The amazing algorithm behind Google Maps and Apple Maps

google-maps-iphone-ios

Even before the advent of Google Maps, folks were using programs like MapQuest to print up directions and figure out the shortest route between any two locations. While it’s easy to take mapping apps for granted these days, there’s some interesting mathematical algorithms at work behind the scenes that make it all possible.
Not many people are aware of this, but the computer algorithm that makes mapping programs so convenient dates all the way back to 1956, when a programmer named Edsger W. Dijkstra needed to come up with a solvable problem as a means to showcase the power of a new ARMAC computer. Dijkstra himself is a bit of a computing legend, having received the Turing Award in 1972.
Related: Free Gmail plugin lets you see if your emails are being tracked before you open them
Seeking to come up with a relatable problem, Dijikstra settled on “the shortest way to travel from Rotterdam to Groningen.”
VICE reports:

“For a demonstration for noncomputing people you have to have a problem statement that non-mathematicians can understand,” Dijkstra recalled in an interview not long before his 2002 death. “They even have to understand the answer. So I designed a program that would find the shortest route between two cities in the Netherlands, using a somewhat reduced road-map of the Netherlands, on which I had selected 64 cities.”

The algorithm underpinning Dijikstra’s work, and indeed, the basic mapping functionality in many programs, was something he said he came up with while casually drinking coffee. The algorithm itself was highlighted in a published paper from 1959 and is appropriately called Dijkstra’s algorithm.
Notably, Dijkstra’s algorithm has applications beyond traditional navigation. It’s also been used for things like urban planning, network routing protocols, and optimal chip design.

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This article was originally published on BGR.com

• Edsger W. Dijkstra
• computer algorithm

Google Clarifies The Mobile-Friendly Algorithm

Google Clarifies The Mobile-Friendly Algorithm Will Roll Out Over A Week, Be A ... - Search Engine Land

Google’s mobile-friendly ranking algorithm that is launching on April 21st will be on a page-by-page and real-time basis but how long will it take to roll out and how do you know if your page qualifies to benefit from it?
Since we know this algorithm will be significantly larger in impact compared to the Panda and Penguin algorithms, webmasters are kind of anxious about the release.
Yesterday, Google answered a series of questions in a Google+ hangout on the topic of this new mobile-friendly ranking algorithm. The three things we learned were:
(1) The algorithm will start rolling out on April 21st and will take a few days to a week to completely and globally.
(2) You are either mobile-friendly or not, there are no degrees of mobile-friendliness in this algorithm.
(3) The fastest way to see if your web pages are mobile-friendly is to see if you have the mobile-friendly label in the live mobile search results now. If not, check the mobile-friendly testing tool, which should match the live Google search results, whereas the mobile usability reports in Google Webmaster Tools can be delayed based on crawl time.

Roll Out Will Be A Few Days To A Week

I transcribed Google’s Mary response on this where she said:

We are expecting it (the mobile friendly algorithm) to roll out on April 21st, we don’t have a set time period because it is going to take a couple of days to roll out. Maybe even a week or so.

Your Page Is Mobile-Friendly Or Not

The mobile-friendly algorithm is an on or off algorithm, on a page-by-page basis, but it is not about how mobile-friendly your pages are, it is simply are you mobile-friendly or not. I transcribed this one also:

As we mentioned in this particular change, you either have a mobile friendly page or not. It is based on the criteria we mentioned earlier, which are small font sizes, your tap targets/links to your buttons are too close together, readable content and your viewpoint. So if you have all of those and your site is mobile friendly then you benefit from the ranking change.
But as we mentioned earlier, there are over 200 different factors that determine ranking so we can’t just give you a yes or no answer with this. It depends on all the other attributes of your site, weather it is providing a great user experience or not. That is the same with desktop search, not isolated with mobile search.

How Do You Know You Are Mobile-Friendly

How do you know if your web pages will be mobile-friendly or not? There are a few ways, but Google said the easiest way is to see if your current pages have the mobile-friendly label in the live mobile search results now. If so, the mobile-friendly testing tool should also confirm this. Keep in mind, the a href=”http://searchengineland.com/mobile-usability-reports-come-google-webmaster-tools-206885″>mobile usability reports in Webmaster Tools can be delayed by crawl time and general webmaster tools reporting delays.
I transcribed the three times Google answered this but I’ll share one here:

Take out your phone, look up your web site. See if there is a gray mobile friendly label in your description snippet. If it is in the search results, if you see it, that means that Google understands that your site is mobile friendly and if you don’t see it then we don’t see that your site is mobile friendly or your is not mobile friendly.

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Little Fanfare as Yahoo Leaves China

Yahoo's decision to close its last remaining operations in China – a research and development center in Beijing – will have little impact on the country's digital industry, experts say, as the company has been largely dormant in the region for the past several years.
Yahoo China has had limited operations in China since it was acquired by Alibaba as part of a strategic partnership with Yahoo Inc. in 2005. In 2013, the www.yahoo.cn Web portal was closed and users were given the option to transfer their existing Yahoo China mail accounts to other Yahoo sites or to Alibaba's Alimail platform.
Foreign technology and social media companies, including Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, have all faced a hostile regulatory and operating environment in China, as well as competition from local tech giants Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent, and Weibo, but experts say Yahoo's decision to pull out of China has just as much to do with cutting costs.
"If they are closing the office, it's because they no longer have user interest and the business is falling off," says one insider, who requested to remain anonymous.

"It's no big deal because nobody cares about Yahoo in China," says another anonymous source. "It's a facility for research and development only, with no actual visibility. The Yahoo brand has been dumped in China since the operation was taken over by Alibaba many years ago."
But from a search industry history point of view, Yahoo's China departure is significant, says Motoko Hunt, president and search marketing consultant at AJPR.
"Yahoo was one of the first well-organized portal sites with a search function for people to get to know the World Wide Web until Baidu and other locally grown search engines and portal sites came out," says Hunt.
"While the operation may have been passed onto Alibaba, the office closure symbolizes the end of an era, and shows how difficult it is for Western businesses to be successful in the Chinese market."
Hunt adds the closure emphasizes the difficulties for foreign companies, especially Western companies, to understand, localize, and adapt to Chinese and other Asian regional markets.
"I give credit to Yahoo that it tried to do that over the years, but it shows how difficult it is for a local team to be heard within a huge corporation to get what they need to grow market share."
In a statement, Yahoo said it was constantly making changes to align resources, and to foster better collaboration, and innovation across its business.
"We currently do not offer local product experiences in Beijing but the office has served as a research and development center. We will be consolidating certain functions into fewer offices, including to our headquarters in Sunnyvale, California, U.S," the statement said.
The Beijing office closure, which will see its estimated 200 to 300 employees laid off, forms part of a number of cost-cutting redundancies across Yahoo's global network over the past six months.

Google’s New Program Aims to Get Local Businesses Online

Google is trying to get local businesses in 30,000 cities worldwide online via a new program called "Let's Put Our Cities on the Map."
The initiative was designed to encourage small businesses, consumers, and local organizations to help complete a local business listing on Google. According to Google's own research, consumers are 38 percent more likely to visit and 29 percent more likely to consider purchasing from businesses with complete listings. However, not enough companies have set up a local business listing on a search engine, Google says.
The program provides each city with a custom website where local businesses can find how they appear on Google Maps and in search results. Take, New York City for example, where the owner of Ost Cafe can see what listing information they have missed on Maps.


