Search engine and social optimization software provider SEOMoz announced today they are undergoing a major rebranding initiative and changing their name to Moz, in addition to launching their newest software solution Moz Analytics. According to Moz CEO Rand Fishkin, the company has evolved beyond an SEO software company, now offering a more broad set of marketing tools. "While SEO remains a key part of our product," says Fishkin in a release announcing the company's name change, "It's no longer transparent or authentic to say we're purely an SEO software company.” Not only is SEOmoz no [...]

Related Topics: Analytics | Branding | Channel: Industry | Marketing Tools: Analytics | Search Marketing

Social media has, since its introduction, created a conundrum for marketers: how do we measure success? It’s all well and good to gain followers and likes, but what does that really mean in terms of bottom-line impact? Pinterest, the latest addition to the social set, introduces a whole new set of opportunities, as well as a whole new set of questions. Don't Think Of It As A Social Platform The best way to look at Pinterest is not as a social platform. Don’t think about developing a “Pinterest Strategy.”  Consider Pinterest a media channel for content marketing. The social aspect [...]

Related Topics: Branding | Channel: Social Media | Marketing Tools: Social Media | Pinterest | Pinterest: Analytics | Social Media Marketing | Social Media Marketing Column

Apple is once again listed as the most valuable brand on earth, while Google inched closer to the top spot and Microsoft fell out of the top five in the 2013 Brandz Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands. This is the eighth year that Brandz has compiled its list, which comes from research involving two million consumers and more than 10,000 brands, the company says. Apple tops the list again this year, with Google moving up from third place to second. Microsoft was ranked fifth last year, but fell to seventh this time around. IBM, at No. 3, is the fourth technology company in the top 10. [...]

Related Topics: Amazon | Apple | Branding | Channel: Industry | eBay | Facebook | Google | Microsoft | Samsung | Top News | Yahoo

Facebook's Creative Council evaluated hundreds of Facebook ad campaigns submitted by brands and agencies from across the globe to select winners for the 2013 Facebook Studio Awards. This year's top winner was Oreo, taking home the Blue Award for the Oreo Daily Twist Campaign, a social program that marked Oreo's 100th Birthday Celebration by posting 100 pieces of social content referencing culturally-relevant events in 100 days. This was the second year Facebook hosted their Studio Awards. Both years, the award levels have included Blue, Gold, Silver and Bronze Awards, all given to campaigns [...]

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

After launching new looks for Windows and Office last year, Microsoft is working toward rebranding additional products, including Bing, Skype and Xbox. During a presentation at the Norwegian Design Council Design Day event on April 17, creative directors from Wolff Olins played a video that revealed what appears to be a new Bing logo. "Other brands are coming along too," said Wolff Olins creative director Todd Simmons during his joint presentation on re-imagining Microsoft's brands with fellow creative director Albert Shum, "Bing, Skype, Yammer, Xbox...everything is under development as wel [...]

Related Topics: Branding | Channel: Search Marketing | Microsoft: Bing | Microsoft: Business Issues

If only Epicurious had been using Social Flow or Buffer, it might've avoided the headaches associated with social media's latest tragedy-related faux pas. But it appears the food-lover's website wasn't using either of those social management services, and sent out a couple tweets on Tuesday that looked like an attempt at self-promotion in the aftermath of a terrible event. Twitter user Thomas Powell seems to have been the first to notice (that's his image above), and coverage on other websites has quickly picked up steam, as is always the case when brands take this route with their s [...]

Related Topics: Branding | Channel: Strategy | Features & Analysis | Marketing Tools: Social Media | Social Media Marketing | Top News | Twitter

Video technology company Unruly released a Social Video Quarterly Report for Q1 2013 today, the first in a new series of quarterly reports measuring social video advertising trends. According to their findings, the Entertainment sector won 28.7 percent of total shares for social videos, followed by the FMCG/CPG, Tech and Automotive sectors. The two entertainment video campaigns that drove the most shares were a set of two trailers for the movie Fast & Furious 6, which generated a combined 4,090,803 shares and Fox's ad for the 'Homer Shake' episode of the The Simpsons which garnered 568, [...]

