As the iPhone, Android phones, and iPad became bestselling consumer gadgets, businesses realized their Web presence needed to translate to those smaller screens. Otherwise, their websites would bear tell-tale signs of a business clueless to mobile: tiny text, tinier links, and a jumbled layout. They risked lost traffic and sales.

These days, responsive design is recommended as the gold standard. But as with most technologies in a multi-device world, it has disadvantages, and it’s not right for every business, or every application.

In a new report from BI Intelligence, we describe what responsive design is and compare it to other mobile optimization tools, analyze responsive designs pros and cons, examine data and statistics that track responsive design adoption and performance across mobile, and evaluate whether dedicated mobile websites have their place, and detail the ramifications for HTML5 development.
To access the full report, sign up for a free trial of BI Intelligence today

Here’s an overview of the main mobile optimization tools:

Mobile apps: Particularly at the beginning of the mobile boom, when some believed apps would channel virtually all mobile activity, businesses rushed to create apps. Apps may be dominant in some mobile markets like the U.S., but consumers use their mobile browsers too — and not just for casual browsing, searching and information look-ups. A great deal of e-commerce happens in the mobile Web browser, not in native apps. Not to mention: Apps are expensive. Apps are not the be-all, end-all for mobile.

Dedicated mobile websites: Some usability gurus advocate for separate mobile sites that offer a stripped-down version of its content and carry their own Web address (often with the URL that looks something like this: m.website). These mobile-only sites tend to perform very well in terms of load speeds.

Responsive design: In responsive design, the same Web code or HTML is delivered to every device, but tweaks to CSS code which determines the layout of Web pages — allow it to determine the device size and adjust layout accordingly. The website maintains the same Web address or URL regardless of what device it’s seen on. In sum: The fluid layout means that content adapts to all form factors, even smart TVs — a fast-growing source of Web traffic.

Responsive Design With Server-Side Support– This is a variant of responsive design. The difference is that the computer server that hosts the website will deliver different batches of HTML and CSS Web code depending on what device the user is on. This method solves some of responsive design’s performance issues, but requires device detection. It means a company can use responsive design and enjoy its advantages where it wants, but deploy more customized components too. It may deploy responsive elements across mobile, while keeping a more traditional fixed layout for the PC. It may even deliver customized experiences for certain device models (like a feature that only works on retina screens, etc.).

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At Flurry, we have been at the epicenter of the mobile revolution for more than five years now and today we see activity from more than 300,000 apps and three billion app sessions every day, giving us a unique vantage point into the behavior of over a billion worldwide mobile consumers.

Today, SourceDigital13 we are sharing a peek into a day in the life of a U.S. adult mobile consumer. (We’ll blog some other parts of my keynote in future posts.) For this depiction (see chart below), we have used a random sample of 15,271 U.S. iOS users and we measured their app usage throughout the month of May, 2013. We also cut the data based on a 24-hour cycle to help understand the usage throughout an entire day.

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The new ads — which will be unveiled Tuesday at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity — will revisit what a banner can be on Windows 8 devices, whether they’re desktop computers, tablets or mobile phones. One question: do advertisers Windows 8 enough to do custom creative for it?

The software giant is showing off the prototypes developed with brands and agencies, including All Saints, Dell, Universal McCann and VML.

One of the most sriking examples comes from clothing brand All Saints and London agency Beattie McGuinness Bungay. As a user horizontally scrolls through Vice’s Windows 8 app, they may overlook the tall rectangle featuring models garbed in All Saints. However those models don’t take their eyes off the user.

The ad uses what Microsoft’s VP-global agencies and accounts Stephen Kim described as “parallax view” so that its image adjusts to its position on the screen. Assuming the gimmick is eye-catching enough to get the user to click on the ad, the unit opens up into video mural that plays as you horizontally scroll through the posh dinner scene. Littered throughout the video — which builds on Microsoft’s new Ad Pano format that aims to be a digital version of the magazine fold-out — are hot spots tied to the items worn by the models that can be clicked on to navigate to a product page and buy the shirt or dress.

“The highest order challenge the creative industry has had for a long time…is how to create ads to get people to interact with a larger experience,” Mr. Kim said.

In another example, footwear brand Vans and New York agency Rooster Worldwide built an ad displayed in the Skype app plays as a user horizontally scrolls. If a user clicks on the ad, he or she is prompted to team up with a friend via a Skype video chat to build a virtual skatepark. After assembling the playground they can check out Vans shoes, watch branded videos and share their creation with other Skype contacts or to Facebook and Twitter.

