Marketing Day: Senate grills Facebook and Twitter (again), Google spoofed by fake Russian trolls & more

Here’s our recap of what happened in online marketing today, as reported on MarTech and other places across the web.

From Marketing Land:

• Virtual reality enters its ‘trough of despair’ as shipments decline
  Sep 6, 2018 by Greg Sterling
  It wouldn’t be fair to say “VR is dead,” but from a consumer electronics perspective it’s not far.
• Facebook, Twitter grilled by Senate committee; Dorsey says company may label bots
  Sep 6, 2018 by Amy Gesenhues
  While Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg and Twitter’s Jack Dorsey had very little new information to share, that could be both a blessing or a curse for advertisers.
• Using Voice Search to Transform Your Local Search Strategy
  Sep 6, 2018 by Digital Marketing Depot
  More than 43 million people in the U.S. now own a smart speaker, and, as of January 2018, there were an estimated one billion voice searches per month. Now is the time to put your Voice Engine Optimization™ (VEO) strategy in place.
• As Google opts out of Senate Intelligence hearings, group sets up Google account posing as Russian troll company — again
  Sep 6, 2018 by Ginny Marvin
  The advocacy group undermines Google’s claims that its systems are robust and can quickly detect and take down fake accounts.
• Avoid the 8 most common pitfalls of automated bidding
  Sep 6, 2018 by Frederick Vallaeys
  With more and more PPC tasks becoming automated, it’s important to understand the limitations of automation. Here are eight of the most common issues to avoid when moving from manual to automated bidding.
• Here’s how to ‘expertly’ hit a link-building home run
  Sep 6, 2018 by Jeremy Knauff
  Use expert opinions in content so when you build it, the links will come.
• Location attribution goes mainstream, as Pandora marks 400th campaign with the KPI
  Sep 6, 2018 by Greg Sterling
  Pandora seeing higher ad spending for campaigns that include offline measurement.
• Facebook’s new Flight Ads will let advertisers target users searching for flights on travel sites, apps
  Sep 6, 2018 by Amy Gesenhues
  Previously called Dynamic ads for travel for flight, the new Flight Ads let airlines and airfare apps go beyond simple retargeting ad tactics.
• Amazon streamlines ad products under new Amazon Advertising brand
  Sep 5, 2018 by Ginny Marvin
  So long, acronym soup of AMS, AMG and AAP, as those brands retire in favor of a unified strategy.

Recent Headlines From MarTech, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Marketing Technology:

• In-depth ABM: What it means to get inside of opportunity and why it’s important
  Sep 6, 2018 by Sonjoy Ganguly
  The rise of account-based marketing has spurred a shift in how marketers think about accounts. How to develop this more nuanced and effective approach.
• Customer Data Challenge: Improve martech efficiency and ROI with unified data
  Sep 6, 2018 by Digital Marketing Depot
  Unifying the data that resides in your martech stack is a huge challenge — one that costs US brands millions of dollars annually. Nearly half of marketers surveyed say data silos affect their ability to engage, support and meet customer needs; more than half say that marketing initiatives are constantly delayed by slow data integration.
• HubSpot goes offline just hours after announcing upgrades to its enterprise suite
  Sep 6, 2018 by Robin Kurzer
  The company issued a mea culpa, blaming the outage on a bug in the confirmation code that’s now been fixed.

Online Marketing News From Around The Web:

• 12 Easy Ways To Build Your Free Email List Right Now, Optin Monster
• 7 Psychology Facts That All Social Media Marketers Should Know, Buffer
• 9 Step Guide: Inbound Marketing Checklist For Cloud Startups, RavenTools
• How to Lower Cost Per View for LinkedIn Video Ads, PPCHero
• Jamesblunt.com hack. Daily SERPs, You’re Beautiful!, Sistrix
• Marketing to Baby Boomers, Infusionsoft

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily MarTech. Staff authors are listed here.

About The Author

Debra Mastaler

Debra Mastaler is an internationally recognized authority on link building and is an OMCP Certified Link Building Trainer. Based in Washington DC, Debra is also a columnist for Search Engine Land, has written for or been featured in numerous tech publications and is active on the search marketing conference circuit as a speaker and trainer. Debra serves as a judge for the Landy Awards and is the President of Alliance-Link.com. Connect with Debra on Twitter and LinkedIn to stay in touch.