Google will also provide local business owners with a step-by-step guide for getting online with Google My Business, and a free website and domain name for one year with Google's partner Startlogic.
Consumers can participate in the program by creating postcards to support their favorite local businesses, and further sharing the postcards on Google+, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. However, such sharing will not help local businesses rank higher in Google search results.
"Sharing the postcards won't make businesses appear higher in search, but will hopefully spur them to verify and start managing their business listing," a Google spokesperson tells Search Engine Watch.
The search giant has also partnered with local organizations like chambers of commerce and small business development centers to offer Google My Business workshops, where local businesses can learn to how to control the information listed about them on Google Search and Maps.
Are you ready to get your favorite local businesses online?
Homepage image via Shutterstock.

Facebook Launches App Analytics

Facebook Launches App Analytics At F8 Developers Conference

Wed, 25 Mar 2015 18:38:13 +0000

One of the many announcements coming out of Facebook’s F8 conference for developers today is Facebook Analytics for Apps, a free service that Facebook says can help developers in several ways.
The analytics tool is available today for apps that are logging App Events, which Facebook says is 87 percent of the top-grossing apps in the U.S. Developers that aren’t doing that but want to start can head over to Facebook’s developer documentation to get started.
From Facebook’s announcement, here’s an overview of what Analytics for Apps offers:

Cross-Device
People now use multiple devices to interact with businesses across apps and websites, and Facebook Analytics for Apps can help developers and marketers understand their traffic across these devices, which in turn can help them improve performance.
Segments
You can look at segments, or groups of people who have certain characteristics, like women or people using Android phones. You can then look at metrics for these groups to see how they use your app differently than the overall population.
Cohorts
You can now also look at cohorts, or groups of people who took a set of actions in your app. Then you can review specific metrics for that group, like what percentage of them launched your app, completed a registration, or made a purchase.
Funnels
Creating funnels lets you look at how people move through a series of steps in your app, like a purchase flow. This can help you see where people drop off, which can help you figure out where to devote resources to improving performance.
Improving your advertising
Facebook Analytics for Apps can help developers understand and improve the ads they’re already running, and figure out how to run better ads in the future. Analytics helps you measure the lifetime value of your Facebook ads, and re-engage people who have dropped off using re-marketing.

Facebook Analytics for Apps is accessible at facebook.com/analytics, a dashboard with access to all of a developers’ apps.
For more news from today’s F8 keynote, see our live blog coverage. And we’ll be sharing more news today and tomorrow on our F8 conference topic page.

Vodka Brand Creates Mobile App To Program Personalized LED Messages On Bottles

Last week, a chocolate bar brand launched a QR code-based mobile app that allows people to add personalized messages of love on their candy bars. This week, a vodka brand is upping the game with LED and Bluetooth technology.
Medea Vodka, which has had manually programmable LED strips on its bottles since 2010, has introduced a mobile app that uses Bluetooth to assign personalized messages to LED strips on vodka bottles. The company will showcase this technology at the upcoming Nightclub & Bar Convention & Trade Show in Las Vegas later this month and introduce the bottles in June.
Here’s a look at the original, non-Bluetooth LED bottles in action:
The new LED bottles will use Apple’s iBeacon technology and an app to enable a smartphone to wirelessly set and display scrolling messages. The Medea App, not yet available in either the Apple App Store or Google Play Store, will be able to determine what bottles are in the area without having to connect or find every Bluetooth-enabled device. The app will keep tabs on which bottles are around and available to be registered.
Once a person registers a particular bottle using the app, that bottle — and the ability to post messages to the bottle — can be accessed by anyone who the initial registrant chooses to invite. Anyone with access to a bottle can also share their messages to Facebook, Twitter and email. Since users reportedly must register to program their bottle’s message, the app may be a source of useful customer data for Medea.
The bottles are pre-programmed with six phrases including, “Happy Birthday,” “Congratulations” and “Thank you,” which scroll across the LED label.
Medea is promoting the new bottles and app on Facebook and Twitter:

Yes, it’s true. We’ll be rolling out a #bluetooth #app that enables #mobile users to program customized messages to…
Posted by Medea Vodka on Monday, March 23, 2015

Did you see our #bluetooth #app news on @CNBC? http://t.co/yIe7oSNM7G. This will be unveiled at #ncbshow2015 @NightclubBar next week!
— MedeaVodka (@MedeaVodka) March 23, 2015

Build Your Brand Authority

How Copywriting Can Build Your Brand Authority

Wed, 25 Mar 2015 14:00:00 +0000
When you're recognized as a brand authority, you become the go-to business for products or services in your industry; you can be more selective with clients, and you can charge higher rates that reflect your expertise.
When we hear "brand authority," we usually think about PR, online and offline marketing, public speaking, writing books, being interviewed... In all that, giving thought to what you say is undoubtedly important, but it's often how you say it that establishes your true credibility as a brand authority.
By following these four steps, you'll discover just how effective your copywriting can be in building your brand authority.
1. Be consistent in your tone of voice
All companies have a certain tone of voice. You hear it in their marketing materials, blog posts, YouTube videos, and social media posts. The way a company "talks" can determine whether anyone wants to do business with it, and that's why businesses must get tone of voice right—and keep it consistent.

Consistency in tone of voice breeds familiarity, which in turn creates trust and, finally, brand authority. Here are three tips to ensure you keep your brand's tone of voice consistent:

1. Define it. How do you want to portray your voice to your audience? Are you a serious blue chip company laser-focused on delivering results? Or are you a fresh new startup looking to shake up your industry?
2. Own it. Once you know how you want your brand to sound, take ownership of it by using that tone in all of your marketing materials.
3. Encourage it. Create a style guide and distribute it to all your writers and editors so that everyone follows the same guidelines. Also provide it to agencies doing work for you and anyone who wants to guest-post on your blog.

2. Make it emotional
Most people think they decide with whom to do business based on reason and logic. Although rational thought does have bearing on our decisions, our emotions ultimately get their way.
Our emotional responses to a piece of writing have more influence on our decisions than the actual content of the writing itself, research suggests. In fact, in print advertising, we're twice as likely to buy from a brand that appeals to our emotions than one that doesn't at all.
The following three steps can help ensure you make the most of emotion in your copywriting to establish your brand authority:

1. Use emotional triggers. Tug at your customers' heart strings by appealing to their strongest emotions and tapping into their needs and desires. Some of our strongest emotions are value, trust, fear, guilt, competition, belonging, and pleasure.
2. Use intriguing headlines. Every successful advert, article, blog post, and email begins with a strong headline. Think about what words will encourage your audience to read on and into the body of your copy.
3. Include a call to action. Having built up all that emotion, you'll want to direct your customers to fulfill a specific action you want them to take, whether that's making a purchase or subscribing to a newsletter.

