Are Mobile Consumers Better Informed than Salespeople?

By Michael de Souza, VP Media

An editor of Harvard Magazine recently wrote about consumers who are taking on (willingly or not) the roles of petrol attendants, check out clerks and sales assistants. Go to a supermarket in the US, and you're likely to scan your own purchase. Drive into a petrol station, pump your own gasoline and squeegee the windshield yourself.

“The robots have won,” writes Craig Lambert. “Although the automatons were supposedly going to free people by taking on life’s menial, repetitive tasks, frequently, technological innovation actually offloads such jobs onto human beings."

It's not all bad news, though. When it comes to purchase decisions, consumers are winning. The average shopper has become adept at product research - checking product information and comparing prices on the spot.  Even in situations where a salesperson is available, consumers have a bigger view that includes options in other stores and online.

The self-service phenomenon may be charmless, but in this case, mobile technology is empowering consumers with information . . . and offering new opportunities to retailers and publishers.

New Mobile Regulations in Indonesia Pave the Way for M-Commerce Growth

By K.F. Lai, BuzzCity CEO

The government of Indonesia has effectively 'reset' the mobile subscriptions market. It shut down all mobile subscriptions in mid-October and required content providers who wish to resubscribe their users to do so in compliance with tougher rules.

Consumer agencies have been pushing for this action against a small minority of mobile advertisers whose fraudulent actions tarnished the whole industry, for some time.

The result is good news for the whole industry (well, everyone except those fraudsters) and it took place not a moment too late. Regulators around the world are starting to recognise the importance of their role in protecting the value chain. By re-establishing much-needed trust between businesses and consumers, this paves the way for the emergence of solid m-commerce markets.

Ad networks: the scale and insight to beat fragmentation

The past few years have shown remarkable growth of the mobile internet, driven by rapid consumer adoption and major advances in the capabilities of mobile devices. In recent months, mobile ad networks received a great vote of confidence from investors, who bet substantial sums that the space will continue growing, become more valuable, and attract an increasing share of marketing budgets.

In spite of this, though, some naysayers still question the value of ad networks. They believe that marketers are still treating mobile as an afterthought, and they question the quality of network traffic.

The BuzzCity Report ( Volume 1 Issue 4 )

In the third quarter of 2011, our network grew by 11%, and served a total of 33.7 billion ads worldwide. We’ve already exceeded the number of ads served in the whole of 2010, and are well on track to double last year’s performance.


In addition to the regular roundup of stats and analytics, we focus on the practical lessons particularly aimed at smaller businesses. Our feature section is a primer on ‘Mobilizing your Business’ and our Media Insight section shows how you can effectively make use of social networking to promote a local business. Please click here to download the full report.