Yesterday we announced our strategic partnership with Gigya, the #1 social choice for websites. This new relationship will allow marketers to leverage permission-based Facebook data for use across addressable digital media and for actionable analytics. That means brands will be able to seamlessly fuse the wealth of permission-based social identity information (such as Facebook likes, check-ins, and interests) with existing customer data and cross-channel activity (such as purchase history, clicks, and search activity) within our on-demand software platform Concentri. The Knotice-Gigya partnership allows social data collected and stored within Gigya’s Identity Management Platform to be blended with the customer profile and activity data collected and stored via our proprietary Universal Profile Management system. All of this opens the ability to drive actionable analytics and stronger cross-channel execution based on more relevant information.

It’s exciting stuff.

We believe this will transform the way marketers will be able to leverage permission-based Facebook data across addressable digital marketing channels. It also allows for a truly unified view of consumers across the channels including social, which directly supports the findings and recommendations of Forrester Research Inc.’s recent report “The New Messaging Mandate” (January 2012) in which Knotice is featured.

What’s really nice is that the Gigya relationship is going to provide a vehicle for brands to offer more value for consumers in exchange for allowing access to social information. Permission-based social data pulled into our Concentri platform offers an enormous opportunity for marketers to target individuals with increased relevance, adding more value to brand interactions. For example, marketers will now be able to tailor email marketing campaigns based on users’ location, interests and on-site activities, such as sharing and commenting. Not only can marketers use this wealth of permission-based data to support actionable analytics and better cross-channel messaging, it also expands those unified customer identities in a very elegant way.

Privacy considerations are key. These capabilities only exist when consumers have opted-in to share their information with the respective brands by authenticating via Gigya’s Social Login.

With Facebook with connecting a seventh of humanity coupled with the fact that 95% of the time spent on social sites overall is spent on Facebook, it’s safe to say that in 2012, “Social=Facebook.” This new relationship puts Knotice cleanly at the intersection of social and addressable digital media, to leverage the social information for cross channel execution for a deeper level of engagement.

Stay tuned for future case-study examples of the Knotice-Gigya solution in action.

At the very least, presenting a good user experience will allow you to capture a higher conversion rate from your existing efforts. From there, you will recognize higher traction amongst traditionally lower segments you market to, an increased relevancy and raised brand impression from mobile-first customers and prospects. Some may reveal very telling things you can address programmatically to cater specifically to those who volunteer that they prefer to receive your communication formatted for their busy lifestyle.

An additional trend that seems bound to impact commerce via mobile email is the increased capability of things like CDN solutions so that the big data stores that drive these communications can be put to work to not just personalize but perform. Fast loading, dynamic-to-the-user experiences should begin to become the norm for those on the leading edge.

Another trend that we certainly can’t put numbers on, but that I suspect will begin to show an impact, is the burgeoning mobile payments/wallet/transaction space. The more that card issuers, payment processors, retailers, and other brands looking to get a piece of this pie invest in raising awareness the better. Raising the collective conscience of all phone owners will lower barriers to transacting on devices.

Also, I’ve seen a slew of mobile marketing predictions for 2012. One that I’ve seen quite a bit during the first weeks of the year has been the prediction of the impending death of the QR code, I’ll address that in a later post.

What trend will you be keeping an eye on in the mobile space this year?

It also has its share of problems, though. Development time takes longer; it takes forever to download Flash-based content on a slower network (which in turn requires the development of a Flash preloader); a knowledge of ActionScript is required to really unlock its full potential; it presents an inconsistent and incompatible mobile experience; it’s SEO hit-or-miss; and Flash players are usually buggy, crash regularly, require frequent updates and create a host of security and privacy issues.

Until recently, Flash has pretty much been the only game in town with regards to the creation and handling of the kind of content it supports.But HTML5 has pretty much won the fight for the future of Web browsing. Not only has the new syntax proven to be very multimedia friendly, thus eliminating the need to develop and/or implement Flash- based technology, Adobe itself has publicly encouraged designers and developers to pursue HTML5 solutions – at least when developing for mobile Web.

Flash will still be critical part of the desktop multimedia experience, however, especially since only the latest versions of most browsers can read HTML5. Even if Flash is on the path towards becoming an outdated Web technology, too many desktop browser users have come to expect and rely on it to display interesting and innovative forms of content.

And they’ll be expecting it for the foreseeable future. It’s going to take awhile for HTML5-friendly browsers to become standard-use across the Web, so the Flash phase-out isn’t likely to happen as quickly as some would expect (or want). Designers and developers have been creating tailored Web experiences for different platforms for the past few years, and while it isn’t an efficient or productive way of doing things, it’s more or less how things are going to have to be until a universal, cross-device standard is implemented.

