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Spotify's video ads are coming.

The music-streaming service will soon roll out its video ad products for marketers, including a mobile product that lets listeners watch a video ad in exchange for a half hour without any further commercial interruption.

Spotify will start testing the video ads in the fourth quarter with a limited number of brands and plans to extend them to all advertisers in the first quarter of 2015.

Coca-Cola, Ford, McDonald's and Universal Pictures have signed on as the ads' first global buyers. Kraft Foods, Target and Wells Fargo will be the U.S.-only launch advertisers.

"We think about video as one of the most dynamic forms of content that advertisers have and that bring great relevance to Spotify," said Spotify's chief business officer, Jeff Levick. "Brands have clearly stated it's of interest."

U.S. advertisers are projected to spend $5.96 billion on digital video this year, according to eMarketer estimates, and $1.44 billion of that spend is expected to go to video ads on tablets and smartphones.

Spotify's mobile video ad makes an advertiser the only marketer to interrupt listening for the following 30 minutes. But listeners have to agree to the bargain: Either watch the video and get a half-hour respite from further commercials, or decline the video ad and continue to listen to standard ad-supported music, audio ads included.

Spotify tried out different lengths for its "Sponsored Sessions," including 15 minutes and an hour, and saw 30 minutes notch the higher opt-in rate, Mr. Levick said.

The Sponsored Session ad is like Hulu's "Branded Entertainment Selector" video ad, which lets viewers opt to watch one long pre-roll ad and then see their chosen show or movie without any more ads. While Hulu deploys a pre-roll that's at least one minute long, however, Spotify is limiting its Sponsored Session ads to 15 or 30 seconds.

Mr. Levick declined to say how much Spotify is charging advertisers for the Sponsored Sessions ads, but said they are being priced at a premium to make up for revenue lost from the ads that don't run in the half hour afterward.

The Sponsored Sessions may eventually make their way to Spotify's desktop service, but there's a reason the company is starting on mobile. "Mobile is the fastest growing traffic for Spotify," Mr. Levick said, noting that mobile now accounts for more impressions and streams that desktop. "It's where we're putting the majority of our efforts into innovating."

Spotify claims more than 30 million users of its free ad-supported service, but Mr. Levick declined to say how that breaks down between mobile and desktop. The company didn't operate a mobile version of its free ad-supported service until last December. That mobile ad business has grown quickly.

"Desktop has historically been the larger source of impressions in terms of where ad revenue is coming from. Mobile in the last nine months has accelerated and become that," Mr. Levick said.

But Spotify isn't ignoring opportunities to make money from desktop. Its coming desktop video ads, dubbed "Video Takeover" ads, will work like regular ads on the service, playing as a visual if someone has the Spotify desktop app in view and otherwise playing as audio only.

Spotify had pitched the new video ads to Cannes attendees in June. As a result of those discussions, Spotify added a post-roll element to the Sponsored Sessions that reminds a user of the brand that paid for the ad-free session e. "That's a direct result of the conversations in Cannes," Mr. Levick said. He added that there's a chance Spotify could use that exit message to lead someone into a second ad-free session sponsored by that brand.

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Spotify's Video Ads Land First Buyers as Debut Approaches

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Spotify's video ads are coming. The music-streaming service will soon roll out its video ad products for marketers, including a mobile product that lets listeners watch a video ad in exchange for a half hour without any further commercial interruption.

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Property partner raises £1.25 - without launching yet

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Property partner raises £1.25 - without launching yet

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At its media event today, Apple has announced Apple Pay, a new NFC payment system for its iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus smartphones and its upcoming Apple Watch. The service uses TouchID fingerprint recognition to authenticate payments.

Apple Pay will launch in the US first in October with support for Mastercard, Visa, and American Express cards.

When you add a credit card, the payment information is saved to the iPhone 6's new Secure Element chip. Purchases will generate a one-time payment number.

Retailers that have signed on to support Apple Pay include Macy's, Walgreens, Staples, Subway, McDonald's, Whole Foods and the Disney Store. Stripe has announced full support for Apple Pay on its platform.

For online purchases, Apple Pay will enable one-touch checkout without having to enter your card number or address. No card information will be shared with the merchant. Target, Uber and Groupon are on deck to include Apple Pay in their iOS apps. The OpenTable app will let you pay your check with Apple Pay.

An Apple Pay API for iOS 8 will let more developers tap into the service.
Check out our event page and liveblog to follow the latest news from Apple today.
Read next: Here it is: The Apple Watch

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Apple announces Apple Pay, an NFC payment feature for the iPhone 6 and Apple Watch

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At its media event today, Apple has announced Apple Pay, a new NFC payment system for its iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus smartphones and its upcoming Apple Watch. The service uses TouchID fingerprint recognition to authenticate payments. Apple Pay will launch in the US first in October with support for Mastercard, Visa, and American Express cards.

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People will hate the Apple Watch, but they'll probably be wrong

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People will hate the Apple Watch, but they'll probably be wrong

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For a live blog of the product announcements happening at today's big unveiling, check out staff writer Parmy Olson's coverage here.
" Apple's Latest Is A Bust," Adam Sharp was sure, in "5 Reasons the iPad Will Fail."

" Apple iPhone Will Fail in a Late, Defensive Move," Matthew Lynn told Bloomberg.

"There is no denying that the MacBook Air's thinness makes it visually striking. But I'm not convinced of the utility of that thinness," Macworld mused of the first-generation of Apple's now iconic, industry-leading laptop.

"My recently laid-off ass can't justify paying that much money for something that is slightly cooler than the competition... I have a feeling the consumers being targeted with this device won't either," was a not-uncommon reaction to the very first iPod at MacRumors.

Later today, when Apple unveils its long-awaited wearable, expect similar, self-assured proclamations of its doom. Steve Ballmer notoriously laughed at the iPhone. If he knew the iPhone would allow Apple to capture between 50 and 80% of all the profit in the mobile industry over the past 4 years, he probably wouldn't have laughed. If Sharp had a clue the iPad would sell 225 million in just 4 years, he might have chosen a different word than "fail."

Still, with four of the millennium's biggest hit products, Apple's new releases typically draw more predictions of doom than success. The source of this could probably fill a psychology thesis, but some factors are easily identified.

Apple is rarely first to market: The iPod was hardly the first MP3 player; the iPad certainly not the first attempt at a tablet. Apple's wrist-wearable device, whether or not it's called the iWatch, will hardly be different. The category has been pioneered on the one hand by Pebble, Sony and Samsung, with "smartwatches" and on the other by Fitbit, with its fitness trackers. Motorola's recently related Moto 360 looks good enough to crave (although reviews are mixed).

