Author Archives: John Koetsier

Apple Arcade: The ‘Boutique’ Of Mobile Games, But Ongoing Innovation Is An Issue

Apple unveiled Arcade, a $5/month subscription for mobile games, just over a month ago. We’ve now had some time to evaluate what it looks like, how it operates, and what impact it may have on mobile, mobile gaming, and innovation in the casual games space.

And we’ve seen how Google has jumped in with a similar model.

There’s a lot to like about this kind of service, as anyone who has ever been nickeled and dimed to death playing a “free” mobile game knows. Or whoever’s bought a game that eventually turned out to be awful.

Get the full story in my post at Forbes …

Google’s New Pixel 4 Phones Come With Radar (In Fact, Two Radars)

So much for “talk to the hand.” Now, it’s talk with the hand.

Google released its new Pixel 4 phones today, and yes: they come with upgraded cameras, new colors, new designs, and smoother-scrolling 90Hz screen refresh rates. 

But all of that is evolution, not revolution.

Talking with your hand, on the other hand (sorry!), that’s fairly new for mainstream smartphones (Samsung has released some gesture-based technology as well). Google calls it ‘Motion Sense’ and it originates in the company’s Project Soli. Motion Sense is enabled by a tiny radar chip that senses nearby movement and allows you to control your phone with gestures.

Get the full story in my post at Forbes …

Apple’s China Risk: $43 Billion

Doing the right thing can be expensive.

And not only for the NBA.

Last quarter Apple sold $9 billion dollars worth of iPhones, accessories, and services in China, down from $10.2 billion in Q2 and $13.2 billion in Q1. For the whole year, assuming it sells about $10 billion in the current quarter, Apple will pull in a Delta Airlines or American Express worth of revenue from greater China: almost $43 billion.

Get the full story in my post at Forbes …

Mobile ad monetization: Analyzing true ROI by tying in ad revenue

Can accounting for ad monetization revenue in your user acquisition ROI analysis help your app business grow smarter and faster? According to Singular Product Manager Lisi Gardiner … yes, it can!

It’s not shocking to most in mobile that ad monetization is growing fast. In fact, App Annie says that 60% more apps will build ad monetization into their overall mobile revenue strategies this year. So it’s clear that in-app advertising is a major — and growing — contributor to mobile publishers’ revenue.

For hyper-casual gaming publishers, it could get to 100% of their revenue.

Get the full story in my post on Singular’s blog …

Internet advertising growth is slowing. Here’s what’s changing … and why

Read this sentence slowly: pre-movie ads at the theater will grow faster than internet advertising next year.

You got that right.

Ads shown for 10-20 minutes to a paying audience waiting for the real show to start will grow faster than the fastest, most modern, most digital advertising ecosystem ever created. The most annoying part of going to a theater is now also the fastest-growing sector in paid marketing.

But this shouldn’t be a shock, at least on one hand.

Get the full story in my post on Singular’s blog …

A modern marketers’ survival guide to the data explosion

CMO’s biggest priority in 2019 is getting actionable insights from data. We know this because they’ve told us.

“With the exponential growth of data over the past decade and into the new year, it’s becoming harder daily to turn information into action,” says SurveyMonkey CMO Leela Srinivasan. “While more data has the potential to deliver more meaningful insights, prioritizing an action plan to address it is critical.”

The question, of course, is how.

Get the full story in my post on Singular’s blog …

Apple’s China Risk: $43 Billion

Doing the right thing can be expensive.

And not only for the NBA.

Last quarter Apple sold $9 billion dollars worth of iPhones, accessories, and services in China, down from $10.2 billion in Q2 and $13.2 billion in Q1. For the whole year, assuming it sells about $10 billion in the current quarter, Apple will pull in a Delta Airlines or American Express worth of revenue from greater China: almost $43 billion.

Get the full story in my post at Forbes …

Box CEO Aaron Levie On AI, Robotics, The Future Of Work, Digital Transformation And #YangGang

What will work look like when everything is digitally transformed, artificial intelligence is optimally deployed and robots are embedded in every aspect of our economy? That’s hard to know, but one company that’s focused on making work work better, and helping businesses digitally transform, is Box.

Box, which went public in 2015, still acts very much like a Silicon Valley startup. Except, of course, grown up, with partnerships with Google and IBM and just about any other important company you can think of.

And 95,000 customers, including 69% of the Fortune 500.

I had a chance to interview Box CEO Aaron Levie at BoxWorks, the company’s annual conference where it unveils new products, new relationships and new ways of transforming the business of work.

Get the full interview in my post at Forbes …

10B Downloads Later, This Simple Mobile Game Is A Multi-Platform Cash Cow

Talking Tom is an icon in the mobile world. Literally, of course, with the app’s icon on billions of phones globally. But also figuratively, thanks to the game’s ridiculous level of success.