3. Keep it conversational
Building your brand authority involves a certain professionalism, but that doesn't mean your copy needs to be full of longwinded sentences and obscure words. If you want to stand out from the crowd, your copy needs to speak to people in a way they can relate to.
When crafting your copy, write as you would talk to a friend—directly—and focused on the main points of your message. You can keep your copywriting conversational by following these three tips:

1. Read your copy out loud. Hearing your voice speaking your copy can help you recognize any shortcomings, including incorrect tone of voice or confusing structure.
2. Use short sentences. The shorter the sentence, the more readable the copy. If you can say it in one sentence, why use three?
3. One idea at a time. Keeping each point you want to make within one paragraph helps deliver your messages more clearly and makes your copy more digestible.

4. Make it look easy
Think about how the most successful brands portray themselves to the public. Do they make a point of constantly telling you how hard they work at becoming a trusted company?
The most successful brands make it look effortless. Undoubtedly a lot of effort goes in behind the scenes, but the audience sees only the finished product, presented in a seemingly effortless way.
If your branding comes across as forced, too sales-like, or overcomplicated, you'll find it difficult to attract the kind of customer loyalty that authority brands have. The following three actions can help you make your copywriting look easy:

1. Use bullet points and numbered lists. Breaking down your copy into small, digestible chunks is a surefire way to simplify your brand message. People are automatically drawn to copy that stands out on a page.
2. Start with a strong opening line. Use the first line in your copy to make a bold statement that shows your readers you know what you're talking about.
3. End with a summary. Gathering the most important pieces of information at the end of your copy can help strengthen your content. It also gives people an opportunity to reflect on what they've just read.

* * *
Although following all these copywriting tips will certainly improve your brand authority, bear in mind that sounding unique often what sets a brand apart from the competition. And if that means breaking some of these copywriting "rules," then so be it.

A Marketer's View: An 11-Step Plan for Launching Your Startup

Disclaimer: the headline on this article promises you 11 steps to launch a startup. It does not promise you 11 easy steps or 11 simple steps or 11 anyone-could-do-it-before-breakfast-without-breaking-a-sweat steps.
Launching a startup is difficult—there's no way around that.
In the best of markets, 75% of venture-backed firms fail to deliver returns on their investments, according to 2012 research from Harvard Senior Lecturer Shikhar Ghosh.
Today, VC firms are debating whether that grim statistic might be exacerbated by a forthcoming tech bubble. Nevertheless, many entrepreneurs decide to launch companies every year.
If you're determined to join their ranks, here's what you need to know about how to launch your business so it lasts.
1. Make sure the service, product, or business you're launching is something you're passionate about and you're in it to win, no matter what. Don't start a business that you don't know much about and for which you aren't willing to learn more. It will never grow.
2. Partner up. Launching a company is a long journey (if things go well) that takes multiple skill sets. Few people can claim expertise in product development, operations, marketing, sales, and every other function you'll need in the early days of your business. That's why so many successful startups are founded by partners or teams. Just make sure you have defined roles and mutual respect from the beginning.
3. Articulate the vision and test-drive messages. Even if you plan to stay in stealth mode for a while, to boost your profile and set the stage for your eventual coming-out party you'll need to craft some messages and positions on industry trends. As you near launch, you'll also need to test-drive your value proposition and overall messaging with beta customers and industry analysts. If those messages aren't resonating with those audiences, you're not ready.
4. Build a strong team. Recruit the A players who can help you grow and ultimately launch. Identify speaking opportunities at local events or at conferences with high awareness, where you can talk about industry trends and catch the attention of attendees. Alternatively, get involved with a recruiter who knows your space and the prime candidates in it.
5. Set clear goals. Is the initial goal of your company launch to hire great talent to build your product? Is it to build up a customer base? Or are you most interested in getting venture capital? Figure it out, because the answer or answers will determine what you should do next.
6. Get all Goldilocks about your market timing. Too late is no good. Too early can be just as bad. If you enter the market before your prospects are ready, your company will flame out, and your future competitors will build their successes on the foundation of your failures. Make sure your market timing is just right, and keep an eye on where the competition is in its development.
7. Get your website ready for close scrutiny. It should be optimized for analytics, easy to navigate, and responsive to multiple devices. If your initial goal for the site is to build awareness rather than drive leads, you can feature minimal calls to action and keep things simple at the start.
8. Build up your content and marketing library. As you add content to your website, include basic information—such as product specs, sales contacts, and calls to action—as well as deep content to support lead conversion when that becomes a priority, including case studies (as soon as they're available), e-books, SlideShares, a healthy blog, and other assets.
9. Be sociable. Pick the three most relevant social media channels for your market, and craft a strategy for building your following on each. LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and other outlets can help you engage with influencers and prospects, amplify your content, and establish yourself as a reliable source of industry knowledge.
10. Craft a pitch. The value-driven message that explains why your company exists should be clear enough that your kids can understand it, and compelling enough that your VC contacts will want to hear more. Make sure you can explain your customers' greatest need and how you're going to solve it. Be ready to identify your competitors and explain why you'll have an edge over them. Finally, practice your pitch and perfect your presentation skills.
11. Build media, analyst, and customer relationships for third-party validation. Blasting out the news of your launch won't get you very far. Concentrate your resources on building relationships with early customers (who can vouch for you), analysts (who can explain how you'll fit into the market), and journalists (who can convey your story and viewpoints to target audiences.)
Launch day is the end of a long road and the beginning of another. To make sure your startup can thrive during the journey, you'll need to walk through those 11 steps first, and find the right resources to help you navigate the difficult terrain.
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Public Relations: Four 'Wow' Ways to Use It for Sales

"PR is an insanely valuable activity in early-stage companies," wrote venture capitalist Mark Suster on his popular blog for startups.
The problem is that most companies focused on growth are almost allergic to public relations: It takes a ton of time, it doesn't easily lend itself to metrics, and the people who work in PR are often big picture, strategic—or, if you'd rather, "fuzzy"—thinkers.
In other words, PR people don't fit easily into the world of the bootstrapped or venture-backed growth company.
Yet, founders and investors alike will acknowledge that a company's perceived lack of credibility is one of the silent killers of great sales opportunities: Big potential clients can circle and circle, but they are famously risk-averse. In this era of transparency, social proof, and infinite-pages-on-Forbes, a company that doesn't have great coverage or exposure is almost questionable—and that's enough to kill big deals.
Public relations and sales are perfect companions

Fortunately, with the right technology and tracking, public relations is the perfect support to a natural lead nurturing process. PR creates enough credibility so that you can...

1. Encourage starter customers to grow into enterprise customers
2. Reassure existing investors with social traction
3. Attract new investors for your next round
4. Build your qualified site traffic and Alexa score all at once

Here are four simple ways you can use public relations to enhance your sales—and track it.
1. Build qualified traffic through social media
Share the great coverage you've achieved: Highlight it in your newsletter (if you have one), on your LinkedIn and other social media pages, and in a running news feed on your website. Make it apparent that your industry is in love with you.
Here's what you'll get:

• More credibility (hard to measure)
• Lots more awareness (hard to measure)
• Attaboys from investors
• 10-20% boosts in qualified Web traffic (watch the inbound social link traffic to see it happen)

Here's how you do it:

1. Follow the journalists you want to cover you.
2. Read their work and reshare it with insightful comments, always providing appropriate attribution. Depending on your needs and profile, use a right-sized social media tool to make this easier, such as HootSuite, Radian6, Buffer, or (one of my favorites) Attentive.ly.
3. When they cover you, send the piece to your prospects and your customers, put it in your website, share it, and thank them.
4. Repeat.

