Media Converged, a division of Qwasi Inc.

Mobile Marketing Watch: Print magazines may be loosing ground to their digital counterparts, but mobile technologies have still found their way inside the pages of most issues available  today on your closest newsstand.

According to a new study by mobile marketing and technology services company, Nellymoser Inc., QR codes, digital watermarks, image recognition and other types of mobile action codes are now printed in the top 100 U.S. magazines.

The rate of these attributes of the mobile ad space turning up inside magazines reached a record number in Q2. A total of 2200 codes were printed during the quarter, up from 1365 in Q1 (61% growth). More than 10% of advertisements contained a code, which was double the 5% rate from just one year ago.

Other findings include:

• The number of brands that have adopted mobile action codes jumped to 598 in Q2, up from 451 in Q1 – a 33% increase.
• For the first time every magazine in the study contained at least one code.
• QR codes continue to be the clear action code market leader, maintaining more than an 80% market share since December 2011.

Mobile Marketing Watch: Video sharing giant YouTube has reached a significant decision with regard to its position on mobile advertising and how users are exposed to mobile ads.

                        So… are you more inclined to welcome mobile ads if the ones you’re going to look at were selected by you in the first place?

Econsultancy: The growth of the smartphone provides a number of opportunities for brands to engage with consumers based on their current location. 

According to stats from the Mobile Marketing Association, 26% of mobile users regularly use a map, navigation tool or similar service that automatically determines their current location.

Location-based marketing allows brands to adapt their marketing messages based on where consumers are geographically when they see them, and also what that location may tell you about their habits. 

There are a number of location-based strategies, which can be broadly split into “Push” and “Pull” marketing.

Komarketing Associates: Should B2B marketers be focused on a mobile marketing initiative? We don’t get that question as much as we should. I suspect part of that reason is the ever growing list of marketing responsibilities are clients have on their plate, satisfying short and long-term marketing goals. There is just not enough time in the day to map out this strategy.

That said, it is important to realize that internet marketing, search engine marketing, and social media marketing, are moving rapidly to browsers and applications on the mobile device. Last month I illustrated how mobile device usage was increasing in our clients’ web traffic reports. This trend is also happening across the third party platforms that drive traffic and leads to the organization.

Viral Blog: No matter whether marketers care about social media, local marketing, email marketing, e-commerce, phone calls or web traffic—mobile marketing is changing them all.

If you don’t believe that mobile is changing marketing forever…you’re wrong.

Hopefully a few of these stats will open your eyes.

• There are 7 billion people on Earth. 5.1 billion own a cell phone. 4.2 billion own a toothbrush. (Mobile Marketing Association Asia, 2011)

Mashable: As brands focus efforts on keeping up with broadcasting trends across social platforms like Facebook, Twitter andPinterest, many are neglecting a tried and true marketing tactic that could propel them even further: narrowcasting.

Narrowcasting marks an emerging trend by which consumers are sharing content with smaller, more selective audiences. In contrast to broadcasting, narrowcasting is about tailoring information to better compel the recipients. It’s a competitive alternative, as evidenced by this infographic from Mogreet. While broadcasting gets a brand’s message out to a massive group of people, when it comes to who is actually reading and engaging with the content, the numbers are staggeringly low.