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Google’s out with two big privacy pushes when it comes to Gmail today, aimed at protecting your email from prying eyes. Wait, isn’t Google one of the biggest prying eyes, reading emails for ad targeting and other purposes? Yes, but Google’s new push will even protect you from Google itself. Below, an explainer about what’s […]
Tiny search engine DuckDuckGo scored a huge victory yesterday when Apple announced DuckDuckGo would be an option included in future versions of its Safari web browser, as a privacy feature. But did DuckDuckGo pay to make that happen, as others like Google do? That’s private, and DDG can’t say. “The terms are confidential. Needless to say […]
Google’s new Right To Be Forgotten from has been up for just about a day now, and the company says that over 12,000 submissions have been received. Google confirmed the figures to Marketing Land, which had earlier been reported by Reuters. Google also said that at one point, it had been getting up to 20 […]
Who wants things removed from Google under the newly declared “right to be forgotten” in the European Union? A convicted cyberstalker, an attempted murderer, a politician, a business with bad reviews and a pedophile are among those making such requests to Google. Yesterday, the BBC noted the first three of the cases listed below. Marketing Land has […]
Hello from San Francisco. After a three-year hiatus, Facebook is once again holding its F8 Developers Conference. Kicking things off is Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, with an opening keynote. NOTE: The keynote is now over. Here are some of our formal stories out of it: Meet FAN: The Facebook Audience Network For Serving Up Mobile […]
When small businesses see Google as the “Wild Wild West” of confusing marketing opportunities, Google itself sees working with third-party companies as crucial to cutting through that confusion and fueling its growth. Google provided training to 13,000 third-party sales reps last year and aims to train 20,000 this year. The figure came during a talk […]
Rumors are that Google might be planning to kill Google+ or at least put it into a Walking Dead-like “zombie” mode, as TechCrunch characterizes it — and something Google denies. There are some good reasons for Google to do this, and potentially, it could allow Google to better fight on the new social battlefield, […]
People quickly discovered when Siri came out that asking her questions like “What’s the best computer” or saying “I love you” resulted in humorous answers. Microsoft’s new digital assistant Cortana has some wit about her, too — and there’s a serious reason for that. Microsoft’s Mike Calcagno, who oversees the Bing search platform that underpins how […]
Microsoft’s new cool Cortana personal assistant uses information from within your email to make recommendations and provide predictive suggestions. That is, unless you use Yahoo Mail. As it turns out, Microsoft is forbidden from “reasoning” on Yahoo Mail for contractual reasons. I’m still gathering more of the details, but Microsoft representatives told me that the […]
Microsoft’s annual Build Conference kicked off in San Francisco today with perhaps the biggest news for marketers being the unveiling of its “Cortana” virtual assistant, a challenger to Apple’s Siri and Google Now. In particular, Cortana — like Siri — may route searchers to particular apps or search services. For local search, Yelp now seems especially […]
It was one of the strangest things I’ve seen related to Twitter on TV. The host of a popular comedy show killing his show’s Twitter account with the help of a Twitter founder. But that’s what Stephen Colbert did with Twitter founder Biz Stone on Monday’s show, and the Colbert Report’s account is now gone. […]
For just over a year, Microsoft has been attacking Google over email privacy. Consumers are getting “Scroogled” by a Google that doesn’t respect privacy, it has said. Microsoft can now retire that Scroogled campaign. After violating the privacy of a third-party’s email account, Microsoft’s not in a position to be taking the high-road, any longer. The […]
Facebook keeps coming under fire that it’s harder for brands to get the free exposure — “earned media” — that they once got. But Facebook says it’s not so — it more a matter of adjusting how you measure your earned success. “The opportunity for earned media is still as rich as it was a […]
Samsung got huge attention when Ellen DeGeneres did her now famous Twitter-breaking all-star selfie at the Oscars. But Samsung USA’s chief marketing officer says what’s more important wasn’t that the Samsung phone was used but that Samsung helped create a moment of real joy. “The exact phone almost doesn’t matter,” said Samsung USA CMO Todd Pendleton […]
When most Americans are only ready to buy a car every three to six years, running ads on TV or in traditional media pushing an immediate purchase is largely “tone-deaf” for an audience not ready to hear. Enter digital media, as a solution. Digital, in contrast to broadcast and traditional media, allows marketers to reach […]
Yahoo’s betting big on mobile, to the degree of having increased the number of those working on mobile to 500 people — a 5-to-10-times increase since before Marissa Mayer took over as CEO. Those figures, along with other tidbits mostly heard before, were part of a keynote conversation with Mayer at the 4A’s Transformation conference — the annual […]
If content marketing is the new advertising, then advertising agencies are the new content creators. So how’s the content creation process going? “Content marketing is becoming the future of advertising,” attendees at the 4A’s Transformation conference — the annual gathering of the American Association of Advertising Agencies — were told today by Bloomberg Media Group CEO Justin Smith. As […]
When American Express CMO John Hayes entered advertising 37 years ago, media plans were simple, he says: TV, print, radio. Today, TV ads carry calls to tweet and technology keeps accelerating. How to survive as a marketer? Stay with the fundamentals, especially the ability to interpret change. Hayes gave a keynote address at the 4A’s Transformation conference today […]
BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti posted a staff memo comparing the media empire BuzzFeed is building now to media empires of the past. Don’t have time to read the entire thing, which is over 2,000 words long? That’s OK. We’ve broken it down for you into seven key points: 1. Time magazine began in the 1920s […]
