I’ve heard no greater example of self indulgence than Twitter CEO Dick Costolo’s nausea-inducing claim that 2012 was going to be the year of the Twitter election. (He spoke at the recent All Things Digital event in Southern California.) Amid the Google/Twitter separation mishigas (read: Twitter’s finger pointing) the notion of Twitter as a communication vehicle should […]
I’m often amazed at how naive companies can be about their online testing efforts. The bigger the company, it seems, the more disconnect there can be between the talented optimization team and the senior management. And that, as you might guess, often ends up undermining the revenue and efficiency improvements that come from continuous testing. […]
Google’s been taking fire for Microsoft accusing it of overriding Internet Explorer privacy controls. But Google’s now out with a response: the controls are out-dated, “impractical” to follow and ignored by other companies besides Google, including Facebook, some of Microsoft’s own sites and over 10,000 others. I’m on vacation this week, so I won’t be […]
Here’s our daily recap of what happened in online marketing today, as reported on MarTech and other places across the web. From Marketing Land: Microsoft: Google Is Bypassing Internet Explorer Privacy Settings, Too More trouble for Google today on the privacy front: Just days after revelations that Google is ignoring privacy settings on Apple’s Safari […]
More trouble for Google today on the privacy front: Just days after revelations that Google is ignoring privacy settings on Apple’s Safari web browser, Microsoft says Google is doing the same thing with Internet Explorer. Microsoft shares its findings in a blog post this morning: When the IE team heard that Google had bypassed user […]
As the noise continues to grow surrounding Pinterest and its potential legal headaches, the image-based social network has taken a small step toward placating website owners concerned with potential copyright violations. As LL Social pointed out yesterday, Pinterest is supporting a “nopin” meta tag that will prevent users from pinning images directly from the site […]
While Google will tell you that Latitude has millions of users, what the company doesn’t generally talk about is how many of those people are actively engaged with the product. The consensus appears to be that Latitude is languishing. However Mountain View has been tweaking, enhancing and updating Latitude to breathe new life into it. […]
Fire your marketing department! Social media is free! Have you heard the news? It’s been trumpeted recently in no end of misleading, link-baity headlines such as these: P&G To Lay Off 1,600 After Discovering It’s Free To Advertise On Facebook P&G slashes marketers in lieu of free social media P&G CEO Discovers Social Media Marketing […]
There’s nothing like a white-hot economy, or a white-hot sector, to create marketing geniuses. Notice that there are a lot of well-known social media geniuses these days. The financial service sector seems to have a shortage of them. Which is not to say there are none. It’s my belief that the very smart executives shine […]
From the beginning, Facebook has been about a community of real people and has used everything from .edu email addresses to mobile verification for support. Now Facebook is helping top users (those with the most subscribers) gain more prominence by verifying their account with physical IDs. TechCrunch announced that Facebook is inviting “prominent public figures” to […]
As Google+ keeps on growing, brands are now reaping the benefits of getting involved early. In a recent report from BrightEdge, a massive growth spurt for top brands was uncovered. Compared to December’s numbers, the number of people with top 100 Google+ brands, in their circles was up over 1400% in February. In December the […]
If you still don’t get how much Google is behind ensuring Google+ gets everything it needs to succeed, consider the screenshot below, showing how for the first time ever, Google’s home page now lets you do something other than search. You can share. Social is now coequal with search. Search, Meet Share OK, perhaps the […]
The average Internet user in the U.S. spent 36 hours online in January. That won’t seem like much to those of us who reached 36 hours online by January 3rd, but comScore says it’s a new record for Internet usage. That stat comes from comScore’s latest ranking of US web sites, which shows that January […]
Here’s our daily recap of what happened in online marketing today, as reported on MarTech and other places across the web. From Marketing Land: Marketing Biz: Yahoo CEO Trashes Product Team, Can AOL Patch Patch?, New Searchmetrics Backlink Analysis Tool Welcome to the first edition of Marketing Biz, a new weekly column dedicated to business-related […]
Welcome to the first edition of Marketing Biz, a new weekly column dedicated to business-related news and announcements in online marketing. Each Friday we’ll deliver the most interesting news items in the past week coupled with a quick take and perspective. Marketing business news for the week revolved around the accelerating changes in search, social, […]
From the you-could-see-it-coming-a-mile-away department: U.S. lawmakers, privacy watchdogs and consumer protection groups want Google to explain why it’s been bypassing user privacy settings on Apple’s Safari web browser. The story surfaced late last night in the Wall Street Journal, and has spread quickly — not surprisingly, considering the long-running discussion about Google and privacy and, […]
One of the most common questions I’m asked is how to evaluate a niche from an SEO based affiliate perspective before diving head first into it. We all know the obvious – check traffic volume for keywords in the niche using your favorite keyword research tool. But just because there is traffic, it doesn’t necessarily […]
Earlier this month, Google did a post to bust myths that it felt were being spread about the company regarding privacy. First on the list was from an ad run against Google by FairSearch. Google even later updated its post to say the FairSearch ad had been pulled as “inaccurate.” As it turns out, the […]
Back in November, Google officially launched brand pages for Google+. While they started were launched with limited features, brand pages have evolved to allow for multiple admins, add users into circles and become verified. One of the surprisingly underutilized elements pages is the lack of verification. There still seems to be some confusion around the […]
The Wall Street Journal is out with a story about how Google has been “bypassing the privacy settings of millions of people” who use Apple’s Safari web browser, along with a headline about “Google’s iPhone tracking.” More accurately, Google’s been bypassing Safari’s default privacy settings that block certain types of cookies rather than overriding what […]