The unspoken hope is that top-tier brand advertisers will flock to the new Windows 8 ads whenever they roll out of testing and that app developers will see the premium ad revenues to be had and create apps for Microsoft’s operating system. In other words, Microsoft is Kevin Costner trying to build in-app advertising’s Field of Dreams on its operating system; advertisers are the ghost ballplayers; and app developers are the line of cars that close the film.

Apple is trying to do the same with its iAds, having built its mobile operating system to enable ads that appear as generic mobile banners but, when clicked, open up to function more like an app than an ad. Price drops indicate those ads may not be worth their complexity, but a drive to attract brand dollars to digital may hinge on these types of more immersive, premium banners.

That makes it all the more puzzling that Google, a company far more dependent on advertising revenue than Microsoft or Apple, has yet to build any premium ad products unique to smartphones or tablets running its Android operating system.

Last year Microsoft had also worked with agencies to come up with ad units unique to Windows 8 devices. Those in-app prototypes also aimed to deliver more in-depth brand content but via nontraditional ad formats akin to a Yahoo or AOL home-page takeover.

Without the flexibility to run in various apps or sites, the prototypes are little more than the digital equivalent of a Times Square billboard. Mr. Kim acknowledged the looming scale question, saying the first step was to draft the concepts then figure out how to make them more accessible to advertisers. “Each [prototype] has an element that is designed to take on the challenge of how to work within a more standard ad unit,” Mr. Kim said of this year’s batch.

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Data from the Zumobi platform shows mobile and mobile applications users are highly engaged with advertising served. According to their Q1 numbers smartphone users engaged with ads on Zumobi’s platform for more than 6 minutes while tablet users spent just over 3 minutes with ads. You can see the full infographic here.

“In today’s digital world, consumers expect brands to deliver a relevant and personalized experience,” said Mike Baker, CEO and co-founder of DataXu. “Marketers know that a thorough understanding of their consumers can provide a significant competitive advantage in a noisy marketplace. The Consumer Index underscores that advertising is now research and digital behavioral data delivers valuable insights into the consumer lifestyle trends that can inform strategies, drive engagement, and ultimately improve marketing investment results.”

Meanwhile information out from DataXu examines how consumers are engaging across devices. Their research shows that automotive consumers, for example, are most likely to engage with Media/Entertainment or Health products online. Smartphone users, meanwhile are most likely to show interest in financial services than other categories. PC users are most likely to engage with or convert via retail channels than through automotive channels.

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In the last year, in-app sales on Google Play have grown significantly. At the latest Google I/O Conference, held in San Francisco, the search engine giant confirmed that in-app sales have grown an incredible 700%.

There’s an important message for android app developers in these figures – consumers want to trial apps for free, and only when they are happy with their use are they willing to invest.

Furthermore, Google Play Subscriptions, a product launched only one year ago, have doubled in revenue in each of the last four quarters. Some of the apps using the subscription model, such as Internet radio service Pandora, are even starting to enter the top grossing list.

A key trend revealed by Google is that tablet users are 1.7 times more likely to spend money on an app compared to smartphone users.

In addition, apps that are updated to take advantage of the latest changes to the Android platform generate 2.2 times more revenue than older versions.

Google also announced several new improvements to Google Play development at the I/O Conference including beta testing and staged roll-outs, a public page for highlighting tablet-specific apps, translation services, analytics and monetization tools.

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The IAB estimates that the U.S. mobile ad market brought in $3.4 billion in 2012. The IAB didn’t break out revenues for apps vs. the mobile web, but Flurry has estimated that 80% of mobile activity occurs on apps. Comparatively, Kantar Media calculated that TV advertising accounted for $74 billion in ad revenues in 2012. Even if apps generated 100% of mobile ad revenues, the market would still be just 4.5% that of TV.

Meanwhile, Flurry also found that there are now more monthly users of mobile apps than there are for desktop computers and laptops. Yet the the desktop ad market is still 10 times the size of the mobile ad market in revenues, according to the IAB.

Why?

Michael Becker, managing director of the Mobile Marketing Association, says there are several reasons, but the main ones are a lack of a unified buying infrastructure for mobile apps and a comparatively fragmented market. “Reaching this audience isn’t as easy as making a TV buy,” he says. “That’s the big difference.”

To execute a mobile ad buy, you have to choose between various networks and exchanges and real-time bidding platforms. The ads themselves are also different since they’re often designed to prompt users to take action relatively quickly, which mean fewer branding ads and more direct-response executions. To ensure that the ads are effective, it helps to tailor to them to individual users’ demographics and geographic location. To make things even more complicated, while on desktop, there are basically two operating systems, in mobile there are at least 10, Becker says and “hundreds of browsers and screen sizes.”