The subtlety of the innovation is often not apparent: The iPhone had a big, beautiful touchscreen that actually worked. Things like "pinch to zoom," now taken for granted, weren't on the first Android smartphones. I remember trying to talk myself into buying one of those when the iPhone wasn't yet on Verizon. The workarounds were horrendous; the iPhone pure elegance. People had never experienced a real browser on a phone and so it wasn't easy to see that the iPhone really was the first device that truly enabled the mobile web. It rendered everything else obsolete overnight.

Apple always leaves things out -- on purpose: Tech bloggers and pundits, and their readers, cannot stand this. "It doesn't have Flash." "It has no disk drive." "Where's the keyboard?" Apple will leave some feature off the wearable that is absolutely essential, according to dozens of things you might read in the coming days and weeks. Yet the people who buy the "iWatch," or whatever it's called, won't miss the "missing" thing.

There is an undercurrent of hate towards Apple that is a function of jealousy over the company's success and its "arrogance" both real and perceived. But what really frustrates Apple haters is that the company can most often do things other companies only dream of. Apple will show off more details about its HealthKit app tomorrow with the Mayo Clinic touting the capabilities of iPhones and iWatches for making people healthier. The company will show how its mobile payments solution is ready to go with major national retailers.

Samsung fans will point out that heart-rate monitoring is a " me-too" feature. Android aficionados will explain that paying with your phone has existed for several years thanks to Google Wallet. Neither group will mention that for all the usage of those features, they might as well not exist. And yet, if Apple mentions the competition at all, it will be to heap contempt on it. Again, the critics will be enraged.

In the meantime, Apple's fans will be more sure than ever that they'll need to line up for an iWatch. They'll dismiss the criticism that wearables aren't important enough, or useful enough. They'll trust that Apple has steered them right more often than not. That even if the first iteration isn't perfect, the next big thing is what Apple has to offer. This kind of trust in Apple has been called "cult-like" and the company's customers are derisively called "iSheep" in the comments section at Cnet.

But what has made the big hits a success has been anticipating customer desires and building the right device for the right time. It's true Apple has an imperfect record in its history (see Newton, Mac Cube, et al.), but the 2000s have been near perfect on the hardware front. The iWatch will attempt to follow a formula that has nearly been perfected over 13 years and four category-killing mega-hits. The haters will tell you the iWatch isn't going to be the fifth. History isn't on their side.

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One Sure Thing: Here Comes The Hate For Apple's 'iWatch'

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As Apple gets set to launch its wearable "iWatch", get ready for the predictions of its imminent failure. From the experts to the amateurs, every major product introduction from the company has been greeted by a chorus of doom and gloom. This one will surely be no different.

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My stance on the smartwatch as a viable mobile accessory is unambiguous; I've argued my case before. As a category, it needs to replace -- needs to completely replace our need for a cellphone. Otherwise, it's just one more thing to remember to charge throughout our busy days. To date, there's nothing any of these thinly veiled, proof-of-concept, wrist-worn devices can do that the smartphone already in your hand can't. Apple, I once thought, would prove me wrong. It would be the one to come along and actually make the strongest argument for wearables by analyzing the use cases and delivering that missing core functionality intuitively. Apple's perfectionism would be the hallelujah wearables so desperately needed.

Gamers communicate using hand-drawn images on Nintendo's DS portable.

Instead, at today's Cupertino, California, event, we -- the press, the world at large -- were treated to a beautifully designed smartwatch (e.g., those interchangeable straps) laden with an embarrassing slew of useless gimmicks. With Apple Watch, you can view the phases of the moon or the positions of the planets; you can draw crude pictures with your finger and send them to friends (a feature eerily reminiscent of Nintendo's PictoChat for the DS) or even send them your heartbeat. Cheap tricks that consumers will tire of after a few weeks. But let's not forget the saddest part: Apple Watch will also tell you when you've been sitting too long and need to stand up. Hang your collective head, humanity -- it's a poor reflection on us all.

To date, there's nothing any of these thinly veiled, proof-of-concept, wrist-worn devices can do that the smartphone already in your hand can't.

Then there's the Digital Crown (once simply known as the "crown"), a hardware feature Apple spent several minutes of its slickly produced intro video praising the genius of, as part of its effort to redefine the smartwatch UI. The extensive engineering self-congratulations almost had me fooled: "What was this new UI that obliterated the need for a touchscreen?" I wondered. And then Kevin Lynch, the Apple VP overseeing Watch, came out on stage to demo this revolutionary feature... and wound up mostly using his finger to touch the screen. That app cloud, though -- now, that deserves a nod. Rather than lazily recreate the app grid from iOS, Apple reimagined it as a dynamically expanding mosaic for the stuffy confines of a watch face. And it did so beautifully.

Don't get me wrong: Apple Watch does appear to have some actually useful features, but the bulk of them come from third-party apps. Starwood Hotels, the hotel group that counts bougie faves like the W amongst its portfolio, has an app to let you open your hotel room door with a wave of your wrist. And American Airlines has an app that'll push all your flight info to your Watch for easy boarding. Even BMW's making a play for the Watch space: Its haute clientele will be able to check on the status of their car's charge and location. All of which is very interesting and yet Apple covered each with nary more than a blip of time within its presentation.

To Apple's credit, I do very much want a Taptic mapping experience (read: a much more marketable name for haptic feedback) that'll guide me along my designated route solely with vibrations. (I'd mention Apple Pay, but that distinction really belongs to the new iPhones and Touch ID, not this Watch.) Fitness tracking is in there, too, but that's so old hat by now; it's just expected. If you don't mind, I'll hold my applause.

Will Apple Watch fail? Doubtful. There's too much of a persistent, lingering Jobsian-halo surrounding the Apple brand to let that product fall on its (watch) face. It'll get better with time; most things/people/products inevitably do. It could even make wearables slightly more palatable for the mainstream. But it's not a revolution and it's not what any of us really expected. It's lipstick on a smartwatch. It's an accessory and nothing more.

[Image credit: Kaptain Kobold/Flickr]

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My stance on the smartwatch as a viable mobile accessory is unambiguous; I've argued my case before. As a category, it needs to replace -- needs to completely replace our need for a cellphone. Otherwise, it's just one more thing to remember to charge throughout our busy days.