Microsoft is apparently readying its own digital assistant called “Cortana,” to take on Apple’s Siri and Google Now. Hopefully, Cortana will see more love than Microsoft’s other assistant that you have probably long forgotten about. Ms. Dewey. Ms. Dewey? She was an experimental interface launched in October 2006 for Microsoft’s search engine Live Search (now […]
How do you connect your online marketing efforts to offline sales and success? That’s the focus of a panel at iMedia Content Summit involving Universal Pictures, Clorox and Nuance Digital Marketing. Our live blog below:
Where’s social media going in terms of social experience? Brand leaders are discussing this on a panel at iMedia Content Summit. Our live blog below:
Feeling lost in the world of digital marketing, with all the choices you have to make and how thing are constantly changing? Perhaps take a lesson from Hershey’s, which says it’s not doing digital marketing but instead just marketing — and staying focused on the marketing fundamentals regardless of online or offline. “We are marketing […]
Which brand had its “Oreo moment” during the Oscars? Pizza Hut tried, but Southern California’s Big Mama’s & Papa’s Pizzeria and Miller Lite won — and neither were even trying to. It’s a lesson that brands need to be ready for anything, just as much trying to “newsjack” an event. Newsjacking? These days, it’s all the […]
Samsung’s a big sponsor of the Oscars, to the degree that it even had this year’s host Ellen DeGeneres doing a record-breaking star-studded selfie with a Galaxy phone. But behind the scenes, there’s an iPhone being used. Ellen kicked off the Oscars in her monologue saying that she’d be tweeting during the show and then took […]
There’s no question that Ellen’s selfie taken during the Oscars and surrounded by celebrities has set a new record on Twitter. But the picture has proven a huge hit on Facebook, too — rivaling Twitter’s figures and perhaps heading toward a Facebook record. On Twitter, Ellen’s selfie has over 1.5 million retweets at the moment, […]
Ellen wanted to have the most retweeted photo on Twitter, and she got her wish. Within an hour after taking a star-studded selfie live during the Academy Awards, she passed Barack Obama’s record-setting tweet — and broke Twitter, as well. Here’s Ellen (well Bradley Cooper) taking the picture during the show, saying she wanted to […]
On Thursday, Google made a call for publishers to report if sites have copied or “scraped” their content and are outranking the publishers themselves. But a tweet from a marketer pointing out that Google might be doing what it’s against got far more attention that Google’s own request. The head of Google’s web spam team […]
Hot dating app Tinder is doing 750 million “swipes” per day that lead to 10 million introductions, up from 5 million matches in December. The latest stats came from Tinder founder and CEO Sean Rad, speaking at Upfront Summit, an event focused on tech and VC happening in Los Angeles and Southern California. He also shared thoughts on […]
It’s been a busy year already with big brands getting hit by Google penalties. First came Rap Genius, slammed so hard that you couldn’t find it for its own name. Then came Expedia’s suspected penalty that may have hurt its traffic. But these are also a familiar tune. Big brand violates Google’s rules, gets in trouble […]
Flappy Bird, the maddening free app that seemed to appeared out of nowhere two weeks ago, is a great lesson on how a simple “Share” button may help an app go viral or at least continue to generate buzz. And, on the eve of Flappy Bird going away forever, it also demonstrates how novelty can […]
As expected, the home page of Google France now carries a notification to users that Google was fined for privacy violations relating to the “unified” privacy policy change it made in 2012. A required link to the ruling against it might also be slowing the site of the French privacy agency. Notice Required For 2 […]
Last year, Oreo had its big moment “newsjacking” the Super Bowl, crashing in with a tweet about the event that won the buzz even though Oreo wasn’t an sponsor. This year, Oreo literally sat this one out — and JCPenney’s “mitten-garbled” tweets might have won. Twitter measurement company TweetReach says that JPC was the most-discussed non-sponsor […]
Twitter’s shared that this year’s Super Bowl generated 24.9 million tweets, more than ever before, edging out last year’s record of 24.1 million tweets — and this without a blackout or any other unexpected events other than the Seattle Seahawks’s complete stomping of the Denver Broncos. Twitter is still churning through the data, but the […]
Hashtags were used in 57 percent of nationally-run Super Bowl ads, up from 50% in 2013 and setting a new record. Facebook was the social network most mentioned, though barely. It had only five mentions and just edged past Twitter with four. The numbers are from our third annual #Hashtag Bowl count of social media […]
Brands pay big money to be in the Super Bowl because all the eyeballs watching. But the eyeballs are already watching Super Bowl ads well before the big game starts. This year, over 130 million Super Bowl-related video views have been racked up, according to video analytics company iSpot.tv. These have generated more than 1 […]
Tomorrow, we’re geared up for our annual Hashtag Bowl, a count of social media mentions in Super Bowl ads as well as a look at the ads themselves. But after reviewing the record-breaking number of Super Bowl ads already placed online, the Budweiser #BestBuds puppy ad and hashtags in general are big hits. Will that […]
He’s the star of Budweiser’s Super Bowl ad, the #BestBuds puppy that keeps running back to be with the famous Clydesdale horses. Not content with YouTube fame, the puppy started tweeting through Budweiser’s account. He’s now been housebroken to his own Budweiser Puppy account. Followers of Budweiser were perplexed with a garbled tweet appeared: xjkoweaiodsgajkse;loszdetghjkeiouqw3 […]
MetLife is running a social media campaign to raise money for Hiring Our Heroes today, an effort to help US veterans and spouses find jobs. Who could be upset about that? Me, when it’s yet another campaign — like those done by Heinz and Kelloggs — that feels more about getting social media attention than […]
Move over, Oreo. You earned kudos last year for your quick-thinking funny tweet when the 2013 Super Bowl blackout happened. But there’s a new kid in town, Arby’s, showing that roast beef can newsjack a live event as well as the sweet stuff. Last night, in response to unusual hat worn by singer Pharrell Williams at the […]