Online ads may be on the verge changing significantly, with Google testing favicons within ads.
Favicons are those little icons that show up in browser tabs when visiting certain websites. They’re a way for websites to add a little more branding, but many users find them annoying and distracting. What’s more, browser favicons have been exposed as a privacy risk, allowing bad actors to track users’ activity.
Evidently, Google still believes favicons may have a place in advertising, and is testing their inclusion, according to a tweet by Google’s AdsLiason account.
This is part of a series of small experiments to help users more easily identify the brand or advertiser associated with the Search ads they may see for a given query.
Google has taken the extraordinary step of threatening to pull its search engine out of Australia if it’s forced to pay for news content.
Google has long been at odds with news publishers. Many have tried to get the company to pay for news, but the company has made it a practice to link to and use news content without paying. Google has always claimed that news publishers benefit far more than it does from the arrangement.
In spite of that, the company has begun caving to pressure. France has ordered Google to pay for news and the company recently set aside $1 billion to help fund partnerships with publishers.
Google seems unwilling to give into Australia’s demands, however, according to ABC News. According to the report, Google has said it will pull its search engine if Australia moves ahead with its plans to force the company to pay.
“If this version of the code were to become law, it would give us no real choice but to stop making Google search available in Australia,” Mel Silva, the managing director of Google Australia and New Zealand, told a Senate inquiry. “And that would be a bad outcome not only for us, but also for the Australian people, media diversity, and the small businesses who use our products every day.”
That stance did not go over well with the government, with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison saying “we don’t respond to threats.”
It remains to be seen how things will eventually shake out, but it’s not looking good for Google Australia either way.
Google has announced it paid a record-breaking $6.5 million through its Vulnerability Reward Programs in 2019.
Google’s VRPs rewards security researchers who find and report bugs so the company can address them. According to the company, 2019’s payout doubled what had been paid in any previous single year.
Programs such as this have become a critical tool for companies in the fight against hackers and cybercriminals. By relying on security researchers and “white hat” hackers, companies hope to find security vulnerabilities and bugs before cyber criminals, or “black hats.”
According to Google, “since 2010, we have expanded our VRPs to cover additional Google product areas, including Chrome, Android, and most recently Abuse. We’ve also expanded to cover popular third party apps on Google Play, helping identify and disclose vulnerabilities to impacted app developers. Since then we have paid out more than $21 million in rewards.”
Although $6.5 million is a sizable amount, it pales in comparison to the cost of an exploited security vulnerability or data breach. In fact, according to a study sponsored by IBM Security, the average cost of a single data breach is $3.92 million. In view of the number of bug fixes that $6.5 million facilitated, it seems like quite the bargain.
Google is apparently walking back a recent search redesign that made it difficult to distinguish ads from organic results, according to TechCrunch.
Google was in the news recently for blurring the line between organic search results and ads, making it difficult to distinguish between the two. The move was important because Google only makes money when users click on ads, as opposed to organic results. Therefore, it’s in the company’s interest for users to click on as many ads, or sponsored links, as possible.
The move did not sit well with anyone, however, with consumers, journalists and politicians alike slamming the search giant. As TechCrunch points out, Senator Mark Warner told the Washington Post:
“We’ve seen multiple instances over the last few years where Google has made paid advertisements ever more indistinguishable from organic search results. This is yet another example of a platform exploiting its bottleneck power for commercial gain, to the detriment of both consumers and also small businesses.”
The company has now acknowledged, via Twitter, that it needs to go back to the drawing boards to deliver an update that addresses user concern.
“Here’s our full statement on why we’re going to experiment further. Our early tests of the design for desktop were positive. But we appreciate the feedback, the trust people place in Google, and we’re dedicating to improving the experience.”
In a recent Brookings Institution report, authors Mark Muro, Jacob Whiton and Robert Maxim make the case that better-paid, white-collar professionals are most at risk of losing their jobs to artificial intelligence.
As the report points out, past studies have had little actual data to go on and have, instead, relied on case studies and subject assessments to predict which jobs and industries were most vulnerable.
“What’s more, most research has concentrated on an undifferentiated array of ‘automation’ technologies including robotics, software, and AI all at once,” the report says. “The result has been a lot of discussion—but not a lot of clarity—about AI, with prognostications that range from the utopian to the apocalyptic.”
In contrast, a new method devised by Stanford University Ph.D. candidate Michael Webb compares job descriptions with AI-related patents, giving a higher degree of accuracy.
The new data shows that low-wage jobs will continue to be heavily impacted by automation and robotics. When it comes to true AI, however, “the present analysis suggests that better-educated, better-paid workers (along with manufacturing and production workers) will be the most affected by the new AI technologies, with some exceptions.”
Professions that have a high amount of predictive work, or pattern-oriented tasks are the kind of jobs AI is particularly well-suited to take over.
“At the high end of AI involvement, for example, are numerous well-paid occupations that had relatively low exposure in our earlier, all-encompassing automation analysis. They range from market research analysts and sales managers to programmers, management analysts, and engineers. Often analytic or supervisory, these roles appear heavily involved in pattern-oriented or predictive work, and may therefore be especially susceptible to the data- driven inroads of AI, even though they seemed relatively immune in earlier analyses.”
In addition, individuals “with graduate or professional degrees will be almost four times as exposed to AI as workers with just a high school degree.” The data also shows that high-tech metro areas will be more susceptible than most rural areas.
The original, in-depth report is 46 pages long and is a fascinating read, providing some all-new insights into the far-reaching impacts AI will have on all economic sectors.
Facebook will once again try to channel some of Google’s search success with its new and improved Search Ad feature. However, the ads will only be seen by users in North America.