The disparity between the reach of advertising via mobile apps and the complexity of the buying process is “both the challenge and the opportunity” says Peter Farago, VP of marketing for Flurry.

Flurry projects that the install base for mobile apps will double over the next year, which might lead some to conclude that mobile is a black hole that is eviscerating the TV and desktop market and leaving behind a much less lucrative ad industry in its wake. Yet eMarketer predicts that TV will continue to grow — and outpace digital advertising — through 2017.

One argument is that even though TV ratings are down — Morgan Stanley analyst Benjamin Swinburne recently found that they fell 50% over the past decade — TV is still the last place where you can find 5 million or more people tuned in at the same time to an ad. You may be able to get in front of 5 million people on Facebook, but if you use a display ad, only about one in 1,000 people will click on it.

Paul Gelb, head of strategy at MoPub, a mobile ad exchange firm, makes a more optimistic argument. In Gelb’s view, mobile ad revenues are still low because the industry is so new. Eventually, he says, mobile will be bigger than TV. “The dollars don’t shift in a meaningful way that’s sustainable overnight,” he says. Yet Gelb points out that bigger advertisers are jumping into mobile — Mondelez (nee Kraft) pledged last year to put 10% of its ad budget into the segment — and that both marketers and advertisers are experimenting to see what works. “Sometimes a blank canvas is a challenge,” Gelb says, noting that “even in TV it took the industry years to get to the 15- and 30-second commercial.”

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The device sports a dual-core 1.2GHz processor, 8/16GB of internal storage memory (expandable to 64GB via memory cards), and a 3-megapixel camera on the back, coupled with a 1.3-megapixel one on the front.

The 7-inch screen has a 1024×600 pixel screen, which sounds awfully low by today’s standards, but the device is capable of Full HD video playback.

Samsung has stuffed all that into a 111.1 x 188.0 x 9.9mm package that weighs 302g if you choose the Wi-Fi version, or 306g for the 3G variant.

The Wi-Fi version of the 7-inch Galaxy Tab 3 will be available globally in May, and the 3G version will come in June. Exact pricing and availability will vary by market and will be rolled out “gradually,” Samsung claims.

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Munster, Business Insider reports, believes that Apple will quickly secure at least 10% or better of the low-end smartphone market.

A low-end iPhone is generally thought of as an iPhone available for $300, well below the average selling price of $620.

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Research by IgnitionOne shows that year-over-year paid search spend for tablets and smartphones are up 112% and 113%, respectively in the US.

According to details made available in a press release today, tablet users were also shown to behave differently from PC users and have higher total engagement.

“Not only are users engaging with more ads on mobile devices, they are also spending more time on marketers’ websites when they do,” said Roger Barnette, President of IgnitionOne. “This creates both opportunities and challenges as marketers adjust to the changing landscape.”

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No matter how much mobile applications talk to one another and sync information back and forth, our devices are still essentially distinct from one another, tied together by cloud services that transfer the information to services and then back and forth between each other. But they’re still ultimately separate, and that means a lot of missed opportunity.

What I’d love to see, and what some are already exploring with projects like the Inferno cross-platform operating system, is a way for all these devices to pool not only the information and media we store on them, but also their resources and raw computing power.

Don’t get me wrong; I love that my iPad operates as a completely standalone computer, as opposed to something that needs to be continually tethered to a central tower, like some of the earliest interactive tablet screens. But the fact that I’m now carrying a fairly powerful computer in my pocket in the form of my iPhone, and that both it and my iPad can’t pool their cumulative resources when necessary to accomplish tasks better and faster is starting to seem like an unnecessary failing.

It’s much more likely that we’ll see more and more processing duties handed off to server farms with the growth of cloud services, especially since there’s greater financial incentive to make that happen in terms of being able to charge for the bandwidth needed to make it happen. But when your television, appliances, phone, router, tablet, notebooks and PCs all have powerful processors on board and plenty of computing power, much of which they aren’t even using most of the time, it seems absurd that we have turn to a remote facility miles away to handle our computing demands.

Every tech company today talks about the age of cross-platform computing, where it doesn’t matter what kind of device you use, you get access to the same content. Facebook’s recent News Feed redesign is all about unifying the experience; Microsoft made a big bet on a shared UI with Windows 8 and Windows Phone; Google is moving in that direction with ChromeOS and Android; and Apple is continually adding more features pioneered on iOS back into OS X and tightening the links between the two with services like iCloud.

Now, however, the time has come for someone to take the next step, and bring our devices together in ways that maximize the truly amazing potential they have as a collective, which dwarfs even the impressive things they can now all do on their own.

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