The average age at which kids receive their first cell phone is 12 years old, and 70% of kids under 12 have used a mobile device.  Teens report using their phones to text, take and share pictures, share videos, and visit social networking sites. The widespread use of cell phones and their multiple capabilities highlight the importance of teaching safe guidelines for mobile usage.

This leads to the next interesting highlight from CTIA’s infographic. There is a remarkable difference between the percentage of adults who believe they know what their children are doing online (91%) and the percentage of teens who agree that their parents know what they’re doing (62%). That’s a 29% gap between the two parties, meaning that roughly 1 out of 3 adults think they know what their teen is doing online, but is mistaken.  The best way to ensure online safety is to discuss responsible behavior and set guidelines for online and mobile usage.

It’s important to remember that while mobile phones can lead to risky behavior for teens, they can also act as security devices. Life360 recently paired up with Locaid to deliver something priceless to parents in the US: peace of mind. Life360 allows parents to monitor their child’s location and communicate with them in emergencies.

Parents can watch their children walk home from school and ensure sure they get to their friend’s house safely. And if disaster strikes and phone lines go down, parents are still able to locate their children. As Nathanial Mott wrote in PandoDaily, “the ability to quickly locate and communicate with family members could be a literal life-saver during a disaster.”

Better yet, Life360 works for feature phones as well, so it’s a great option for parents who want to keep track of their kids without giving them a smartphone.

While many are quick to label cell phones as a danger to our youth, we see them as powerful safety tools. Cell phones allow family members to communicate and locate each other instantly – we’ve never before had this capability. Use these features to your advantage while teaching your children how to use them responsibly, and you’ll be wondering why they didn’t have cell phones sooner!

Why? Location-based advertising lifts response rates with relevancy. That’s why the mobile ad networks are boasting 5x lifts in CPMs when a lat/long turns a campaign into high click-through rates. Expect to pay hefty premiums for location-based ads over the next three years.

Should you pay to play in LBS?

You want relevance, you want to reduce spam and annoyance in your customer ranks, you want meaningful click-throughs and mobile purchasing and drive-to-action. All of which means you have to fatten up your mobile marketing budget. Mobile is innovative and effective and, as a result, expensive. The question is how can you cut through the hype and negotiate a good deal on mobile marketing, stand out from the noise and drive the growth of your business all at a high ROI?

Each week I meet with CMOs who share their mobile concerns and plans. Here are the three “Must-Do’s” I always hear:

Get high on smartphones and tablets. There are 1.2 billion smartphones in use worldwide today. It’s not a phone. It’s a computer, camera, browser, shopping assistant, communicator, game platform, wallet, tracker and more. Think beyond your app. While smartphones present a marketer’s dream and endless opportunities to reach out to customers via a device they voluntarily interact with daily, consider this: how is that smartphone or tablet integral to my customers’ lives? And how can I make my brand and products relevant in that relationship?

Go deep on relevance. You’ve probably realized that your mobile app and mobile-friendly website is no longer enough. Daily, as I speak with my company’s clients, they tell me about abysmal download and engagement rates for their apps. My first question to them – are you offering anything that a customer needs? Or are your just pitching your stuff on a smaller screen? Be relevant.

Go wide on location. Knowing the location of your message/offer/service is the #1 way to be relevant. Any mobile campaign you’re running without location should be stopped immediately. After you add location, you will double your ROI at a minimum. Location not only enables greater personalization but adds a layer of verification to help prevent fraud and reduce the unnecessary admin costs of many mobile marketing campaigns. And use geofences. Geofencing provides a unique opportunity for you to target your ads at nearby consumers. When a customer enters a set radius, you can push a discount on that customer’s favorite item through your mobile application. Combine the use of geofences with a targeted mobile advertising strategy and you will increase engagement, footfall and ultimately, wallet share.

So start putting on the LBS. Get high on smartphones and tablets, do deep on relevance, and go wide on location… and start fattening up your mobile marketing ROI.

A 54% increase in profits and happier employees is big news.  However, along with the increased fluidity and employee satisfaction that BYOD provides, it also poses serious security risks that have made companies apprehensive to fully adopt the concept. Allowing employees to access sensitive materials from their personal phones or tablets puts qualified information at risk. Tracking employees’ locations via GPS with a BYOD strategy can also pose a problem, as GPS signals are not always available.