The new Search Ads will work the same way as conventional search engines. The user will type what they are looking for in the search bar and the platform will show the results. And similar to Google, the promoted results will be at the top of the list.
Facebook’s product manager, Zoheb Hajiyani revealed that this new feature is just a trial run, and only a select number of eCommerce, retail, and automotive companies in Canada and the US have access to it. He also explained that they are only conducting “a small test to place ads in Facebook search results.” The company will then assess the value of these ads before deciding whether it will be beneficial to expand it.
The new Search ads will be composed of a headline, an image, copy, and a link to external websites. While the format is more complicated than Google’s text ads, Hajiyani admitted that they’re still improving the feature’s design.
Facebook also hasn’t commented on whether the search triggers are based on phrases or branded or non-branded keywords. But the company will reportedly tag the ads with a “Sponsored” label. It will also provide users with the same controls and transparency settings that will determine what ads they will see.
Users won’t be able to opt out of these ads though. While they can “hide” ads they don’t want to see, much like how it’s done with News Feed advertisements, it won’t stop different ads from appearing on their wall later.
This is not Facebook’s first foray into monetizing the search feature. It previously launched a “sponsored results” feature in 2012 but shut down the project the following year when it was discovered that many advertisers were taking advantage of loopholes in the system.
If account holders take a shine to the new Search Ads, it could lead to a new and significant revenue stream for the company. It will also pit Facebook directly against Google’s paid-search ads.
At the moment, Facebook needs something to energize its growth. Most of the company’s profit comes from ads. Mark Zuckerberg’s brainchild saw its profits peak at 59 percent in the third quarter of 2016 and 49 percent in 2017. However, this year’s revenue only grew by 33 percent.
Controlling the search position of your brand is very important to your business. However, this has become increasingly difficult due to changes in Google brand policies that have opened the door to competitors stealing (or buying) your brands traffic and business. Puneet Vaghela, Head of Paid Search at PHD UK, a global communications planning and media buying network recently spoke about these important challenges:
Why is brand search difficult to control in PPC?
With brand search, you are expected to get most of the traffic. However, what we are seeing increasingly is more and more competitors entering the market in our brand space. Back in the day, it was there but you could just get them kicked off by Google or Bing. Nowadays, it’s a lot more difficult with all of the policy changes. What this actually means is that they are not only cannibalizing our traffic but they’re also pushing up our CPCs and our CPAs.
As a brand, you are always looking for ways to get people to your website and get them to convert more. It used to be just interest-based keywords on generics related to your own brand. Now you can cannibalize other peoples brands and get those incremental gains. The problem then is competitors coming into our brand space and pushing our ads down or increasing the CPCs on our ads. It’s not just direct competitors either, you have resellers, aggregators, etc. In the automotive space you have dealers and many automotive brands are having issues with trying to control how their dealers are bidding because dealers don’t have as much experience.
What we are seeing now is traffic is being lost from our brands’ brand-related search terms onto our main website and it’s going away.
This is even more important on mobile
As you know with mobile there’s a lot less space on the SERP, and usually with the size of the ads above the fold takes up most of the space and not many people are going to scroll down all the way to the bottom. Also, with mobile, it’s when people are actually looking for stuff at the moment and they’ve got less attention span, so it’s even more important that we actually pick up this traffic. Chances are that whatever they click on they are going to then stick with that. This is especially the case for retailers and automotive businesses who have local offerings and people looking for local specific information.
On mobile, the lower your ad position is the higher (negative) impact it has on your clickthrough rate.
On tablet and on desktop the actual CTR decrease as your ad position goes down isn’t as significant as it is on mobile. This goes to show that on mobile we need to make sure that our ad positions are up there at the top.
How valuable is your brand space?
Once you have the data and you know about your brand space it’s about analyzing the data and finding out how valuable is your brand space to you? Years ago you could just log into Google Analytics and look at the value per click of your organic brand and the value per click of your paid search brand. As long as the value was more than your cost per click it made it viable to bid on your brand. It was a pretty simple analysis.
Then seven years ago Google took away the ability to see organic keyword data and analytics have become harder. What we are seeing now is that’s it’s a lot more difficult to access this data and so people are having to think of different tests that they can come up with.
I like to use standard deviation to get the validity of the data in the beginning in order to measure the success of the ad test. The reason for this is that gives a much better data set to work with so once you actually have the data in you can use a range to look at the changes we see if we then turn the brand off. If it fits within this range then fine, we don’t need to work on brand PPC. If it’s outside of the range then we know that PPC needs to be turned on because it’s having a significant impact on our business.
On Monday, Google announced updates to its paid storage plans under Google Drive. CalledGoogle One, customers will have access to expanded storage at lower price points, plus a bevy of other benefits.
With Google One, consumers can get 100GB and 200 GB of storage for monthly fees of $1.99 and $2.99, respectively. The 2TB plan was priced at $19.99 previously but will now cost $9.99 a month after the 1TB plan gets discontinued. And for heavy users, the rates for 10TB, 20TB, and 30TB will remain unchanged.
But, why the need for increased storage? Google pointed that users nowadays have more mobile devices, shoot more 4K videos, and take high-resolution photographs, requiring more storage and easier sharing of files online.
With more space, smarter options, access to experts and more, Google One is a simple plan for expanded storage with extra benefits to help you get more out of Google → https://t.co/65IdUJmn5Zpic.twitter.com/hJTXvvAWkZ
Following public clamor, paid consumers can now share their storage limit with up to five family members. Each will have their own private storage space, aside from the extra benefits that come with Google One. Users, even with the basic storage account, will have ‘one-tap’ access to round-the-clock support with live experts onboard, and not just AI-powered chatbots to answer queries.
