The New Market Research

HowMutch.com's tag line "Everyone Has a Price" says it all. The site questions users about how much they are willing to pay for various products, services, and scenarios and then provides follow-up information in terms of median price, percentage of users who answered higher, and percentage of users who answered lower. The interactive website could be a good tool in the future for companies to determine how much consumers are willing to fork over for new product lines, services, or offerings.

AdMob

In case you missed it... a rep from Google's AdMob was here in the office Friday morning and gave a very interesting presentation on what's happening in the mobile advertising space. This two minute video (below) offers a great overview. Click here to download and view the entire presentation.

The full presentation includes stats on the current mobile internet landscape and several creative examples of what types of advertising units, user experiences and interactions are currently available.

Location Based Social Networks... what's the deal?

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been hearing a lot of buzz lately about Location Based Social Networks (LBSNs) such as Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite and Loopt. With a growing user-base (Foursquare just passed the 2 million mark) we all want to know who’s using these services, how often they’re using them, what they’re using them for, how our clients can get involved, and if they should. Large chains such as Starbucks and Chili’s restaurant have already partnered with LBSNs to test promotions… so far, with mixed results. Check out this article from AdAge about some of the challenges and pitfalls these early adopters have faced.

A recent report by Forrester provides a little perspective on the subject of LBSNs, finding that less than 5% of U.S. online users have ever used a location-based application on a mobile device. Interesting to note that these users are typically young (~70% between the ages of 19 and 35), male (~80%), well-educated, and influential. Read more on Forrester’s own blog and on gigaom.com