According to figures from comScore, visits to social networking sites Twitter and Facebook via mobile internet browsers showed triple-digit growth during January.

The study found that 30.8% of smartphone users accessed social networking sites via their mobile browser in January 2010, up 8.3% from 22.5% one year ago. Access to social network Facebook, in particular, grew 112% in the past year attracting 25.1 mobile users in January, compared to Twitter which experienced a 347% increase on the corresponding period of 2009.

Overall figures for January 2010 revealed that 11.1% of all mobile phone users accessed a social networking site via their mobile’s internet browser. This shows an increase of 4.6% over the past 12 months.

Such figures are proof that social media sites are increasingly being used by individuals worldwide regardless of their location, and this is where mobile marketing still holds great promise for marketers. Not only are users accessing social sites and community networks via their phones, they’re also feeling more comfortable making purchases from their handsets, as revealed by a recent Compete Smartphone Intelligence Survey.

Following a successful run of seminars hosted by 77Agency and B!Digital in 2009, business social network Viadeo has decided to officially join the partnership for 2010. Viadeo’s COO, Peter Crosby, has participated as guest speaker in previous events.

As 45.4% of Senior Marketers say they consider social networks and applications a “top priority” for 2010 and 26.8% say the same of mobile, the partnership of new media agency 77Agency, mobile advertising and marketing provider B!Digital and business social network Viadeo brings together specialists in each of the areas in which marketers are keen to focus over coming months.

The topics covered in the seminars will vary each quarter, ranging from a general review of current social media and mobile marketing opportunities to a closer look at different industry sectors and specific sessions to look at campaign management tools and measuring ROI for social campaigns.

Aside from the hosts, guest speakers from the new media industry are being lined up to take part in the events.  Bruce Daisley of YouTube has been confirmed for the March event.

Peter Crosby, COO Europe of Viadeo commented:

“The importance of social media is growing exponentially. It is fast becoming the medium of choice for advertisers and marketeers and increasingly for both internal and external business communication. It is essential that any business or public sector body gets a true understanding of social media so they can maximise the benefits and avoid any potential pitfalls. Social media is the new must-have marketing tool for the foreseeable future.”

Marco Corsaro, Managing Director of 77Agency said:

“We’re very pleased to welcome Viadeo on board.  We feel that the collaboration between the three companies can only build upon the success of last year’s events.”

“Buongiorno has developed unique worldwide experience in supporting and generating relationships between brands and customers via mobile devices in the last 10 years. I’m looking forward to participating in the Social Media Marketing events and illustrating how mobile marketing can be an integral part of the social media marketing mix, in a new convergent phase of the market, ” commented Stefano Diemmi, newly appointed Managing Director – B!Digital.

For further information on upcoming events, check out the 77Agency Facebook Fanpage or visit the 77Agency website.

Last Thursday we hosted our first social media seminar of 2010 with partners B!Digital and Viadeo at Soho House London. The evening was a success. People arrived between 4pm and 4:30pm to register & have a welcome drink before the actual presentations began at around 4:30pm.

First up was 77Agency partner and Business Strategist, Amedeo Guffanti, who spoke about the opportunities of Facebook for brands with a specific focus on the importance of buildiding a good Fan Page and the advertising possibilities around it.

Next on the mic was Wayne Gibbins, Communication & Partnership Director for Viadeo. As part of his presentation, he held a live poll amongst the attendees about the importance of social media marketing for their brands and if they would work with a PSN ( professional social network) to achieve their goals. People voted with their mobiles and viewed the results live on the screen.

The last presentation of the evening was on Mobile Couponing and Social Media, which was given by Stefano Diemmi from B!Digital. It was interesting to see how only a few brands are currently using mobile marketing to achieve their business objectives, however, there seemed to be a clear interest in the opportunities existent today and those in the pipeline.

Some of the companies that attended include: Reckitt Benckiser, Piaggio Group, Expedia World Wide, Acer, Elemis, Miller Harris, FX Capital Group, Deutsche Bank, Alico, and Comment:Visions (EuroNews).

Our next London event will be on the 31st of March and we are very happy to have YouTube as one of our special guest speakers!

Stay tuned and visit our Fan Page for more event news!

45.4% of respondents worldwide considered social networks and applications a ‘top priority’ for 2010, while 42.2% found it ‘important’. Following closely were digital infrastructure, search optimization and mobile with 44.5%, 27.0% and 26.8% of respondents who considered these as their biggest priorities for this year.