Google promises to add more benefits to its available plans, but for now, users can look forward to credits on Google Play, discounts on select hotels discovered in Google Search, or premium rates on other services. After all, the tech giant noticed that people with paid storage plans are often heavy users of Google products.
Despite the exciting announcement, rollout will happen gradually over the next few months so users should look out for email confirmation regarding the update. Existing storage plans in the US will be upgraded to Google One first before they are made available worldwide. The tech giant revealed that it will launch an Android app to help users in managing their accounts, and not their files.
On the other hand, Google assured that G Suite business customers will not be affected by the upgrade. The free 15GB storage quota under Google Drive will also remain available to all accounts.
Google’s latest storage plans will most likely be extended to include other services and packaged under a single subscription offering. It will be poised to compete withOneDrive, a subscription worth $99.99 annually or $9.99 monthly through the Microsoft Store. Similar to Google One, it has 1TB storage quota that can be shared with five users. There are, however, no options to modify storage space or plans for over 1TB. The subscription comes with access to Office suite apps, such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, as well as a monthly allocation of 60 minutes of Skype calls per user.
The terms machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) have been cropping up more often when it comes to organic and paid search. Now a recent report by Acquisio has confirmed just how effective machine learning is for search results.
According to Acquisio, paid search accounts that have been optimised for machine learning have 71% higher conversion rates and have lower cost-per-click (CPC). But these were not the only benefits that accounts using machine learning enjoyed. The web marketing company also revealed these accounts were also able to reach their target spending levels and had lower churn rates.
The data implies that small marketing teams and CMOs now stand on an even playing field with more established companies now that ML is more affordable, effective and accessible to everyone.
This doesn’t mean that marketers should ignore organic search and original, value-laden content. Paid search might be the easiest way to rank high in search engines, particularly since AI will be doing the bulk of the work, developing campaigns that have greater odds of being seen by the right searchers at the proper time. However, organic search is more authentic and will last longer than paid searches.
The goal now is to understand how ML impacts the search system and how to take advantage of the technology’s evolution that made paid and organic searches more effective.
Paid vs Organic Search: Which Wins in the End?
There’s been an ongoing debate as to which is better – paid or organic searches. Interestingly, both have come out on top, but at different times and conditions. The results have depended on the type of research done and other outside factors. For instance, a study conducted in 2011 showed that organic search was more effective. However, paid search has outpaced its counterpart from 2013 onwards. But this appears to be due to the changes Google has made to its algorithm.
So which is better? Andy Taylor, the Associate Director of Research at Merkle, believes that flexibility is the best option. Instead of just sticking to one approach, companies should determine what search strategy is ideal for their business at the moment and the technology that’s currently available. After all, the ideal marketing strategy for your company now will probably change in a few months as customers change their expectations and technologies expand.
Machine Learning is Changing More Than Search
The rise of machine learning has also resulted in a shift to data-driven models instead of the conventional attribution models. This multi-touch attribution model (MTA) relies on an analytics scale that’s more descriptive and takes into account various touchpoint outputs, like ad interactions, ad creative, or exposure order. It also allows marketers to have a better understanding of how factors, like a distinct set of keywords and ad words, can affect a conversion.
But it’s not just search capacities that machine learning has an impact on. The technology is also being used to refine and make algorithm changes. It has been theorized that Google’s RankBrain utilizes machine learning to assess if the company has to revise its own rankings based on what the consumer searches for and whether the user was satisfied with the result.
Machine Learning Will Push for More Sophisticated Content
Because machine learning technology is developing more advanced SEM capacities and sophisticated algorithms, search engines are pushing marketers and content producers to deliver more refined content. This would eventually lead to search engines becoming more discerning to the quality of online content a company is putting out. This means producing high-quality content that particularly targets what the consumer is looking for becomes more vital than ever before.
Machine learning and AI are impacting every aspect of marketing. Companies should start understanding them and how to utilize ML-optimized tools effectively in their marketing campaigns.
Google announced that on January 10, 2017 they are going to lower the mobile search ranking of sites with interstitial ads popping up in front of content. This is something that many mobile searchers will applaud and many publishers will not be too happy about.
“To improve the mobile search experience, after January 10, 2017, pages where content is not easily accessible to a user on the transition from the mobile search results may not rank as highly,” posted Google Product Manager Doantam Phan . “Pages that show intrusive interstitials provide a poorer experience to users than other pages where content is immediately accessible. This can be problematic on mobile devices where screens are often smaller.”
People have become very upset over intrusive popups on mobile devices because it significantly degrades the user experience. “I can’t stand all this stuff popping up on my phone,” commented Bonnie Akridge. “I wish they would get rid of it all. Much of what I read is already mobile friendly but I get the question box do I want to switch to mobile friendly. All this crap is so flipping annoying. I didn’t sign up for this and I hate it being force on me.”
An internet marketer had a somewhat different reaction. “I’ve always hated those popups that come up and block the page (especially on mobile),” stated S. Kyle Davis. “Now it seems that Google has made the use of “interstitials” a ranking point. Good to hear! Of course, any time Google does something like this, the opposite reaction is that it is making things harder for advertisers (thus making it harder for content producers to make money and continue producing content). However, I always hope that it pushes us to find better, less obtrusive and more effective ways to communicate paid messages to audiences.”
Although this initially applies to only mobile search rankings, its a reasonable prediction that Google will extend this to desktop rankings as well in the future, effectively killing interstitial and popup advertising on the internet.