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Apple's highly anticipated entry into the world of wearable technology is the Apple Watch, CEO Tim Cook announced on Tuesday.

The Apple Watch will monitor health and fitness, tracking the wearer's movement, heartrate and activity with built-in sensors, feeding the information into Apple's Health app for the iPhone and iPad and allowing review and analysis of the data.

"This is the most personal device we've ever created," said Apple's chief executive Tim Cook. "We've set up to make the best watch in the world. One that is precise. It's synced with a universal time standard."

It uses a button on the side of the watch - dubbed the "digital crown" by Apple - which turns like a jog dial for adjusting functions including zooming and setting the time - no pinching to zoom required. It also functions as the home button.

The screen is covered by a curved sapphire glass touchscreen that can differentiate between a tap and a touch, and vibrates with alerts using a haptic feedback component and a speaker.

The Apple Watch is charged by a wireless, inductive charging pad that magnetically connects to the back of the watch.

Three editions

The smartwatch will be available in three versions: the stainless steel Watch, aluminium Watch Sport and 18c gold Apple Watch Edition. Six different straps will also be available, each with a quick-remove clasp.

All three will rely on a iPhone paired using Bluetooth to sync data, and will be compatible with iPhone 5, 5C, 5S, 6 and 6 Plus, but the device will not be available until early 2015. The starting price will be $349 in the US.

Apps, taps and touching

Several of Apple's apps will be available on the Watch, including voice-control tool Siri, Messages, Maps as well as information pulled from calendars, email and other iPhone apps.

Maps will provide walking directions right on your wrist, buzzing for each turn required in the same way Google Maps operates on Google's Android Wear smartwatches. Siri will be accessible through the side button, as will voice dictation.

The watch has a quick-reply panel on the face board for messages and suggests text or emoticons for a reply - perhaps for when dictating a reply isn't appropriate.

Apple's new payment tool Apple Pay will also be available on the Apple Watch, allowing users to pay for goods and services in the US using the watch like a contactless credit card.

Hundreds of third-party apps, including Twitter and Facebook, will also be available, arranged in clusters for easier launching on the smaller screen, zooming in using the digital crown.

Apple also includes a new communication app called digital touch, which allows users to share taps, small drawings and even their heartbeat with other Apple Watch users.

The Apple Watch can also control music playing on iPhone or iPad devices around it, as well as storing music locally on the Watch, playing through Bluetooth headphones.

Health and fitness

Apple's focus on fitness extends to the Apple Watch, which can be plugged into the existing iPhone Health app so that fitness data can be shared with third-party apps.

Two new apps, Fitness and Workout, track different levels of activity. The Fitness records general activity, steps and calories burned throughout the day, similar to fitness trackers currently on the market like the Misfit Shine or Jawbone Up, but also notes how sedentary the wearer has been and encourages them to move throughout the day.

The Workout app tracks activity for custom workouts, acting like a personal trainer and responding to the wearer's heartrate and movement.

Tough competition

With as much as 70% of the market for smartphones saturated in developed markets, gadget makers have released a slew of smartwatches in the past few years to try and create appetite for a new type of device. In 2013 9.7m wearables, including fitness trackers and smartwatches, were sold worldwide according to data from research firm CCS Insight. That number is expected to reach 22.3m in 2014.

Earlier this month more than 10 rival smartwatches were released at IFA, Europe's largest electronics trade show in Berlin, with devices by Samsung, Sony, Asus and Motorola all launching smartwatches - and many running Google's Android Wear software.

But wearable technology has struggled to become mainstream, with few convincing use cases and ugly designs for devices failing to convince consumers to replace their wrist watches. Smartwatches have also been shown to have a high rate of abandonment too, with one third of Americans ditching the devices within six months of trying them according to research by Endeavour partners. Many devcies have launched in time for the Christmas market, but the Apple Watch will not launch until 2015.
Topics

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Apple Watch: Apple's first wearable device and smartwatch

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Apple's highly anticipated entry into the world of wearable technology is the Apple Watch, CEO Tim Cook announced on Tuesday. The Apple Watch will monitor health and fitness, tracking the wearer's movement, heartrate and activity with built-in sensors, feeding the information into Apple's Health app for the iPhone and iPad and allowing review and analysis of the data.

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Testing a way for you to make purchases on Twitter

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How brands are getting around the iPhone embargo

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How brands are getting around the iPhone embargo

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Three Mobile would like us to write about this secretly as an offpage piece to help promote their iCat video. We can do it as a blog post on Arena site.

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Advertising tech companies make up a fifth of Britain's fastest growing tech  businesses

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Advertising tech companies make up a fifth of Britain's fastest growing tech  businesses

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The numbers of companies have more than tripled in the last six years, according to this year's Tech Track 100, the annual league table of Britain's fastest-growing private tech businesses.

By comparison, the 2008 table had just six companies working in the ad-servicing sector.

Switch Concepts, a Southampton-based ad software development business sits at number two on the new list, having seen a 262 per cent rise in annual sales over three years.

Other strong performers include MobileWebAdz, a mobile ad software provider, which recorded a142 per cent rise over the same period, despite dropping one place on the league table to sixth. Video ad platform, Unruly, which compiles Campaign's Viral Chart, enters the table at 14 with a 117 per cent rise in sales.

The top 25 also includes Skimlinks a marketing tech development business at 17, Somo, mobile marketing services provider at 19, The Exchange Lab, digital ad services provider at 21, and digital marketing agency, Potato, at 25.

An interesting new entry to the top ten is Hide My Ass!, the secure virtual private network service, which encrypts user's online activity and has more than 215,000 subscribers. LMAX Exchange, an online brokerage business, tops the list.

The league table, now in its 14th year, is researched and compiled by Fast Track and is sponsored by Hiscox, Barclays, BDO and Business Growth Fund.

UK's 100 fastest-growing private tech, telecoms and digital media companies

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Advertising tech companies make up fifth of Britain's fastest-growing businesses

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The numbers of companies have more than tripled in the last six years, according to this year's Tech Track 100, the annual league table of Britain's fastest-growing private tech businesses. By comparison, the 2008 table had just six companies working in the ad-servicing sector.

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Mobile application marketplace Tapdaq has raised $1.4m with the hope to invest in and retain world class talent.

The London-based startup is an exchange that allows independent developers to advertise within each others apps.

The funding comes primarily from Balderton Capital with investors including Open Ocean Capital, Doug Scott, Steve Pankhurst, Tim Ward, Marc Nohr and Ballpark Ventures.