Location technology helps companies to embrace BYOD AND minimize the associated risks.

Use Cases:

1)      Mobile employees can be difficult to track and manage. Location data enables effective mobile workforce management allowing employers to track their employees’ locations in real time. When employees know that their location is transparent, they are more likely to successfully manage their schedule and reach daily goals.

2)      Location-based workplace management tools help maximize efficiency and accountability. By enabling a Geofence around an office or meeting site, on-time arrival of employees can be tracked. Notifications can also be enabled to let you know when your employee has reached their destination. These features help ensure that even while using their own devices, your employees are as efficient and accountable as possible.

3)      Companies can use location to prevent fraudulent activity. Location can be used as an additional layer of authentication, allowing specific employees access to specific information while in specific areas. This prevents employees from browsing confidential information in public places where the information can be at risk. It also prevents any threats from the information getting into the wrong hands if a device is misplace or stolen.

BYOD boasts impressive benefits, and location data helps minimize its risks. CEOs take note; it’s time to start the transition to BYOD. CLOs, be prepared; make sure location is at the center of your BYOD strategy.

The number one reason for innovation in mobile marketing is innovation in mobile devices. For starters, a smartphone is no longer primarily a phone. It’s a mobile browsing device with a phone capability. As LiveIntent’s Julia Rieger stated, “2013 will be the year when Smartphones finally take center stage in delivering news and information as their primary purpose and when people finally realize that referring to them as ‘phones’ is a misnomer.”

Smartphones are swarming the market. A Pew Internet and American Life Project found that 53% of mobile phone owners own smartphones, and 88% of those owners access their email on their phone daily.

It’s clear that smartphones are everywhere in the US, and they’re attached to our hips 24/7. Smartphones present a marketer’s dream: they provide endless opportunities to reach out to customers via a GPS-enabled device that they voluntarily interact with daily.

And it’s not just smartphones. The growth of the tablet market is undeniable. Tablets entered the consumer world in about 2009 and have become an item most households own. A study by Pew Research Center shows that one in four American adults owns a tablet computer. These impressive figures tell us that the demand for handheld tablets is on the rise.

A mobile app or mobile-friendly website is no longer enough. Daily, as I speak with Locaid’s clients, they tell me about the number of customers downloading their apps. My first question to them – is anyone actually using the app on a regular basis and are you seeing the ROI you expecteced? If you’ve invested in an app I think you probably know the answer.

So how can you ensure the most bang for your mobile marketing buck?

By using Location. Location not only enables greater personalization but also adds a layer of verification to help prevent fraud and reduce the unnecessary admin costs of many mobile marketing campaigns.

The best location-based mobile marketing example is the use of Geofences to optimize app engagement. Geofencing provides a unique opportunity for merchants to target their advertisements at nearby consumers. When a customer enters a set radius, a company can push a discount on that customer’s favorite item through its mobile application.

Combine the use of geofences with a targeted mobile advertising strategy and you will increase engagement, footfall and ultimately, wallet share. Find out my 6 secrets for a successful geofence campaign in this Mobile Marketer article.

In 2013, mobile advertising will take center stage. Google will soon begin requiring that all AdWords clients buy mobile advertising space, even if they only want to reach desktop-computer users. In essence this means that mobile advertising will soon be mandatory.

Eoin Keenan in his blog on ’3 Mobile Marketing Technologies to watch in 2013′ adds that “A real opportunity is a one-off, temporary offers or create really local ads. Finally, it allows you to develop profiles of users based on their travel and location patterns – people that regularly pass your store can be targeted as a potential customer.”

The future of mobile marketing is now. Don’t act and you will be left behind.

So what does this mean for Chief Location Officers in the Mobile Gambling industry?

As smartphones continue to penetrate the mobile market, mobile Internet usage will increase. In India, mobile Internet traffic surpassed desktop Internet usage in May 2012. It is only a matter of time until the same happens in the US and in other markets.

In the US, mobile gambling laws, which weren’t on many people’s radars 10 years ago, are starting to surface as an important issue. Establishing mobile gambling laws and regulations will help the US capitalize on the income potential while protecting consumers. Nevada is the only state to have legalized mobile gambling, but New Jersey and Illinois are soon to follow.