Talking Tom and related games will have been downloaded more than ten billion times by the end 2019, according to the game’s publisher, Outfit7. Players have poked Tom more than 530 billion times. And the game’s fans have watched over 200,000 years of Talking Tom video content across a variety of platforms.

Get the full story in my post at Forbes …

If You Are One Of 218M ‘Words With Friends’ Players, Change Your Password Now

A hacker has breached Zynga’s Word With Friends game and claims to have accessed a database of more than 218 million players. That means your name, email address, and encrypted password are potentially in the wild, if you’re a registered player.

In addition, the hack includes phone numbers and Facebook IDs.

Get the full story in my post at Forbes …

Amazon’s Echo Loop Smart Ring Gives A Whole New Meaning To ‘Talk To The Hand’

Amazon’s new smart ring is big, fat, and ugly. And it doesn’t do much that a smart ring should.

I’ve been wearing a Motiv smart ring for the better part of a year now, and while I primarily use my Apple Watch for fitness tracking, the Motiv is a super-small and unobtrusive way to track my sleep patterns as well as monitor activity and health.

Get the full story in my post at Forbes …

Apple Finally Gets Face Unlock Right: iPhone 11 And iOS 13

It finally just works.

Apple’s had facial recognition technologyMORE ON THIS TOPIC FROM FORBESGoogle’s New Nest Hub Max Raises Questions About How Much We Still Value Our PrivacyAmerica’s Views On Face Recognition And Surveillance Cameras5 Best Gaming Laptops Under $1,000 for unlocking its phones for two years now, since iPhone X. But as a two-year owner on several iPhone X’s (I named the most recent one “Unbroken” for a reason), the company’s Face ID technology wasn’t great.

It was slow.

And it required just the right angle to work.

Get the full story in my post at Forbes …

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s Super Smart Response To Internal Leaks: Live-Stream Everything

Two days ago a Facebook employee leaked audio and video of an internal Facebook meeting. It has potentially sensitive data and insights that SenatorElizabeth Warren has already responded to publicly.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s response?

He’s live-streaming Facebook’s weekly internal question-and-answer session to his 117.5 million followers … on Facebook, of course.

Get the full story in my post at Forbes …

Batterygate 2.0? Apple Releases New iPhone 11 Performance Management System

Apple’s new iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro phones include a new performance management system that will impact speed and quality of smartphone use over time, according to a new support document from the company.

“Depending on the battery state and the tasks that your iPhone is handling, examples might include longer app launch times, lower frame rates, reduced wireless-data throughput, backlight dimming, or lower speaker volume.”
– Apple

To date there have been 32 class action lawsuits launched after “Batterygate” came to light in 2017. Apple had introduced a new power management system which throttled CPU performance for phones with older, weaker batteries.

Get the full story in my post at Forbes …

Instagram vs Facebook vs YouTube vs Twitter: Where Beauty Brands Spend The Most

It’s probably not shocking that Instagram captures the lion’s share of the beauty industry’s ad dollars. It is, after all, the quintessential platform of the selfie. But according to a new report from BrandTotal, YouTube gets a massive 93% of the biggest cosmetics company’s ad dollars.

Get the full story in my post at Forbes …

Chief Growth Officers: A Rorschach Test For The Future of Marketing

Remember Rorschach blots?

They’re abstract ink blots that psychologists used in the 1960s to examine people’s subconscious thoughts, emotions, and biases. Do you see an angel or a demon? Is it a dolphin or a shark? Is your martech setup a stack or a blob?

(Don’t answer that last one!)

In some ways, the chief growth officer (CGO) role represents a Rorschach blot for how you see the future of marketing. Is it about technology or people? Is it about big data or big ideas? Is marketing an all-encompassing function that includes sales, customer experience, support, and more, or is it what happens before someone buys?

At Singular we recently surveyed 700 companies to learn more about the species of marketer labeled “CGO” and what impact they are making.

Get the full post at CMO.com …

Apple’s 6 Consumer Subscription Services Will Cost You $100/month

Apple just announced TV+ and Apple Arcade at its September Apple event. Now, getting all of the company’s consumer subscription services will cost you around $100/month.

And that doesn’t include AppleCare.

Get the full story in my post at Forbes …

Apple Hints China Behind ‘Billion Device iPhone Hack’ That Google Reported

Apple, Google, and China are all bound up in the news this morning, thanks to an Apple statement released this morning. A week ago, Google released details of a hack that could essentially own your iPhone, just by visiting a website.

Never mentioned by Google: which websites, where they were, or who they impacted.

But today, Apple provided a big clue that implicates China.