2. Make lead generation events do double duty
There's nothing like having people who already trust you in the room—learning to trust you more and sharing that with others. That's why event marketing is ranked by B2B marketers year after year as their "go-to" sales tactic, according to the MarketingProfs and Content Marketing Institute annual study.
Your marketing team already executes trendy client development events, now consider inviting trade journalists, local journalists, and promising bloggers to come meet sources and learn the trends, too. You may even jump for a ticket for a writer who really gets your field and your company.
Here's what you'll get:

• Top-notch coverage of your event
• Better relationships with journalists—priceless over the long haul
• Inbound prospects from links in the articles (trackable!)
• Bonus points from clients and investors who see that you are the go-to company in your industry

Here's how you do it:

1. Go back to that list of journalists, and have your CEO invite them to participate on a press pass, all expenses paid.
2. Assign one person on your team, or from your agency, to help the journalists connect. See whether they can do briefings with a key client or two as well as a couple of your inside thought leaders.
3. Make sure they get a company backgrounder, possibly case study notes prewritten, and bios, ahead of the event.
4. Provide a quiet private room for the journalists to work with lots of power, coffee, and raging-fast Internet.

3. Hijack the smartest minds in your industry
What, you haven't written your book yet? Of course not! Growth stage companies are too busy for major campaigns like book writing. The next best thing is to develop a mutually beneficial alliance with a leading author or two in your field.
Authors are looking for ways to promote their books—and you'd like to reach their audience, too. Combing forces is one way to do both. Creating a webinar on a topic of interest both to the author and to you creates content that is twice as interesting. Moreover, the author's network enlarges the distribution footprint.
Here's how you do it:

1. Read books in your industry (you're already doing that, right?).
2. Pick three authors who speak to you or your team.
3. Reach out to them on their author website or LinkedIn, inviting them to speak with you about a webinar series. Ask whether they would be open to promoting the series to their own fans (you'll want to hear a "yes").
4. Offer to buy copies of their book for attendees, or for attendees who attend and ask questions. It's quid pro quo: This person needs to promote and sell books; make sure you help.
5. Mention your webinar series with the author when you are speaking with trade journalists.
6. List the author webinar in the trade calendars as an industry event.
7. Have one of your content developers write up the webinar with the author and your expert as a blog post or series of posts.

Here's what you get:

• Access to a new group of potential clients through the authors' distribution list
• Signups for your webinar consisting of people interested in the topic who are now on your nurture list
• More credibility

4. Put clients on commission
Few clients like to go on the record with a no-holds barred testimonial, so don't ask them for it. Instead, ask them to go on video with a short industry perspective at your next big tradeshow, where presumably you and the client will both attend.
Used properly on your website, these kinds of pieces showcase the kind of company you are by showcasing the quality of the company you keep. One example is the recent video by ENGAGE.cx, a CRM startup: Its video features thought leadership from a former VP of CRM at Oracle and at Intercontinental Hotels group.
Here's how you do it:

1. Look for clients who are building their personal reputation as thought leaders.
2. Ask whether they would provide a perspective on an issue that matters to you business and your prospective clients.
3. Provide 1-3 questions in advance for your client.
4. Send a video team to them. You'll find their perspective speaks for itself when they showcase their own strengths and insights.
5. Put the video on your website and develop a social media campaign around it.
6. Ask your client and your client's PR team to promote their point of view.
7. Send it to journalists and ask whether they'd like to interview your client and your internal expert on the topic.

Here's what you get:

• Enormous credibility kudos
• Nice soundbites for investors about why companies are working with you
• Jealous competitors
• Substantial inbound lead traffic to see what experts say on an important trend (thanks to your social media outbound and your media pitching—and perhaps that of your client as well)

* * *
Your public relations efforts pay off even more powerfully when distributed through your sales and marketing process. There are many more ways to do this—once you get started sharing your credibility, it's addictive. Let me know how it's going for you.
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Five Ways Marketing Technology Will Transform Our Industry

Though 83% of B2B marketers say creating buyer-centric marketing is a priority, only 23% claim to be advanced in its implementation, according to research firm SiriusDecisions.
This discrepancy isn't surprising when you look at the technology landscape in which today's marketers operate.
 Nearly 2,000 marketing solutions that specialize in search, email, social, events, webinars, videos, and much more are now available. Marketers have defaulted to building marketing strategies around these channels-focused investments rather than buyer interests.
But priorities are shifting away from rigid channel-based tactics toward holistic strategies that deliver a consistent buyer experience across all devices and outlets, and allow for adaptation in the face of inevitable change.
How will marketing technology help push us toward that brighter future?

Here are five ways.
1. Integration will rule
Integration is the key to supporting real alignment across teams, getting visibility into all your content and campaigns, surfacing insights that are otherwise locked inside tools, and ensuring your buyer's journey is clear and consistent.
If your investments in marketing technology are going to succeed, those different apps and systems need to "talk to each other." And that's where integration is critical.

Rebecca Lieb, industry analyst at the Altimeter Group, refers to a future model called the "content marketing stack," which combines eight specific workflow solutions around content and social.

This stack will not only work with technologies currently on the market, Lieb says, but will also promote integrations with future tools.
"There can always be new technologies that emerge, technologies we haven't even thought of or conceived of at this point," Lieb says. "But there is an immediate need for all of these point solutions on the landscape to start talking to each other and start playing nice with each other."
By opening up their APIs, marketing "stacks" will allow new technologies to plug into their environments seamlessly.
2. Marketers will become technologists
As the technology landscape shifts toward integration, marketers will need to become more tech-savvy than ever.

Mayur Gupta, chief marketing technologist at Kimberly-Clark, calls the future marketer who is not only technically driven but also creatively driven "The Unicorn."
"The Unicorn is a modern marketer who is a technologist," Gupta says. "But she is also a storyteller, she is also a creative, she is also a copywriter."
The Unicorns will cut across silos—both internal and external—unifying the customer journey from awareness to sale through retention.
The result is a closely integrated department, regardless of function, that can plan and deliver marketing campaigns based on both analytical and creative decision-making.
3. Silos will shatter
Most marketing teams today depend on static documents circulated via email for feedback or a sea of disorganized Google documents. As a result, multiple versions and conflicting edits throw a wrench in efficiency, confusing stakeholders and stalling campaign launches. There are no visible tasks or next steps, and things get very messy very quickly.
Visibility is the cornerstone of a customer-centric marketing process. Future marketing teams will depend on agile, adaptable processes that hinge on real-time editing and collaboration on cloud-based platforms.
This integrated platform will grant organization-wide visibility across all functions, channels, and tools.
4. New executive roles will emerge
Great customer experiences are human-driven, not technology-driven. Companies need someone to hold the reins on internal marketing technology investments, organizing and prioritizing them to deliver a rewarding customer experience.

