Marketing Google

Twin Design / Shutterstock.com It’s a Thursday, so Facebook is probably changing its news feed algorithm. Correct!This time Facebook is adding a new signal to its algorithm to show people more “informative” stories. What does that mean? It sounds like it means cooking videos over cat videos, newsy articles over fluffy listicles.“This could be a news article on a current event, a story about your favorite celebrity, a piece of local news, a review of an upcoming movie, a recipe or anything that informs you,” according to a company blog post Facebook published on Thursday announcing the change. The blog post goes on to say that “Informative stories are therefore different for each person and will likely change over time.” Helpful!To figure out what stories are informative to which people, Facebook is relying on a focus group it can project across its 1.7 billion-person audience. Every day “tens of thousands of people” around the world in Facebook’s Feed Quality Program rank the stories i…

SEO is now a digital marketing activity used by 94 percent of marketers, and it’s estimated that companies will spend just over $65 billion on SEO in 2016. Yet despite the increasing usage of and growing investment in this digital marketing channel, measuring the ROI of SEO efforts can still present a considerable challenge for marketers.For brands to maximize the impact of SEO, they need to be able to communicate the value of their efforts and show their CMO just how well SEO is performing. It is only with this evangelism that digital marketing departments will be able to secure the resources, funding and attention they need to drive forward toward marketing maturity and revenue-based success.What do the CMO and the board want to know?For SEOs to communicate effectively, they need to consider their audience. CMOs do not want to see slides with information about the latest Google algorithm update or the steps being taken to avoid duplicate content penalties; instead, they want to know…

As search engines become more sophisticated, the levers available to improve SEO performance have become more complex and more out of control of the brand and/or agency. Historically, where agencies could easily influence search results through building authority links with no dependency on the client, there are now many more factors at play, which are harder to optimize.If the primary purpose of the SEO agency is to improve SEO performance of their client, it is important that their model or the way they engage with clients facilitate the ability to do this. An inability to deliver performance gains means they are unable to justify their fee and risk losing business.I would argue that as an industry, we didn’t do a great job transitioning to content marketing-based strategies. If we don’t learn from the past, then ultimately, we face the same risks of disruption.[Read the full article on Search Engine Land.]

via Marketing Land

Xperiel’s visualization of its platform The huge and growing archipelago of devices, screens, and sensors represents an enormous opportunity for whichever companies best connect the pieces.Today, startup Xperiel is announcing its bid to be that connector — a new platform for marketers to quickly and easily build apps that link to GPS, audio signals, digital billboards, connected kiosks, and other pieces of the growing Internet of Things.The platform is the first product from the Sunnyvale, California-based company, launched in 2013 by engineers who helped develop the technology that became Google Wallet. Xperiel is currently in a private beta with a few brands, notably the Los Angeles Dodgers, and a self-serve version is planned for release by year’s end.Along with the platform, the company is also announcing today its initial funding of $7 million from investors that include the Los Angeles Dodgers, Major League Baseball, Sun Microsystems’ co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim, Intuit’s Scott …

Instagram’s direct-response advertising business was born a year ago with a silver spoon in its mouth. Its parent company, Facebook, had spent years developing ad formats, honing targeting capabilities and building measurement systems and attracting marketers that didn’t want people to only see their ads but to act on them, to click on them and install an app, visit a product site, buy something. Conceivably Instagram could have inherited that business and its customers and called it a day. But it’s not that easy, and in Instagram’s case, it hasn’t been.Instagram’s ad business has not yet totally clicked with direct-response advertisers, based on interviews with several agency execs.There are natural growing pains, like convincing marketers who are very comfortable spending their money on Google’s search ads and Facebook’s ads to try something new. Then there are the perception problems spurred by the look-heavy, link-light app catering to brand advertisers since debuting its first ad…

Although Facebook now generates upwards of 80% of its revenue from mobile ads, the world’s largest social network isn’t waving the white flag on desktop ad blocking.Yesterday, it announced that it’s changing the way it delivers desktop ads in an effort to thwart ad blocking software.Andrew Bosworth, Facebook’s Ads & Business Platform VP, didn’t mince words, telling the Wall Street Journal, “Facebook is ad-supported. Ads are a part of the Facebook experience; they’re not a tack on.” In a blog post, he explained Facebook’s position in slightly more diplomatic terms:We’ve designed our ad formats, ad performance and controls to address the underlying reasons people have turned to ad blocking software. When we asked people about why they used ad blocking software, the primary reason we heard was to stop annoying, disruptive ads.Facebook believes that it’s well on its way to addressing concerns over annoying ads.“As a result of what we’ve learned, we’ve introduced tools to help people c…