So, while the future may belong to HTML5, Flash is still an appropriate technology in certain cases for present Web development.

The show delivered a number of new products and concepts, but none so earthshattering as in previous years. As I followed Twitter, some of the hottest trends from the event were around OLED TVs, ultrabooks and tablets.

TVs

One of the biggest focal points was the beautiful Samsung 55-inch 4mm thick OLED HDTV. For those who may not know what OLED is, it’s organic light-emitting diode technology and it is poised to oust LCD TVs because of its lack of backlight, better viewing angles and greener functionality. There is no denying that this TV would pull any room together!

But, as TVs become thinner and their picture quality enhances, so does their connectivity and “smartness.” Consumers are being urged to purchase new TVs and integrate them into what is becoming known as a “Smart Home.” The qualities such as voice integration, motion control, web applications, internet connectivity and cloud capabilities promise to enhance the overall experience.

With the addition of OLED TVs, consumers and companies seem to have put 3-D technology on the backburner for the time being, where as last year it was in the spotlight. Moving forward, TVs will still be produced to have the 3-D capability, however without the desired content existing in 3-D format the question is will consumers change their viewing habits to watch shows they normally wouldn’t, just because they are in 3-D? Let alone, throw on a pair of the world’s most unattractive glasses?

Ultrabooks

The Ultrabook is a term coined by Intel, but a product heavily influenced by Apple’s MacBook, which offers an affordable, thin, light product with functional storage and speed. The MacBook has been in the market for over five years and prior to the official ultrabook category being established, has lacked major competition. However, some say 2012 is clearly the year of the ultrabook and that statement is difficult to argue with over 20 new ultrabooks released and gaining traction quickly.

Out of the numerous ultrabooks announced, one specifically caught my attention – the Lenovo Yoga. As if naming the product Yoga wasn’t quirky enough, the functionality helps you easily make the connection back to the name, as it bends and functions like no other product out in the market. In one position it may function as a laptop and with a couple of twists and turns, it transforms into a tablet with touch screen capabilities, running on Windows 8. It clearly offers users a lot of flexibility, no pun intended and I imagine this trend to be carried across other products.

Tablets

As I mentioned earlier, Apple has historically influenced many product categories and that influence also extended into the tablet category thanks to their iPad products. However, after a number of competitors have released their versions of the tablet that run on the Android systems, many have failed to gain momentum. In my opinion their fail is a result of not understanding their audience or core users. For example, companies such as Apple, as well as new entrant Amazon with their Amazon Fire understand that consumers want content and usability. They have developed products that provide just that and as a result have been wildly successful. Overall, the tablet growth at the 2012 show was not as you would have expected. There were a number of new introductions, but companies are moving forward very cautiously. As many reevaluate and assess the products and what they are developing, I expect 2013 to have more momentum for tablets as the audience clearly exists.

Across 3 categories, TVs, Ultrabooks and Tablets, there are a number of things I did not touch upon. So, with that said if you’re interested in other products exhibited at CES I suggest checking out the following sites.

PC Magazine: Reviews of the best products across the top categories at the show.

CES WEB: Overview of awards and product nominations across categories you may not have known even exist.

Did you attend the show or follow along online? What products interested you and why?

As with many things, the spirit behind the SOPA and PIPA acts, to protect creativity and to control deliberate acts of piracy and copyright infringement, is well intended. I’ve realized myself that there are few things more ire-inspiring than others making gains from something you have legitimately imagined or created. However, as with many things making their way through our legal system, these acts have become bloated with attachments and aspire to give too much power to an uninformed enforcement entity with its own agenda. Once this power is granted, as consumers and citizens of a free Internet, we lose any ability to even realize how our access to information, perspectives, innovation, and connectivity are being impacted.

The way each of these acts are written, if signed into law, it would not be unreasonable to be able to interpret most websites and service providers as violators that could be subject to immediate shut-down or immediately open to litigation by essentially anyone with an Internet connection. This means everything from social media, Web-based email, any site with ratings and reviews, any functionality that allows anyone to contribute, comment, or share, would be subject to business-crushing regulation.

An act of legislation would immediately impact business fundamentals of an already mature industry that is driving so many positive changes globally and it would also give an unreasonable amount of control over your Internet/IP connection to government agencies. Not only would we suffer from the blissfully dangerous ignorance which censorship brings, we would likely be paying more for access to this incontrovertibly curated “information.” By introducing an enforcement layer of bureaucracy, service providers from search engines, ISPs, payment processors, and even ad servers will be forced to monitor and block access to anyone that is deemed possibly in violation of the letters of these laws (as defined, basically most of the Internet as we know it), an administrative expense that will surely be passed on to us as consumers for those businesses that survive.

