Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

The mobile web and apps are complementary. However they’ve been treated as though they’re mutually exclusive in the press and in most industry discussions. Now comes a Millward Brown study, “The New Mobile Mantra,” that offers some deeper insight into when people use apps and when they use the mobile web.

While this isn’t the first piece of research to compare mobile web and app usage. But it’s more nuanced than most and seeks to get at the consumer psychology and rationale behind the varying use cases. The study, conducted over the course of the first three quarters of 2015, is based on both an examination of click-stream data and consumer survey data (n=2,011 US smartphone owners over 18).

Millward Brown found that while apps command the most user time, “61 percent of smartphone users access their browsers at least once a day, spending an average of 31 minutes in total.”...

Want to track your packages with the swipe of your finger? Now you can. Need to split a complicated dinner bill? It's no longer the end-of-meal buzz kill.

It's been an exciting year for mobile apps. Not only have some of our favorite apps gone through redesigns and other changes, but a ton of new apps have been created to make our lives easier.

Here are some of my favorite apps that have made a difference in my life this past year whether through better organization, helpful tips, or teaching me something new....

No one can deny the rapid rate in which Mobile Commerce is growing.

A recent report from comScore showed that online retail spending had grown by 14% last year, while total consumer retail spending had only grown by single digits. At the moment, most online spending is still happening over desktop and laptop computers, but that is expected to change, and soon, according to recent data from the U.S. Census and other sources.

Mobile Online Spending is the Way of the Future.People might still be using their computers to buy online, but they won’t be for much longer. According to Digiday, commerce is one of the industries that will be most affected by growing mobile platforms. According to a forecast by Goldman Sachs, global e-commerce is expected to grow to $638 billion by 2018. Goldman also asserts that it will be tablets rather than smart phones that will be the primary source of online spending....

Data from the Pew Research Center shows teens now primarily use their smartphones to access the Internet -- and this could have a big impact on your business.

Teens use smartphones (shocking, right?). What you might find more interesting is that new data from Pew Research Center shows that 78% of U.S. teens now have a mobile phone—and nearly half of them (47%) own a smartphone. As a result, smartphones are now the primary devices that teens use to access the Internet—and this has big implications for your marketing strategy.

The Pew study reports that 50% of teen smartphone owners say they use the Internet through their phones. And 3 in 4 teenagers report they’re “mobile Internet users,” which means they access the Internet on some sort of mobile device including phones and tablets (compared to 55% of adults who classify themselves in the same category)....

But how on earth would you ever know whether the brand you are choosing to buy has equality in mind or even gives a damn about women in general? Good news, there’s now an app for that! It is called Buy Up Index and we predict it will be a game changer and keep brands accountable to the majority of the consumer market.

The app rates a company or a brand from A to C and using a proprietary rating method, they assess companies based on four major factors: women employees, women leadership, corporate citizenship and marketing...

Google has just launched a new app that business owners will find incredibly useful. Google has just launched a brand new application called Google Places for Business in the App Store.

The app allows users to connect their business with Google Search, Google Maps, and Google+ from an iPhone or iPod touch, and is free to download and install. Thanks to this new application, it’s now easier than ever for owners to promote their business online.

In Google Places for Business, users can not only check on their online business listing, but also have the option of updating the details of their business on the go, directly from an iDevice....