While the some of us are bickering about the pending update for the Apple MacBook the company is allegedly redesigning the MacBook Pro 2016. The rumor mills also point out at the possibility that Apple is already testing out the new laptop since the beginning of this year. Apple has been victimised by its sluggish sales for the past two quarters and the iPad sales also seemed to have taken a plunge.MacBook laptop line-up has been one of the strongest offerings for the company and the sales for the same have been climbing up with last Year-on-Year sale growth at 6 percent. However, as we said earlier the iPad sales seem to have dropped by 23 percent, but again tablet sales have always been fidgety. Also, the iPhone sales usually slow down this time of the year as Apple readies the iterative upgrade for the same, this time around it’s the iPhone 7 which is expected to be released this September.Apple insiders have reasons to believe (including the revamp of the design) that the MacBook …

While Samsung Galaxy Note7 was getting unveiled in India, a dark horse was presumably getting ready in China to take on its Korean counterpart. Well, it’s none other than the Xiaomi Mi Note 2; a device that has been in pipeline for just too long. Nevertheless, it now seems that Xiaomi is all set to unveil their mega phablet, and guess what, it has some powerful internals underneath.A new leak coming from China has now revealed most of the specs of the alleged smartphone. Incidentally, the Mi Note 2 is expected to come in three variants and just in case you are thinking that the difference between the three is in the RAM or internal storage, then you are wrong. Rather there’s a lot that differs among these variants – starting from the display to the build quality.As expected, Xiaomi Mi Note 2 will sport a Samsung made 5.7 inch Super AMOLED display upfront. But wait, there’s more to the tale. While the base variant of the Mi Note 2 will sport a Full HD panel, the other two will come wit…

Visa Digital Skyline in downtown San Francisco for SuperBowl 50. When you think of Visa, what comes to mind? Plastic credit cards? A hierarchical financial services culture? Think again.Visa has gone through tremendous change to meet consumers where they are — on their mobile devices. There’s more to this change than paying on mobile rather than plastic.The organization considers itself more of a technology company than a financial services company. The marketing leadership at Visa reinvented not just the way they engage consumers, amidst an onslaught of social channels, but also how the team is organized.The marketing team made an intentional organizational shift from vertical to horizontal and has home-grown an army of “Swiss Army knife” talent.Leading this effort for North America Marketing is Lara Hood Balazs. She joined us to discuss how this organizational change happened, and how it has given rise to new digital business solutions and a workforce that promotes equality and diver…

55% of searchers don’t know which links in the SERPs are PPC ads, according to a new survey. I covered this topic back in April, using data from an Ofcom report which found that up to 50% of users shown a SERP screenshot could not identify paid ads.The article also mentioned data from Varn, which found that, of the 1,010 Uk internet users who were asked the question below,  50.6% couldn’t identify which links were ads:The survey above came from February this year, but there have been a few changes to the SERPs since then, so Varn repeated the survey.And, the new one found that almost 55% now don’t know which links are paid ads and which are organic.The results are also split by age, with the general trend being that, the younger you are, the more likely it is that you’ll spot the ads, though almost 50% of 25 to 34s still aren’t seeing ads.As before, the results can seem surprising when you look at a typical search results page, and the results labelled as ads.Then again, perhaps I’m n…

Millennials spend about six hours a day checking email, according to Adobe. Marketers have the opportunity to capitalize on the amount of time millennials spend reading their emails and maximize their email marketing efforts. But how?To make an impact among millennials, marketers need to break the mold, focus their attention and put the recipients in control of the content they receive.Break the moldOver 215 billion emails are sent every day, according to Radicati, and that number is only going to increase over time. Marketers need to set themselves apart from the masses to increase open and engagement rates, especially among millennials.To do that, try using an emoji in the subject line, but only if it is true to your brand and recipients’ interests. Begin adding emojis to subject lines for a select group of recipients — for example, your most engaged ones — to see if the content resonates with them, and expand accordingly, depending on the response.While the use of hashtags in subje…

Here’s our recap of what happened in marketing technology, as reported on Marketing Land and other places across the web.From Marketing Land:Confirmed: New AdWords interface rolling out to more users
Aug 10, 2016 by Greg Finn
Google has confirmed the rollout of the new user interface to more AdWords users.SEO and the CMO: Communication and board room metrics that matter
Aug 10, 2016 by Jim Yu
Securing investment for SEO is a tough challenge, especially when CMOs don’t fully understand the value of this channel. Columnist Jim Yu explains how SEOs can translate the data they track internally into metrics that matter to the C-suite.Google remarketing lists for search ads make their way to Google search partners
Aug 9, 2016 by Greg Finn
RLSAs are headed outside of Google websites and into the wide world of Google search partners.From Around The Web:Why Personalization Is Key for Content Marketing, www.emarketer.comAct-On Gets ‘Social’ With Advanced Engagement and Analytics, press.act-on.c…