Young serial entrepreneur

With the funding announcement, the company has also announced bringing on Russell Buckley, first employee at AdMob, as Chairman.

Tapdaq was founded in 2013 by serial entrepreneur Ted Nash who as a teenager launched LittleGossip.com.

The website, where students write anonymous gossip, had been criticised for promoting cyberbullying.

Advertising exchange

The motivation behind Tapdaq was to empower developers who couldn't afford the existing ad networks.

Their website states:

Whilst it's been reported that 25 developers earn 50% of the revenue, there are roughly 800,000 developers.

The website gives developers their own digital currency to trade and use to advertise their apps. New users get 1000 free 'daqs' upon signup to try out the service.

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Tapdaq raises $1.4m to let devs trade ads - UKTN (UK Tech News)

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Mobile application marketplace Tapdaq has raised $1.4m with the hope to invest in and retain world class talent. The London-based startup is an exchange that allows independent developers to advertise within each others apps. The funding comes primarily from Balderton Capital with investors including Open Ocean Capital, Doug Scott, Steve Pankhurst, Tim Ward, Marc Nohr and Ballpark ...

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Moto 360 launched, iWatch rumoured, and now 'smart ring' on the market

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A "smart ring" manufactured by a US-Chinese company, Mota, will flash notifications and scroll text across an attractive metal ring, in the latest incarnation of wearable technology.

"The secret to good wearable technology is to make it super, super simple," Mota's co-founder Kevin Faro explained to the Guardian on the show floor of the bustling IFA in Berlin.

"The idea of the smart ring is to deliver important notifications discreetly to the finger - if you're in an important meeting but your wife is about to give birth, you want to know immediately but you also don't want to annoy the boss," explained Faro.

The ring, a work in progress, will vibrate before displaying icons and small snippets of text on a display on one side of the ring. It connects to Android and iPhones via Bluetooth, with a function that only allows text, call and email notifications from those most important to you.

"We're starting with basic notifications but the software is adaptable and we can easily add notifications for other apps like Uber or Twitter," said Faro.

Mota is drawing on its experience of building three generations of smartwatches to create something small and waterproof with decent battery life. The ring is wirelessly charged and will come with inserts to fit the ring to the wearer's finger.

A prototype ring is for sale on Indiegogo for $60 (£37) with an "alpha" version of the ring available by a projected date of March 2016, for $150. The alpha version will ship to testers in six months, with first production models shipping to buyers in nine months.

"We often come up with ideas that we're super psyched about internally, but we're a business and we need to know consumers want to buy it, explained Faro. "We're using crowd funding to test user reaction and see if there's demand before putting it into mass production."

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Inserts will fit inside the ring to size it to the wearer's finger. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian

This year has seen manufacturers flood the wearable technology market with hundreds of fitness trackers, smartwatches and other devices, despite consumer adoption being slow with smartwatches in particular failing to appeal to the mass market.

The Mota smart ring is an alternative to the smartwatch but may suffer a similar fate with consumers, bought as a novelty but abandoned after six months.
* Motorola's Moto 360 is a smartwatch masquerading as a classic time piece* Google smartwatches review: LG G Watch, Samsung Gear Live and Android Wear* Two months with Android Wear: the best smartwatches yet Topics

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Mota's smart ring buzzes messages to your finger

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A "smart ring" manufactured by a US-Chinese company, Mota, will flash notifications and scroll text across an attractive metal ring, in the latest incarnation of wearable technology. "The secret to good wearable technology is to make it super, super simple," Mota's co-founder Kevin Faro explained to the Guardian on the show floor of the bustling IFA in Berlin.

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A carrot company is using junk-food tactics to sell healthy food to kids

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A carrot company is using junk-food tactics to sell healthy food to kids

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For every ad that kids see for healthy foods like fruits and vegetables, they see over 50 more for junk foods like soda and chocolate-flavored cereal. The food industry spends nearly $2 billion annually marketing junk food directly to children, and it works: The more ads kids see, the more they eat.

Can produce growers co-opt some of the same tactics to get children to eat vegetables instead? That's the strategy adopted by Bolthouse Farms, one of the largest producers of baby carrots and juices in North America.

In a new display that will be rolling out across selected grocery stores, the company is selling new products like "veggie snackers," a pack of carrots flavored like chips; pureed fruit in tubes; and unsweetened fruit smoothies, all wrapped in colorful, junk food-like packaging.

"We believe that stealing a play out of the junk food playbook is a way for us to make these kinds of foods more emotive, more reachable, more accessible, more affordable, and that will increase consumption overall," says Todd Putman, chief commercial officer at Bolthouse Farms.

Read more about Bolthouse Farm's marketing strategy here: How Carrots Became The New Junk Food.

The project is part of the company's larger approach to inspire kids to make healthier choices. Over the last few years, it's launched everything from an extreme baby carrot ad that parodied junk food commercials to a new project with Sesame Street. In the campaign, Sesame Street will be offering the use of their characters, for free, for produce companies to put on their packaging-so bananas and apples can be plastered with Elmo to lure kids in.

"The marketing world in produce is very different than what is typically called the center of the store," says Putnam, who used to work in marketing at Coca-Cola. "In the center of the store, there's a lot of capability and marketing and innovation that happens on those products. In produce, you just don't see the same kind of marketing activation, the same kind of packaging, the same kind of product innovation. You just don't see it."

As Bolthouse and other brands start to bring some of that innovation to the produce aisle, they're hoping to see real changes in how children eat. Some experiments have already shown that it can work-when a company called Super Sprowtz put its vegetable superhero characters on healthy snacks at a school salad bar, for example, the number of students eating vegetables at lunch rose 250%.

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A Carrot Company Is Using Junk Food-Style Marketing To Change The Way Kids Eat

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For every ad that kids see for healthy foods like fruits and vegetables, they see over 50 more for junk foods like soda and chocolate-flavored cereal. The food industry spends nearly $2 billion annually marketing junk food directly to children, and it works: The more ads kids see, the more they eat.

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Brands underestimate long-term effects of TV advertising

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Brands underestimate long-term effects of TV advertising

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Brands underestimate TV ad effects | WARC

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NEW YORK: Many brands may be guilty of underestimating the long-term impact of their television advertising, according to a study from CBS, Kellogg's and Nielsen Catalina Solutions.