However, an important fact that ties along with these findings is that senior marketers are not only allocating their marketing budgets to social media, they also want to see measurable results from their social initiatives.

According to a study from MarketingProfs which interviewed almost 5,000 marketing pros, almost all CMOs declared they’d look to increase their social media activites to engage customers, measure ROI and reach new audiences.

Findings also reported these marketers will execute the following activites during this year:

* A 400% increase in use of Twitter comments to inform decisions about products and services
* A 59% increase in use of customer reviews and ratings
* A 24% increase in use of social media for pre-sales Q&A

Some predictions from CMOs say social media will have an impact on revenue in 2010 and these are:

* 80% say up to a 5% impact, and 15% say a 5-10% impact

* Most companies (81%) plan to link annual revenues to their social media investment in 2010

Of those companies that did tie social media investment to 2009 revenues here are some of the outcomes:

* Companies with 5% or less revenue tied to social media in 2009 foresee that the link between revenue and social media will increase 5% or more in 2010
* Those with 6-10% of revenue tied to social media in 2009 project that the link will increase more than 10%
* Those with higher than 6% of their revenue linked to social media in 2009 foresee that the link will increase more than 20% in 2010

More findings from to the study from eMarketer revealed that respondents (27.9%) considered time spent online as the most important performance metric, followed by unique page views with 23.7%.

Are you looking to engage with your customers and allocate more budget to the digital space? Discuss.

The recent study by Compete- Smartphone Intelligence Survey- has revealed that mobile commerce (m-commerce) is bound to grow drastically in 2010.

“We’re seeing notable behavior differences across devices, so, for example, users of the Android operating system share different characteristics than Blackberry and iPhone enthusiasts. As manufacturers and marketers better understand how each group actually uses their devices, there’s a huge potential in 2010 for mobile commerce to explode,” said Danielle Nohe, director of consumer technologies for Compete.

The survey also found that 37% of smartphone users have bought something non-mobile using their handsets in the past 6 months. At the same time, 19% of total smartphone owners have bought music from their device, also 14% of respondents purchased books, DVDs or games and about 12% purchased movie tickets.

Other results from the report that focus more on the specific types of mobile devices in the market include:

- 40% of Android owners and 51% of Blackberry owners would spend $500 or more to buy a product from their mobile phone, compared to 9% of iPhone owners
- The most popular mobile shopping-related activities are research related: 41% of iPhone users and 43% of Android users are most likely to check sale prices at alternative locations from their mobile phones while they are shopping
- The second most likely activity is accessing consumer reviews, with 39% of iPhone owners and 31% of Android owners investigating reviews from their handset before they purchase

Millward Brown recently presented their predictions with regards to where the digital marketing is headed in 2010, suggesting a series of insights about viral videos, online display ads, location and mobile marketing.

The marketing research company disclosed that marketers will be experimenting with larger ad formats that will not only be innovative and eye-catching to consumers, they will also prove to perform quite well. However, one must not forget that large also equals intrusive, therefore, only the most efficient formats will be able to survive and be adopted by marketers and advertisers.

Online videos will continue to experiment continuous growth and in result, more sophisticated viral video analytics and services will be available for marketers to measure the impact of their campaigns. Rather than just placing videos and hoping for a massive viral effect, marketers will instead be able to invest in viral seeding strategies thanks to the information provided by the new and advanced viral monitoring tools.

According to the Mobile Marketing Association, mobile marketing spend will grow to $2.16 billion in 2010 from last year’s $1.7 billion. With the increase in iPhone usage (33.75 million units sold worldwide to date/Q4 2009) and popularity of the Google Android, mobile web usage is only bound to increase as access to the internet becomes cheaper. The advantage of mobile is that it provides the ability to target by site, phone model, demographics and location, all of which can be very useful to advertisers.

On a similar note, geo-targeting continues to rise thanks to the increasing number of GPS-enabled devices available in the market today. comScore has reported that 11% of their mobile panel is currently using map or direction-based applications on their devices, representing 41% year-on-year growth and potentially stealing market share from standalone GPS devices. The downside could be that consumers won’t always share their location with brands, however, brands are able to do so without a problem, and will often be seen making location a fundamental feature in their ad campaigns.

We’ve been hearing theories back and forth as to what will happen in the digital marketing industry during this fresh, new year. One important fact to keep in mind and as Advertising Age narrows it down for us is: the basic rules of brand building are just as important for innovations in the digital space as they are for traditional forms of communication.

New technology by itself won’t bring you the results you’re aiming towards. Creativity and relevancy are still key factors in any digital communication strategy you develop.