Why should CLOs care?

As discussed in our blog post on mobile sports betting, location data will be a key component in mobile gambling regulation. A user’s location will need to be verified to allow them to take part.

Locaid is currently the only network location service that is approved by the Nevada Gaming Control Board to provide secure and accurate location data.

CLO’s: Keep your finger on the pulse of the evolution of mobile gambling laws and the critical role that reliable and accurate location data will play. There is a lot to be learned, discovered, and taught in this developing field.

CLOs need friends in well-located places.  Here’s one of mine: tech entrepreneur Jon Spinney is the man behind this detailed Location Services Mergers and Acquisition Tracker .   Spinney, a location entrepreneur and guru now running LBS products inside of AT&T, has been tracking LBS M&As from as far back as 1999, when AOL acquired MapQuest for $1 billion.  Spinney’s tracker helps us keep a pulse on past and present location service M&As. And, with added details such as Category and Value, Spinney adds color to otherwise black and white data. Google, for example, acquired DealMap in August of 2011 for their mobile advertising data, and Ditto.me’s value to Google lied in the company’s team and their social networking features.

My favorite take-aways from Spinney’s tracker:

• Location Mergers and Acquisitions with reported price tags have totaled over $28 billion since 1999, proving location data’s immense value in today’s tech-heavy world.
• Google bought Zagat last year for $151 million, with the value lying mostly in the vast array of location-based content on the site. Food for thought!

OMG!  Just lost $$$ 4 grand on Draw Something!  Didn’t get the cartoon of Chris Christie.  Yikes!  Went back to my spacious cornfield suite (in the Farmville Tower).  Tomorrow I am sticking to poker while touring Hoover Dam.

That’s a Tweet from me, four years from now.  Right after Zynga opened up their monster casino on the strip, where Excalibur used to stand sentry.  Sounds outrageous?  The groundwork is already underway.

How did this happen?

The answer is something you hold to your head everyday: your phone.  While most of the gaming industry focuses on yesterday’s major computing cycle, the Age of the Internet, the next wave of operators is busy changing the game.  Those players, Facebook and Zynga included, are riding today’s tectonic computing transformation: the Age of Mobile.

Too many of the old guard are still focused on the last wave, the Internet, what we technologists call “THE HOW.”  How as in how consumers access content and services…bricks and clicks, cookies and browsers, Macs and PCs.  The new guard is focused on “THE WHERE.”  They are knee deep in what Kleiner Perkins’ star analyst Mary Meeker calls the “fifth major computing cycle of mankind,” the Age of Mobile.

What matters in this age of mobile?  Not how, but where.

Zynga figured it out back in 2012.  We live in a mobile society, always on the go.  There are more mobile phone subscribers in the US than there are citizens.  Of the 7 billion people on this planet, 6.1 billion own a mobile device.  And more of those devices are smart phones, phones that can do just about anything your computer can do.

Zynga got mobile games, but virtual money didn’t drive real profits.  So they turned to the mobile device and realized that the phone in your pocket or purse has the ability to collect and stream all kinds of information about you: the calls you make, the sites you visit, what you Tweet and Like.  And while all this behavioral data is helpful for serving ads and pushing coupons, Zynga found the gold in the phone: at any time, that device knows precisely where you are.

Real-time location data is the most valuable and engaging aspect of the Age of Mobile.  Location-Based Services (LBS) are transforming every industry. Credit card issuers like VISA use mobile location to battle fraud.  Logistics companies like FedEx use location to track shipments. Big brands like Kohl’s and Miller Coors use mobile location to improve marketing campaigns.

Zynga and Facebook realized early on that mobile location would revolutionize the way we play games and place bets.

Used to be you had to be physically sitting at the card table to place a wager, or standing at the lottery machine to buy a lotto ticket.  No longer.  New Jersey, Illinois and more states in 2012 were moving to legalize mobile gambling, and allowing operators to take bets on a customer’s own smartphone.  (Disclosure: my company Locaid provides authenticated location to the only smartphone gaming apps approved by the Nevada Gaming Control Board.)

