While Facebook's stock price continues to drop, the number of acquisitions is steadily increasing.  From Instagram to Karma, Facebook has been busy the last few months, and according to TheNextWeb, rumors have been swirling that another acquisition could be underway. Face.com, a facial recognition tool, is the alleged acquisition target.  Deeming itself "The world’s largest and most accurate face recognition platform," Face.com works seamlessly to tag users' friends on Facebook and has a mobile app entitled KLICK, and a Facebook app, Photo Tagger.   Tech blog, Newsge [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Facebook | Facebook: Acquisitions

In my last article, I wrote about getting back to the core of digital marketing effectiveness by focusing on the consumer.  That article was focused on the “why” of this issue -- namely, the massive digital divide between consumers engaging in real-time across channels and the marketers who are trying to reach and engage them, but often using digital marketing practices that are largely siloed and not executing in real-time. Today, we move past the problem and focus in on the “how” -- how to bridge that divide and reshape the current digital landscape. First, a short recap of the c [...]

Related Topics: Analytics | Analytics & Marketing Column | Channel: Analytics

Governments that had previously closed the book on Street View privacy investigations appear to be considering "round two," in the wake of the FCC report that asserted that the personal data collected was not inadvertent but intentional. Privacy regulators in both the UK and Australia are now considering reopening Street View privacy cases that were previously closed. Several other European nations had concluded similar investigations with either no penalties or relatively minor fines assessed against Google. Those generally favorable outcomes for Google were largely based on earlier sta [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Google: International | Google: Legal | Google: Privacy | Google: Street View | Legal: Privacy | Top News

In politics, the act of drawing, reviewing and re-structuring district lines for voting purposes to ensure that like demographics are aligned is a common practice. These lines appear bizarre when viewed on a map due to the non-uniform nature of redistricting. Why don’t politicians just use ZIP codes?  Politicians learned many years ago that zip codes are not demographically sensitive. While it is fair to assume that there are some similarities with you and your immediate neighbors, within a few short blocks there are often stark contradictions across virtually every demographic data p [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Display Advertising | Display Advertising | Display Advertising Column

It was probably inevitable that Yahoo's Livestand app would be discontinued -- as was announced earlier today. Though a noble attempt, it was always a weaker product than some of its competitors, including Flipboard and Zite. Livestand was announced in November, just six months ago. Whatever strategy gave birth to Livestand, under Carol Bartz, is no longer in place at Yahoo. Blake Irving, former Yahoo Product Chief, was the one who introduced Livestand and IntoNow last year. He's no longer with the company, resigning during the short-lived Scott Thompson regime. Livestand had improve [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Top News | Yahoo: Business Issues | Yahoo: Mobile

Here's our daily recap of what happened in online marketing today, as reported on Marketing Land and other places across the web. From Marketing Land: Marketing Biz: Tracking Google’s Dune StrategyThis week Google took substantial steps to ensure that it remains the dominant way in which users access the Internet both on mobile platforms and desktops. These major news items may not have gotten as much notice with the Facebook IPO and iAcquire link buying scandals. And maybe you missed funding news for GitHub, the [...] How Performance Marketing Is Influencing The Next Generati [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Marketing Day

This week Google took substantial steps to ensure that it remains the dominant way in which users access the Internet both on mobile platforms and desktops. These major news items may not have gotten as much notice with the Facebook IPO and iAcquire link buying scandals. And maybe you missed funding news for GitHub, the acquisition of PowerReviews by Bazaarvoice or launch of Keyword Lift by LivePerson. That is ... unless you're reading Marketing Biz. Google gets China OK to buy Motorola The approval brings the Internet search giant closer to sealing its biggest acquisition ever. Bu [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Marketing Biz

There have been several interesting announcements in the last week for the next wave of internet startups. While Facebook’s IPO and subsequent lawsuit has been at the forefront, social sharing site Pinterest made a splash last week when they announced raising $100 million from Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten. Rakuten, the parent company Buy.com and Linkshare, has deep roots in internet retailing and performance marketing. In an interview, the CEO of Rakuten said that Pinterest is growing exponentially in Japan, and that he wants Rakuten to grow with Pinterest to become the payment [...]

Related Topics: Affiliate Marketing | Affiliate Marketing Column | Channel: Content Marketing

Earlier this month, Google+ was re-tuned for the iPhone.  Now it's Android's turn.  The newest version of Google+ for Android features a bigger, richer style and new highly requested features from users.  Version 2.6 can be downloaded from Google Play and comes equipped with the following improvements. Bigger Images Now Google+ posts highlight the media included in the post with a subtle textual overlay of content on top: This does seem to slow the app down a bit while the bigger images have to load.  Any post without media simply defaults to black text on a white backround. Nav [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Google | Google: Google+

Here's another sign of Tumblr's growth: The blogging network/platform has cracked comScore's chart of the Top 50 U.S. web properties for the first time. ComScore's April 2012 report credits Tumblr with 23.5 million visitors during the month, which is good enough for No. 47 on the list. As you can see on the full chart below, that still leaves it behind sites like Netflix and MySpace (Nos. 41 and 42, respectively), but ahead of retail giant Target. Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook and AOL comprise the top five, just as they did in March (and for some time before that, as I recall). Her [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Content Marketing | Statistics: Popularity & Usage | Top News | Tumblr