Although there’s a whole new year ahead of us, there’re still a lot of challenges lined up for marketers and advertisers in digital marketing. This is AdAge’s take on what could lay ahead of us. (Click image to enlarge)

One thing that holds true about digital marketing is that the shift is constant and consumers will continue to direct the mediums through usage. In result, marketers will need to peer around the corner and stage venues that are welcoming to this new engaged consumer.

A recent study by Forrester Research revealed that because the market is maturing, many marketers are reevaluating their marketing strategies and turning to digital agencies overall to manage their interactive communication initiatives.

However, many are still skeptical about handing over the reigns to a digital agency and instead choose to play a more conservative role while sticking to their traditional agency.

The ’state of interactive agencies’ survey conducted by Forrester, interviewed 100 global interactive marketers and found that only 23% of respondents preferred their traditional brand agency to plan and manage interactive marketing activities.

Most significantly, about 46% did not consider traditional agencies of being capable of handling the interactive work. The rest had no opinion.

According to Forrester, there’s a ‘great race’ between those traditional agencies which are investing in becoming more digital-savvy and digital marketing agencies that don’t want to be seen as just the banner creators and sem marketers.

One thing to keep in mind is that if marketers want to stay ahead of the curve, whether with one or two or more providers, they must shift their marketing efforts online in order to survive in this fast-moving industry we’re living in today.

Emerging media such as mobile and social will also force marketers to change their approach and require an agency that adds more competent capabilities that comply with its client’s interactive needs and requirements.

Last Thursday, for the second time in Italy, 77Agency and Buongiorno Marketing Services, in collaboration with Key-Com and BootB, presented 360° Marketing: Using creativity to integrate offline, social & mobile activities, at the beautiful Adriano Hotel in Rome.

This time, the keynote speaker was Angelo Liverani, Agency Relationship Manager- Google Italy, who spoke about the benefits and opportunities that the greatest platform for user-generated content on the Web– YouTube– has to offer. Liverani also talked about the role of YouTube in the media mix including targeted advertising campaigns along with several case studies.

77Agency, who in 2009 was officially recognized as Google Analytics Authorized Consultant and Google Website Optimizer Consultant and who currently has a portfolio of clients such as Lavazza, Dimensione Danza, Barclaycard, RadioDeejay, RCS Group, Lottomatica, JP Morgan and Saxo Bank, aimed to offer to the exclusive attendees of the seminars, useful insights about the importance of using creativity in the development of multichannel campaigns, the integration of online campaigns with offline activities and finally, mobile social media.

Other additional speakers included Key-Com, who spoke about the importance of merging online marketing initiatives with the offline world. As we know, billions of people are now online, and the rapid growth of emerging technologies and social communities is at a very high point. In addition, innovative advertising campaigns can capture the overflow from the online world, while at the same time merging it with traditional offline mediums to engage the right audiences in a direct and creative manner.

Buongiorno MS on the other hand, explained how social networking and consumer generated medium have moved beyond computers. There’s a bigger audience that’s now accessing their favorite social network from their mobile devices, therefore, there’s definitely a monetizing opportunity there for marketers.

Last but not least, BootB, the online pitching engine, enlightened the crowd with its innovative concept of giving brands online access to an unlimited amount of creative proposals from which they can choose without going through the hassle of booking meetings or tweaking strategies continuously.

77Agency’s next seminar, Developing a Coherent Facebook and Social Media Strategy, will be held at the Soho House London, October 15th. Book your place now at seminarslondon@77agency.com

Nielsen tells us that in the past year, the number of smartphone subscribers grew from 15 million in Q2 2008 to 26 million Q2 the following year.

In the UK, 55% of iPhone users and 34% of smartphone users have used web search, as opposed to 12% of total mobile phone users, according to data from Google’s Internet Stats page.

Today, it’s not the U.S. that’s leading the smartphone market, it’s Italy whose percentage of smartphone owners is 28%, followed by Spain who’s not lagging too far behind with 23%.

Markets with the most room to grow on smartphone penetration are France (11%), Canada (12%), UK (12%), Germany (12%) and Sweden (13%).

Nielsen stats also show us that smartphone owners continue to be predominantly male, are 65% more likely than the average mobile subscriber to be between the ages of 25 and 34.

Evidently, there’s great potential for growth in the mobile industry one aspect which marketers should not overlook as it represents a great marketing opportunity. More people are changing their habits and adopting these new technologies. More people than ever want to be connected and take the Internet with them at all times.