“Although the majority of pages now have text and content on the page that is readable without zooming, we’ve recently seen many examples where these pages show intrusive interstitials to users,” says Phan. “While the underlying content is present on the page and available to be indexed by Google, content may be visually obscured by an interstitial. This can frustrate users because they are unable to easily access the content that they were expecting when they tapped on the search result.”
Google specifically does not want sites to show a popup that covers the main content either immediately or delayed, they don’t want any ads that have to be closed by the user and they consider large top ads to be effectively the same as an interstitial. So they are going to penalize sites where ads dominate above the fold space.
They did offer exceptions where they won’t rank lower sites with interstitials that are a response to a legal obligation such as age verification, are part of a login process or small top banners.
“Remember, this new signal is just one of hundreds of signals that are used in ranking,” said Phan. “The intent of the search query is still a very strong signal, so a page may still rank highly if it has great, relevant content.”
Facebook’s goal is to connect with everyone, yes every single person in the world. Not just that, but Facebook wants to connect to everyone at all times, in every waking moment. Facebook envisions a future where you will always be engaging with some part of the Facebook ecosystem, whether it’s on its mega social platform at Facebook, using it’s search engine, messaging a business associate or communicating on video or via a virtual reality environment.
But first lets talk business.
“I often talk about how when we develop new products we think about it in three phases, said Zuckerberg. “First, building a consumer use case. Then, second, making it so that people can organically interact with businesses. And then third, on top of that, once there’s a large volume of people interacting with businesses, give businesses tools to reach more people and pay. And that’s ultimately the business opportunity.”
During the earnings call yesterday, Mark Zuckerberg opened the curtain into Facebook’s plans, strategies and dreams for the future. He first provided the latest metrics illustrating Facebook’s continued success, 1.7 billion people now use Facebook every month, and 1.1 billion people use it every day. He said that Facebook revenue grew by 59% year-over year to $6.4 billion, and advertising revenue was up 63% to $6.2 billion.
Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook said that Q2 ad revenue grew 63% and mobile ad revenue hit $5.2 billion, up 81% year-over-year, and was approximately 84% of total ad revenue. Facebook is now truly a mobile app rather than a desktop experience for the vast majority of its users.
Zuckerberg said that they continue to see excellent growth and over the past year Facebook has added over 200 million people using Facebook on a monthly basis. Time spent per person increased double digit percentages year-over-year across Facebook, Instagram and Messenger. And that doesn’t even include WhatsApp yet.
Facebook is still growing rapidly and that’s because it has continued to evolve. It’s evolution has happened because of increased bandwidth, technological advancements, acquisitions of new platforms like WhatsApp and Instagram and most importantly continuing to be on the cutting edge of what people want in a social network. All of this while simultaneously building a successful business model that pays for this evolution.
What’s really interesting however, is how Zuckerberg sees Facebook transforming in the future. “Our results show our progress as we work to make the world more open and connected across our three-, five- and ten-year horizons,” he said. “Over the next three years we are focused on continuing to build our community and help people share more of what matters to them. The next five years are about building our newer products into full ecosystems with developers and businesses. And over the next ten years we are working to build new technologies to help everyone connect in new ways.”
Facebook is seeking to be the world’s business platform, not just the peoples. More on this below in the Search section on a Facebook future where it is competing with LinkedIn.
“We’re excited to announce that we now have 60 million monthly active business Pages on Facebook,” said Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. “We also continue to grow the number of active advertisers on our platform. This shows that both our free and paid products are providing value to marketers of all sizes around the world. We continue to focus on our three priorities — capitalizing on the shift to mobile, growing the number of marketers using our ad products, and making our ads more relevant and effective.”
Trust me, this is just the beginning of Facebook’s morphing into both a personal and business platform in the future.
The Future of Facebook is Video
Facebook used to be mostly text and over the years they changed to be photo centric, with many people using Facebook as their family photo album. People still do that but Zuckerberg envisions a huge change coming. “We see a world that is video first, with video at the heart of all of our apps and services.”
“Over the past six months we have been particularly focused on Live video. Live represents a new way to share what’s happening in more immediate and creative ways,” Zuckerberg said. “This quarter Candace Payne’s Chewbacca mask video was viewed almost 160 million times. Live is also changing the way we see politics, as news organizations and delegates go Live from the Republican and Democratic conventions. And we have seen in Minnesota and Dallas how Live can shine a light on important moments as they happen.”
At Fortune‘s Most Powerful Women International Summit in London, Nicola Mendelsohn, VP EMEA at Facebook, predicted that the Facebook newsfeed will be all video in 5 years. “It will definitely be mobile. It will probably be all video,” Mendelsohn said. “I just think if we look, we already are seeing a year on year decline in text. We’re seeing a massive increase as I’ve said on both pictures and video. So yeah, if I was having a bet, I would say video, video, video.”
“When you think about what’s happening on video on our platform we’re really excited by the production and consumption of video and we’re seeing the full range from people posting the things in their personal lives; the power of what a mobile phone can produce and distribute now is pretty incredible when you compare it to just a few years ago to some of the most sophisticated content producers in the world producing for us,” added Sandberg.
Facebook Focuses on Search
Facebook is moving into the search space aggressively, definitely to help it compete with Twitter and perhaps even Google in the future. Facebook launched true keyword search in late 2014 that allows users to search not just profile names or just your friends posts, but also everyone’s public posts. And, if you didn’t know, all postings default at public, which means that anyone can search for your posts.
The first goal for Facebook with search is to become more like Twitter, where people post their thoughts, feelings and most importantly news reports, especially the on-the-scene kind. When the next plane lands in the Hudson, Facebook wants the survivor standing on the wing to use their platform to post about this breaking news, not Twitter. More precisely, Facebook wants you to use Facebook Live to stream your personalized live news coverage.