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Mobile visits to retail sites reaching a tipping point

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Mobile visits to retail sites reaching a tipping point

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Visits to retail websites via mobile devices have overtaken desktop traffic for the first time ever, the latest IMRG Capgemini Quarterly Benchmarking Report has revealed.

As well as 52% of visits coming from mobile, over a third (36%) of UK online sales are now completed on a smartphone or tablet device - a figure that rises to 40% for clothing and apparel merchants.

Of sales completed on a mobile device, smartphones account for around 18%, while tablets account for 82%, based on the data sample from the IMRG Capgemini m-Retail Sales Index.

Other key highlights from the Quarterly Benchmarking include:

Visitor bounce rates rose to 28% in Q2, up from 25% in the previous quarter. This is most likely due to increased mobile traffic.

The checkout abandonment rate reached a record low of 27%, down from 36% in Q1.

Tina Spooner, chief information officer at IMRG, said: "With over half of all e-retail traffic now coming via smartphones and tablet devices, the latest Quarterly Benchmarking results reveal a huge landmark in the growth of mobile commerce.

"Considering that as recently as 2010 mobile visits to e-retail sites accounted for less than 3% of traffic, this latest milestone represents staggering growth of 2,000% over the past 4 years. These results clearly demonstrate that retailers' investment in mobile optimisation is encouraging consumers to adopt mobile devices as a shopping platform."

The report also revealed that the total estimated online spend during Q2 (May to July) was £24.2bn, with £8.7bn spent via smartphones and tablet devices.

Alex Smith-Bingham, vice president, digital services leader, Capgemini, said: "Whether you're shopping on your tablet from the comfort of your couch or on your smartphone during your daily commute, mobile offers the customer unparalleled convenience. It's no wonder then that we've hit such a significant milestone in a relatively short period of time. As retailers further develop their m-commerce platforms and as the technology becomes increasingly more sophisticated, we'll see the role of the desktop in our day-to-day shopping cycle diminish. It will be very interesting to see just how wide the gap between mobile and traditional e-retail will become in 12 months' time."

Mark Lewis, online director at John Lewis, said: "We called John Lewis's first ever 'mobile Christmas' in 2013 and we have continued to see customers shop via this channel during the first half of this year. Today, over half of the traffic to johnlewis.com comes from mobile and tablet devices and we've also seen an increase in the conversion rate of traffic to sales. We've placed a significant focus on developing our mobile strategy and have more enhancements planned for our app later this year. Customers want to be able to shop seamlessly across all channels and mobile is now the go-to choice alongside visiting our shops."

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Mobile visits to retail websites reach tipping point, IMRG Capgemini Quarterly Benchmarking Report shows

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Visits to retail websites via mobile devices have overtaken desktop traffic for the first time ever, the latest IMRG Capgemini Quarterly Benchmarking Report has revealed. As well as 52% of visits coming from mobile, over a third (36%) of UK online sales are now completed on a smartphone or tablet device - a figure that [...]

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Ikea lampoons tech launches to promote catalogue

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Ikea lampoons tech launches to promote catalogue

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Looking for a simple, intuitive device that you never have to plug in? May we suggest Ikea's bookbook?

In this introduction for its 2015 print catalog, the Swedish furniture retailer has some fun taking the piss out of Apple's bombastic product release videos. Once it introduces the premise, the jokes write themselves. "The first thing to note is no cables, not even a power cable," says a beaming exec names Jörgen Eghammer, who is shot in against an Apple-like white background. "The battery life is eternal." The navigation? It's based on "tactile touch technology that you can actually feel." The content also comes preinstalled.

While it may appear that Ikea is a bit of a Luddite, that's hardly the case. The brand has experimented quite a bit with digital and even added augmented reality functionality to its 2013 print catalog. Orabrush also beat Ikea to the punch by a few years. In the Apple parody below, execs gush about a device that scrapes bad breath germs off your tongue:

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Ikea Lampoons Apple to Promote Its 'Bookbook'

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Looking for a simple, intuitive device that you never have to plug in? May we suggest Ikea's bookbook? In this introduction for its 2015 print catalog, the Swedish furniture retailer has some fun taking the piss out of Apple's bombastic product release videos. Once it introduces the premise, the jokes write themselves.

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Brand spam is a big annoyance - 20% never open brand emails

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Brand spam is a big annoyance - 20% never open brand emails

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More than 11 billion emails are sitting unopened in British inboxes - and more than half are from brands

New research has revealed that the average Brit has 260 unopened emails in his or her inbox, totalling more than 11 billion across the country - and the majority of them are from brands.

The Webtrends research, which canvassed 2,000 Britons aged 18 and over, found that 56 per cent of those unopened emails are from brands that the respondents signed up to receive communications from, while 36 per cent are genuine spam and 7 per cent are from friends and family.

John Fleming, Webtrends Marketing Director EMEA & APAC, says: "One of the key reasons Brits are ignoring these emails is irrelevancy. While they've signed up to receive updates from brands, they're self-selecting which ones they actually read and only opening the emails they find relevant.

"This 'brand spam' is also driving Brits barmy - in fact, survey respondents said it's the most annoying thing a brand can do when it comes to communications, even worse than sending texts in the middle of the night. 84 per cent of Brits say irrelevant brand spam drives them mad," he continues.

So how can brands ensure their costly marketing campaigns don't go to waste? Get personal.

Fleming says: "Of the 20 per cent of Brits who never open brand emails, 60 per cent say they would be more likely to open them if the subject line contained information that was personalised to them. Likewise, of the 65 per cent of people who sometimes or often open brand emails, 82 per cent would be more likely to open them if the subject line contained personalised information."

"It's not just email," Fleming adds. "New technologies offer businesses the opportunity to truly personalise the customer experience across a wide range of channels, such as website optimisation and the use of data to enhance in-store experiences.

"Based on a user's behaviour, and the cumulative behaviour of others, marketers can change what people see on a website, even on-the-fly and even if they don't know who the user is. They can also use data to improve the in-store shopping experience through contextual personalisation - combining known online data with real-time information and location-based beacons technology to deliver in-the-moment special offers and enhanced services to customers.

"We'll start to see many more businesses starting to do this and the potential is huge, but brands will need to take care. While marketers are excited by what the new frontier of contextual personalisation and location marketing offers, to many consumers, the idea sounds intimidating and invasive.

"As always, it's all about the implementation. Our research reveals that just 19 per cent of Britons say they don't respond more positively when they receive personalised content from brands. It will be important that businesses communicate with people in a way that doesn't simply bombard them with annoying or unwanted messages, but instead proposes recommendations, offers and experiences tailored to their wants and likes."

