There's an undercurrent of hostility in the marketing world this week. Google and Apple continue to joust, sending not-so-subtle messages about their intentions. There was also news that teens might not be liking (pun intended) Facebook as much as they once did. Ditto goes for Bret Taylor, Facebook CTO, who is leaving the company this summer. Finally, Dave Winer joins a chorus of folks who are mad at ICANN. Not everyone was mad though, as we saw two fairly high profile acquisitions in the digital marketing vertical. Congrats to AKQA and Econsultancy. Google Offers app now available o [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Marketing Biz

What's next for the social network that has 900 million users? An ad network like Google's AdSense, many believe. And today, InsideFacebook spotted the first hints of what such a thing might look like. On Zynga.com, the independent web presence of the gaming company whose apps also populate Facebook, users are now seeing Sponsored Stories ads. Clicking on "Sponsored" takes you to an FAQ page that explains: When you connect with Facebook on Zynga.com, you'll see personalized ads and sponsored stories. The Facebook ads you see on Zynga are the same ads you see on Facebook.com. You'll [...]

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

Have no fear, the next time you make an errant comment on Facebook you won't have to delete it forever.  Facebook rolled out comment editing along with a history of edits.  Rival Google+ has had this popular functionality since its inception, something that appears to be used with regularity. Editing a Facebook comment is simple, but currently must be performed on the web version -- no support for mobile or webiste comment widgets exists.  A nice feature with the comment editing system is that a comment history will also accompany all comments so the initial context can still be found. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Uncategorized

Following the success of its NASCAR hashtag page earlier this month, Twitter has just launched another sports-themed hashtag page -- this one for Euro 2012, the European Football Championship. It's another step for Twitter in the direction of content curation and, beyond that, becoming something of a media source in its own right. With hashtag pages, Twitter uses a combination of algorithms and human editors that surface "the best and most relevant Tweets from commentators, broadcasters, journalists, players, former players" and others. Twitter is already where folks like this are crea [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Social Media Marketing | Social Media Marketing: Hashtags | Top News | Twitter

Taciturn is a word sometimes used to describe Google CEO Larry Page. However that took on new meaning yesterday as the company announced that Page was ill and had lost his voice. These voice problems were blamed for his absence at a shareholder meeting yesterday. At the meeting a new class of non-voting Google stock was approved. Page will also reportedly miss next week's important Google developer conference in San Francisco. However Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt is a more than capable surrogate as is Google co-founder Sergey Mikhaylovich Brin. Apparently the Google CEO will also [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Business Issues

I had coffee with the affiliate manager of a local retailer recently and we talked about some of the challenges facing internet retailers, whether they're managing an established or mature affiliate program. Early stage affiliate programs are often a new revenue stream contributing to ecommerce growth, a lead generation mechanism for your sales force, or a medium to increase new user signups and subscriptions -- very exciting stuff that everybody in your company loves to hear about. But what happens when your affiliate program has lost its “new car smell” and the proverbial honeymoon [...]

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

British footballers Jack Wilshere and Wayne Rooney recently tweeted about their resolution to #makeitcount, a new Nike campaign slogan.  However, in the process of making it count, they forgot to make it sponsored: The advertising watchdog Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) took heed to the tweets as they failed to make the sponsorship clear and "obviously identifiable."  The ASA stated the following about the #Nike tweets: "We considered there was nothing obvious in the tweets to indicate they were Nike marketing communications." The tweets were found to breach the advertising [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Social Media Marketing | Social Media Marketing: Advertising | Top News | Twitter: Advertising

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: WPP Bets Big On Digital Future With AKQA AcquisitionWPP PLC, the world’s largest advertising company, has added one of the last and largest independent digital agencies, AKQA, to its ranks, agreeing to purchase the firm for a reported $540 million. The purchase price, if correct, makes it one of the largest digital advertising agency acquisitions. The San-Francisco-based agency will remain an freestanding unit [...] Twitter Deni [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Marketing Day

[caption id="attachment_15024" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Chairman Tom Bedecarré and Founder and CEO Ajaz Ahmed"][/caption] WPP PLC, the world's largest advertising company, has added one of the last and largest independent digital agencies, AKQA, to its ranks, agreeing to purchase the firm for a reported $540 million. The purchase price, if correct, makes it one of the largest digital advertising agency acquisitions. The San-Francisco-based agency will remain an freestanding unit within the holding company and will retain its leadership -- founder and CEO Ajaz Ahmed and Ch [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Display Advertising | Display Advertising | Internet Marketing Industry | Internet Marketing Industry: Acquisitions | Social Media Marketing: Advertising | Top News

Twitter says hackers were not involved in the outages that have plagued the service on and off today. Twitter said that the outage was caused by "a cascaded bug in one of our infrastructure components." Twitter later explained, also via tweet, that a cascaded bug "has an effect that isn't confined to a particular software element; its effect 'cascades' into other elements as well." Mashable has reported that a group of hackers called UGNazi is claiming credit for bringing Twitter down today. @RT_com @YourAnonNews @AnonopsSweden We just #TangoDown'd twitter.com for 40 minutes worldwide [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Top News | Twitter