“We’re making good progress on core services within the Facebook app, like Search,” Zuckerberg stated. “A growing way people use search is to find what people are saying about a topic across the more than 2.5 trillion posts in our network. Now, people are doing more than 2 billion searches a day, between looking up people, businesses and other things that they care about. Continuous, steady improvement to services like search are an important part of helping people connect and realizing our mission.”
He also said this in minimizing their true plans, in my opinion.
So I’d say we’re around the second phase of that in search now. We have a pretty big navigational use case where people look up people and pages and groups that they want to get to and look at and search. One of the big growing use cases that we’re investing a lot in is looking up the content in the ecosystem and that is an area that we’re very excited about which helps people find more content.
But certainly there’s a reasonable amount of behavior in there which is looking for things that over time could be monetizeable or commercial intense and at some point we will probably want to work on that but we’re still in the phase of just making it easier for people to find all the content they want and connect with businesses organically.
But what’s their next goal? Facebook has certainly focused on the business use of their platform as they continue to look for monetization opportunities. My guess is that Facebook will seek to compete with LinkedIn as the business platform of record.
Over the last few years LinkedIn has certainly moved from a glorified directory of business professionals to a platform for business related news, conversation and connection. Facebook has the platform but would need to figure out how to easily separate family life from business life, which could be done rather easily. With Microsoft buying LinkedIn, Facebook will be highly motivated to compete.
Google tried to compete with Facebook with Google+ and it failed miserably, but that’s because it’s harder to get people to change their social habits than it is their search habits. You don’t need your friends to use Facebook Search in order for you to find it useful, but you definitely need your friends to move to a new social platform to make it work for you. That was Google’s dilemma, but it won’t be Facebook’s.
“Since it refocused on keywords, Facebook is now seeing 2 billion searches per day of its 2.5 trillion posts,” stated TechCrunch writer Josh Constine. “That’s compared to 1.5 billion searches per day in July 2015, and 1 billion in September 2012. That’s a 33% climb in just 9 months.”
That’s lets than half a reported 3.5 billion searches per day on Google. The difference is that Google’s searches are monitizable, while Facebook searches, not so much. However, this must scare the heck out of Google because it shows how ingrained people are to use Facebook for search. Therefore, over time I predict that Facebook will add web indexing to it’s search engine. They already have 3.5 billion searches, why not open up search to everything and in the process open up a huge monetization opportunity.
One other prediction, Facebook will disconnect its search app from just Facebook.com, just like they did Messenger. Then, voilà, Facebook is competing with Google.
Making Instagram Stronger
Instagram was purchased by Facebook for $1 billion while it was just getting off the ground. It is now center to its plans on connecting with everyone in the world on a constant always on basis. That’s why Instagram is so important to Facebook, it has a foothold with younger people and its active user base is not a clone of Facebook’s, so it expands the corporate Facebook’s universe of connectivity and engagement.
“Over the next five years we are working hard to build ecosystems around some of our newer products,” said Zuckerberg. “Instagram now has more than 500 million monthly actives, with more than 300 million daily. Now we’re working to make the experience more engaging.”
He said that when Instagram, despite user pushback, began to rank its feed in order to improve the experience, that they are already seeing a “positive impact” with people spending more time and share more content within the platform.
As always, business is important to Zuckerberg as well. “We’ve also introduced our advertising tools on Instagram and we’re seeing marketers engage with people in creative and innovative ways.”
Messaging with Messenger & WhatsApp
“In the two years since we separated Messenger from the main Facebook app — which was a controversial decision at the time — we’ve improved performance and given people new ways to express themselves,” commented Zuckerberg. “Now, for the first time, more than 1 billion people are using Messenger every month.”
Facebook sees a huge opportunity with messaging because it moves them closer to their goal of connecting everyone on a constant always on basis. That’s why they paid $22 billion for WhatsApp, which is a service that barely had a business model.
“I’m also happy with the updates we’re making to WhatsApp — which also has a community of more than 1 billion people,” said Zuckerberg. “This quarter we launched new desktop apps and end-to-end encryption, and millions of people are using WhatsApp’s voice calling features.”
Facebook has big plans for messaging because not only does it help them bring even more people into Facebook’s universe, but it moves them into the business space, where Facebook desperately wants to be, because that’s where the money is.
“The scale we’ve achieved with our messaging services makes it clear that they are more than just a way to chat with friends,” Zuckerberg noted. “That’s why we’re also making it easier for people to connect with groups and businesses as well. We are going to keep focusing on this over the next several years.”
Facebook owned messaging has now taken over standard text messaging according to Zuckerberg.
“Between Messenger and WhatsApp I think we’re around 60 billion messages a day which is something like three times more than the peak of global SMS traffic.”
It’s incredible to think that Facebook now owns the messaging space. Who would have thought that 3 years ago?
New Technologies
“I’m also excited about the early progress we’re making on our 10-year initiatives,” said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg during their recent earnings announcement. “We are investing in new technologies to give more people a voice — including the 4 billion people around the world who aren’t yet online — and helping more people take advantage of the opportunities that come with the internet.”
Facebook is seeking to connect everyone in the world, regardless of any obstacle. It’s a long term plan, but Facebook is on it.
“One of the biggest opportunities to grow our community is in developing countries where connectivity is less advanced than what we take for granted here at home,” Zuckerberg said. “So over the past couple of years, we’ve began making steady improvements to our apps to make them work regardless of the device or connection people are using. We also built a light-weight version of our Android app, called Facebook Lite, that is tuned to work on 2G networks and is now used by more than 100 million people.”
