The good folks at Gartner released a report that predicts a whopping 74% jump in mobile marketing dollars this year. My favorite part of the article, the part that sinks right in with Greenbean, states that they "expect location-based ads to find an audience among young mobile users who are increasingly using mobile devices to navigate and connect with friends on the go."

Other snippets and predictions from the report include:

• Real growth will accelerate in 2011
• 2013 - $13 billion industry
• 45.5% of mobiles will be PDAs in 2013
• Asia Pacific, North America, Europe to lead in that order

You can catch the whole article here.

As reported in Marketing Daily on Media Post News, Scarborough Research reports that 8.6 million - or 8% -- of U.S. households currently get at least some coupons via text message and/or email.

There are some other interesting facts in the report as well.

• comScore reported that online coupons were the top-gaining category on the Internet
• Shoppers most likely to get coupons via text, email or the Internet tend to be young, affluent, educated and female
• They are 51% more likely to be college graduates or have an advanced degree

Those are promising numbers for the mobile marketing / eCoupon / text marketing categories. We're pointed in the right direction as far as growth and there's still plenty of room for first mover advantage for aggressive marketers.

You can read the summary by Media Post here.

The good folks at Media Post summarize a recent study by the Local Mobile Search unit of Opus Research on SMS text marketing.

A few quick, noteworthy stats:

• 57% of U.S. cell phone subscribers use text messaging frequently
• Text messaging now outstrips calls per day
• The reach of text messaging is twice that of mobile internet, at 70%

My favorite quote from the article is Nate Elliott's comment about the relevance of SMS messages when they're truly opt-in like on Greenbean.com. "After all, when your marketing is targeted well, users stop thinking of it as marketing and start thinking of it as content, or a service."

You can read the whole article here.
 

Online coupons are gaining popularity fast. Almost 60% of shoppers are using coupons more often to cut expenses, according to a recent survey from market-research firm comScore Inc. About one of every three respondents said they use the Web to find printable coupons and promotional codes; visits to these sites grew 46% year-over-year as of December 2008, comScore reported.

"The recession has definitely accelerated the demand" for online coupons, said Greg Sterling, an Internet analyst and a principal at San Francisco-based Sterling Market Intelligence.

"People don't have the same resistance or inhibition to coupons online," he added. Or, for that matter, with coupons sent directly to a mobile phone -- which Sterling sees as the up-and-coming trend in coupon-clipping.

Click here to read the whole article at MarketWatch.

The folks over at Ecommerce Journal compiled a bunch of mobile stats from research companies such as Deloitte, Brightkite, Scarborough Research and Yankee Group. The really promising one that the Greenbean Team likes is that 86% of Millennials  (14-25) are likely to use SMS text.

Click here to read the full report.

In Asia, Africa, Europe and elsewhere, cell phone technology has always been way ahead of what's available in the states. Around the world, people use their phones in innovative, creative ways.

Listen to the 48 minute segment, including mobile coupons, here.

“If you want to see the next 10 years, just look at the next 10 months,” RIM’s co-chief executive officer Jim Balsillie said in an interview with The Globe. “You can only see so far ahead, but you’re just seeing a revolution happening right now and it’s just so fast, you almost don’t notice – if that doesn’t sound like a paradox.”

Read the rest of the article above to learn about how the next 10 years could very well be "the Mobile Decade" like the last 10 have been "the Download Decade." Plus, there's a video interview with Google's own Michael Jones, Chief Technology Advocate.

Companies that take advantage of mobile marketing technology now will reap the rewards. "Get your Beans! here."

According to Juniper Research, mobile coupons are expected to be one of the biggest winners of the current global recession. Juniper Research forecasts that the redemption value of mobile coupons will increase by over 30% by 2010. Read the rest of the post here.

Wow! That's an impressive figure.

Planet Funk, a trendy clothing store whose customer base is young, fashionable and permanently attached to their mobile phones, formulated a campaign around mobile coupons in November, 2008.

"Nearly 2,000 coupons were generated and 91% were redeemed."

Read more at BizReport.com.

There's a great article in Financial Times where Laura Keely, director of marketing promotions at Kimberly-Clark, whose brands include Huggies and Kleenex, says changes in the age of the audience that is reading newspapers – and clipping coupons – is a significant factor in her interest in online couponing.

“What we’re seeing is that younger consumers aren’t buying a Sunday newspaper and clipping those coupons,” she says. “The numbers drop off significantly when you are looking at an 18-24 consumer. If she’s not reading the paper and cutting that coupon, where is she? She’s online.”

You can read the whole story here.