Advertisers hoping to get into Amazon's live streaming of NFL games will find a price tag of $2.8 million for ad blocks. That tops the $550,000 to $590,000 that TV networks charge for their ad slots, but the Amazon blocks include the option of running ads for the duration of the football season.

Apple Pay is coming to a variety of national restaurant chains, including Quiznos and MOD Pizza, thanks to a decision by cloud platform Punchh to incorporate the payment option in its mobile app. Punchh handles the marketing for dozens of chains.

Context marketing that takes into account mobile's immediacy in consumers' lives allows marketers to take full advantage of the platform. But it's a difficult proposition, writes Sitecore Chief Marketing Office Scott Anderson, who reviews the considerable challenges.

Reddit is making a fresh appeal for advertisers with its introduction of video ads, as revealed at the Cannes Lions festival. The rollout is part of a broader pitch selling Reddit as a kind of anti-social network with 300 million highly committed monthly users.

Revenue from games on smartphones and tablets is projected to easily outpace revenue produced by the alternative venues of consoles and PCs, according to Newzoo. Mobile's share is also expected to continue growing.

In terms of ad revenue and ad views, 20% of mobile users account for 80% in both cases, according to a report by Soomla. The report traces the linkage to the fact that heavier mobile users, especially gamers, will submit to many ad views to secure rewards.

Chatbots for businesses are well-suited to the nature of the new sharing economy, writes BotAnalytics' Ilker Koksal. They can serve to mimic the key characteristics of sharing, meeting customers' "needs at all hours of the day -- and comfortably, from their mobile phone."

At the dawn of the internet of things, we find ourselves connecting with the physical objects that surround us in our everyday lives. Marketing leaders must view IoT in new ways, as it brings what marketers love about the digital world - tracking, measurement, accountability, increased customer touch points - into the physical world. Join Reveal Mobile, Thinfilm and the MMA for a webinar (July 20) providing an introduction for marketers, brands, retailers and agencies to help build a framework for thinking about IoT and the opportunities that exist. Attendees will leave with an understanding of why IoT matters to consumers (and therefore their organization) through numerous case studies and additional uses cases.

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The MMA Smarties Awards is the only global mobile-marketing awards program honoring innovation, creativity and success. New this year, the MMA Smarties Index, developed in partnership with WARC, will analyze winner and finalist campaign data from all the Smarties programs around the world to identify and rank the industry’s agencies, marketers and brands delivering the biggest business impact. Trust us – you'll want to be on this list.

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