Virtual reality is another huge area of investment for Facebook, especially with their $2 billion purchase of Oculus. They see VR as an extension of connecting and sharing. Know one really knows the future of VR, but it will be deeply engrained in advertising in the future and since all of Facebook’s revenue comes from advertising, they need to be in this space.
“We believe that virtual reality can help people share richer experiences and help everyone understand what’s going on around the world,” said Zuckerberg. “It’s really early for us in VR but we’re hitting some important milestones. As of the second quarter more than 1 million people a month are using Oculus on mobile phones through our Gear VR 4partnership with Samsung.”
Zuckerberg also commented on the potential revenue importance of their investment in VR:
“More than 300 apps are already available at the Oculus store for Gear VR, we’ve filled all of our pre-orders for Oculus Rift and we are seeing increasing demand from retail as stores plan for the holidays. While it’s still early for augmented reality, we’re doing AR research and are seeing lightweight versions of AR technology today in mobile apps like MSQRD.”
Facebook is Just Getting Started
“So that’s a recap of the progress we’re making in our 10 year plan,” said Zuckerberg. “We have a saying at Facebook that our journey is only 1% done — and while I’m happy with our progress, we have a lot more work to do to grow our community and connect the whole world. That means making big investments and taking risks — focusing not just on what Facebook is, but on what it can be.”
In a deal with LyricFind, Google is now displaying lyrics in search results starting immediately. LyricFind is the world’s largest lyric licensing service with over 4,000 publishers in its catalog. Lyrics will be seen both in Google’s search results and within Google Play Music.
“We’re happy to expand the depth and quality of lyrics available on Google’s services,” says LyricFind CEO Darryl Ballantyne. “We’re working together to make lyrics available to a larger audience in a faster and more efficient way.”
We're happy to announce our partnership with Google! Through this new deal, LyricFind will add lyrics from 4,000… https://t.co/upKXDG6cZg
LyricFind, founded by Darryl Ballantyne and Mohamed Moutadayne bills itself as “the world’s leader in legal lyric solutions.” The company was founded in 2004.
Billboard spoke to Ballantyne and got this quote indicating that the partnership will generate millions more in royalties to its publishing partners:
“It should be a significant revenue stream,” Ballantyne said. “I can’t get into the rates, but we expect it to be millions of dollars generated for publishers and songwriters as a result of this. It’s all based on usage. Royalties are paid based on the number of times a lyric is viewed. The more it’s viewed, the more publishers get paid.”
Included in the over 4,000 music publishers that LyricFind currently licenses are all the majors – Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner/Chappell Music Publishing, Sony/ATV Music Publishing (including EMI Music Publishing), and Kobalt. According to LyricFind, they are also the exclusive third-party lyrics licensor for Universal Music Publishing Group, the world’s largest music publisher.
Google is reportedly working on a virtual keyboard interface for iOS in an effort to increases searches from the operating system.
In January, Bloomberg Business reported that Google paid Apple $1 billion to keep its search bar on the iPhone. Now, the company appears to be going even further to ensure people keep using Google to search from Apple’s devices.
The keyboard news comes from The Verge, which says it has been in development for months, has been in use internally, and incorporates a variety of search options:
The Google keyboard incorporates a number of features meant to distinguish it from the stock iOS keyboard. Like its Android counterpart, the Google keyboard for iOS employs gesture-based typing, so you can slide your finger from one letter to the next and let Google guess your intended word. Tap the Google logo and you can access traditional web search. It also appears to have distinct buttons for pictures and GIF searches, both presumably powered by Google image search. The keyboard is visually distinct from the standard Android keyboard, which incorporates voice search but no text or image-based searching.
In recent years, Apple has distanced itself from Google where possible – most notably the use of Google Maps with the introduction of the initially flawed Apple Maps, which has been said to be greatly improved these days.
If Google can convince iOS users they need its keyboard it could help, though I can’t honestly imagine it would make a huge difference.
As The Verge notes, it’s unclear if Google actually plans to release this or not.
Marchex announced a new integration with DoubleClick Search to deliver better return on ad spend for search marketers that rely on inbound phone calls to drive revenue. According to the mobile ad analytics company, the integration is the only one to provide 100% keyword attribution for calls placed directly from paid search ads for an unlimited number of keywords.
“Marketers rely on paid search campaigns to reach customers across multiple digital platforms,” a spokesperson for Marchex said in an email. “But when it comes to measuring the results of these campaigns, there’s a significant gap between online ad impressions and offline sales – especially in today’s mobile world when inbound calls are easier than ever.”
The integration seeks to change that.
They cite research from Google showing that 57% of smartphone users call a business after searching for info on their phone because they want to talk to a real person.
Marchex Search Analtyics delivers call intelligence data such as Interactive Voice Response (IVR) inputs for each keyword directly into DoubleClick Search so markters can optimize their search marketing efforts accordingly.
“Our integration with DoubleClick search is designed for the largest search marketers with hundreds of thousands of keywords,” said Nilesh Dhawale, Senior Product Manager at Marchex. “We are thrilled to partner with DoubleClick Search to provide any client that uses click-to-call the ability to properly automate paid search bidding.”
The Marchex Analytics Platform is already being leveraged with DoubleClick Search for clients in a variety of industries. including Time Warner Cable, Liberty University, and Location3.
Adobe just released its Q4 2015 Digital Advertising Report looking at data for Q4 2014 to Q4 2015 from over 400 billion digital ad impressions from Google, Facebook, Bing/Yahoo, Baidu, and Yandex and over 4,000 branded sites across industries.
They looked at paid search trends, mobile spend patterns, Google vs. Facebook ad performance, and how digital advertising over the holidays drove online retailer revenues.
