Instagram has more than 30 million users, Greteman Group being one of them.

In an industry such as aviation – where everyone from pilots in the cockpit to CEOs in the cabin are connected to their smartphones 24/7 – mobile’s going nowhere. But up. For now, though, mobile advertising requires a leap of faith. One backed by some intriguing indicators.

If you own a smartphone, you’ve seen mobile ads a time or two (thousand). Most of us just wait out the obligatory three seconds to skip past and get back to “Words With Friends,” or the next song. As prevalent as mobile advertising is, the services have yet to spin straw into gold. The recent Wall Street Journal article “Riches in Mobile Ads, Just No Profits” pointed out that mobile ads drew less than 1% – about $1.45 billion dollars of total ad sales. Consumers’ love for Pandora and Instagram has yet to translate to solid financial performance. (more…)

Mobile marketers rejoice: Industry leaders have finalized guidelines to make on-the-go advertising more streamlined for advertisers, online networks and agencies alike. (more…)

What can marketers and clients do when they want to spread the word about an important topic on a shoestring budget? The answer often lies in guerilla marketing, word-of-mouth and earned-media tactics. (more…)

With the New Year comes resolutions, a refreshed outlook on life and – new this year – sponsored stories in your Facebook news feed.

Starting in early January, Facebook users will start to see these ads. These sponsored stories will look the same as other postings appearing in the news feed, but will be distinguished by a link that reads “Sponsored” below the post. (Mobile users won’t initially see the stories, but that’s planned for later in the spring.) (more…)

Ask on-the-go aviation professionals which media they spend the most time with, and it will likely be some form of a mobile device. News, flight planning, networking, weather updates, texting, ecommerce – and at the touch of a finger. Available regardless of when you check or where you are.

Tablets and smartphones are fueling the move to mobile. At ComScore’s last count, there were 234 million of us using mobile devices. Just in the U.S. Think about what that means to you. And your marketing. Millions of engagement opportunities. Millions of potential new customers. (more…)

Whether you’re planning to sell logoed items at your Oshkosh booth later this month or taking a down payment on a turboprop, if you haven’t yet tried the sweet new Square credit-card reader, I suggest you check it out. It’s efficient, secure and cost effective. Both the reader and the application are free. There are no monthly fees or contracts. You simply pay a per-swipe fee of 2.75 percent. Add 15 cents for a manual-entry transaction. (more…)

This is your captain speaking: I just passed level 17 on Angry Birds and checked my email.

Just more than a year ago, Steve Jobs and Apple introduced the iPad to wide acclaim and a fair amount of head-scratching. Yes, many said, it’s pretty cool, but what will anyone do with it?

One respected market analysis firm predicted that Apple would sell four million iPads in the 12 months after its April release. A few days later, it cut that prediction in half, “after watching a replay of Apple’s iPad introduction and reassessing the device’s potential.”

By the end of 2010 – in just nine months – Apple sold 12 million iPads. That number is expected to triple in 2011. (more…)

You don't have to give up style, for mobile.

In interactive technology there’s always a “next big thing” which gets hyped in the media ad nauseum. Our job as an agency is to carefully assess the next big thing and determine if it’s actually something our clients should be considering, or just a lot of hot air. Currently, the mobile web is getting a lot of attention, as more and more people buy smartphones and begin viewing mobile versions of websites on these devices. After looking over the facts, I’ve come to the completely impartial view that the mobile web is the single greatest achievement that mankind will ever see.

Ok, that was a bit much, but here’s some data that should at least give you an idea of what has me excited. (more…)