Some 70% of companies today already have a chief marketing technologist (CMT). Soon, it will be more like 90%.
Research firm Gartner defines CMTs as "familiar with marketing techniques as well as technologies. They need to understand how to use technology to define markets, attract, acquire, and retain customers."
Their main job, as Scott Brinker puts it, is to enable a holistic approach to marketing technology and help leadership recognize how new technologies can open up new opportunities across all teams.
Technically fluent storytellers, CMTs are the bridges between IT and marketing. They work closely with the CIO and the CMO to establish the technological blueprint that allows companies to serve their customers at the highest level.
5. Insights will surface
Future integrated marketing technology stacks will provide real insights into marketing performance, surfacing data previously locked in separate tools.
These platforms will provide far more than vanity metrics like unique views and shares. They'll integrate with social, CRM, marketing automation, and Web analytics tools to reveal results across all channels throughout the buyer's cycle. The results then give marketers insight into which content and messages speed up the pace to purchase.
This vision of marketing technology isn't only a figment of our imaginations. There are centralized platforms already adopting this model today.

Google's Ridiculous AdSense Morality Police Strike Again

AP Photo/Andy Wong, File
Nearly a year ago, we wrote about an absolutely ridiculous situation in which Google AdSense threatened to cut off all of our ads (which they had just spent months begging us to use) because the ads showed up on this page, which has a story about a publicity rights dispute concerning a music video that includes someone dancing suggestively around a pole. The morality police at AdSense argued that this news story -- which was about a legal dispute concerning the video -- somehow violated AdSense's terms against putting the ads on content including "strategically covered nudity" and "lewd or provocative poses." Apparently, the AdSense team has no "newsworthy" exception to these idiotic policies.

TAGGED: Google, Ads

Optimizing for AdWord

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Optimizing for AdWords Display Campaigns: Demographics, Ads, Mobile

For campaigns running on AdWords' Google Display Network (GDN), advertisers will likely have various goals and results. For branding and awareness, ad impressions and reach will be the key metric to track. For sales and conversion goals, more targeted campaigns with higher click-through rate (CTR) and conversions will be the goal.
There are several other options, so optimizing display campaigns can make all the difference. Consider the following tips when rolling up your sleeves for optimizations:

Demographics

Layer demographics targeting into any campaign for more accuracy in reaching your audience. In the AdWords demographics tab, you will see a chart that shows the demographic stats of your audience based on clicks, impressions, or conversions. Pay special attention to how the stats change as the drop-down is changed. The audience may vary slightly from who is targeted (impressions) vs. who actually clicks or converts.


Based on stats and goals, there are several optimization actions that can be taken like exclusions, bid maximums, or destination URLs. Use this for improving campaign customization. For example, say your product has slightly different messages for men and women. Send each to different landing pages to see how that may impact results.

Text Ads on GDN

Text ads on the display network have evolved into a simplified format with easier readability for mobile users. Oftentimes the ads will be displayed with the title and description lines one and line two. With this, a dotted scroll area reveals a display URL when user clicks. There is also a large button with arrow. The clickable areas in the ad are the headline, button, and the display URL on "page 2" of the ad.

On mobile, it appears as you scroll down the page in the browser, the ad does automatically advance to the destination URL, otherwise it appears to be the same as desktop.

Text ads in display may need slightly different approach than text ads in search. To optimize for text ads on GDN:

• It may be more powerful to combine lines one and two into one-sentence messaging to get the key point across.
• If brand is important, don't rely on the display URL to provide brand cues. Instead, use it in the headline so it is most visible with the larger font and in blue.
• Likewise, since the headline is most visibly, try using the call-to-action or top selling point in the text ad.

Mobile Display and Mobile App Serving

As I noted in my post "5 PPC Settings That Can Sabotage Success," sometimes an influx of impressions in your display campaign and a reduction in conversion rate can mean the ads are appearing on mobile apps. This can happen in almost any campaign targeting, even campaigns that have a -100 percent bid modifier to opt out of mobile because the ads will still appear on tablets. Often the apps have little to do with your product or service. Typically users are busy actively engaging in the app, not in ads.
Mobile placements may not be appropriate for advertisers who do not have a mobile-friendly website and neglected to optimize for this.

There are a few ways to control this:

1. Site category options allow advertisers to exclude categories such as sensitive content or type of placement. In this area, look for "in-game" (online and mobile app games where ads are shown within the game) and GMob mobile app non-interstitial (banner ad slots in GMob mobile apps) and consider excluding them.
2. Using a -100% on mobile will exclude apps and mobile websites, so consider this as an option, too. It will not exclude apps on tablets.
3. In placement exclusions, entering in adsenseformobileapps.com should exclude apps on mobile and tablet without impacting mobile websites.
4. Exclude individual placements apps. Start with analyzing results to determine which are relevant to ads and which ones are not and exclude as appropriate. For example, children’s apps if they are not appropriate but all other app placements are OK.

The display network can be a challenging territory to traverse, but optimizations in based on goals for different campaigns elements can be very effective in fine-tuning results. Optimization possibilities are endless, so what are your tips and tricks to improve GDN performance? Tell us in the comments or tweet at @sewatch or @LisaRocksSEM.

Lisa Raehsler is the founder and principal strategist at Big Click Co. , an online advertising company and Google AdWords Certified Partner, specializing in strategy and management of SEM and PPC for search engines, display, retargeting, and social media ad campaigns. More than just passionate about search, Lisa has led strategy on dozens of PPC accounts and puts her experience into practice every day as a thought leader in integrating clients' search campaigns with ecommerce websites, behavioral targeting strategies, and web analytics.
In addition to agency work, she has led successful online marketing programs at Thomson Reuters in search marketing, merchandising, and ecommerce strategies at the enterprise level.
Lisa frequently lends her expertise to the search industry through organizational involvement, speaking, and writing. She has participated extensively in the local interactive community, as well as at national search engine marketing conferences. Lisa's recent speaking engagements include SES, OMS, MIMA, HeroConf, and SMX conferences, as well as numerous private and public training engagements. As a columnist for ClickZ, she writes on the topic of paid search. She holds a BA in Economics from Valparaiso University and is a Google AdWords Certified Partner.

Messenger Business

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Messenger Business: Facebook Turns Messenger Into Customer Service & Commerce Channel

Today at Facebook’s developer conference F8 the company announced, among other things, Messenger Platform, which opens up the app to third party publisher and developers. As one feature of Messenger Platform, Facebook also introduced what it’s calling “Messenger for Business.”
The objective is to “reinvent the way people communicate and interact with businesses.” Initial integrations include e-commerce sites Everlane and Zulily. Customer service software provider Zendesk is also supporting the platform.
Facebook isn’t limiting the program to e-commerce; it wants to make Messenger a customer service/live chat channel for all kinds of businesses. For now the focus, however, is on enterprises. Small businesses have access to similar messaging functionality through their existing Pages.
There are different technical integrations and specifications behind the scenes. But what Messenger for Business is intended to do is replace email and provide real-time business-customer interaction and rich notifications (see graphics above and below). Where Messenger is integrated and consumers are logged in to Facebook, they’ll see an opt-in prompt on partner commerce sites to receive shipping notifications.

