Marketing Day: November 6, 2013

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:

• AdSense Adds A/B Testing Capabilities For Ad Unit Settings
  Today, Google announced a new AdSense experiments feature that allows publishers to run A/B tests on ad unit settings including ad types and ad styles such as borders and font colors. The feature is available within AdSense as part of Content Experiments. The “Traffic split” option at the bottom of the set-up page is checked […]
• Facebook Expands Partner Categories Including More Targets For Retail And Automotive
  Facebook announced it is expanding the list of partner categories that advertisers can target from 500 to more than 1,000. The audience segments are pulled from Facebook’s third-party data partners Datalogix, Axciom and Epsilon. The Ahead of the holiday season, Facebook is emphasizing the additional partner categories that are relevant to retail and automotive brands, […]
• Google+ Invades The Android 4.4 “KitKat” Phone App: What It Means For Businesses & People
  Practically no one has a phone with Google’s latest Android 4.4 operating system on it yet. But the system, nicknamed KitKat, will shortly be spreading beyond the Nexus 5 launched last week. When it does, people with Android 4.4 will discover that their phone’s dialer has become integrated with Google+. That’ll have a big impact […]
• 180 Days With Google Glass: Hits, Misses & What Marketers Need to Know
  Six months ago today, I hopped an early morning flight to San Francisco and headed to Google’s campus to become a Google Glass Explorer. I arrived more with a sense of curiosity than enthusiasm, and had even emailed Danny Sullivan — my boss and Marketing Land’s Founding Editor — a week or two earlier to […]
• Marketers Hate These Buzzwords, Which (Ahem) They Created
  Marketers are brilliant at creating buzzwords and then saturating all matter of communications — whitepapers, PowerPoint decks, tweets, casual conversations with Starbucks’ baristas — with them. Equally impressive, marketers excel at then claiming to hate the very turn of phrase they elevated to buzzword status. In a new poll of more than 500 marketing professionals, […]
• Social Media Driving Revenue For One Third Of B2C Companies, One Fifth Of B2B Firms [Report]
  In a year in which more marketers are reporting increased pressure to deliver ROI, social media finally seems to have become a part of the revenue equation for many companies. More marketers at both B2C and B2B companies report they are not only generating awareness and leads from social media campaigns, but that those leads […]
• New Research: The Retargeting Barometer, 3rd Edition
  The results have just been released from the 3rd edition of the Retargeting Barometer, the ad industry’s only survey focused on the use of retargeting. Published by Chango, and this time in partnership with Digiday, the study attracted 300 respondents, including brand marketers from a broad set of industries and from media agencies. The full […]
• Microsoft’s CEO Dilemma: Internal Candidate, Mobile Maven Or Turnaround King
  According to Reuters the list of Microsoft CEO candidates to succeed Steve Ballmer is down to a short list of four or five. Among them are current Ford CEO Alan Mulally, former Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, Microsoft executive and former Skype CEO Tony Bates and Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, who at one point oversaw Bing. Mulally […]
• Mobile Now 28 Percent Of Total Web Traffic — Report
  Public Relations firm Walker Sands produces a quarterly index of mobile traffic to its clients’ websites. Yesterday the firm released new data. The data show that collectively Walker Sands’ clients are seeing 28 percent of their traffic from smartphones and tablets. The data also reflect the relative shares of Android and iOS devices. Accordingly firm’s […]
• The Most Overlooked Email Marketing Strategy: Segmentation
  I get questions all the time from marketers looking for advice on their email campaigns. How can we run better campaigns? How can we improve opens and clicks? Should we use HTML templates or plain text? How often should we email? …and so on. Time and again, I’ve noticed that email marketers rarely focus on […]
• No, Really, You Should Test That
  “You should test that.” It’s a phrase that Chris Goward, founder and CEO of marketing optimization agency WiderFunnel, has probably uttered at least a thousand times. Having participated on a number of conference panels with Chris over the years — a real treat, by the way, if you ever have the opportunity to hear him […]
• Mobile Market: iPhone Gains, Google’s Got Reach, Facebook Top App
  Comscore reports that 62 percent of American adults now carry smartphones (Nielsen says it’s 64 percent). The firm’s latest smartphone tracking data show that the iPhone remains the top single smartphone, while Android retains its OS crown though it appears to have peaked in the US. While Android’s market share is down slightly Samsung’s is […]

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

• Image Mismatch: The Latest Google Webmaster Tools Manual Action Penalty
• Google Testing Site Name & URL In Search Result Snippets
• Google’s Matt Cutts: Don’t Worry About An SEO Down Side To Responsive Design, There Is None
• How To Leave Anonymous Business Reviews In Google+
• Google Maps’ Mobile Reach Drops In September — comScore
• How B2B Sites Can Align Their Website Strategy With SEM Tactics

