Marketing Day: February 20, 2014

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:

• Pirate Sites Earn $227 Million In Ad Revenue Per Year With Some Funded By Major Brands [Report]

  The Digital Citizens Alliance claims pirate sites earn $227 million in advertising revenue per year, with ads from major brands like Amazon, McDonalds, American Express and Ford showing up on 30 percent of the largest sites. Yesterday, TorrentFreak covered the Digital Citizens Alliance report Good Money Gone Bad: Digital Thieves and the Hijacking of the Online Ad […]

• AdRoll Launches Mobile Retargeting Solution For Cross-Device Campaigns

  Today, AdRoll announced a private beta launch of a new mobile retargeting offering that enables marketers to retarget users across devices. The mobile retargeting solution allows marketers to identify high-intent desktop users and target them across mobile devices to promote app installs and conversions on mobile optimized sites. AdRoll, currently the only ad tech that […]
• Facebook Rolling Out New Targeting Mechanics, All US Advertisers To Get Partner Categories Access

  Today, Facebook announced changes to its ad targeting features will be rolling out globally. Additionally, all advertisers in the US, including local businesses, will have access to the third-party targeting data available in Partner Categories. The new targeting options will be based on four primary targeting types: location, demographic, interest and behavior. Location: Build campaigns […]

• Will Facebook Advertisers Look Abroad? 85 Percent Of Ad Dollars Spent On Just 15 Percent Of Users [Study]

  While just 15 percent of global Facebook users are in North America, the region accounts for nearly half (48 percent) of the Facebook advertising spend. In a new report that analyzed over 200 Facebook marketers, Marin Software says advertisers are under investing in Facebook in regions outside of North America. North America’s user share is […]

• Beckon Launches Out Of Stealth Mode To Simplify Cross-Channel Analytics & Planning

  Too much data in too many places has long been the Achilles’ heel of multi-channel marketing campaigns. Harnessing data from multiple sources, teams and formats is time-consuming and not always even that illustrative of what’s working and what’s not. Beckon is aiming to change that. Officially launching today, the company is coming out of a […]

• Location-Based Mobile Marketing Is Where It’s At For Consumers

  The ability for mobile devices to track and report a person’s location in real time with a reliable degree of accuracy has come into its own. The tendency of consumers to use that feature is increasing in popularity, as well. According to the Pew Institute, “74% of adult smartphone owners ages 18 and older say […]

• Google Analytics Now Showing Up On Google+ Page Dashboard

  According to a Google+ post from Daniel Waisberg, Google+ Page dashboards now include Google Analytics monthly metrics. “If your page is linked to a website that has Google Analytics you can now view your monthly metrics (and comparison to last month) from your Google+ dashboard,” claims Waisberg. Waisberg, an analytics advocate at Google, included a […]

• State-Level Usage Statistics: How They Can Be Leveraged

  For many brands, regionalization of marketing programs represents a key pillar to their overarching strategy. Particularly for those companies operating nationally, it’s often difficult and costly to target consumers on a very granular level. Regionalization allows marketers to look at trends across a slightly larger area — typically several adjacent states that share some cultural […]

• Boost Your Social Strategy With SEO Data

  We all know that a great social strategy can help your SEO efforts — gaining visibility and shares, helping create relationships, etc. — but thinking about things the other way around is a little bit trickier. In other words, can you use your SEO data to help improve your social media strategy? Although this method […]

• Shrewd Or Desperate: Facebook To Buy WhatsApp For $19B In Cash And Stock

  It’s mostly a stock transaction: $12 billion in Facebook shares and $3 billion more to retain WhatsApp employees over four years after closing. (It will cost Facebook only $2 billion if the deal doesn’t go through). Beyond this, WhatsApp founder/CEO Jan Koum and his fellow workers will get an additional $4 billion in cash up front. […]

Recent Headlines From Search Engine Land, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Search News & Information:

• Yandex Reports Revenue Up 37% In Q4, Ad Network Revenue Nearly Doubles
• Yahoo Gives $10 Million To Help Develop Next-Gen Siri And Better “Contextual Search”
• Expect Labs Offers Free API: Google Now In A Box
• How To Use AdWords Scripts Efficiently In Agencies And Enterprise SEM
• Bing Webmaster Guidelines Updated To Include Demotions For Keyword Stuffing
• Live @ SMX West: Making Sense Of The Local Landscape

Online Marketing News From Around The Web:

