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Socialbakers has released its latest "Socially Devoted" figures for Q1, and the results are a mixed bag. On the one hand, the average response rate grew 6% points quarter-over-quarter to 38%, after only improving by 4% points in the preceding 6 months. But on the other hand, that means that significantly fewer than half of questions posted to brands' Twitter profiles were answered. What's more, the average response time increased by 10%, from 6 hours in Q4 2012 to more than 6-and-a-half hours in Q1. Read more »

The volume of smartphone impressions on the Millennial Media platform is increasing, but not as quickly as impressions from non-phone connected devices, represented primarily by tablets, according to [download page] Millennial Media's latest Mobile Mix report. In Q1, the company reports that non-phone connected devices accounted for 25% of total platform impressions, up from 20% a year earlier. That 5% point gain came entirely at the expense of smartphones, which dropped from 75% to 70% share of impressions. Feature phones, somewhat surprisingly, kept steady at 5%. Read more »

79% of smartphone owners qualify as "smartphone shoppers," says Google in new study results, using their devices to assist with shopping at least once a month. 84% of these smartphone shoppers use their devices to help them while they're in a store, equating to about 2 in 3 smartphone owners overall using their devices in-store. The most common way these consumers go about their research is through search, per the study, with store and brand websites less popular. That pattern also applies when smartphone owners compare prices, discover promotional offers, and find out where products are sold Read more »

The mobile marketing ecosystem is demonstrating rapid growth, with $6.7 billion spent by client-side marketers and retailers in 2012, according to [download page] a study commissioned by the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) and conducted by researchers at Columbia University. That investment should grow to $10.5 billion this year before ballooning to $19.8 billion in 2015, with close to half of that ($9.2 billion) coming from mobile advertising alone. Read more »

75% of ad agencies responding to a BrightRoll survey believe that video is equally or more effective than TV, and that's up from 64% who believed that to be the case in last year's survey, according to a new BrightRoll report [download page]. Even more respondents (91%) believe that digital video measures up well with display, although they're less convinced about its effectiveness compared to social media (68%), search (52%) and direct response (45%). The most important aspect of video advertising to clients is its targeting capabilities, according to 45% of respondents, with reach (27%) also valuable. Read more »

The US advertising market is quite heavily affected by political spending and the Olympics (P&O), with TV particularly influenced by cyclical P&O spending, according to [download page] the latest forecast from MAGNA GLOBAL. The researcher estimates that ad spending on core media will inch forward by 0.4% this year, but that growth is a more robust 2.4% when excluding P&O revenues. That disparity also means that TV revenues will decline by 2.8% this year, but otherwise be up by 1.9% when excluding the P&O impact. Next year, when P&O spending is back in play, the advertising market will rebound, growing by 5.9%, and fueled by an 8.9% expansion in TV revenues. Read more »

Perhaps due to the growing influence of social shares on search rankings, local SEOs are increasingly seeing social media as an effective marketing channel for local businesses, according to results from a BrightLocal industry survey. More than 8 in 10 respondents believe that social either works well for certain business types (57%) or that it is very powerful (25%), up from 76% last year, while fewer than 1 in 10 are of the opinion that it's over-hyped. When it comes to generating leads customers for clients, though, SEOs are biased towards search, with 82% saying that "general search" is one of their top-3 most effective online channels. Read more »

Facebook released its Q1 earnings yesterday, showing mobile's growing influence on the social network, consistent with various recent research reports (such as this one). According to the release, the number of mobile monthly active users (mobile MAUs) grew by more than 10% quarter-over-quarter, to reach more than three-quarters of total monthly active users worldwide. Mobile-only monthly active users also grew by more than 20%, exceeding 10% of the total. Read more »

Talking to people works, according to results from Ifbyphone's "State of Marketing Measurement: Survey Report" [download page]. Asked to rate various marketing tools for their effectiveness in generating sales leads, respondents ranked inbound phone calls highest, with a rating average of 3.4 on an 8-point scale (where 1 represents the highest potential). In-person visits were virtually on par with inbound phone calls, with a rating average of 3.48. Read more »

6 in 10 search marketers believe that it will be either much more (27%) or more (36%) important to rank in global search engines this year compared to last, according to results from BrightEdge's "2013 Search Marketer Survey" [download page]. A key aspect of reaching consumers around the world involves getting to the Chinese customer, and 41% of respondents believe it will be more important to rank in Baidu this year, versus about 1 in 10 who see this being less important. A recent report from Covario found that Baidu accounted for 1 in 4 global paid search clicks in Q1. Read more »