Online Marketing News From Around The Web:

Affiliate Marketing

• How to Conduct Niche Research for an Affiliate Site, Rae Hoffman
• The Intersection of Domain Names & Affiliate Marketing: A Q&A with Morgan Linton, HasOffers
• Using affiliate marketing and the Internet to boost your company’s revenue, The Next Web

Analytics

• Firefox cookie blocking effort delayed again, as Mozilla commitment wavers, San Francisco Chronicle
• Google Analytics API made easy – Google docs Magic Tutorial, Distilled
• Making Use of Operative Tools for Web Analytics, www.revenews.com

Blogs & Blogging

• The Benefits of Blogging: Why Businesses Do It, and You Should Too, HubSpot
• The Ultimate Newbie Blogging Guide: What The Experts Don’t Tell You!, Heidi Cohen
• Top 5 WordPress Plugins for Video, www.blogherald.com

Business Issues

• Google Says Its Mystery Barges May Be Used As Interactive Space Where People Can Learn About Its Technology, TechCrunch
• Pinterest hires Joanne Bradford as head of partnerships, All Things D
• Twitter Is No Leap of Faith, All Things D
• Twitter underwriters aiming to price at $27 per share: Sources, www.cnbc.com
• Twitter’s IPO means that it is growing up — but will it lose its soul in the process?, GigaOM
• With An Eye For International Growth, Twitter Sharpens Its Focus In India, TechCrunch
• Yahoo Finance Redesign Pushes Personalization, Wall Street Journal

Content Marketing

• 9,000 Uniques in One Day: A Viral Marketing Case Study, moz.com
• HMV’s Big Brave Step Into The World Of Content Marketing, www.webpresence.tv
• The 10 Commandments of Content Marketing, www.jeffbullas.com

Copywriting, Design & Usability

• 7 Things the Great Copywriters Wish You Knew, Copyblogger
• The 4 Design Assumptions Costing You Money, usabilitygeek.com
• What Your Copywriting Clients Secretly Think (But Won’t Tell You), menwithpens.ca

Display & Contextual Advertising

• A Look At Instagram’s First Ad: Are Fans & Followers Just A Meaningless Metric?, HasOffers
• Affinity.com Forays Into Real-Time Bidding (RTB), www.affinity.com
• Over 5% Of Instagram Ad Views Have Led To Likes, Signaling Big Potential, TechCrunch
• The Haters Are Wrong About Twitter — Its Ads Are Working Well, And Here Are The Data That Show It, Business Insider

Domaining

• Marchex’s Archeo Division Sells 81 Domains For $1.9 Million; Ave Price $23,500, The Domains
• Donuts puts date to first Sunrise, signs big registrars, says it won’t have a landrush, DomainIncite

E-Commerce

• 5 Success Strategies of High-Converting Ecommerce Websites, www.marketingwords.com
• 9 Ecommerce Lessons from NFL Online Shops, Practical E-Commerce

Email Marketing

• Four Experts Predict the Future of Email Marketing, www.vocus.com
• Christmas email frequency: how to delight your subscribers, eConsultancy
• Why more emails at Christmas almost always means more money, eConsultancy

General Internet Marketing

• 98% Of Your Paid Ads Are A Colossal Waste of Money [Videos], unbounce.com

Internet Marketing Industry

• PK4 Media Launches Cross-Platform Technology Solution, PR Web
• DudaMobile Gives Back with Launch of Non-Profit Program, PR Web

Mobile/Local Marketing

• Designing Business Location Website Pages, Part 2: Multiple Location Business, localu.org
• Google Glass Is The New Screen, MediaPost
• Message Systems Announces First Mobile Engagement Platform for the Enterprise, www.marketwired.com

Other Items

• Google Apps dropping support for IE9, www.neowin.net

Reputation Management

• Understanding your online reputation goals, www.trackur.com

Social Media

• Introducing Digg Video, blog.digg.com
• Twitter Marketers Are Still Looking For Answers, blogs.forrester.com
• 4 Fun Ways to Improve Your Facebook Engagement, Social Media Examiner
• 4 Tips to Writing Attention-Grabbing Social Media Posts, Search Influence
• 7 ways to reach holiday shoppers on Pinterest, businessblog.pinterest.com
• A new way to get notifications on Safari, Official Pinterest Blog
• How To Gain More Followers On Social Media, www.koozai.com
• New Twitter Cards put on quite the (slide)show (with images), storify.com

Video

• Turning comments into conversations that matter to you, youtube-global.blogspot.com
• YouTube begins rolling out its new Google+ commenting system to individual video pages, The Next Web

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

About The Author

Matt McGee

Matt McGee joined Third Door Media as a writer/reporter/editor in September 2008. He served as Editor-In-Chief from January 2013 until his departure in July 2017. He can be found on Twitter at @MattMcGee.