Tag: mobile commerce

Square shows more aggression in the mobile commerce space

PayPal may soon have unprecedented competition as acclaimed mobile commerce firm Square makes a bold business move. Square has won attention in North America and elsewhere in the world for its approach to mobile commerce. Unlike some companies involved in this sector, Square has an interest in making mobile payments as accessible to consumers as possible. In order to accomplish this goal, the company developed a quarter-sized device that can be plugged into nearly any smartphone. This device allows consumers to make mobile payments as they see fit.

Square Market unveiled

Square boasts of a very productive partnership with Starbucks, which has seen a great deal of success in its adoption of mobile commerce. As Square grows to be more formidable in the highly competitive mobile commerce field, the company has taken steps to set it further apart from others in the sector. The firm has announced the launch of a new platform it calls Square Market. The Square Market exists as a platform through which merchants can list a variety of products, allowing consumers to browse and purchase with their mobile device.

Platform may be welcome among merchants

The Square Market has a somewhat ambitious goal in that it aims to blur the lines between online and offline commerce. Square has been somewhat successful in this endeavor through its other ventures in mobile commerce, but the Square Market represents the company’s boldest attempt to engage consumers in a new way. The Market platform is expected to find a great deal of favor with merchants as it offers them a variety of features, such as the ability to set up an online store nearly instantly.

Square takes aim at competitors

The Square Market is designed specifically to challenge platforms like Amazon, Etsy, and eBay. PayPal is has also been targeted by Square, which has ambitious plans to become more involved in the financial services realm in the future. PayPal has long dominated this sector and has established a strong foothold in the mobile commerce space. Square may find it difficult to dethrone PayPal, but has committed to putting up a good fight with its competitors.

Fiksu research data has indicated that smartphone ads are outperforming those that are more familiar.

Fiksu has now released the findings of its most recent research which have indicated that the cost per engagement of mobile marketing is ten times less expensive than paid search marketing.

This study is only the most recent evidence of how advertising over this channel is succeeding.

In fact, it shows that mobile marketing has pulled ahead of traditional advertising techniques both in affordability and effectiveness. The report, “Brand building on mobile devices: measuring the value of consumer engagement,” involved an analysis of over 2.4 billion app marketing data points from global application brand campaigns that have been implementing promotions through the Fiksu Platform. What it revealed was that compared to traditional channels of advertising, these are considerably more cost effective.

Fiksu also released a new metric for measuring the ROI of mobile marketing of brands.

As an element of its study, Fiksu brought in a brand new type of metric that was created to allow companies and brands to better understand the return on investment (ROI) of mobile marketing (the cost per mobile engagement). According to Fiksu, the central findings from this research were the following:

• The mobile marketing CPM (cost per thousand impressions) rates are the second smallest among all of the various forms of advertising – including print, broadcast and digital. The only lower rate is through social media.

• When it comes to major brands, mobile display advertising CPCs (cost per clicks) are up to 90 percent less expensive than desktop pay per click (PPC) campaigns.

• In mobile app advertising, the CPEm (cost per engagement in mobile) for mobile marketing is a tenth of the cost of a keyword click over desktop.

According to the Fisku vice president, Craig Palli, “Brands are waking up to the fact that mobile apps provide an incredible and very cost-effective canvas for marketing. But using CPM and CPC as sole measures of ROI eclipses the powerful engagement that mobile apps bring and which brand marketers seek.” When discussing this mobile marketing study, he went on to say that “Fiksu’s new CPEm metric is a far more meaningful tool for brands to use for planning and decision-making.”