Related Topics: Branding | Channel: Video | Marketing Tools: Analytics | Marketing Tools: Social Media | Social Media Marketing: Advertising | Statistics: Online Advertising | Statistics: Social Media | Top News | Video

With its launch today at the 2013 ad:tech Summit, Blab claims to be the first commercial platform to predict social media conversations up to 72 hours before they happen. Applying algorithms that analyze text, images, and videos from more than 50,000 real-time data sources, Blab organizes billions of conversations to predict future conversations within 24, 48 and 72-hour windows. Designed using a SaaS platform, marketers access Blab's Conversation Canvas dashboard to find opportunities and threats in real-time, making it possible to devise strategies and develop content based on future conv [...]

Related Topics: Branding | Channel: Strategy | Marketing Tools: Social Media | Social Media Marketing | Social Media Marketing: Hashtags

Chartbeat, a provider of web-analytics software, is on a mission to convince publishers that below-the-fold ad opportunities may be more valuable than top of page ad placements. Using a cross-section of data from publishers in their network, Chartbeat found that web visitors are only engaged for a few seconds at the top of the page, while 66 percent of a visitor's Engaged Time over a 24-hour period happened below-the-fold, the area of a page not visible when the page is opened in a browser. According to Chartbeat, their Engaged Time metric is a more effective way to measure visitor activ [...]

Related Topics: Branding | Channel: Display Advertising | Display Advertising

Nielsen, a global information and measurement company, collaborated with Sharethrough, a native advertising company, on a performance study comparing the brand-building effectiveness of native video ads against pre-roll video ad units. The study found native video ads, user-initiated content-based videos contextually integrated into a site's natural experience, to be more effective at driving brand lift metrics than the industry standard pre-roll video ads that auto-play before user-selected video content. To conduct the study, Sharethrough worked with five advertisers, creating native a [...]

Related Topics: Branding | Channel: Video | Video

Findings from a recent survey conducted by Harris Interactive and inContact, a provider of cloud contact center software, prove companies cannot rely on brand loyalty when it comes to keeping existing customers or winning new ones. The survey, conducted online February 11 through February 13, 2013 using a nationwide sample of 2,191 U.S. adults aged 18 years and older, examined changing consumer behavior trends and customer service preferences. Survey findings confirmed that consumers are less likely to make buying decisions based on brand loyalty, and more likely to choose a company that of [...]

Related Topics: Branding | Channel: Strategy | Features & Analysis | Statistics: General

You've probably heard this before: Business.com has recently launched a new brand, a new website and new products that aim to extend the company's appeal to both B2B marketers and buyers. The site has gone through a number of changes over the years since its founding in 1999, but the new Business.com is more of a matchmaking service than it's been before. The new home page walks B2B buyers into the process of selecting a provider and asks questions along the way to help the site connect the user with the best matching vendors. "We do see ourselves as the e-Harmony for small-to-medium ent [...]

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We all know the day of multi-device and cross-screen usage is here. The challenge for marketers is to understand how to communicate effectively with consumers as they engage with multiple devices simultaneously and sequentially throughout the day. A new study commissioned by Microsoft, titled Cross-Screen Engagement, aims to help marketers learn how users are engaging with multiple screens and to find opportunities to reach consumers "in their moment". In the two-phase study, Flamingo Research and Ipsos OTX interviewed consumers in five markets—Australia, Brazil, Canada, the UK and t [...]

Related Topics: Branding | Channel: Display Advertising | Display Advertising | Features & Analysis | Internet Marketing Industry: Stats | Microsoft | Mobile Marketing | Search Marketing | Social Media Marketing | Statistics | Statistics: Mobile Marketing | Statistics: Online Advertising | Statistics: Online Behavior | Statistics: Popularity & Usage | Top News

Yesterday, it was Burger King. Earlier today it was Jeep. And now it's MTV. It's a brand marketer's nightmare -- getting your Twitter account hacked. About a half hour ago, the MTV account tweeted "MMM. THIS BURGER TASTES GOOD!!!!!!!!!! #MTVHACK." MTV is the third major brand account that has been hijacked this week. The account was temporarily branded as the BET Experience, a live music event in Los Angeles. It's not confirmed if promoters of the event hacked the account. Sine then, the MTV Twitter seems to have been frozen, and the BET Experience branding removed. Earlier to [...]