If users agree they’ll receive Messenger updates tied to specific shipping events (e.g., delay). Customers will also be able to discuss anything with the enterprise or merchant, including the desire to buy more of something. Facebook told me that both Everlane and Zulily reps could address the potential sales opportunities.
I asked about automation vs. live human support. Facebook stressed that it was up to the partner but the company’s preference was for human customer service and support vs. chat bots.
In an ideal scenario Messenger for Business removes friction from the customer service process (now mostly telephone based) and could result in incremental sales for merchants. There are lots of interesting possibilities. As with all things, however, partner execution will mater to the user experience. Facebook is being careful to selectively roll out the feature to those partners the company believes will deliver a great experience.
One can imagine over time all kinds of interesting possibilities and interactions facilitated by Messenger around appointment inventory, products, product features and specs and so on. Say, for example, I’m getting ready to buy a major appliance. I could hypothetically ask retailers like HomeDepot or Lowe’s whether they have the item in stock, what the price is and what the various product configurations are. (HomeDepot and Lowe’s are not announced partners.)
I repeatedly Facebook about all kinds of small-business hypotheticals and scenarios and was consistently redirected back to Pages. Right now Messenger for Business isn’t available for traditional “offline” SMBs. Over time it could be.
If it becomes widely adopted Messenger for Business could rival or exceed Twitter’s vaunted customer service capabilities. Indeed, for those organizations that do a good job with it, Messenger for Business potentially represents a major advance over phone-based customer service, IVRs and the horrifying, but now standard recorded refrain: “due to higher than expected call volumes wait times will be longer than expected.

Facebook Launches New Video Embeds

Facebook Launches New Video Embeds & Comment Syncing From Site To Page

Wed, 25 Mar 2015 19:25:24 +0000

Have you found the perfect Facebook video to illustrate a blog post? Now you can embed it directly on your site without its supporting post. Facebook also has a beta test that allows comments on publishers’ sites to sync to their Facebook Page and vice versa.
Facebook announced the new features today at its F8 developers conference in San Francisco.
Previously, if you wanted to embed video on your site, you had to embed the entire Facebook post containing the video. So like Twitter before it, Facebook is enabling YouTube-like video embedding. That will please publishers, journalists and the creators of videos who should see greater distribution of their content. It should also increase the number of Facebook video views, which are already averaging 3 billion a day according to the social network.
The new feature is active now:

The update to the comment plugin will affect fewer publishers — at least immediately — but it could prove to be a major development. At launch in 2011 and until now, the comment plugin gave publishers the ability to host a Facebook powered discussion board on their site, but the conversation there is largely siloed. Commenters are given the ability to post comments on their News Feed, but any conversation on a site’s Facebook Page is separate from the discussion going on within the comment plugin.
Now publishers will have the option to mirror those conversations. The discussion thread from any link posted on a site’s Facebook Page will automatically pull in comments from the plugin and vice versa.
“The value here is we can unify the conversation in multiple places,” said Simon Cross, a product manager on Facebook’s platform team. “We think that’s going to increase engagement on your website because there will be more comments there.”
The new feature is being rolled out in the next few weeks as a beta test with six publishers: BET, NHL, BuzzFeed, Huffington Post, Elite Daily and Fox Sports

Uplifting Instagram Marketing

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Uplifting Instagram Marketing: Soffe Apparel's Paul Anderson on Marketing Smarts [Podcast]

Paul Anderson is director of marketing at Soffe Apparel, an apparel company started in 1949 as a distributor to the military. Over the years, the company expanded into clothing and became known for its signature athletic shorts. The shorts, made for men, became popular among cheerleaders, who would fold down the band so they'd fit properly.
In the fall of 2014, Soffe conducted market research into the young, female market for athletic apparel that yielded some interesting insights. Soffe learned that women felt more motivated to work out as part of a group, and that that sense of belonging was key to success when pursuing their fitness goals.
I invited Paul to Marketing Smarts to discuss how Soffe used those insights to completely rebrand the company to reach the underserved demographic of young, female athletes seeking inspiration and motivation from one another.
Soffe's "Strength in Us" campaign is a complete turnaround from the brand's previous marketing message. The company's willingness to act on sound audience data has turned its social channels into a destination of choice for its target audience.
Here are just a few highlights from our conversation:

Don't be afraid to rebrand if you're not reaching your core audience (03:23): "The Soffe brand has been going through a massive revamp over the past 18 months.... We noticed especially on the women's side that there was this massive disconnect with our core consumers. So, one of the things we wanted to do...was to go out and actually listen to that consumer. That really prompted [us to conduct] research."
Invest in research so you can truly understand your audience (04:00): "One of the big things we did was to bring on a new agency of record...and they've got some pretty interesting proprietary tools at their disposal [that] allowed us to set the stage for the research that we did. Being able to, at scale, understand and listen on social and through search, we were able to get an idea of brand sentiment.... That then prompted us to dig into the specifics around our core consumer.... Young women were connecting through exercise and these group-based activities.... 80% of young women said they were more motivated to exercise with friends or a team. 92% said they were more powerful as a group... It wasn't that they weren't competitive—they were individually competitive—they just felt that there was something more."
Look for opportunities to connect with audiences your competition is ignoring (05:35): "As we looked at the activewear market in general, we saw a big opportunity there to tell our story, a story that had been part of Soffe for a long time: our roots in the military, our roots in cheerleading, and then how that evolved to how...young women approach active now.... We're a smaller 'fighter brand' as I like to say, but as you look at the big guys that are out there, it's all a lot of the same—advertises and talks about 'lone individuals' with big campaign slogans glorifying the single athlete. We thought that this was an interesting thing that we'd want to hang our hat on, and talk to our core consumer and young women in a more realistic and authentic way."
Once you've reviewed the data, use it to better serve your target audience (07:41): "We did some early segmentation work and really looked at the different groups around dance culture, around gymnastics culture, Zumba and cardio barre—all these sort of new exercise movements that really are based around groups, and they all sort of draft off of dance in a lot of ways. We're really concentrating on messaging around those activity bases where we're building product and merchandizing around those things. It started with segmentation."
Go where your audience is (like Instagram) and give them content that inspires (08:53): "What we wanted to do as we launched for spring 2015 was to put a break between the brand's old and new content. We wanted to be pretty stark about it. To launch the 'Strength is in Us' campaign, we released a 24-word manifesto in 24 separate posts, and each post featured compelling statistics around our study, and it really just captivated—the statistics around teamwork, around the power of collective strength. It was interesting to see our consumer who was used to our 'old' content, and then seeing the reaction from our new 'coming out' party.... It's just about being a content source for our consumer and really to inspire and motivate young women around this idea of 'the power of we' and 'the strength is in us....' We were on Instagram before, but we're being more strategic and more channel specific about it. It is our most engaged channel."

Experiment, but not without a strategy; establish a baseline to measure against (12:18): "We can see Likes, comments; and as our audience grows, those things are all important. One of the things...we had seen through our initial research around the brand was digging down and understanding brand sentiment...and we're going to be paying attention, obviously, to that. We wanted to be a place to host the conversation around our positioning, sort of a content source of inspiration and motivation.... We want to be a brand publishing content that engages our consumer. It's one thing that we just didn't do when we lost touch with them.... We've established a brand-tracker base that we're going to use to measure yourself against quarterly, so that'll be really interesting to see where the needle moves there.... We have seen our followers increase at a rate that was higher than what we were previously doing, so that's a good sign."
To learn more, visit Soffe.com or follow Soffe on Twitter: @Soffe. And be sure to check out its Instagram feed: @soffegirl.
Paul and I talked about much more, so be sure to listen to the entire show, which you can do above, or download the mp3 and listen at your convenience. Of course, you can also subscribe to the Marketing Smarts podcast in iTunes or via RSS and never miss an episode!
This episode brought to you by CallidusCloud.