Let’s solve this together in a reasonable way, contact your local and regional law makers and let them know this is the wrong road to go down and that you support their ability to not sign it into law.

I sat down to talk with Brent, who recently started at Knotice in a job that was recently created. He shared his thoughts on working at one of the fastest growing companies in Northeast Ohio, on job creation, and of course, how taping the show went.

“One of the questions I enjoyed being asked was what I would do if I won the lottery, if I would quit my job or not,” he said. “I don’t have children, and my wife and I are both professional musicians outside of the office, so we don’t have any commitments keeping us locked in anywhere. Still my answer was an honest one. I told him that ‘if I won $100,000,000 in the lottery, I would keep my job and invest it in Knotice.’ Now, I may move my ‘office’ to the beach, but I definitely wouldn’t just pick up and walk away. What is life, after all, without purpose.”

One of the things that makes Knotice a great place to work is the atmosphere. We all love our jobs. So when Brent had the opportunity to represent us, he felt honored.

“This company is a major success story, and will continue to be. I haven’t seen anything that I would deem as undermining our success here. The structure, the strategy, the ambition, and mostly the people are all dedicated to the success of the organization. That was the second major contributor to my decision to leave a stable job at a $100 billion company to come here. The first contributing factor being that I would be working with an entire company of folks that ‘get it’ – that I wouldn’t have to justify every decision or explain every concept in order to get traction. But yes, it made me proud to be asked to represent Knotice this way. Plus, the host plugged my band, and my wife’s band! I got to represent Knotice AND plug my music at the same time! Who gets to say that?”

Check out more from Brent and Jon (and more folks from the Akron Global Business Accelerator) below.

Show #43: Mommy, Where do Jobs Come From? by The Civic Commons

Finally, the fifth trend to watch in 2012 is concept that encapsulates much of what I discussed in parts one through four – privacy.

#5 – First party and third party

The terms “first party” and “third party” denote something technical and legal in nature. At Knotice we are clearly advocates for a first-party approach in how brands create, access and use data, and how they identify and track consumers and customers. This bias permeates everything we do from a software and services standpoint:

• Profile tracking is performed only on the brand’s domains
• Profiles are identified and recognized by a first party cookie
• Third party data sources are treated as circumspect, with a strategic preference for leveraging explicit data and preferences or implicit and behavioral activity in the first party
• Extending choice and control to consumers across channels including email, mobile, web and online display

The fifth trend to watch in 2012 isn’t the digital marketing universe falling in line with Knotice’s philosophical and strategic position. Rather, the fifth trend to watch in 2012 is the emerging realization that the mechanics and philosophy of how good online business is done may be coalescing within a technical concept: first party vs. third party.

The mechanics and philosophy of doing business in the first party draws important distinctions and has meaningful impact on online business, which I have touched on in previous segments of this series.

Among them:

• Providing a technical framework allowing for more reliable identification, recognition and tracking of profiles, leading to more effective targeting on the front end and more meaningful cross-channel metrics, analysis and attribution on the back end.
• Minimizing reliance on third-party tracking mechanisms, behavioral data aggregation, and data sources which improves an organization’s ability to better embrace transparency with consumer data, privacy and preferences.
• Creating an efficient, effective technical and operational framework for the holistic practice of cross-channel direct digital marketing and communications.
• Consolidating and owning the responsibility for educating consumers, inspiring them to express preferences, capturing and respecting those preferences, and making this dialogue an easily-accessible across channel engagements, from the user’s mobile device to the call center.

If these are trends to watch in 2012, then clearly the shift to a first-party technical and philosophical approach is the encapsulating mega-trend for 2012.

#4 — Consumer data, privacy and preferences

In 2012 the fourth trend to watch for direct digital marketing is that of marketers earnestly taking steps to establish transparency with consumers and customers regarding how data is collected, and what data is used (and by what means) to communicate with them. It is the marketers’ response to the consumer-in-control that is meaningful this year.

Here’s the old 2011 “spin” in response to consumer concerns of data privacy: first, deny the allegation; downplay the consumer impact; and, pin the curtain tighter around the doorway to where the sausage is made. Meanwhile, enact cosmetic changes and jettison plainly indiscrete practices, while assessing the long-term business impact of an increasingly vigilant consumer. The prevailing marketer anxiety: having to making sense of a world where the once ample reserves of behavioral and third-party data sources are suddenly cut off and unavailable.

