On the latest installment of BIA/Kelsey’s analyst roundtable series, analyst Mike Boland explained why he is even more bullish on mobile ad revenue with his latest forecast and Managing Editor Charles Laughlin assessed recent actions of Hibu’s new CEO aimed at cutting costs and rationalizing the product set.

Boland outlined his 2013-18 mobile advertising forecast, which was published last week for BIA/Kelsey clients. Boland also provided a detailed forecast summary in a blog post last week.

One of the notable elements of the new mobile forecast is the projected growth in the share of total mobile ad revenue generated by location-targeted mobile ad campaigns, roughly from 40 percent to 51 percent over the forecast period.

“What is driving that growth is a lot more adoption from national advertisers to localize their campaigns in various ways,” Boland said.

Notably, this movement of greater local targeting by national advertisers is the central them of BIA/Kelsey’s upcoming Leading in Local: The National Impact conference, May 7-9 in Atlanta.

Laughlin then examined the flurry of recent developments at the global directory company Hibu under its new CEO (since March) David Eckert.

Eckert has imposed some heavy cost cutting, with hundreds of jobs eliminated and production sent offshore. In addition, Hibu will shut down its U.S. hyperlocal magazine initiative, citing no clear path to profitability. Laughlin detailed these developments in a blog post last week.

On the roundtable, Laughlin summed up Hibu’s recent actions this way, “Actions [Eckert] has taken in the short time he has been there suggest that he is going to be very aggressive not only in cutting costs but in making tough decisions about which products they are going to keep and which products they are not going to keep.”

Check out this video to listen to the full roundtable discussion, recorded on April 11.

The post Analyst Roundtable: New Mobile Forecast Data & Tough Love from New Hibu CEO appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

On the latest installment of BIA/Kelsey’s analyst roundtable series, analyst Mike Boland explained why he is even more bullish on mobile ad revenue with his latest forecast and Managing Editor Charles Laughlin assessed recent actions of Hibu’s new CEO aimed at cutting costs and rationalizing the product set.

Boland outlined his 2013-18 mobile advertising forecast, which was published last week for BIA/Kelsey clients. Boland also provided a detailed forecast summary in a blog post last week.

One of the notable elements of the new mobile forecast is the projected growth in the share of total mobile ad revenue generated by location-targeted mobile ad campaigns, roughly from 40 percent to 51 percent over the forecast period.

“What is driving that growth is a lot more adoption from national advertisers to localize their campaigns in various ways,” Boland said.

Notably, this movement of greater local targeting by national advertisers is the central them of BIA/Kelsey’s upcoming Leading in Local: The National Impact conference, May 7-9 in Atlanta.

Laughlin then examined the flurry of recent developments at the global directory company Hibu under its new CEO (since March) David Eckert.

Eckert has imposed some heavy cost cutting, with hundreds of jobs eliminated and production sent offshore. In addition, Hibu will shut down its U.S. hyperlocal magazine initiative, citing no clear path to profitability. Laughlin detailed these developments in a blog post last week.

On the roundtable, Laughlin summed up Hibu’s recent actions this way, “Actions [Eckert] has taken in the short time he has been there suggest that he is going to be very aggressive not only in cutting costs but in making tough decisions about which products they are going to keep and which products they are not going to keep.”

Check out this video to listen to the full roundtable discussion, recorded on April 11.

The post Analyst Roundtable: New Mobile Forecast Data & Tough Love from New Hibu CEO appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

And Google has made two announcements in this past week that has the potential to disrupt local mobile advertising in an interesting way. The first announcement took place last week with Google announcement of Android Wear and the second was yesterday’s announcement of Google Now launching on the Chrome browser for desktop and laptop browsers.

BIA/Kelsey senior analyst Mike Boland and associate analyst Meshach Cisero conferred around these two mobile topics today on the latest in our ongoing Analyst Roundtable series.

Boland began the conversation by noting that “Starbucks has been a leader in mobile payments.” He then outlined the upgrades of the new mobile payment upgrades and features which included easier point-of sale transactions such as tipping your barista and the biggest upgrade was the ability to order in advance.

Boland also stated Burger King also released a similar feature — to help consumers get their Whoppers faster. Boland says this is important because it allows users to have a personalize portal and provides a lot more convenience. Boland did mention while this is an advancement in mobile payments for Starbucks, it’s a brand new service from Burger King. Boland also goes on to say these apps open the door to a lot of potential ways to interact with customers such as loyalty programs.

Next, Cisero shared his thoughts on the recent announcement of Android Wear and Google Now for Desktop.

“Google has the potential to disrupt local mobile advertising in an interesting way,” Cisero said referring to yesterday’s announcement of Google Now migration to desktop. Previously the service was only available to smart phone users. However, now the service is going to allow you to sync the services between all devices. Google Now on the desktop seems to be only a supplement of the mobile version but it would appear to me that google has a more robust plan of building it out to get a more holistic view of a users computing behavior.

The big question is will consumers actually buy these smart watches? Cisero strongly believes that this is Google’s strategy to bring wearable tech to the mass market. He highlighted Google’s efforts to incorporate style and functionality by partnering with companies like Fossil.

Check out the video below for today’s Analyst Roundtable in its entirety.

The post Analyst Roundtable: Keeping Up with Mobile: Starbucks, Burger King and Google appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.