Special thanks to production sponsor Candidio, an efficient, affordable video production platform allowing marketers and communicators to collaborate and curate video content, with help from a team of professional, on-demand video editors for the finishing touches. Check them out!

Show opener music credit: Noam Weinstein.

This marketing podcast was created and published by MarketingProfs.

Kerry O'Shea Gorgone is instructional design manager, enterprise training, at MarketingProfs. She's also a speaker, writer, attorney, and educator. She hosts and produces the weekly Marketing Smarts podcast. To contact Kerry about being a guest on Marketing Smarts, send her an email, or you can find her on Twitter (@KerryGorgone), Google+, and her personal blog.

B2B Brands and the Super Bowl: How B2B Marketers Can Capitalize on Consumer Events

Often, the Super Bowl seems as if it's more of a season than a one-day event. It dominates consumer conversations for weeks and weeks before Super Bowl Sunday arrives. From the food to the entertainment to the ads and the big game itself, the public is more focused on the Super Bowl than on most national holidays.
Communications professionals typically see the game as a time for business-to-consumer (B2C) marketers to capitalize on the benefits of all that conversation. But the truth is that business-to-business (B2B) companies can, and should, also take advantage of major consumer events.
Conversations from the newsroom to the living room and even the conference room are all about the Super Bowl. It's natural for companies to want to engage in that conversation—and they can, and they should.
As with any "trend intervention," brands must tread cautiously to make sure that their interactions are appropriate and valued rather than inappropriate and unwelcomed interruptions of the conversation.
B2B marketers can take advantage of the opportunity to reach a portion of the 180 million spectators expected for this year's Super Bowl—or the audiences of other major events traditionally considered B2C marketing opportunities.

Here are just a few of the tactics that B2B marketers can employ to get in the game.
Keep your eye on the ball
Even B2B advertising content and marketing collateral can jump on the Super Bowl bandwagon. When the public is so focused on a major event, tying it to your marketing efforts may help increase awareness and message retention.
Perhaps a football-themed infographic, whitepaper, email campaign, or tradeshow booth can help you garner a few new fans for your company.
Be a super fan
The Super Bowl is practically a religious holiday. Just as your organization might wish folks a great holiday celebration or perhaps share something about the culture of your organization, you can demonstrate the excitement of your employees for the game.
From creating a special homepage banner to posting photos of your decorated office on social media, you have many subtle ways to show your organization is full of loyal fans.
Select winning tactics
Consider adding giveaways or a well-designed contest to your marketing mix. On the low end, you could provide customers with a care package to enjoy the big game, and on the high end you could give actual tickets to your best customers.
If planned well, a contest leading up to the event could serve as a lead-generation tool as well as garner goodwill with your current customer base.
Know the score
For most sports fans, knowing the stats of every game and player is a badge of honor. Is there a way for you to dig into the data to support your customers or inform your industry? Perhaps your company sells products or provides services that may be affected by the game.
It's not just sales of chicken wings, beer, and giant TVs that spike before the Super Bowl. This is the first year that the game can be streamed live to a device without the need for a cable subscription, so we may see spikes in everything from wireless router sales to computer and mobile device upgrades.
Share such knowledge with your customers to help them plan accordingly.
Coach your team
A major consumer event could be an opportunity to help your own customers succeed at their own game. If you can offer them solid advice or guidance on how they can use this opportunity or other trends and breaking news events to their advantage, they will appreciate the gesture. If you can weave your product or service into that story, you might be able to spur sales at the same time.
Alternatively, you could just incorporate a "playbook" approach to your business advice and turn it into anything from a simple blog entry to a longer-form e-book for more in-depth coaching. One of the easiest analogies to make is between scoring on the field and scoring in business. Pick a theme, own the cheese factor, and score a touchdown.
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As any good fan knows, overindulging at the pre-game can wind up hurting more than helping your brand; so... everything in moderation. But when done well, adopting a major consumer event as part of an overall marketing effort can help B2B communicators have a positive impact on engagement with customers through public relations, social media, and traditional marketing efforts.
In the end, businesses are composed of individual consumers, and when something is capturing the hearts and minds of the general public... that public also brings it to work, including at B2B firms.
Careful planning and thoughtful program development that takes advantage of large-scale consumer and cultural events can lead to a win-win for your company and your clients.
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Elements of a Successful Creative Pitch

Elements of a Successful Creative Pitch [Infographic]

Kindle

You've one shot to dazzle your audience with your idea, service, or product. Here are some tips to make sure you rock the presentation.
Get your audience prepared for your presentation by setting the stage. Be sure to include walk-in music, a printed itinerary, welcome videos, and light refreshments.
Also, consider the best format for your presentation. "The presentation hould be well-organized with key point logically building on each other," states the following USC Annenberg infographic.
Another key element is the content, so take time to plan your content around your goal. Don't use hyperbole or create infodumps. "Streamline the content," suggests USC.
Find out more about creating a successful creative pitch in the following infographic.


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Veronica Maria Jarski is the Opinions editor and a senior writer at MarketingProfs.
Twitter: @Veronica_Jarski

Know Where Your Ads Are Running, Whom They're Reaching, and How Much You're Paying?

Most advertisers today are going in blind and getting deceived in online advertising. Amid the rise of programmatic online media buys, somehow transparency has deftly managed to slip through the cracks.
Brands and agencies at a recent Digiday event were asked to identify their single largest concern regarding online advertising. Once all votes were in, ad fraud and viewability emerged as the top industry issues keeping execs up at night.
With bots, suspect placements, and cost-transparency issues looming large, heads of digital are beginning to take a closer look at exactly where, when, and what their agencies and ad tech partners are running in their ad placements.
The opacity of the online advertising industry hasn't been adequately scrutinized until now. New technology in the form of placement quality monitoring and video-by-video location databases is beginning to force the realization among advertisers that the somewhat sketchy way things have been so far may not be the way they'll always have to be.
As an advertiser, you have the right to know where your ads are running, whom you're reaching, and how much you're paying. You need clear reporting that boils down to the KPIs that matter for your business.