Zynga figured out that location was a critical lynchpin in the new gaming ecosystem.  They predicted the day when the house takes more bets from customer smartphones than from the casino floor.  So Zynga (with a billion dollar loan from Facebook) decided to build a house, right on the strip.

Location-as-a-Service providers made it easy for Zynga and other gaming operators back in 2012.  Take geofencing.  Draw a circle around your casino or a perimeter around your state, and when your customer crosses your “fence,” they get an alert, such as an “OK to wager” message, or a promotion to visit your casino, or an incentive not to stray into your competitor’s house.  Mobile marketing with location geofencing adds rich context and much-desired relevance to a consumer relationship with your brand.

In highly regulated industries such as gaming and banking, location is complex and evolving.  And Zynga was an alien on Planet Vegas.  In Nevada, mobile gamers must be within state lines to place bets on their mobile phone.  Smartphone location (Wi-Fi and GPS) does not meet the requirements of the Nevada Gaming Control Board because these location sources are easily spoofed.  Network location sourced from the wireless carriers (the kind Locaid provides) cannot be spoofed by an app on the device.  This location, combined with geofencing, allowed gaming operators like Zynga to extend their books and games beyond the casino walls for the first time in US history.

In 2011, a historic first was achieved by Leroy’s: the first legal real money wager was placed on a smartphone in the state Nevada.  It was only a matter of time (and money) before Zynga and Facebook started negotiating with Trump and Wynn.

Zynga saw that the legalization of online gambling had the potential to create a multi-billion dollar market in the US, with many states eager to cash in on the revenue potential. Pair legalized online gambling with location-verified mobile gaming, and Zynga saw a huge, unchartered market.  That was in 2012.

Who else saw the opportunity in mobile and location back then?  AWI (now William Hill) was an early entrant.  But others were close behind.  With fraud protection and location verification, geofencing’s role in mobile gaming’s bulging market was destined to play a crucial role to ensure compliance and safety for all players, while ensuring all gamers within state lines can get a piece of the action from the comfort of their living room, car, or favorite bar.

Perhaps it’s not too late for the major gaming operators to take notice of mobile location.  Perhaps those that run the largest betting books in the country will realize that location verification via geofencing captures enormous value from the Age of Mobile.  Perhaps those CEOs and strategists have realized that the majority of consumers are constantly interacting with their phones, day in and day out

Zynga figured it out.  They did “Draw Something” back in 2012: they drew geofences around state borders, so they could start taking real money bets.  Is Caesarsville and ParisParisville far behind?

This article originally appeared on June 22, 2012 on TotallyGaming.com.

Do you remember cutting coupons? I do.  When I was a teenager I cut them for Mom and pocketed the savings for a new bike (from Sears, a ten speed that weighted fifty pounds).  For most (and anyone reading this blog), paper coupons are ancient history. Who has time for that anymore?  

Turns out, anyone with a mobile phone has time now, because mobile coupons take no time at all.  Coupons are making a new-and-improved comeback via your mobile phone, and marketing analysts are “cutting up” a huge chuck of mobile spend to the once lowly coupon.

Kudos to new mobile technologies.  Mobile coupons are a big focus of mobile advertising using near field communication (NFC) technology as one of many ways to increase store traffic. As discussed in last week’s post, hyper-local marketing via mobile advertising is on everyone’s radar, and mobile coupons are expected to rise with the tide. Mobile coupon spending is expected to grow eight-fold from $5.4 billion to $43 billion by 2016 (Juniper Research).

Why Mobile Coupons?
Living Social, Google, Coupons Inc., and Discover have all spoken to their current focus on mobile coupons via NFC. They want to make coupons faster and easier for us consumers to use. Isn’t technology grand?

Currently, coupons or vouchers can be redeemed 2 ways. First is the good ol’ fashioned printing or cutting out of the coupon for the cashier to scan, which triggers the discount. Second is pulling the coupon up on your smartphone, revealing a QR code or a barcode for the cashier to scan. Neither of these are that seamless, as they require the consumer and cashier to do multiple steps. And as we know, consumers don’t like multiple steps.

This is where NFC technology comes in. With a simple tap of your smartphone against an in-store station, your coupons are automatically redeemed – no barcodes required! Additionally, with the development of mobile payments such as Google Wallet, a single tap of your smartphone will both redeem coupons and run the transaction against your credit card. Tap and go. Talk about seamless!