According to the report, paid search growth momentum is slowing, more money is being spent on mobile, and advertisers saw increased CTRs across Google display ads and Facebook News Feed ads.
It found that paid search growth slowed to 3% compared to a 12% increase seen in Q4 2014. In Europe, it was 5% compared to 17% in 2014.
“Mobile search spend increased by 23% YoY and helped further close the mobile gap,” a spokesperson for Adobe said in an email. “Mobile clicks increased by 35% YoY with smartphones contributing to most of the mobile growth. Google and Bing product listing ads (visual ad formats for online retailers) saw a healthy increase in spending (37% YoY) triggered by online holiday shopping.”
“Heading into the holiday season, Google display CTRs grew much faster from Q3 than Facebook News Feed CTRs – 219% vs. 77%, respectively, but a YoY comparison shows that Facebook’s CTRs are still outperforming Google (up 35% vs. 27% YoY, respectively),” they said. “Over the holidays, nearly $1 out of every $3 in retail revenue came from search and display advertising: Search and display combined generated 32% of all online U.S. retail revenue in Q4. Paid search drove 10% more revenue for retailers than direct traffic during Thanksgiving weekend.”
You can find more insights and analysis about Adobe’s findings in a post here.
Bing now powers AOL’s web, mobile, and tablet search. This applies to both organic and paid search results across AOL’s properties around the world.
The two companies announced their search partnership back in June, and it went into effect on January 1. Bing shares some words in a new blog post:
Our partnership with AOL brings additional scale and opportunity to advertisers and marketers. Today, 1 in 5 searches happen on Bing.com, and by providing Bing search results for the number 3 (Yahoo) and 5 (AOL) search providers in the US, Bing powers close to one-third of US PC web searches.1 Today’s announcement is testament to Microsoft’s ongoing focus on search and search advertising and our increasing scale that connects a marketer’s media buys to new publishers and audiences to help them achieve more impact for their business.
For marketers looking to drive connections for their brands with the right people at the right time, AOL’s high-quality audience is a valuable addition to the Bing network. AOL has many established sites with unique, loyal users who generate several billion search queries each year and spend more online than the average internet searcher.
AOL’s search head Tim Lemmon added, “Partnering with Bing allows us to provide great search results and capabilities, across all screens, to our global audiences, as well as providing our brands valuable business insights and intelligence. We’re looking forward to working together with the Bing team and bringing our audience to the Bing Network.”
Back in June, we looked at what marketers should know about the AOL-Bing deal. Check that out here.
Pinterest is often thought of as a social network, and it is to an extent. You can follow people (including friends), and they can follow you back. You can interact with them and even send them direct messages. In these regards it’s very much in the same stable as Facebook, Twitter, and others. Like Facebook and Twitter, it also has a search feature. Pinterest wants marketers to know that this is more what they should be focusing on. Not the social aspects.
Now that advertising on Pinterest is a thing, the company is working to get more businesses using it. The Wall Street Journal reports that in its ad pitch to companies, it’s trying to distance itself from social networks like Facebook and get advertisers to shift some of their search budget to Pinterest.
Does Pinterest currently have a place in your search marketing budget? Your marketing budget in general? Does it deserve one? Let us know what you think.
Pinterest Use Among Consumers Can’t Be Ignored
Last month, we looked at research from Pew Research Center showing that the proportion of online adults who use Pinterest has doubled since 2012, though like other social platforms, didn’t experience significant growth in usage between September 2014 and April 2015. Still, in 2012, the percentage of online adults using Pinterest was 15%. Now, it’s 31%. 27% of those Pinterest users use it daily. That’s up from 17% last September.
“Some 31% of online adults use Pinterest, a proportion that is unchanged from the 28% of online adults who did so in September 2014,” the study said. “Women continue to dominate Pinterest – 44% of online women use the site, compared with 16% of online men. Those under the age of 50 are also more likely to be Pinterest users – 37% do so, compared with 22% of those ages 50 and older.”
Here’s a look at Pew’s demographic findings for Pinterest:
Another study from Ahalogy polled over 1,000 people and determined that 82% are female and 18% are male, but that men on Pinterest have increased 4% since 2014.
Beyond gender, the study looked at race, education, employment, marital status, age, household size, sexual orientation, pets, kids, and income. 75–80% identified themselves as white compared to 10% and 5% African-American. 45% have graduated college or postgraduate. 56% said they are employed with 15% saying they are a homemaker, 12% unemployed, and 10% students. Respondents were more likely to be single and living alone (33%), and less likely to be divorced (9%).
82% of daily pinners are under 40. 88% heterosexual, and active pinners are more likely to have pets than not. 61% have dogs while 43% have cats. The number of active pinners with children dropped to 36% from 46% in 2014. Users are also more likely to be affluent with 45% having household incomes of at least $60k and growth in the $60-100k range.
There are really a ton of different comparisons throughout that report, but here’s a look at categories most browsed by active and daily pinners:
Here’s an infographic (via Social Media Today) highlighting even more from the study:
Notice the parts that say 39% use Pinterst as a general search engine, 49% use it instead of browsing catalogs, and 35% skip e-commerce sites and look for products on Pinterest instead.
Pinterst Wants Your Search Ad Dollars
As the Journal notes, while the social network ad space is becoming a more and more crowded playing field, Pinterest wants to focus on marketers’ search budgets as search is still the dominant part of the online advertising industry with 45% of digital ad spend in the U.S. in 2014 (eMarketer).
The report says Pinterest has been “making the rounds” with advertisers, trying to convince them to look at its service with a search eye rather than a social one. It quotes a Pinterest exec as saying that Pinterest isn’t a place where people go to connect with family and friends, but rather to “go through the catalog and do searches”.