Affiliate Marketing

• How Not to Close an Affiliate Program, www.tricia.me
• What do I need to start an Affiliate Program? Part 2 of 5: Recruitment Strategy, blog.shareasale.com

Blogs & Blogging

• 3 Proven Blog Post Marketing Strategies That Most Bloggers Overlook, Pushing Social
• A blogger’s guide to setting up a WordPress site: 14 vital widgets, eConsultancy
• Blogging is Dead, Social Media Today
• Content Marketing: The Lost Art of Post Tags and Categories, Crazy Egg
• Spend 10 Minutes Doing This Every Day and You Could Transform Your Blogging, ProBlogger

Business Issues

• Before Facebook Deal, WhatsApp Was Helping BuzzFeed and Shazam Go Viral With New Platform Tools, recode.net
• Chrome OS Doubled Its Share Of Web Traffic Since Last September, Now At 0.2%, TechCrunch
• Google Launches Project Tango Smartphone To Experiment With Computer Vision And 3D Sensors, TechCrunch
• Google Was Willing to Beat Facebook’s $19B Offer for WhatsApp, www.theinformation.com
• Groupon Skyrockets After Hours On Q4 Beat With Revenue Of $768.4M, EPS Of $0.04 [Update: Following Enthusiasm, Investors Turn Sour], TechCrunch
• Satya Nadella, Chief of Microsoft, on His New Role, New York Times
• Vocal developer advocate Tim Bray announces departure from Google, 9to5 Google

Content Marketing

• Content Marketing Evolution – 5 Essential Stages, Online Marketing Blog
• How a Culture of Content Marketing Increased One Company’s Web Traffic by 3000% in One Year, The Sales Lion

Conversion Optimization

• 9 Irresistibly Smart Copywriting Examples for Better Conversions, visualwebsiteoptimizer.com

Copywriting, Design & Usability

• 75 Resources for Writing Incredible Copy that Converts, KISS Metrics

Display & Contextual Advertising

• How To Pitch YouTube Video Ads As A New PPC Initiative, www.ppchero.com
• What does Facebook’s new campaign structure mean for advertisers?, fbppc.com

Domaining

• BBC Confused About .Plumbing, DomainInvesting.com
• Gucci Wins UDRP on 71 Domains Against the Most Ridiculous Domain Holders Of All Time, The Domains
• New gTLD Registrations Top 125K As .Today; .Technology; .Land; .Directory Open Up Strong, The Domains
• What if Domain Investors Buy the Good gTLD Domain Names?, DomainInvesting.com

Ecommerce

• 4 Big Ways Big Data Will Transform Ecommerce, Get Elastic
• Optimising e-Commerce websites for mobile, www.smartinsights.com
• Wal-Mart grows global web sales 30% in 2013 and projects similar growth this year, Internet Retailer

Email Marketing

• Are Your Emails Positioned Well?, MediaPost

Internet Marketing Industry

• Criteo Acquires Tedemis For $29 Million, Proving There Is A Nascent Exit Market In France, TechCrunch
• Gigya Finishes 2013 on Torrid Pace, Processed More Than 800 Million Logins in Single Year, Market Wired
• Movable Ink Opens London Office, PR Web
• Real-Time Mobile Analytics Platform Amplitude Takes On Flurry & Mixpanel, TechCrunch
• Top Social Media Buying Companies for Facebook and Twitter Join Sizmek Social Connect, MarketWatch

Mobile/Local Marketing

• How One Scammer Manipulated Apple’s Top Charts To Earn Tens Of Thousands Daily Using A $10 GameSalad Template, TechCrunch

Social Media

• Facebook Is Changing — And It’s Your Fault, Social Times
• gShift Launches Twitter Social Keyword Research Module for Marketers, PR Web
• How to Encourage Google+ Fans to Share Your Content, Social Media Examiner
• Less than 1% of tweets mentioning McDonald’s in relation to Sochi Winter Olympics are positive, www.thedrum.com
• One Fifth Of UK Consumers Now Use Twitter, Rising To One Quarter By 2017 [STATS], Media Bistro
• Pinterest: the no-bro zone, Digiday
• The Complete Guide to Using Social Media for Customer Service, blog.bufferapp.com
• The Loyal Users of Google Plus Say It Is No Ghost Town, New York Times
• The Rise of Anonymous Sharing Apps: Secret & Shrtwv, Social Times

Video

• Metrics to Measure YouTube Marketing, Distilled
• Why "Whiteboard Fridays" Are Great Content Marketing, AWeber