Some small businesses can register now for access to Twitter’s self-serve advertising platform, which will formally launch next month according to Ad Age. The program is open to American Express cardholders and merchants, and Twitter will include a $100 credit to help the first 10,000 eligible participants get started. The signup form is available at […]
Here’s our daily recap of what happened in online marketing today, as reported on MarTech and other places across the web. From Marketing Land: Pinterest Drops Skimlinks, Might Try Ads; Says Copyright Issues Not A Significant Issue Yet Pinterest has stopped using Skimlinks to monetize some of the “pins” that its users were publishing on […]
Pinterest has stopped using Skimlinks to monetize some of the “pins” that its users were publishing on the site and, in other news, the company also says that copyright issues haven’t been a “significent issue” to date. Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann has been making the rounds a bit this week (“finally,” some would say) and […]
QR (Quick Response) codes are an awesome mobile marketing tool, and are now popping up literally everywhere. Some of the methods of using QR codes today make great sense, like on a business card, so people can scan your info instead of having to type it all in. And then the placement of some QR […]
Last night Microsoft announced msnNOW, a service that aggregates content around trending topics. msnNOW allows users to choose what the hottest trends are by showing a share count for each trending topic. Other than the web presence at now.msn.com, users can interact with the msnNOW Facebook app and mobile site. What Is It? One of the […]
Some U.S. companies with Facebook pages will be able to use Facebook’s new Timeline interface at the end of this month, according to a new report. Ad Age is reporting that Facebook will launch Timeline for brands/business pages during its fMC conference in New York City on February 29th. FMC is Facebook’s first event geared […]
Two NBA teams with Google+ brand pages are adding about 10,000 new followers/circlers per day since being added to Google’s official suggested users list. The suggested users list is shown to new Google+ users during the sign-up process, and can also be seen by existing users at this URL: plus.google.com/getstarted/follow. At the moment, Google suggests […]
Here’s our daily recap of what happened in online marketing today, as reported on MarTech and other places across the web. From Marketing Land: Introducing Inbound.org: Community-Curated News For Marketers Late last week SEOmoz’s Rand Fishkin and Hubspot’s Dharmesh Shah collaborated to launch a “for fun” Hacker News-like site called Inbound.org. According to the site, […]
Late last week SEOmoz’s Rand Fishkin and Hubspot’s Dharmesh Shah collaborated to launch a “for fun” Hacker News-like site called Inbound.org. According to the site, “The goal of Inbound.org is to prevent great content from the world of inbound marketing from going unnoticed. There’s an amazing community of bloggers, marketers and enthusiasts passionate about non-paid channels like SEO, social […]
Apple is a company that rarely discounts its products. Not so with iAd, which is once again cutting prices to attract advertisers. According to AdAge, the new iAd minimum ad spend is being reduced from $500,000 to $100,000. It began at $1 million when the platform launched two years ago. Apple’s iAd was the product […]
In a study complied by Website-Monitoring.com, a few key trends about Google+ user demographics were revealed. The most eye-opening stat? 67% of all users were male. This of course is the exact opposite of most social media networking sites. Women hold the slight majority of users on Twitter, a 55% majority on Facebook, and a whopping 97% share on Pinterest. With […]
One of the driving features of Google+ has been the Circles product. A handful of enhancements are rolling out to further help users customize their connections. Sean Purcell, Google Product Manager, announced the improvements on the way Circles will work and additional ways to discover other users and brands. Circle Enhancements With the growing number of Google+ users […]
Here’s our daily recap of what happened in online marketing today, as reported on MarTech and other places across the web. From Marketing Land: Google #2, Facebook #38 In Global “Brand Desire” Study Facebook is seen by many as a threat to Google over the long term. That point can be debated at length. However […]
Facebook is seen by many as a threat to Google over the long term. That point can be debated at length. However there’s one area where Facebook appears to be no threat to Mountain View (at least in the near term): brand perception. Facebook badly lags Google in a new “brand desire” survey from UK-based […]
Worldwide sports star? Check. Top male model in the world? Check. Gorgeous, fashionable wife. Check? Advertising guru? Ok, it might be a stretch to call David Beckham an ad guru, but after H&M’s near perfect campaign execution during and after the Super Bowl, the title seems relatively fitting for the fashion brand. I’m not suggesting […]
Why do apps matter? For the first time ever, Apple’s iOS surpassed Mac OS in terms of Web browsing market share, highlighting a shift of consumers focus towards mobile. The arrival of smartphones brought with it the “application age,” a time period in which over the last few years approximately one million of third-party applications have […]
The most popular Twitter brand pages are out and the results are a mixed bag. Thanks to ZoomSphere, a social statistics firm, all of the Twitter brand pages can be tracked by popularity. Out of the top 20 pages 8 are bands/artists, 6 brands, 4 celebrities, 1 news source and 1 Government entity (The White House). The international […]
It looks like Google’s going to be in the hardware game. Both the European Union and the US Department Of Justice have cleared Google to go ahead with its planned purchase of Motorola Mobility, which makes cellphones, tablets and set-top boxes. Google Looking For Patent Protections Google announced its intention to purchase Motorola Mobility last […]
Here’s our daily recap of what happened in online marketing today, as reported on MarTech and other places across the web. From Marketing Land: 21 Percent Of Ads On News Sites Are House Ads: Pew Study Online news sites are struggling to get advertisers to move from their traditional platforms to online outlets. One of […]
Online news sites are struggling to get advertisers to move from their traditional platforms to online outlets. One of the effects of that, according to a new report from Pew’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, is that more than one in five ads on news websites are house ads. The implications are obvious to an […]