Advantages of Mobile Coupons for Customers:

• No scissors required. You can’t run with scissors, but you can run with your smartphone to redeem the coupon that just popped up!
• Less waste. Mobile coupons are digital, meaning less paper waste.
• Coupons will be fun. Before, coupons were reserved for household items, such as ketchup, cat food, and cleaning agents. Snooze. Now, coupons sent to you can have the variety of daily deal sites, with discounts on social outings and fun local events, all with seamless redemption.
• They will be targeted to YOU. Mobile coupons, like mobile advertising, will be tailored to you. For example, you can sync your phone to your loyalty membership program (club card) at your grocery store. Your purchase history can then be used to offer mobile coupons on products you may like, introducing you to new products. This is like the “Netflix Recommends” feature of mobile coupons, which has always lead to good discoveries for me.

Advantages of Mobile Coupons for Merchants:

• Secure. Mobile coupons can’t be duplicated.
• High redemption rates. Mobile coupons have redemption rates as high as 30%, vs paper coupon’s 2%.
• Excellent tracking. Instant access to who redeemed the coupons, where they were, and at what time.
• Instant insight into ad campaigns. Instantly see how successful a coupon campaign is and who it’s working with.
• Low Cost. Digital coupons are less expensive to distribute than paper.
• Enhanced data. Redemption data will be linked to purchase history and customer type, allowing for more precise research and future campaigns.

So, say goodbye to your scissors and coupon organizer. They are soon to be relics from the pre-smartphone age that future generations will never believe. I picture them picking up a coupon book, blowing dust off of it, and asking me, “What is this specimen?” Mobile coupons, I welcome your seamless money-saving discounts with open arms.

Today, 1 of 5 dating relationships start online. Not getting any? Check out the Top Online Dating Sites. But you singles shock me–you are just lazy daters in this mobile era. You ask: “Who wants to drive cross town for nookie when there’s an app for finding a date right around the corner?”

Enter okcupid. These lovelies recently announced location-based dating for iOS and Android apps. That means you can broadcast your location to people who have the same interests and profile matches to yours. You can even chat with people who are nearby.

Gone are the days of desperately scanning dive bars for that one person who thinks you’re not a dweeb.  Not that I ever did that.)  All you need to do now is broadcast your nerdy hobbies and quickly locate other geeks like you (not that I was a geek either). These days, if you can’t be with the one you love, Google the one you want to love and if they are nearby, start loving! (Apologies to CSN&Y).

I’m looking forward to the first location-based wedding. Anyone out there about to be married via okcupid? I will ship a bottle of LBS champagne to the first couple, validated by the okcupid CEO, who enters wedded bliss are a direct result of Location-Based Dating. The Chief Location Officer should preside at such a matrimonious celebration, don’t you think? Or at least sing in the choir. Or throw rose petals. Or crash it.

Future post: Location-based bachelor parties (Check In: Las Vegas).

CLO Advice: Location is the single most important data export from your mobile device, whether it be a feature phone, smartphone, or now, “paper-phone.”

A prototype flexible smartphone made of electronic paper and created by Canadian researchers, can do all the things bulkier smartphones can do such as make and take calls, send messages, play music or display e-books.

It’s a weird amalgam of the oldest in retro and the latest in high tech.

It looks retro, kind of like the tabs they put on top of folders, back when folders were made of paper and tabs were made of plastic. Cast your mind back. Way back. Add to that the way you use it—by bending it like paper.

But it’s smokin’ high tech too. It uses the same e-Ink technology as the Kindle so it should be easy for my old eyes to read. And you activate it by it using bend gestures (which sounds like yoga or something you do while driving in Italy) that interact with a flexible printed circuit with bend sensors.

You can only imagine the kind of havoc a two year old could wreak with it. Bend—call the boss. Squish—make a video of Dad trying to grab the phone back. Wiggle—forward all my emails to random addressees. Imagine what teenagers will look like playing video games. That, of course, will be part of its charm.

Imagine the potential if you add location information to the mix. Dedicate one of those pages to mobile coupons, mobile ads, real-time traffic, and so on.

And will it be easier to use and fold up than a gas station map?

Full article here: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/paperphone-cellphone-future/story?id=13535486

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