2012 will be the year the spin is abandoned in favor of transparency. We already see a cultural shift in some areas of the Internet where transparency has been embraced as good business – not because it’s defensible by counsel or because the nasty bits are more securely protected, but because it’s the right thing to do. Is it possible that the perception of the empowered digital consumer can morph from that of gnat-on-steroids to that of respected, rational and right individuals and consumers in the eyes of today’s marketers? That is, marketers recognize there is a significant and affluent audience with whom it is good business to do good business.

I believe that the business of the “curtain in the sausage factory” will become expensive, troublesome and perhaps more importantly, simply out of style. Marketers are beginning to understand that allowing consumers to express preferences and manage the framework for data-based interactions and messaging is a win-win. It is an invasive and intoxicating concept that, once embraced, will ultimately become fully-realized within many organizations by force of momentum. The ultimate manifestation will take a long time and take many shapes across industries as the market clarifies the prevailing mechanisms for consumer education and expression of choice. But the trend to watch in 2012 is the earnest progress towards brand transparency – embracing a policy where consumers are encouraged to understand and express preferences towards the brand as the nature of the dialogue.

The long-term business value is the potential for revenue, consumer loyalty and advocacy.

Within this staggeringly complex ecosystem intelligent marketers will realize that a system of single-channel, last-click attribution has outlived its usefulness, if the goal is to create meaningful digital marketing strategies rather than incrementally optimize a series of tactical deployments. And while attribution models that can make sense of the interplay between 2 or 3 channels clearly represent progress (and a hell of a worthwhile starting point), this is just the tip of the iceberg:

• Understanding how the diverse media and direct digital marketing tactics contribute to revenue, contribute to important milestones like awareness and consideration is critical.
• Understanding the most common and effective recipes for online impressions across channels to produce happy buyers, larger receipts, and better brand advocates.
• Understanding whether a brand impression on a smartphone influences a purchase decision made on a desktop computer, or, if the respective purchase funnels on desktop computers and smartphones are more isolated from each other. All of this and more is at stake.

Better investment in, and more attention paid to, intelligent attribution models will be an important aspect of effective marketing strategy development this year. This is nothing new for the small group of sophisticated online marketers at the leading edge of the curve. But the trend to watch in 2012 is seeing the torch being picked up by the brands at the middle of the curve and laying the groundwork for better measurement and insights. 2012 will be a year of attribution.

Let’s take a look at the second trend I’ll be keeping an eye on:

#2 – Understanding multi-screen profiles In 2012 digital consumers are multi-screen consumers. In my 2011 piece, I identified the “four screens and counting” dilemma. The prevalence of multiple wired screens within reach of the digital consumer during the course of the day (TV, desktop/laptop computer, tablet, and smartphone) creates hurdles for marketers. This means increasing technical complexity from an execution standpoint, and fractured views of individual consumers. Even though cross-channel consumer data (another focus for marketers in 2012) is important and becoming a more tangible reality every day, the concept of communicating with an individual profile across their four screens is still elusive.

2012 will be the year that marketers begin to make sense of the fractured multi-screen profile, both in terms of creating a single holistic view of this device-hopping user and better understanding the inherent schizophrenic behavior that comes with multi-device use habits.

About a month ago I read about IBM’s efforts to re-think and re-design the venerable email inbox specifically for mobile (smartphone) users. Why? Because research clearly shows that the same person has far different priorities and traits when accessing their email inbox from their smartphone vs. their desktop computer. It’s the same person; it’s the same email in their inbox. But the mere difference of the device being used to access the inbox makes all the difference in the world to turning priorities and user traits upside down.

As direct digital marketers in 2012 we have two mandates for understanding multi-screen profiles: use the increasingly powerful tools at techniques at our disposal to aggregate user and activity data from cross-channel activities into consolidated consumer profiles, yet be wary of using that single consolidated profile view to dictate segmentation and targeting regardless of the point of interaction. We can aggregate attributes like demographics, purchase history, browsing behavior and more, and create increasingly actionable insights. But these insights may always be trumped by the specific needs and desires signaled to us by the user’s device of the moment. While the primary online shopper within a young family may always buy the large box of diapers at Amazon with standard ground shipping, the same shopper while on a mobile device may only be interested in the small box and rush shipping.

Understanding, reacting to and creating a smarter view of these multi-screen profiles is an imperative for 2012 – and a trend to watch.

Check back next week for the rest of my trends to watch!