Two unlikely global titans have partnered on a “mobile only” media deal whose footprint covers 16 countries, from developed markets in North America and Europe to emerging markets in Eastern Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and Asia Pacific.

Mondelez International, the CPG giant behind billion-dollar brands like Oreo and Cadbury, announced today that it has inked a landmark deal with Google: a one-year partnership that will include mobile search, display and websites. While financial terms were not released, the deal will include branded mobile websites, training and mobile capability building, analytics and opportunity to opt in to Google's mobile beta programs.Continue reading...

HTC One, a.k.a. the Facebook Home phone that's coming to AT&T and other carriers, is just one focus of the company’s impending brand refresh and aggressive marketing campaign to get better market placement against competitors like Samsung. 

HTC has been known for good hardware and not-so-good promotion, but squaring off against marketing-savvy Samsung requires the former to up its game. "It's one thing to make a great device—HTC has done that before," Mike Woodward, president of HTC America told the LA Times. "What is a little different this time is the way that we're going to market. We want to really get that down to the streets and get that down to consumers." 

HTC had been using “quietly brilliant” as its slogan, but the brand is looking to step out of its shell with a new marketing message that has “bold,” “authentic” and “playful” themes. The new tagline, "Everything Your Phone Isn't," is courting "Generation Feed" (what HTC calls tech-savvy, early-adopters). "Tech millennials are hard to connect with," Erin McGee, HTC North America VP Marketing told Ad Age. "We wanted to create a closer connection by targeting passion points."Continue reading...

The just released MediaBrix Social and Mobile Gaming report is bullish on the performance of social gaming ad campaigns as mobile gaming video ads deliver an average CTR of 3 percent, 30 times higher than the CTR of standard banner advertising campaigns. 

“The key finding on ad engagement rates is that the average social and mobile gaming engagement rates are around 20 percent, the highest of the reported ad formats,” states the report. “By way of comparison, Facebook brand pages have an average engagement rate of .50 percent and pre-roll ads have engagement rates ranging from .7 percent to 3.64 percent, according to data supplied by eMarketer.” 

“It comes as no surprise that social and mobile gaming advertising sees results 30-100 times better than standard online advertising campaigns,” commented Ari Brandt, CEO and Co-founder of MediaBrix, which is behind Honda's new mobile social campaign for the 2013 Honda Civic. “This is largely due to the fact that people are driven by a deep well of positive emotions—such as joy, excitement and brand affinity—when playing social and mobile games.”Continue reading...

Joining other major companies and brands such as Unilever, Nike, PepsiCo, Lexus, BMW and AT&T in spurring mobile innovation around its brands, Mondelez International is investing in mobile startups in the hopes that they'll bring the kind of game-changing innovations to the company that often are hard to come by at corporate stalwarts such as the global-snacks operation that used to be part of Kraft Foods.

That said, it was Kraft that spearheaded the mobile incubator program that Mondelez is now running with. Mondelez just announced nine startups to participate in an ambitious new mobile-technology initiative aimed at drivng more impulse purchases and better in-store marketing. Called Mobile Futures, the program kicked off in October with a call for new ideas that drew 126 applications. Twenty-two startups survived the first cut, then were narrowed to nine after a two-day pitch event last month.

Mondelez hopes to launch one or two mobile-focused tech companies out of the process as well as garner new applications specifically for its business. It's one important way in which the spinoff — which owns megabrands such as Oreo, Trident, Stride and Cadbury — is attempting to do business differently, more dynamically, than in its old incarnation paired with what has now become Kraft's North American grocery business.Continue reading...

Barack Obama isn't the only presidential incumbent to leverage mobile, social and digital technology in his re-election campaign. Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga is using augmented reality technology in his presidential re-election campaign's mobile app.

The 'Raila for President' app, built by London based agency Blue Storm Solutions, includes information on the Kenyan election process, current news and videos, and advanced image recognition technology from Aurasma. The deal takes the UK-based brand into its 100th foreign territory with the Aurasma-enabled app to bring election posters and literature to life real-time, and encourage click-through to donate to the campaign.

With penetration of smartphones at 7% and growing fast in Kenya, Odinga’s campaign is looking to the African nation's mobile-savvy influencers to help in his re-election bid, which has been challenged by charges of police harassment of the country's ethnic minority population.Continue reading...

Turns out the next most valuable real estate to be developed is indoors. A consortia of 22 companies has banded together to create the In-Location Alliance:

The aim of the In-Location Alliance is to act as a pioneer opening up new business streams for indoor environments. Indoor positioning is the next frontier of mobile services, offering great opportunities to enhance consumer experiences. For the benefit of enterprises, the Alliance will drive a world-wide indoor positioning system for use in major venues. Our pilots, along with technical evaluations, are paramount for driving rapid market adoption.

Founding members include: Broadcom, CSR, Dialog Semiconductor, Eptisa, Geomobile, Genasys, Indra, Insiteo, Nokia, Nomadic Solutions, Nordic Semiconductor, Nordic Technology Group, NowOn, Primax Electronics, Qualcomm, RapidBlue Solutions, Samsung Electronics, Seolane Innovation, Sony Mobile Communications, TamperSeal AB, Team Action Zone and Visioglobe. Continue reading...

In addition to the expected kids' marketing tie-ins such as a McDonald's Happy Meal promotion, Ice Age: Continental Drift  opens in movie theaters today with a mobile campaign it hopes moviegoers will find cool: GoldRun’s augmented reality mobile app.

Using the free photo app, available for iPhone and Android, fans can pose with more than a dozen characters, including Scrat, narrated by Chris Wedge, Manny (Ray Romano), Diego (Dennis Leary) and Sid (John Legquizamo), from the fourth film (expected to top the box office this weekend) in the wildly popular Ice Age series.Continue reading...

Facebook users can now capture their nightlife experience in a rich multimedia manner that shares the fun, virtually.

It's all thanks to the NightTag app, which "lets your friends know where you are, what you're doing, and what you're listening to. It gives you club listings [in select regions] and, if you're not going out, brings the music to you through a selection of live radio streams."

The app, billed as the first social music app specifically for Facebook, posts a photo from, say, a nightclub; activates music-recognition software that identifies the song and the location where it’s playing via GPS, then posts the elements onto a user’s Facebook Timeline in one, unified photo post.Continue reading...