Digital Intelligence

Nielsen, a leading provider of information and insights into what consumers watch and buy, today announced the launch of the Nielsen Innovation Lab, a program designed to spur pioneering ideas and better, faster advancements in the area of advertising effectiveness. The Innovation Lab will incorporate assets from across Nielsen with external resources – from clients, industry groups and academia – to enhance understanding of the value of advertising activities across media platforms. Stanford Graduate School of Business has signed on as the first collaborator and will contribute creativity and academic rigor to Lab initiatives.

Hipcricket®, the one-stop mobile marketing and advertising wholly-owned subsidiary of Augme® Technologies, Inc. (OTCBB: AUGT or “Augme”), announced that it has surpassed the 200,000 mark for mobile marketing and mobile advertising campaigns, thereby maintaining its industry leadership position in this key metric. By completing more than 27,000 campaigns in the quarter ended May 31, 2012 (the first quarter of FY2013), Hipcricket enjoyed a 52 percent increase in campaigns completed when compared with the previous quarter ended February 29, 2012.

iJento, a technology leader in customer intelligence, announced that it now offers turnkey customer intelligence solutions via a new technology integration with Tealium, the leader in enterprise tag management. The integration gives organizations the ability to roll-out customer intelligence solutions within a matter of hours utilizing a single line of JavaScript code. Once installed, joint clients can manage their choice of analytics and digital marketing vendor tags quickly and efficiently through an intuitive, web-based console. This makes it easy for marketing teams to respond to tag changes instantly without relying on valuable IT resources.

With consumer confidence up and brands looking to reconnect, spending on advertising is on the rise—around the globe and across media types. TV, newspapers, radio, outdoor, Internet, and cinema all saw an increase in ad spend in the beginning of 2012 compared to last year, according to Nielsen’s quarterly Global AdView Pulse report. Though TV continues to attract the majority of advertising dollars, Internet advertising saw the biggest increases, with advertisers spending 12.1 percent more in Q1 2012 than one year prior. During that time, ad spend overall increased 3.1 percent globally.

Lookout, the leading mobile security company, announced its Mobile App Advertising Guidelines: A Framework for Encouraging Innovation While Protecting Privacy. The Mobile App Advertising Guidelines provide a framework to help app developers and ad providers – such as ad networks and ad exchanges – understand how they can explore new ad display techniques and access personal information while adhering to strong mobile privacy and user choice principles. By equipping mobile advertisers and developers with clear privacy and user experience guidelines, Lookout aims to enable growth and innovation in mobile advertising, while protecting user privacy and increasing the trustworthiness of ads.

Yahoo! (NASDAQ:YHOO) and Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) announced that they have entered into definitive agreements that launch a new advertising partnership, extend and expand distribution arrangements, and settle all pending patent claims between the companies.

According to the new Ad-ology Auto Shoppers Forecast, 36% of U.S. consumers plan to purchase a new vehicle in the next 12 months. That’s a 64% increase from May 2011.

Ace Metrix™, the new standard in television and video analytics, announced the 10 most effective ads for the second quarter of 2012, a list led once again by Samsung, but this time for its French Door refrigerator instead of its Galaxy Note, which last quarter beat out Apple as the top mobile device advertiser. Apple rebounded in Q2, with its celebrity themed spot starring Zoey Deschanel promoting the iPhone 4S taking the only mobile device spot on the Top 10 list. Consumer packaged goods companies made a strong showing this quarter with ads from Lysol, Nestle, Downy, and Reynolds in the Top 10, as well as ads from restaurants Olive Garden and Applebee’s. Finally, Lowes was the one retailer to make the list, and Audi A6 was the one automotive company to make the list.

comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released data from the comScore MobiLens service, reporting key trends in the U.S. mobile phone industry during the three month average period ending May 2012. The study surveyed more than 30,000 U.S. mobile subscribers and found Samsung to be the top handset manufacturer overall with 25.7 percent market share. Google Android continued to grow its share in the U.S. smartphone market, accounting for 50.9 percent of smartphone subscribers, while Apple captured 31.9 percent.