Get the full story in my post at Forbes …

Alleged Global Google Privacy Leak: ‘GDPR Workaround’ Could Incur $5.4B Fine

Startup browser maker Brave has filed new evidence with the Irish Data Protection Commission stating that Google has created a GDPR workaround that is sharing the personal data of billions of people to thousands of companies globally.

If upheld, this could cost Google $5.4 billion.

Get the full story in my post at Forbes …

Internet advertising growth is slowing. Here’s what’s changing … and why

Read this sentence slowly: pre-movie ads at the theater will grow faster than internet advertising next year.

You got that right.

Ads shown for 10-20 minutes to a paying audience waiting for the real show to start will grow faster than the fastest, most modern, most digital advertising ecosystem ever created. The most annoying part of going to a theater is now also the fastest-growing sector in paid marketing.

But this shouldn’t be a shock, at least on one hand.

Not because cinema ads are shockingly effective — 8X better than TV, according to one study — and not because more people globally are going to movies than ever before. But it shouldn’t be a shock primarily because nothing can grow at huge rates forever.

Internet advertising has just gotten too big to grow at huge multiples.

Get the full story in my post on Singular’s blog …

A modern marketers’ survival guide to the data explosion

CMO’s biggest priority in 2019 is getting actionable insights from data. We know this because they’ve told us.

“With the exponential growth of data over the past decade and into the new year, it’s becoming harder daily to turn information into action,” says SurveyMonkey CMO Leela Srinivasan. “While more data has the potential to deliver more meaningful insights, prioritizing an action plan to address it is critical.”

The question, of course, is how.

The big problem for mobile/digital marketers today is way too much data. Exploding channels. And more and more siloed marketing technology tools to “manage” it. As we see every day, everything in technology and data is up and to the right:

Get the full story in my post on Singular’s blog …

Growth loops: How to win the $5.6 trillion digital commerce market

E-commerce and m-commerce are hard.

Retail in general is challenging, and digital commerce has both giant international competitors like Amazon and Alibaba. Plus, there are hugely successful direct-to-consumer startups like Dollar Shave Club (now owned by Unilever), Casper in the mattress industry, Allbirds in shoes, and Bonobos in clothing.

So how do you scale profitable growth?

Get the full story in my post on Singular’s blog …

CGO-led brands are 65% more likely to invest in new marketing technology

A CGO is a growth catalyst who brings together almost every department in a company to stimulate growth, including product development, customer support, sales, and yes — of course — marketing.

But how do they drive growth? And, how different is a company with a chief growth officer than one without?

Here’s three key differences that our recent survey of 700 companies found. CGO-led organizations are investing much more heavily in:

1. marketing technology
2. AI and machine learning
3. digital ads and … marketing events

Get the full story in my post on Singular’s blog …

Singular releases breakthrough deterministic Android Install Validation for mobile app install fraud prevention

Mobile marketing is a high-stakes game of cyber warfare, and the fraudsters are winning.

Advertisers will lose as much as $42 billion in 2019 to digital ad fraud, according to Juniper Research. To fight back, Singular has built a team of cyber-security experts with roots in Unit 8200, the elite Israeli intelligence division that has been called “the foremost technical intelligence agency in the world.”

Today Singular is unveiling the team’s latest breakthrough: first-in-industry Android Install Validation that is deterministically identifying fake app installs.

Get the full story in my post on Singular’s blog …

Hong Kong Protestors Using Mesh Messaging App China Can’t Block: Usage Up 3685%

How do you communicate when the government censors the internet? With a peer-to-peer mesh broadcasting network that doesn’t use the internet.

That’s exactly what Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters are doing now, thanks to San Fransisco startup Bridgefy’s Bluetooth-based messaging app. The protesters can communicate with each other — and the public — using no persistent managed network.

Get the full story in my post at Forbes …

Global First: Korea’s SK Telecom Breaks 1 Million 5G Subscriber Mark

SK Telecom in South Korea announced today that it has surpassed one million 5G subscribers in just 140 days after launching service. That’s twice as fast as its LTE uptake in 2011.

The big difference with 5G?

People are using 65% more data on 5G than LTE.

Get the full story in my post at Forbes …

Apple Card Launches For Everyone. Now Credit Is As Private As Cash

Apple Card is launching this morning to every Apple customer in the U.S., the company announced this morning. 

With the launch Apple takes one more step away from the old Apple Computer, or even the Apple mobile company that has become of the most valuable companies in the world, and another step towards technology-mediated services.

And now credit is as private as cash.

Get the full story in my post at Forbes …

Amazon Boosts Spending 300%: Now Outspending Netflix As Top Streaming Advertiser

Amazon Prime Video is now outspending Netflix as the top streaming or over-the-top video advertiser, according to a new study by MediaRadar. 

And not just by a little.

Get the full story in my post at Forbes …