Pinterest is now adding specific attribution for several more sites when images and other content are saved/shared by its users. According to the company's blog post, photos from Etsy and 500px, along with content from Kickstarter, Slideshare and SoundCloud are now displaying direct credit to each source. Pinterest users aren't able to change or remove the attribution. All new pins are being attributed to these sites, and Pinterest also says it'll go back and add it to previous pins, too. Here's what it looks like for pins from Etsy. These sites join Flickr, YouTube, Behance and V [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Pinterest | Pinterest: Legal

Next Tuesday, June 26, at 1 PM EDT, Search Engine Land's Elisabeth Osmeloski and PhoCusWright's Carroll Rheem will co-present "Search, Social & Mobile - What Travel Marketers Must Know," a free webcast about online travel and search. The webcast is aimed at travel marketers and will include topics such as how consumers are searching for travel information today, in light of the rapid growth of social media and mobile devices; what travel marketers need to know in order to succeed in today's online environment; and how to exploit social and mobile to improve search marketing success in the t [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | SMX & DMD Alerts

There were two big announcements this week coming out of Microsoft: the Surface tablet PC and the new mobile OS, Windows Phone 8, which will be closely aligned with the desktop version of 8. At the same time the company announced that it had reached 100,000 mobile apps for the Windows Phone. What now comes into clearer focus is Microsoft's larger integrated PC-mobile push. This is Microsoft's "one-two punch" and effort -- last ditch according to some -- to slow the iPad and deterioration of the PC market and re-insert itself into the consumer conversation. Is This "Desperation" or a Bold N [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile Marketing | Features & Analysis | Microsoft: Mobile | Microsoft: Surface | Top News

Twitter is planning to expand its advertising products to as many as 50 countries by the end of this year. The news comes from an article in The Guardian about Jack Dorsey's and Dick Costolo's comments today at a news conference in Cannes, France. Twitter itself hasn't announced the expansion on its advertising blog yet, but The Twitter Advertising account on Twitter did retweet the Guardian's article earlier today. The Guardian says that Twitter is planning to launch three ad products -- Promoted Tweets, Promoted Accounts and Promoted Trends -- into Brazil and other Latin American count [...]

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

Twitter is apparently down. Its engineers are working on the problem now according to a blog post (on Tumblr). There's no word on what caused the outage or when the site will be back up. Twitter simply times out when you try and load it. It's unclear how widespread the outage is or when the problem first occurred. I've been unable to access Twitter for the past hour or so. According to the company's most recent stats, Twitter has 500 million registered users and 140 million active users (with roughly 60 percent active on mobile). Most of them are probably asking the question: Now [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Twitter

Traditional advertisers often find Facebook daunting. Social media marketing is the future, that is certain, but transitioning established advertising strategy to new media can be a challenge. It’s worth it: with over 900 million people at your disposal, the possibilities are nearly limitless. The breadth of data available through Facebook and the versatility of its ad units allow marketers to customize solutions for any type of client, whether a Fortune 100 brand or a local mom and pop hardware store. At the same time, it can be a bit overwhelming. Facebook isn't like other type [...]

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

Two recent mobile case studies illustrate how marketers that make thoughtful investments in the mobile user experience and take mobile advertising seriously are reaping early rewards vs. their competitors. The two cases I discuss below involve Starwood Hotels & Resorts and Time Warner Cable. It’s already well documented that mobile ads are today driving higher conversions at a lower customer acquisition cost than ads on the PC. This is equally true in paid search. It remains the case, however, that most marketers are “not valuing mobile correctly, not bidding correctly,” accord [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile Marketing | Mobile Marketing Column

Six months ago mobile was one of Facebook's weakest areas.  Today it is one of their brightest and most promising sectors.  Facebook has been beefing up its mobile presence with the purchase of Instagram, the integration to iOS6, the launch of App center & Facebook camera, and a heavy mobile ad push (that actually work).  Today that reaches out even further with the mobilization of the open graph "Like" button. Users will now be able to like content directly within an app for an integrated experience.  The following examples show the seamless integration of Likes on the Instagram [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Facebook | Facebook: Mobile | Mobile Marketing | Social Media Marketing | Top News

For an average sender, triggered campaigns make up a low percentage of overall email volume, typically less than 5%. But don’t let the low percentage throw you. In a well-conceived and well-managed program, that 5% can be responsible for 20% or more of your email marketing revenue. In most organizations, these “low-volume, high ROI” triggers take standard forms — welcome messages, order confirmations, rating and reviews requests, abandoned shopping cart notifications, etc. But by dedicating some time and resources to incrementally raising the level of sophistication of you [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Email Marketing | Email Marketing Column

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 Marketing Effectiveness Backed By Two Of Its Biggest AdvertisersJust days ahead of Facebook’s IPO, GM dropped Facebook Ads citing that they weren’t effective. While Facebook lost that $10 million dollar account lost last month, today Facebook gathered support from their two largest advertisers, Ford and Coca-Cola. Both brands stated that Facebook ads bring value to their marketing efforts. painting a much [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Marketing Day