Importance of personalisation
● 44 per cent of Britons say they find personalised recommendations useful
● Brits are most likely to respond positively to brand communications or webpages that:
o Deliver real time information relating to their interests (51 per cent)
o Include info or offers relating to previous purchases (44 per cent)
o Include info or offers relevant to their location (37 per cent)
● Personalisation matters when it comes to social media, too:
o 40 per cent of consumers say they respond positively to sponsored content that is relevant to their interests
o 21 per cent say they respond positively to content that is relevant to what they've recently been browsing

Brits are more likely to open emails from:
o Retail brands (55 per cent)
o Hobbies and interests / leisure (42 per cent)
o Travel (33 per cent)
o Financial services / banks (27 per cent)
o Charities (12 per cent)
o Media organisations (10 per cent)

The main reasons Brits unsubscribe from brand communications are:
* Get too many emails - 48 per cent
* They're not relevant - 36 per cent
* Bad real-life experience with the brand - 11 per cent

Who are the UK's worst email openers?
* Men are slightly worse offenders than women with an average 268 unopened emails vs 253 for women.
* 25-34 year olds are the most likely not to open emails - an average of 352 compared to just 79 for people aged 55 and over.
* Regional top 10:
1. Liverpool - an average of 447 unopened emails per person
2. London - 392
3. Swansea - 348
4. Birmingham - 331
5. Edinburgh - 315
6. Cambridge - 307
7. Oxford - 269
8. Cardiff - 246
9. Newcastle - 241
10. Sheffield - 237
o Wolverhampton has the lowest total with just 87 unopened emails

To learn more about the latest personalisation trends, please see the Webtrends Contextual Personalisation whitepaper here.

-ENDS-

EDITOR'S NOTE: 2,000 British consumers aged 18 and over were surveyed in this research, which was undertaken independently for Webtrends by OnePoll in Q2 2014. The Office for National Statistics estimates there were 44.6 million British internet users in Q1 2014.

Published on: 10:20AM on 4th September 2014

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More than 11 billion emails are sitting unopened in British inboxes - and more than half are from brands New research has revealed that the average Brit has 260 unopened emails in his or her inbox, totalling more than 11 billion across the country - and the majority of them are from brands.

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Real World Web - PSFK's guide to the IoT

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Real World Web - PSFK's guide to the IoT

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PSFK Real World Web Report on the Internet of Things

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The Real World Web report in collaboration with iQ by intel identifies 10 trends and three major themes within the internet of things that point to the role in...

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Here's a riddle: When is a tweet more than a tweet?

We're all pretty familiar with Twitter's 140 characters-and of course, a photo is always an eye-catching addition. But what if your Twitter audience could sign up for your email list without ever leaving Twitter, or directly download your new app straight from a tweet? What if a photo and article summary could travel alongside every post of your content?

And what if you could do all of this for free, right now?

Twitter cards offer all this potential and more. In this post, we'll go over everything a marketer or small business owner needs to know about Twitter cards-how to understand which types are best for you, how to set up and verify your cards, how to analyze and measure your cards and a few caveats and best practices to know to make sure your Twitter cards stand out from the crowd.

Let's get going!

Exclusive Bonus: Download a free Twitter Cards cheat sheet!

What are Twitter cards?

If you've ever watched a Vine, viewed a YouTube video or clicked on a photo with your Twitter stream, you've already come into contact with a Twitter card.

Twitter's card infrastructure is what allows us to have these rich media experiences that go far beyond a 140-character written message right within Twitter.

By adding a few lines of HTML to your webpage (don't worry, we'll cover that; it's probably easier than you think), you can create this experience for your audience, too.

Any users who Tweet links to your content will have a "card" added to the tweet that's visible to all of their followers. For instance, here's how The Verge's Twitter card carried its information right into my Twitter stream when I shared a recent article there.

With four different card types to choose from, you can use Twitter cards to ask your audience to do things like:

View an image

Watch a video

Visit a landing page

Download an app

...without them ever having to leave Twitter. You'll also get added benefits, like:

A consistent look for your posts across platforms (anyone who shares content that has Twitter cards code in place will produce the same media-rich tweets)

Consistent attribution that could drive more traffic to your site and increase the number of people following you

Custom titles and descriptions for your photo or URL (a lot of extra room above and beyond the tweet's standard 140!), and

A really awesome mobile experience for your audience.

Are you in yet? Good; now let's figure out what Twitter cards are right for you.

Types of Twitter cards and their uses

Right now there are four types of Twitter cards that cover a lot of different ground for different types of Twitter publishers as well as different marketing goals. Here's a quick rundown of each type with an example of how that card looks in the Twitter stream.

Summary card

Summary cards are Twitter's "default" card and include a title, description, thumbnail image, Twitter account attribution and a direct link to the content. These are great for blog posts!

Large photo summary card

Large photo summary cards have all the same features of a regular summary card, but they trade a bit of the description space for a big, beautiful image. Highly visual content producers might want to think about this card.

Player card

If you work in music, video, or multimedia, a player card is a must. This card allows your audience to watch, listen, or click through your media without leaving Twitter. Think YouTube, SoundCloud, Vine, etc. Here's how YouTube's card allows users to watch a YouTube video while staying put within Twitter.

App card

For driving traffic directly to an app, the Twitter app card is ideal-particularly on mobile. When an app with cards enabled is mentioned on Twitter, this card shows the app's name, ratings, price and icon, along with a short description. The link takes viewers directly to the App Store to download. The call-to-action only displays in the Twitter for iPhone, iPad, and Android apps, and only when the user does not already have your app installed.

How to set up Twitter cards

Have you picked your favorite Twitter card options yet? Excellent; now it's time to set them up. There are a few different ways to go about this, so we'll do it Choose Your Own Adventure style. (Note: For website and lead generation cards, it's simple: Just go to the Twitter Ads Dashboard to make them).

If you're a developer (or are buddies with a developer)

For maximum control and flexibility over your Twitter cards, you can add the appropriate meta tags for the card of your choice onto your site. Twitter offers some nice documentation on how to do this, with the code all set for you to plug your information into. Here's a sample of their code for a summary card.

If you're not a developer

Don't worry if you're not a developer or can't wrangle one to give you a hand; there's still quite a bit you can do on your own. Next step!

