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Interactive Marketing Could Outperform Traditional Television Ad Revenue by 2016

Interactive marketing is defined as a combination of display advertising, search advertising, mobile marketing, social media marketing, and email marketing. A Forrester Research report suggests that these mediums combined could represent $77 billion by 2016. That’s expected to be 35% of all advertising spend.

Techvibes recently reported that traditional television still leads all advertising spend at $70 billion in the United States. Still, you should see how cool interactive marketing is getting. Exclusively at Community 54 in Toronto, a lyric video is triggered by the image of Toronto-based singer-songwriter Colin Munroe as seen to your right. You can view the video in which his single “Invincible” comes to life.

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Smartphone Ownership in Canada Now 54%, Up From 36% in 2011, Study Finds

54% of wireless customers in Canada currently own a smartphone, up from 36% in 2011, according to the J.D Power and Associates 2012 Canadian Wireless Total Ownership Experience Study.

While more customers use smartphones in 2012, compared with 2011, the study found that the brands they select are shifting. Among smartphone owners in this study, 33% use Blackberry, down from 42% in 2011. Apple (30%) and Samsung (13%) have each increased their share by 4% from 2011.

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By 2016, 57% of Smartphone Owners Will Use Their Own Device at Work: Forrester

According to Ms. Brownlee Thomas, principal analyst at Forrester, the impact of mobility on the business practices of organizations will be as important as those caused by Internet.

She stated that the needs related to mobile devices and applications varied among groups of employees within an organization. Information workers are supported by the IT department and the performers of tasks have their mobile devices and applications dedicated. On the other hand, the workers concerned can use their mobile devices to work without formal IT support, while "nonconformists" select, purchase, and use their own equipment and apps for the job.

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US Department of Defence Approves BlackBerry 7, Awards Security Certification

Research In Motion's newest mobile platform, BlackBerry 7, has been officially approved for use by the US Department of Defence, the Waterloo company said today. BB7 has won security certification and specified BlackBerrys are now listed on the department's unified communications approved product list. Those models are the Bold 9900 and 9930, the Torch 9850 and 9860, and the Curve 9360.

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Canadian Mobile Payments Adoption Ranks Second in the World

Mobile payments are set to go mainstream in the next one to four years and Canada is one of the leaders on this front.

MasterCard recently revealed the MasterCard Mobile Payment Readiness Index, which analyzed the state and adoption of mobile payments across 34 countries worldwide. The Index takes into account three types of mobile payments, which are person to person (P2P), mobile e-commerce (m-commerce), and mobile payments at the point of sale (POS). It also looks at consumer readiness, environment, financial services, infrastructure, mobile commerce clusters, and regulation.

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Toronto's Bnotions Hires Canadian Jenna Hannon as Marketing Director [Updated]

Toronto-based app developer Bnotions has hired Jenna Hannon as their marketing director.

Jenna was born in Calgary, but was educated at the University of Southern California and has worked there for the past six years. Boasting a background of broadcasting, marketing, and board sports, the self-described "blondest tech geek" is a "perfect addition" to Bnotions, according to the Canadian startup.

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Canadian Startup Makes Fourth Batch of 500 Startups

Dave McClure's 500 Startups announced their fourth batch of startups for the Spring 2012 cohort today and Vancouver's Storypanda made the cut.

Storypanda is making kids stories collaborative by by allowing families to read, create and share their own stories on the iPad.

While the Storypanda team has already been working out of the Mountain View incubator program for over a month, today's announcement couldn't have come at a better time.

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