Related Topics: Branding | Channel: Strategy | Twitter | Twitter: Accounts & Profiles

Despite arguments that four million dollars are better spent online than on a Super Bowl commercial, there's rarely an advertising opportunity that can raise awareness of your brand and get people talking like a Super Bowl commercial done right. From kick off until final play, I tracked 42 brands and 53 commercials with an eye toward how those brands might be tracking success. Did they want viewers to talk about their brand? Visit their web site? Go online to see the commercial again? Or just go out and buy the product? Eight of the ads had no calls to action at all, so apparently the ad [...]

Related Topics: Branding | Channel: Strategy | Facebook | Features & Analysis | Social Media Marketing: Hashtags | Statistics: Social Media | Top News | Twitter

While it appeared to me that she was still lip-syncing yesterday, Beyonce Knowles was one of the big winners of yesterday's social media buzz bowl. The not-so-single lady's celebrated halftime performance generated more than 250,000 tweets per minute (TPMs). Overall, according to Twitter, her performance drove 5.5 million tweets -- and perhaps shut down power at the stadium for a half hour thereafter. Other top TPM winners were the following: Power outage: 231,500 TPM 108-yard kickoff return for Ravens TD by Jones: 185,000 TPM Clock expires; Ravens win: 183,000 TPM Jones catch [...]

Related Topics: Branding | Channel: Industry | Facebook | Facebook: Business Issues | Features & Analysis | Social Media Marketing | Statistics: Online Behavior | Statistics: Popularity & Usage | Twitter | Twitter: Business Issues | Twitter: Statistics

The Baltimore Ravens just beat the San Francisco 49ers to win Super Bowl XLVII in a game that came down to the final seconds. But online, the social network showdown belonged to Twitter in a dominating win over Facebook, Google+ and all other social networks. According to my count, Twitter was mentioned in 26 of 52 national TV commercials -- that's 50 percent of the spots that aired during CBS' game coverage. Facebook was mentioned in only four of those commercials -- about eight percent. Google+, which is reportedly the No. 2 social network in the world, wasn't mentioned at all. YouTube [...]

Related Topics: Branding | Channel: Industry | Facebook | Facebook: Instagram | Facebook: Marketing | Facebook: Pages | Features & Analysis | Google | Google: Google+ | Google: Marketing | Social Media Marketing | Social Media Marketing: Hashtags | Statistics: General | Statistics: Social Media | Top News | Twitter | Twitter: Marketing

Thanks to super-fast reactions, at least three brands were able to "newsjack" the power outage that hit the Super Bowl early in the third quarter of today's game. With the Ravens up by a score of 28-6, and a 49ers third-down play just about to begin, the lights inside the stadium went out, causing a somewhat lengthy delay that's still ongoing as I type this. Several brands saw the power outage as a chance to market themselves in clever ways on Twitter, which is no doubt experiencing new, all-time usage levels for a sporting event. Oreo, which ran a commercial earlier in the TV broadca [...]

Related Topics: Branding | Channel: Strategy | Features & Analysis | Social Media Marketing | Top News | Twitter

A recent survey from research firm Gartner estimates that by 2014, 10-15% of all reviews left by users on social media sites will be paid for by the companies themselves. While this isn't a new phenomenon, companies may not see the potential downfalls of going overboard when it comes to paid social media interactions and reviews. There is a right way and a wrong way to work with online users to generate content about a business in exchange for cash. For instance, working with well-trafficked bloggers on a paid review campaign that lets them give their honest feedback is a great way to gener [...]

Related Topics: Branding | Channel: Strategy | Facebook | Social Media Marketing | Social Media Marketing Column | Social Media Marketing: Spam

To date, branding has often been associated with billboards, magazine spreads and million-dollar TV spots. In online advertising, this translates to large media buys with premium publishers, including spots such as site sponsorships and homepage takeovers. However, where do data and ad targeting fit into the branding equation? Is there a place for branding campaigns within the world of ad targeting and real-time media buying? The answer is yes. Large brands such as Proctor & Gamble (P&G) and Unilever have already commented publicly about moving brand dollars to digital -- crediti [...]

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