The JioFi 4G MiFi hotspot device from Reliance Jio was launched few days back, but was available exclusively for HP desktop and laptop users. As per our sources, the 4G MiFi router will be available for purchase by anyone starting tomorrow, i.e 12th August 2016. The JioFi 4G MiFi router is powered by Lyf and comes with the free preview offer with 90 days unlimited 4G internet, VoLTE calls, and SMSes.Reliance Jio is yet to have a commercial launch, but the preview offer has enticed people to do their best to get a Jio SIM. JioFi is a portable 4G MiFi router which costs Rs 2,899 and creates a 4G Wifi hotspot through which you can connect up to as many as 31 devices. The device takes up to 3 hours to be charged completely and can then run up to 6 hours. In addition to 3 months of unlimited data, JioFi owners are entitled to make unlimited HD voice & video calls by downloading JioJoin app.As per our sources, Reliance Digital and Dx Mini retailers have started receiving circulars askin…

Relevancy, relevancy, relevancy; it’s the mantra of digital marketers around the world. But when it comes to content marketing, how do you quantify this? Can you determine just how relevant you are, and how you can improve it?Relevancy is now a critical element in search marketing, but understanding and quantifying that relevancy is no easy task.It takes a combination of human and algorithmic review to really get to the bottom of what makes content suitable to answer your audience search query, but how do you know that you are looking for the right things?Content, context, timing, technical proficiency and audience targeting – these are all critical to ensuring that your brand is delivering effective, relevant content.Understand your audience personasAs more and more branded content is produced, more and more of it becomes ambient, ignored and ineffective. That’s a huge amount of resource and investment that is going to waste.A lot of this is down to a lack of meaningful insight on th…

It seems to be raining new TV brands in India with Kodak announcing their new HD LED TV lineup. This announcement comes close on heels of the LeEco Super 3 TV announcement and also Micromax Canvas Smart TV. The product lineup will consist of five HD LED TV’s with sizes ranging from 32-inch to 50-inch. Just like most of the other players in the market, it seems that even Kodak is interested to gain traction by tapping the budget LED TV market.The line-up also consists of Kodak Smart HD TV’s which will be launched along with the others. The company says that the Smart LED line-up will be made available on major e-commerce destinations including ShopClues, Flipkart, and Amazon starting from 15th of August, however, the 32-inch basic variant will be sold exclusively through Shopclues.Moving on, Kodak offers two variants for every display size (except for 50-inch), one an usual LED TV while the other one is a smart variant. The 32-inch HDXSMART boasts of USB to USB copy feature, 4GB of Fla…

You may be surprised at how common some SEO myths still are in 2016, so it’s definitely time to leave them behind.Whether you’re an expert or a beginner at SEO, it’s always useful to compile all the myths you read about, so you can work out for yourself the ones you actually need to be worried about.What would you add to this list of the most common SEO myths?1. SEO is deadThis is certainly the most popular SEO-related myth and it ended up an urban legend, widely spread among sites and communities. If you happen to believe that SEO is indeed dead, or if you’re just a pessimist, I assume the rest of the myths won’t be much useful to you.If you want to keep on reading and set things straight once and for all, keep in mind that search engines and algorithms are not disappearing anytime soon, so you may still rely on SEO to maintain visibility and traffic to your site.2. SEO is about adding the right keywordsThere used to be a time when keyword density was (mistakenly) synonymous with a g…

Samsung had announced the Note 7 at a global launch event recently and now the company has finally pulled the wraps from its India offering. The Samsung Galaxy Note7 is launched in India priced at Rs 59,900 and will be sold through both offline and online retail channels. In the meanwhile, the device has received rave reviews and is touted to be the best in class, something the Note series is known for.Galaxy Note7 packs a 5.7-inch QHD Super AMOLED display and draws power from the Exynos 8890 alongside 4GB of RAM. Design wise the Note7 for the first time resembles the Galaxy S series, thanks to the warped edges and the overall revamped aesthetics. On the storage front, the Galaxy Note7 offers 64GB of internal storage along with an option to expand the memory up to 256GB, courtesy microSD card.The imaging end is taken care by a 12-Megapixel primary sensor with a f/1.7 Lens aperture, Optical Image Stabilization. The secondary sensor shapes up in the form of a 5-Megpixel unit alongside O…

Update: Web-push notification is now enabled for Chrome browser. This article is updated with new information. How many subscription channels are you offering on your blog? Most of you have already enabled many of these must have subscription options, and with the advancement in technology, there are new methods that you can use to notify your readers of latest posts or important updates from your blog.Today I will be talking about Pushengage, which is a Web push notification for WordPress and supports another platform like E-commerce sites, BlogSpot, Joomla, Drupal, bbPress & much more. Using Pushengage service, you give another subscription option to readers of your blog, who are using Chrome browser (All platform) or Safari browser on Mac OS to subscribe to your blog push notification.Check the review: WordPress Desktop Editor for Mac – BlogoIf you are using a smartphone (iOS or Android) I’m sure you are aware of push notification sent by the installed apps. Web push notificati…