Category: Apps

Sharper Image enters into the mobile commerce field for the holiday season

Sharper Image has a long history in specializing in high-tech products, but the retailer is entering into new territory that it has not yet explored. The retailer is set to launch its holiday catalog, which will feature a wide array of innovative gadgetry. While this is nothing new in and of itself, the catalog will be linked to a mobile commerce site, allowing consumers to purchase products they are interested from their smartphones and tablets.

Retailers work to engage mobile consumers

Mobile commerce has become quite popular among retailers, largely due to the success that many companies saw with their mobile commerce initiatives during the 2012 holiday season. Last year, many consumers opted to shop from their mobile devices, taking advantage of special deals being offered by retailers trying to engage the mobile crowd. For many retailers, this led to a sharp increase in revenue, which has encouraged them to continue pursuing mobile commerce aggressively.

Application equipped with image recognition technology

Sharper Image is not content to simply link its holiday catalog to a mobile commerce website, of course. The retailer has also developed an application that will allow consumers to browse, research, and purchase products directly from the catalog using image recognition technology. Each image in the catalog contains a digital watermark that function in a similar fashion to a QR code. When the application registers the watermark, it directs consumers to a particular product page.

Mobile commerce may usher in success for retailers

The application is designed to make the shopping experience more engaging while also leveraging the convenience of mobile commerce. Sharper Image expects that consumers will respond well to the initiative, which may also be a boon for those looking to get their holiday shopping out of the way early. Other companies have similar initiatives in mind, but none are utilizing image recognition technology to promote mobile commerce among consumers.

This, according to the execs at both The Weather Channel as well as at Criteo.

Execs from both The Weather Company – the operator of The Weather Channel – and from Criteo – an adtech platform – believe that as much as mobile marketing is growing in popularity and presents considerable opportunity for monetization of a website or an app, the ads that are used over this channel leave a great deal to be desired.

These two execs have agreed that it is primarily the format of the ads that needs to improve.

They have stated that the mobile marketing ad format continues to be riddled with flawed and time will require it to improve. That said, this is not quite an encouraging statement considering the fact that the channel has been heavily used, worldwide. It is also a rather grim statement considering that Criteo is a considerable buyer of m-commerce ads, and the Weather Channel is a large seller due to the great popularity of its app.

That said, despite the current statements, they do feel that mobile marketing will be the place to be in the long run.

In a recent interview with a business publication, Greg Coleman, the president of Criteo, said “Do mobile ads suck? Maybe, maybe not.” He added that if you are able to encourage a viewer to click an ad, which he called, making an “ad dance”, then you can assume “that it doesn’t suck.”

In order to be able to make better mobile marketing ads, according to Coleman, there is a requirement for the industry to look into the ads that have been made by curatives that have developed a smartphone based background and who have what is referred to as Coleman as the mobile “DNA”.

At the same time, The Weather Company’s chief global revenue officer, Curt Hecht, has expressed a different angle of view regarding the direction that mobile marketing was taking. In his opinion, considering the way that things currently are, the methods that are used for purchasing and selling ads over smartphones and tablets are what he called “a complete mess”. For a company that sells ad space on its apps, this isn’t the best type of statement to make.