Facebook is working with developers and agencies to offer premium ad inventory in a more automated way -- through its API and desktop Power Editor campaign management software, a company spokesperson confirms. And ClickZ is reporting that it's the first step toward making these ad types -- previously only available via a relationship with a Facebook salesperson -- available on its self-service interface. Currently, self-service (read: smaller) advertisers can buy certain types of ads and sponsored stories, but others are limited to larger advertisers and agencies, who work directly with sal [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Facebook | Facebook: Advertising | Social Media Marketing

Here's our daily recap of what happened in online marketing today, as reported on Marketing Land and other places across the web. From Marketing Land: Facebook’s Promoted Posts Rolling Out, Here’s What It Looks LikeFacebook has begun rolling out Promoted Posts, a new tool that lets Page owners spend money to show status updates to more fans. At the moment, we can use Promoted Posts from our Marketing Land page, but it’s not available to us on Search Engine Land’s page, which has about seven times more “Likes.” Only [...] Facebook Launches Standalo [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Marketing Day

Facebook has begun rolling out Promoted Posts, a new tool that lets Page owners spend money to show status updates to more fans. At the moment, we can use Promoted Posts from our Marketing Land page, but it's not available to us on Search Engine Land's page, which has about seven times more "Likes." Only new status updates can be promoted this way; you can't go back to an old post and pay to promote it. If Promoted Posts is available on your Page, you'll see a new "Promote" button below the empty status update box. Note: You have to be using Facebook as the Page in order to see this. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Facebook | Facebook: Advertising | Facebook: Pages | Social Media Marketing | Social Media Marketing: Advertising | Top News

Later today, Facebook Camera will be available as a standalone app for the iPhone. That's probably great news for a lot of Facebook users, but on a bigger scale, Google+ and Flickr probably have good reason to be worried. As shown in Facebook's announcement, the new Camera app will allow both photo sharing and consumption. Users can publish multiple photos at once, rather than posting one photo at a time. They can tag friends, add a location and/or include a description. There's also a few photo editing tools -- cropping, rotating and so forth. Or, they can use the app to browse through and [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Facebook | Facebook: Apps & App Center | Facebook: Mobile | Google: Google+ | Pinterest | Top News | Yahoo: Flickr

Research firm IDC is out with Q1 global smartphone estimates. These are shipments and not sales estimates. However the striking thing is that the market is totally dominated by Android and iOS. The former has about 60 percent share and iOS has 23 percent. The estimates don't include tablets/iPads however. Source: IDC Windows is seen shipping more units than last year; but, again, this is not indicative of sales. The platform has seen some sales success this year but not uniformly across markets. Compare Gartner global smartphones numbers below, which are generally consistent wi [...]

Related Topics: Apple: iOS | Channel: Strategy | Google: Android | Statistics: Market Share | Statistics: Mobile Marketing | Statistics: Popularity & Usage | Top News

Too many marketers are relying on clicks and CTR as mobile success metrics. While CTR has validity in PC search campaigns, clicks are a lazy or sloppy metric in mobile that don't tell you that much about how your campaign is actually performing (in most cases).  It's therefore critical to go beyond the click and look at a range of metrics to gain a true sense of mobile ROI. Comparing Mobile Ad Networks Let me illustrate with a real-world example. In addition to my role as an editor here, I also work as an analyst with a firm in San Francisco called Opus Research. Late last year we sought to [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile Marketing | Mobile Marketing | Mobile Marketing Column

 Most analyses of General Motors' pulling of its $10 million Facebook ad spend last week focused on the shortcomings of the social network -- the ads aren't immersive and engaging, the tracking isn't what it should be. Perhaps that's understandable in a week when the world's critical eyes were on the 8-year-old company that was set to go public at a $104 billion market valuation. Criticism has only heated up this week with a lawsuit over whether big investors were given access to information that smaller investors lacked. But many seasoned Facebook marketers were stunned at GM's report [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Facebook: Advertising | Features & Analysis | Top News

Here's our daily recap of what happened in online marketing today, as reported on Marketing Land and other places across the web. From Marketing Land: Google Scores Total Victory Against Oracle In Patent SuitAccording to reports just coming out, the jury in the Oracle-Google trial has found that Google did not infringe any of Oracle’s patents with Android. Thus there are no damages that Google must pay to Oracle. This is near total victory for Google. In an earlier phase of the trial Google was found by the jury [...] Content Marketing: What Kind of Content?Sure, content marke [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Marketing Day

According to reports just coming out, the jury in the Oracle-Google trial has found that Google did not infringe any of Oracle's patents with Android. Thus there are no damages that Google must pay to Oracle. This is near total victory for Google. In an earlier phase of the trial Google was found by the jury to have violated Oracle's copyright in using some Java code in Android APIs. However, the jury deadlocked on the question of Google's defense of "fair use." The status of that portion of the trial is still unresolved. Final determinations about the copyright issues will be mad [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile Marketing | Google: Android | Google: Legal | Google: Mobile | Legal: General | Legal: Patents

Sure, content marketing means developing content around your business, your products and your services. But content isn’t supposed to exist in a you-oriented void. Content is targeted externally; at customers, prospects, buyers, brand advocates, bloggers, the media, people participating in social networks, even potentially employees (if you’re recruiting). So the first rule of knowing what kind of content you’ll create is knowing who you’re creating it for. This will not only help  determine what kind of content, but also in what form and where content will appear. Blogs? YouTub [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Content Marketing | Content Marketing | Content Marketing Column