If you have a WordPress.org site

There are three different plugins you can try Twitter recommends three plugins to integrate your WordPress site with Twitter Cards: Jetpack, JM Twitter Cards and WordPress SEO by Yoast. Jetpack: Install Jetpack and navigate to the "Social" section to validate your Twitter handle and turn on Twitter cards. Jetpack automatically scans the contents of your post and determines the best card type.

If your post has no images, the Twitter card will be set to summary

If your post has between 1 and 4 images, the Twitter card will be set to large photo summary

If your post has more than 4 images, the Twitter card will be set to gallery

WordPress SEO: Install WordPress SEO by Yoast and navigate to Social > Twitter, where you can choose between summary and large photo summary cards. Bonus: Yoast also helps out with Facebook Open Graph!

JM Twitter Cards: Install JM Twitter Cards and you can enable summary, large photo summary, app, and photo cards. No matter which of these plugins you use, you'll need to wind up your process by taking a URL from your blog or website (not the main site name; a specific URL where you'd like your card to display) and running it through the Twitter Card validator. You'll probably end up getting a message like this. From here, click the "request approval" button, fill out the quick information the form asks for (your website, a description of your website, your Twitter handle, your email address)

Twitter says it could take up to a few weeks to get approval, but all my tests for this post got approved almost instantly. When you're approved, you'll get an email that looks like this: The next time you tweet one of your links, it should be card-ified!

If you have a WordPress.com site

By default, WordPress-hosted blogs are enabled for Twitter Cards. WordPress automatically scans the contents of your post and determines the best Card type. (You'll still need to do the validator step, though.)

If you have a Tumblr or Blogger blog

For Tumblr, Blogger or any other kind of site, get working on befriending a developer or getting comfortable with code-adding meta tags are the way to go here (you'll also need to validate). This also goes for more complicated cards that require a few extra steps, like the player card.

Need-to-knows and strategies for Twitter cards

So far we've talked about all the great things about Twitter cards, of which there are many. There are a few caveats to know, too.

1. Most cards are unexpanded, so make users want to click

First of all, your Twitter card ensures that all your extra information will travel with every post to Twitter. However, there's no guarantee that your audience will click to see it. For instance, here's how the Huffington Post would likely want you see their post.

But in the Twitter stream, and as it gets retweeted by fans, here's how it looks. Only when that "view summary" text at the bottom right is clicked will users see the full Twitter card.

The default for all Twitter cards (except website and lead generation cards, which are treated a little differently) is this unexpanded version that relies on the user to click for more. The lesson here? Make your copy so compelling and intriguing that users want to click (not so different than what we're already used to doing with Twitter, right?) One great example I came across is Etsy. Their tweets are short and sweet and do a great job of compelling the viewer to click.

What aren't they getting out of? Let's find out:

Ah, got it. Looks comfy! Basically, whichever card you choose you'll want to be aware that every word counts-in the tweet itself and in your extra space for descriptions and calls-to-action. Make your offer clear, your text compelling. You might even consider including a "click to expand" call to action in your tweet to ensure maximum visibility.

Prioritize images

Twitter is pretty good about finding and resizing images to fit your posts, but help yourself out by devoting a little extra time to your images in posts where cards are enabled and the images you make for special cards like lead generation and website cards. Once your cards are in place it might be tempting to let them to do the work and tweet fewer photos, but keep prioritizing attached photos, too! Tweets with images attract 18% more clicks, 89% more favorites and 150% more retweets than those without them, and Twitter shows photos by default in the stream (as opposed to cards, which need to be clicked to expand). A quick glance at the metrics for these two Flickr posts shows that the photo your audience sees by default has more of an impact than the one they have to click to find.

Test your cards

With so many Twitter card options, I bet you knew we wouldn't let you leave this post without talking about A/B testing. Try creating multiple cards for the same campaign with varying images, text and calls-to-action to see which types work best. You might even consider multiple types of cards. Depending on your content and goals, you could find that various sections of your site thrive with different card types.

Cards + pins + ads

With cards plus the ability to pin tweets to the top of your timeline, Twitter has given marketers a powerful one-two punch. We've had particular success at Buffer with pinning our lead generation card to the top of our Twitter stream.

Marketers with an advertising budget cam combine lead generation or website cards with targeting options like interest, keywords, or tailored audiences segments to drive qualified traffic at just the right time

How to measure success with Twitter cards

I imagine after you've gone through all the effort of choosing your cards, bribing a developer and/or installing plugins, and crafting killer cards, you'd like to know how Twitter cards are performing for you. Twitter's got you covered! Let's take a look at some of the analytics you'll find in your account. To see your analytics, navigate from your Twitter account to Ads:

Then to Analytics > Twitter Cards:

Once there, you should see a dashboard that looks something like this:

Since the information in cards travel with the tweet regardless of who's posting, these metrics are for all Twitter users (not just your tweets). Twitter can't count posts made through third party tools, though.

Top line metrics

These are the numbers at the very top and include: URL clicks: The number of clicks on a URL in a tweet or a card Install attempts: The number of times users who don't already have the app installed clicked "Get the app" on a card that has app information enabled Retweets: Retweets that occur on tweets containing a link to your content

Snapshot

The snapshot graphic is a quick look at how tweets and cards are driving traffic, installs or shares-click on the circle of the goal that interests you to see it in full.

Change over time

This graph has the same impressions, tweets and clicks metrics from snapshot, but formed into a rolling 28-day look at how each metric has grown in comparison to the others.

Card types

This chart allows you to benchmark your Twitter cards by comparing their performance against overall standards.

Links

See which content is faring best with this chart, which surfaces your top-performing posts by impressions and clicks (up to 100 top links).

Influencers

Whose posts had the most impact on your impressions and clicks? This chart will tell you-all the way up to your top 100 influencers.

Tweets

Here's a useful list of the top posts that drove clicks back to your site (note that they're not necessarily coming from your account alone)

Sources

Where are all the posts that include a URL or card of yours coming from? This chart captures all the different apps, tools and widgets your audience is posting from.

Over to you

Whew! So that's it for analytics, and everything you need to know (I hope) to get started with Twitter cards. (Got questions I didn't touch on? Let me hear them!) Have you tried Twitter cards? I'd love to hear about your experiences with setting them up and using them, as well as how your audience has interacted with them. Tell me all about it in the comments! Exclusive Bonus: Download a free Twitter Cards cheat sheet!