What you don't need is a "trusted" ad partner charging you an arm and a leg for display ads running at 4 AM in countries where you don't do business or for ads that never get seen anywhere.
Moreover, Google's first-ever ad viewability report [PDF] revealed that 56% of online display ads are never actually seen by consumers. Are you 100% certain that you're getting all the views you're currently paying for?
Who ultimately is responsible for ridding the online ad market of deception and disappointment?
Here's what advertisers should at least consider as they continue to shift media budgets online and search for the perfect technology partner.
Strict Standards 
The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) may define viewability as a minimum of 50% of pixels showing for at least one-to-two seconds, but that doesn't mean you have to. If a 60% video view-to-completion rate is important to you, communicate that KPI to your agency or ad tech partner.
Don't be afraid to get specific about what metrics represent success for your business. The more clearly you lay out what you want at the beginning, the more likely you are to actually get it in the end.
Relationship Economics
Money talk can be tough, but unfortunately, it's up to you to ask how much margin your agency or ad tech provider is making from each media buy. Paying a small percentage to ensure top-quality service, premium inventory, and continual campaign optimization is one thing. Getting practically robbed is quite another.
Finding the One
The same principle should be applied when serving your ad to relevant audiences online. Not all views are created equal, and your ad tech partner needs to spend your ad dollars targeting the right type of consumers for your brand.
Most people wouldn't feel comfortable paying for a lackluster meal at a Michelin star-rated restaurant. Make it clear that you are not willing to pay for low-quality or wildly off-target views either.
Placement Politics
Asking political questions may be taboo in most social situations, but having a conversation with your ad tech partner about precisely where your ads are running online needs to become the norm.
Google's 2014 ad-viewability report notes that above the fold placements have a 68% viewability rate, while below the fold ads have a 40% rate. If your partner can't produce a site-by-site or video-by-video list of placements, it's time to break off the relationship and find someone who can.
* * *
The worldwide media-buying arm of WPP, Group M, has forecast that 50% of the UK's ad market will be digital in 2015. So, make sure you understand where your ads are running, who they're reaching, and what you're paying for.
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#SocialSkim: Facebook Topic Data, Where to Post Various Video Types, Why People Unfollow, More!

See the top brand video spreading across socnets, learn more about Facebook Topic Data, and find out why people unfollow brands—and what kinds of engagement to expect for your social media content. Skim to keep in tune.
A fitting end for a well-penned life. Prolific fantasy author Terry Pratchett passed on after a long struggle with Alzheimer's, and users took to their socnets to pen tributes to him. But we were most touched by the memorial from his assistant, who shares Pratchett's Twitter account, @TerryandRob. In true storyteller style, Rob introduced the character of the Grim Reaper into Terry's last few tweets, concluding, softly but definitively, with The End. The father of Discworld would have beamed.
Love has no labels. At the top of the Viral Video Charts is the Ad Council's effort for Valentine's Day. A public panel shows two skeletons playing, hugging and kissing, after which their owners appear, breaking down stereotypes in the name of blind love. On Facebook alone, the original post was shared 1.3 million times.

Say hello to Facebook Topic Data. Facebook's opened a new analysis feature, Topic Data, to select partners. It "shows marketers what audiences are saying on Facebook about events, brands, subjects and activities, all in a way that keeps personal information private," Facebook says. If you're part of the trial, use this data to produce posts optimized by relevance and create more granular product road maps. It will also be easier to measure brand sentiment, decide what products to stock, and find out which demographics are discussing various facets of your product. Long live Big Data.


60 Twitter tools and tips. Hurtin' for a new cross-account programming platform? How about a link shortener or a trends analyzer? Here are 60 tools and tips made just for Twitter. A few we love: Topsy (for searching through and analyzing trends and tweets), Storify (for building a story that involves a lot of people—then sharing it), MyTopTweet (the 10 most popular tweets of any account) and twtpoll, for polling people who follow you. Tweet away!

Where do you put that video? @TheBuzzer, a show created by Fox Sports network for social platforms, explains where it puts its videos and why. Twitter is for in-the-moment stuff: Instant replays, or stoking the fire around a given topic. Facebook is where "second-day" stories, or its analysis of recently broken news, live. And YouTube is for less topical, evergreen stories (whereas timely stuff is pushed to either Facebook or Twitter). If you're hunting for a social video strategy, this one's a good start.
What interactions will you get for your content? News Whip took a look at how content types affect interactions on Facebook. First discovery? It depends what kind of page you're running (celebrity news, politics, gaming, etc.). The headline also affects whether people will simply Like or actually click through, so be sure to A/B-test. For example, stories or titles for which the subject or outcome are clear, like celeb news or breaking news events, might get a Like but not a click-through. Political news generates lots of comments, as do long-form articles, especially paired with click-baitish titles (like the one below). Listicles and interactives? Total share-bait.

Want more e-commerce sales? Stack up on social reviews. A report (PDF) from Bazaar Voice demonstrates how more social reviews drive higher purchases. A hundred could boost conversions by up to 37%, whereas 200 could push that figure up to 44%. It also shows how different ratings can contain different insights: one- or three-star reviews can reveal product flaws, while three- to five-star reviews are rich fodder for new products or features. What's more, customer-written content keeps sites dynamic, boosting SEO. Dig in!

Why are people unfollowing me? Don't feel forsaken. Fractl and Buzzstream surveyed 900 social media users to learn the answer to this question. (See the full infographic.) 21% of users said they unfollowed because of repetitive, boring content; 19% because the brand posted too often (over six times per day). Unfollows can also result from offensive activity or content you post that's irrelevant to your service. Time to start cutting down on Caturday posts.

44 social tools for pros. Need to boost your social media game? This comprehensive list of pro tools covers everything from tying your networking back to social media sites (Discover.ly), creating social calls to action (Snip.ly]), and designing social media-friendly images (Pablo).

We'll wrap with some storytelling inspiration. On the heels of a Gap microseries, Comedy Central's launched the first episode of a short-form Web series via Instagram account @atmidnightcc. The cleverly-named "Plot Twistagram" is like a choose-your-own-adventure: Each week, producers ask fans to submit ideas for the next episode's plot in the comments section of the current episode. Showrunners produce their favorite one. Below you'll find the first episode. How can you use Instagram to flaunt your storytelling skills?

Plot Twistagram Episode 1 - Your mission, should you choose to accept it: Tell us what YOU want to see happen next! We'll choose our favorite idea and shoot it! This is a new interactive series exclusively on Instagram brought to you by the @atmidnightcc digital pod. Every Monday we'll release a new episode based on what you decided should happen. Leave your suggestions in the comments section below. Good luck and get creative! #PlotTwistagram

A video posted by @Midnight (@atmidnightcc) on Mar 9, 2015 at 5:54am PDT

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Eye-Tracking Study: Native Ads vs. Banner Ads

Mon, 16 Mar 2015 13:00:00 +0000

Kindle

Native ads in digital news feeds receive significantly more visual attention from consumers than banner ads do, according to a recent report from Sharethrough and Nielsen.
The report was based on data from a study in which mock banner and native ads from five advertisers were shown to participants in a video simulating the experience of scrolling through an editorial feed. Using a combination of EEG data—measurements of neural activity in the brain—and eye tracking, Nielsen quantified where and how the participants' focus was directed.
In-feed native ads in the desktop simulation received 25% more attention from study participants than banner ads did; on tablets, the native ads received twice as much visual focus as the banners.

Native ads and banner ads were also processed visually in different ways by study participants.

The banner ads displayed received little to no visual focus on the text; instead, study participants processed the ads in the peripheral field of vision, similar to how they viewed images.
With the native ads, visual focus was on the text rather than the thumbnail, similar to the surrounding editorial content. In other words, the native ads were read in addition to being seen.

About the research: The report was based on data from a study in which mock banner and native ads from five advertisers were shown to participants in a video simulating the experience of scrolling through an editorial feed.
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Ayaz Nanji is an independent digital strategist and the co-founder of Inbound ContentWorks, a marketing agency that specializes in content creation for businesses and brands. He is also a research writer for MarketingProfs. His past experience includes working for Google/YouTube, the Travel Channel, AOL, and the New York Times.
LinkedIn: Ayaz Nanji
Twitter: @ayaznanji