Last month, the company hired the former head of Twitter’s brand advertising products Nipoon Malhotra to work on its ad tech. Malhotra also worked in search advertising at Microsoft (Bing).
“Nipoon is a proven leader with the ability to execute and scale teams and revenue generating products,” said Pinterest head of product for monetization Jonathan Shottan in August. “We are thrilled to have him as part of the team as we continue to grow and innovate on ads and commerce.”
There is plenty to potentially be gained from organic Pinterest search optimization as well. Here are some things to consider on that front. There are even opportunities for visibility in more traditional search engines like Bing and Google with a focused Pinterest strategy. Bing has been showing Pinterest content in search results for quite a while, but Google launched a new integration a few months ago.
Do you view Pinterest as part of the search landscape? Do you treat it as such in your marketing efforts (either organic or paid)? Discuss.
Giada’s divorce is final from her hubby, Todd Thompson.
However, the newly minted Miss De Laurentiis has paid dearly.
Giada divorced Todd Thompson with no pre-nup, which means he gets half of pending advances for Giada’s cookbooks that are in the works.
That sum includes a $2.5 million balance for Giada at Home/Weeknights with Giada. It also includes $2.3 million for Giada Feel Good Food, and $757,000 for Everyday Pasta/Giada’s Kitchen.
In addition to that, Todd made out like a bandit, garnering $9,000 per month in child support from Giada in the divorce.
Todd also gets to keep the couple’s home in Pacific Palisades, valued at $3.2 million.
Going with the pricey home into Todd’s possesion are $300,000 in art and furnishings and a membership in the upscale Bel-Air Bay Club.
Giada’s divorce decree dictates that the couple will share custody of their seven-year-old daughter, Jade Marie.
However, neither one will get spousal support since they’re both independently wealthy.
Giada De Laurentiis is reportedly worth around $20 million, while her ex-husband is worth closer to $15 million.
Way back in January of 2011, it seemed Giada De Laurentiis had this marriage thing tied down after a rumor surfaced that she had an affair with John Mayer.
She said of her relationship back then, “I think it can be hard for any man to sometimes be upstaged by his wife.”
She added, “So when I’m home, I work very hard to be Todd’s wife and Jade’s mother. I have no problem going back to those traditional roles. I try to be Giada, the young girl that he met 20 years ago and fell in love with.”
She continued, “All men want to be treated like kings in a relationship, and I think if women don’t indulge that sometimes, their men are likely to stray and look for someone who can give that to them.”
What do you think went wrong between Giada De Laurentiis and Todd Thompson since then?
Earlier this year, Google announced that it was expanding paid search advertising to the Google Play store. Given that people frequently go there to search for apps, this seemed like an obvious place for search ads, and it’s still surprising it’s taken Google this long to offer them to app makers.
Better late than never though. Google has been testing the ads since February, but on Wednesday, announced a full roll-out to all advertisers and developers who use Search app install campaigns on AdWords.
According to Google, Google Play reaches over a billion people on Android devices in over 190 countries, so there’s a lot of potential reach here.
“Search Ads on Google Play can provide consumers new ways to discover apps that they otherwise might have missed and help developers drive more awareness of their apps,” says Surojit Chatterjee, Director of Product Management for Mobile Search Ads at Google.
“As we expand the opportunities for developers to promote their apps, we’re also committed to providing conversion tracking tools that work seamlessly across channels and align with whichever measurement solution a developer chooses to use,” says Chatterjee. “That’s why we’re introducing Android first app opens, a new conversion tracking solution that measures when a user first opens an app after clicking on an ad and completing an Android app install. In addition to providing app conversion tracking across Search, Display and YouTube, this new solution also allows developers to better align the conversion volume they see in AdWords with the data they see in a third-party measurement solution. First app opens are the standard conversion type for third-party solutions, so we’re working with key partners like Tune, AppsFlyer, Kochava, Adjust and Apsalar to ensure data consistency and give developers the freedom to use reporting and optimization features across AdWords and third-party solutions of their choice.”
Google says that Universal App Campaigns will soon (in the coming weeks) make it easier to promote apps on Google Play in addition to Google Search, YouTube, AdMob, and the Google Display Network.
IgnitionOne released its Q2 2015 Digital Marketing Report this week, highlighting data and trends in search, programmatic display, social, and mobile advertising. The company manages over $1.5 billion in digital spend and tracks over $30 billion in customer revenue.
It found “strong” growth in paid search spend in the U.S. for the third consecutive quarter, up 22% year-over-year.
According to the findings, and not surprisingly, mobile search growth was the main driver of this paid search spend growth. Mobile phone spend in general was up 71% yearover-year. Growth for tablets was up 22%. Smartphones accounted for the greatest growth in mobile spend at 59% of spend compared to tablets.
“Despite gains in search market share made by Yahoo!/Bing in previous quarters, Google reclaimed much of its lost ground,” IgnitionOne says. “Google took in 75.5% of U.S. paid search spend, as opposed to Yahoo!/Bing’s 24.5%. The search giant was outpaced by Facebook in display growth, however, dropping -9% YoY compared to Facebook’s 48% growth in display spend.”
Meanwhile, programmatic display grew 33%. This category has shown growth for two quarters. It did see a decrease in impressions thanks to Facebook changes.
“As industry giants battle over market share it only serves to highlight how important it is for marketers and their technologies to be publisher-agnostic,” said IgnitionOne CEO Will Margiloff. “This report once again validates sophisticated marketers paying close attention to individual customers and delivering messages at the right time, efficiently, no matter what publisher or what device.”
