eMarketer and another from BIA/Kelsey (BIA). (IDC is slated to come out with theirs very soon.) The figures they project for mobile advertising in four years are $10 billion apart. 

In one way or another most forecasts turn out to be wrong. Forecasts typically either fail to anticipate technology shifts or they have the opposite problem. They are often aggressive in assuming how quickly technology adoption will happen or change the market. Think about past predictions regarding the rise of digial advertising and the erosion of traditional media. It's happening but years after many thought it would.

I've certainly been guilty of incorrect predictions and aggressive forecasts in the past. So I now generally prefer the IAB's methodology, which reports on actual revenues after the fact.

Let's take a look at and compare the eMarketer and BIA mobile forecasts, which are strikingly different. BIA says that US mobile advertising in 2013 will be worth $5.4 billion and $16.8 billion by 2017. By comparison eMarketer is much more bullish, saying that US mobile advertising will be $7.3 billion this year and $27 billion by 2017. The 2017 number is almost certainly way too aggressive.

New York-based eMarketer pegged 2012 mobile ad revenues at $4.1 billion. However my view is that when the IAB numbers come out we'll see something closer to $3.5 - $3.8 billion. However it's possible that eMarketer has it right. Google told financial analysts several months ago that the company's mobile "run rate" was $8 billion globally (including non-ad revenue). 

BIA has raised the amount of its overall forecast from last year considerably but dialed back somewhat the portion allocated to local. That's because the firm began to recognize marketers weren't buying local fast enough. SMBs aren't buying mobile ads directly and brands have only recently started to explore local targeting in earnest. Depending on several variables that may accelerate in the next 12 - 24 months. 

YP said that it had $350 million in mobile-ad revenue today. It's not selling mobile advertising directly to the company's mostly small business advertiser base. Rather this is how the company is allocating or attributing revenue from ads that appear on mobile devices but are originally sold as part of a broader package. 

The local portion of BIA's forecast is dominated by search advertising, which has been the major contributor to local-mobile ad revenues. BIA maintains the assumption that search will continue to dominate local advertising throughout the forecast period. And mobile paid search is consistently expected to have more than 2X local ad revenues vs. mobile display in the BIA forecast.

Yet there are many more display impressions (in apps for example) than search queries. I don't know ratio off the top of my head but it's quite significant. If we're going to see billions in local-moble ad revenue it can't all come from search queries on Google. (Almost all paid search revenue in mobile [95%+] will go to Google for at least the foreseeable future, if not indefinitely.)  

Today paid search represents just under half of all PC-based ad revenue. It's likely that will track with mobile over time. 

I do believe that location will increasingly be used by mobile display advertisers, networks and exchanges. But it will also be used together with other variables as a way to reach particular audiences. Location will be both simplified for advertisers and incorporated into larger mobile ad-targeting concepts ("context"). Thus location will be a layer, among other variables, in mobile display and probably not remain a single targeting methodology -- except in geofencing and related "conquesting" scenarios.

Emarketer projects that the majority of mobile revenues will be controlled by a small number of companies: Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Pandora, Millennial Media and "other." Other includes a large number of companies, including Microsoft, Yahoo, mobile exchanges/DSPs and still others. 

The collective "other" category above is probably much too small. However I do agree that a relatively small group of large companies with significant scale will control and collect the lion's share of mobile advertising in the US, just as on the PC. Google, Facebook and Twitter will certainly be among them. 

Google is accelerating the growth of mobile ad revenue with its recent introduction of Enhanced Campaigns, which will push more AdWords advertisers into mobile at higher CPC rates. And by bundling PC and tablet advertising together paid-search on tablets will also grow much more quickly. Location-based ad targeting on tablets is a bit of a wild card: location matters somewhat less on tablets than smartphones but the "ad canvas" is much richer on tablets.

Facebook has also been dialing up the amount of ad revenue it generates from mobile, simply by showing more ads in its apps. Home is a wild card and may or may not favorably impact mobile ad revenue for the company. 

What qualifies as a "mobile" ad may become murkier and more of an attribution question as in the YP example -- such as combined tablet and PC ads in search or Facebook ads that appear equally in mobile and on the PC. And what qualifies as "local" ad in mobile is also a bit of an issue. I would argue a local ad in mobile is one that includes an explicit location mention in the ad creative (or landing page). A "local ad" can also be one that has no location mention but uses explicit location targeting at a DMA level or "below." Ads that target by state, province or region should probably not be considered "local."

Google's Enhanced Campaigns and related simplification of media buying and location targeting will significantly boost ad spending attributable to mobile. I think however the eMarketer numbers for 2016 and 2017 are still too high. I also believe the BIA position that most mobile ads will be localized is also incorrect -- unless the definition of local is radically enlarged. 

Low-Cost Tablets to Accelerate Decline of PC Market

Last week there was a Reuters report asserting the next Google-ASUS Nexus 7 will have an improved screen and may cost as little as $149. The current entry level Nexus 7 is $199. Reuters also said that if it's not the new Nexus 7 than the existing tablet's price may be reduced. The current entry level Kindle Fire from Amazon (with ads) costs $159.

As this all indicates there's a kind of "race to the bottom" going on that may radically depress margins on Android tablets. Furthermore we're likely to see a decent $99 7-inch Android tablet in the next year.

The growth of smartphones and the emergence of these reasonable-quality low-cost tablets such as the Nexus 7 are accelerating a trend toward mobile device adoption at the expense of PCs and further extending PC replacement cycles. In developing countries PCs will likely never reach penetration levels seen in North America or Europe.

In its latest device forecast Gartner joins the party, affirming what we already know about PC erosion in favor of smartphones and tablets on a global basis. In its projection Gartner sees Android as the big winner, effectively replacing Microsoft as the dominant OS on tablets and smartphones.  

The particulars and timing of this forecast will undoubtedly turn out to be wrong. However the direction of the forecast is probably accurate. With its resistance to matching price competition (probably wisely) Apple iPads will not reach tablet penetration levels of low-cost Android based tablets (though the company is considering a lower-cost iPhone).

So far, Microsoft's "2.0" efforts in mobile, Windows Phone and Surface tablets, have only made modest gains in selected markets. However Microsoft still makes money from Android OEMs via patent licensing fees. If it has to rely on licensing the company's future will be pretty grim.

If these figures are anywhere near accurate tablets are poised to become the primary computing (and advertising) platform. Yet we're likely to see quasi-converged devices (i.e., tablets with keyboards like the Surface Pro) become laptop replacements in the near term.