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Twitter Cards Complete Guide: How to Set Up, Measure, More

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Here's a riddle: When is a tweet more than a tweet? We're all pretty familiar with Twitter's 140 characters-and of course, a photo is always an eye-catching addition. But what if your Twitter audience could sign up for your email list without ever leaving Twitter, or directly download your new app straight from a tweet?

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A recent article in The Economist, citing the work of Ryan Raffaelli at Harvard Business School, points to what it calls a "paradox" in the aftermath of disruptive innovation. Some old technologies, after being rendered obsolete by better and cheaper alternatives (indeed even after whole industries based on them have been decimated), manage to "re-emerge" to the point that they sustain healthy businesses. Think mechanical Swiss watches, now enjoying strong sales. Or fountain pens, or vinyl records. Or small-batch, handmade goods - from vermouth to chocolate to pickles.

We could add our own favorite example: pinball. In our HBR article "Big Bang Disruption", we describe the devastation of arcade pinball machines wrought in only a few years by Sony's PlayStation home video console. From a historic high in 1993 of 130,000 machines sold, sales fell over 90% in the next five years. By the end of the decade, only one producer-Stern Pinball-was left making new machines, and with arcades closing daily, it looked as if it, too, would soon be facing game over.

But Stern found salvation in a new customer segment of aging baby-boomers who wanted arcade machines for home rec rooms and man caves. Today, the company does roughly $50 million in total sales, with the home market accounting for over 80% of them.

That's a healthy company. Yet the industry will always remain a shadow of its former self, even as the products that disrupted pinball have revenues in the billions. This is typical of the stage of Big Bang Disruption we refer to as "Entropy," when the supply chain supporting products and services displaced by a disruptive innovation collapse into a kind of economic black hole. Consolidation shrinks the market down, often to one remaining, integrated producer, who can still profit by serving a small group of legacy customers.

That vestiges of old technologies linger on, capable of being resurrected into viable businesses again, doesn't seem strange to us. Indeed, it's part and parcel of the digital disruption remaking every aspect of the global economy. The very technologies that likely disrupted the legacy industry in the first place are the same ones devoted practitioners are using to forge new supply chains and digital platforms for a more efficient, better connected version of the old market. The same disruption is driving both the decline and, later, the re-emergence. There is no paradox.

Consider the re-emergence of artisanal goods. No doubt you are aware of the explosion of the market - some call it a movement - in handcrafted products. At times, it seems, the borough of Brooklyn has become one giant artist colony, with everyone working on something-whiskey, woodworking tools, the reinvention of the egg cream-targeted to a small but impassioned fan-base.

Who are these makers if not the revivers of dying or, in some cases, long extinct technologies? Yet it's thanks to new digital tools such as Etsy, an Internet marketplace selling hand-made goods from around the world; and Kickstarter, the "crowdfunding" site that mediates donation-based funding for a range of products and services, that these artisans can now find and serve their tiny, global markets of customers. These are segments that would have been impossible for individual artisans to organize in a cost-effective way before the rise of the Internet and electronic communication tools that cut out expensive middlemen and asset-heavy enterprises.

The growth of Etsy, fast becoming the leading storefront for handmade products, shows how small products can generate a big bang. Similar to eBay, it provides a platform and marketplace tools to connect buyers and sellers, including digital storefronts and buyer-seller rating systems to establish all-important virtual reputations.

Etsy charges a 20-cent listing fee per item and takes a 3.5% cut of sales. Since achieving first-year sales of $175,000 in 2006, it has increased that number by four orders of magnitude: in 2013, Etsy sold $1.35 billion in merchandise. A survey of its 5,500 U.S.-based sellers revealed that 88% are women, nearly all working from home. For a fifth of them, selling through Etsy is a full-time job.

And digital capabilities also benefit the production, not just the distribution, of Etsy's goods. Etsy's creators benefit from global markets for sourcing raw materials, for example. Other small-scale sellers benefit from more affordable web hosting, design, and manufacturing, all of which are fueling much of the growth in cost-effective handmade and customized goods and services.

Thus, artisanal soap-making has grown from just a handful of producers in 1986 to over 150, most in Oregon, who now have their own trade association. Much of that growth was made possible thanks to Etsy, where handmade soap represents over 5% of all products being offered on the site.

The point is not that most consumers will ever care enough to choose soap that is made with goat's milk, or lard, or without any animal product. On the contrary, the point is that it isn't necessary for most consumers to do so. With handmade soap selling for $4-6 a bar, while mass-produced soap retails for about $1, sellers can do fine with small, loyal customer bases.

Meanwhile, crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstarter are solving the most difficult problem facing small businesses and sole proprietors whose ideas require substantial upfront investment-raising the necessary capital. In 2013 alone, Kickstarter users funded nearly 20,000 projects and committed nearly $500 million.

Among these are thousands of projects posted by producers of art, crafts, design, fashion, and food-including a recent campaign that raised $55,000 for potato salad (don't ask). Together, artisanal categories account for at least 20% of all Kickstarter campaigns and over $100 million in user donations.

The Economist sees these developments as a rejection of the disruptors. "[T]he more that disruptive innovations like the internet boost the overall productivity of the economy," they write, "the more room there will be for old-fashioned industries that focus on quality rather than quantity and heritage rather than novelty." But the Japanese artisan offering hand-tooled wooden ballpoint pens to willing buyers around the world uses the same digital tools that make possible low-cost retractable gel-ink pens.

And the performance breakthroughs achieved by disruptive technologies aren't the only ones by which consumers choose. Hand-crafted or artisanal goods might look better, last longer, and outperform mass-produced goods, at least for particular uses or users.

A digital smart watch keeps time more accurately than a finely-crafted Patek Phillipe, but the latter performs in other ways. As The Economist notes, "people do not just buy something because it provides the most efficient solution to a problem. They buy it because it provides aesthetic satisfaction-a beautiful book, for example, or a perfectly made shirt-or because it makes them feel good about themselves."

Nostalgic goods. Artisanal goods. Disrupted technology goods. Each of these are businesses whose customers are devoted, but few and far between. Fortunately, in the digital age we can have our Turkish Taffy and eat it, too. Today's rich trade in heritage goods is happening because of disruptive technologies, not in spite of them.

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A recent article in The Economist, citing the work of Ryan Raffaelli at Harvard Business School, points to what it calls a "paradox" in the aftermath of disruptive innovation. Some old technologies, after being rendered obsolete by better and cheaper alternatives (indeed even after whole industries based on them have been decimated), manage to "re-emerge" to the point that they sustain healthy businesses.