Click-through rates for Facebook ads have gotten tremendously better over the past year if findings in a new report are any indication. This comes as advertisers adopt different types of ads and become less reliant on organic post reach, which has declined significantly for many of them.
Nanigans released its Global Facebook Advertising Benchmark Report for Q1, which it says represents ad impressions delivered by those using its software. It finds that global CTRs increased 17% quarter-over-quarter and about 260% year-over-year.
This, according to the ad tech company, indicates that advertisers continue to “effectively reach and engage relevant audiences” on the social network.
“Global CTRs for Facebook ads continued to rise in Q1 2015, signaling growing engagement rates across desktop and mobile,” the report says. “Average CTRs in Q1 were 0.81%, up 17% from Q4 2014 and up 260% from Q1 2014. Nanigans customers in the ecommerce vertical saw CTRs increase 12% quarterover-quarter and 281% over the previous year.”
“Companies advertising desktop and mobile games saw average CTRs dip 9% in Q1,” it adds. “Mobile App Install Ad CTRs increased 3% quarter-over-quarter, but decay in other ad units brought the over all average down. A longer-term view shows increasing engagement among gaming advertisers, with CTRs increasing 150% year-over-year.”
The report also finds that advertisers have increasingly adopted newer ad products from Facebook over the past quarter, with spend on video ads increasing 2.8x quarter-over-quarter and spend on multi-product ads increasing 5.2x.
CPCs declined by 17% quarter-over-quarter, and CPMs decreased 3%, but according to Nanigans this is due to seasonality and the quarter following a “competitive Q4 holiday shopping season.”
Facebook has made a ton of improvements to its ad products over the past year, which have no doubt added considerably to the impressive rise in CTRs. In February, the company announced that it reached the milestone of two million active advertisers. At the time, we reflected on many of these improvements.
Instagram is reportedly working on features that would make the service a better marketing platform for e-commerce businesses hoping to attract buyers.
According to AdWeek, Instagram is running marketing campaigns with brands including Banana Republic that take users right to product pages. Apparently that’s just the tip of the iceberg, as “more sophisticated ads are in the works” including an option that would allow brands to link directly to their checkout experience. The report says:
The new ads are part of a carefully managed rollout of better marketing tools on the Facebook-owned photo-sharing app, which is starting to offer the sort of products brands have been demanding, especially in view of the $200,000 many of them are shelling out. And that’s just the entry fee for buying ads on the platform, according to digital marketing executives familiar with Instagram’s business. (Instagram declined to comment for this story.)
“Instagram continues to tease big things coming,” said one Hollywood marketing executive who buys ads on the platform. “And they’re talking about more ways to integrate buying.”
It says one ad exec told them that instead of a buy button, as other social platforms have been tinkering around with, advertisers could more easily link to checkout pages.
The first phase of Instagram’s “carefully managed rollout of better marketing tools” would seem to be the recently launched carousel ads (pictured above). These let brands add multiple photos to a single post, whcih uses can cycle through by swiping left. They also enable advertisers to feature a link, which makes them more attractive as an advertising option.
“One way to look at it is carousel ads bring the potential of multi-page print campaigns to mobile phones – with the added benefit of taking people to a website to learn more,” explained Instagram upon launch. “For instance, a fashion company could use the carousel to deconstruct the individual products in a ‘look.’ A car company might share an array of different features of a vehicle and provide a link to learn more about the new model. Or, an advertiser could showcase how multiple ingredients come together to make a delicious meal.”
The first brands to adopt the ads were Showtime, Banana Republic, Old Navy, L’Oreal Paris, and Samsung. Showtime used them to promote its new season of Penny Dreadful, while Banana Republic and Old Navy promoted their respective spring collections.
You can certainly see where additional e-commerce options could increase sales from the visual social network, though the early adopters seem to be pretty pleased with the carousel ads themselves.
“Instagram is distinctly visual medium, and the carousel function enables us to deliver richer, more cohesive storytelling,” said Taylor Bux, Old Navy’s Director of Digital & Social Strategy. “Additionally, the direct linking to OldNavy.com creates a seamless experience for fans to purchase the items that they love without having to hunt.”
There’s no question that now established visual social networks like Instagram and Pinterest have huge, still largely untapped potential in e-commerce. The latter is said to be readying the launch of a buy button similar to those being tested by Facebook and Twitter.
Shawn Budde, CEO of payments company 2Checkout told us he thinks Pinterest’s buy button will change the future of e-commerce.
Some studies have found that social media hasn’t been all that great for e-commerce conversions. We recently looked at a survey from Bounce Exchange, which found after analyzing over $1 billion in U.S. e-commerce transactions that social media marketing efforts only accounted for about 1.2% of total site conversions. Social conversion rates were 51% lower than sites’ overall average rates, followers were engaging more with content that wasn’t directly related to the products, and follow/share buttons were distracting shoppers and causing shopping cart abandonment.
But important e-commerce features from the social networks are basically still being incubated, and it’s likely that once they are widely available, social will drive a lot more purchases.
As far as Instagram is concerned, there’s still a great deal of potential to be tapped on the unpaid side of things. While one study suggested that brands are moving to Instagram in direct response to declining organic reach on Facebook, another found a shockingly low percentage of brands to even be on the service, even though those who are are seeing a great deal of engagement.
Socialbakers recently shared some stats about Instagram engagnement. Photos are still doing significantly better than videos. They get the highest volume of interactions at 13% on average. Most brands aren’t using filters or hashtags, but those who are are mostly just using one. Interestingly enough, those in the e-commerce industry (as opposed to fashion, beauty, auto, beverages, or services) use way more hashtags than everyone else.
Yesmail found that while brands on Instagram experienced a 278% growth in followers in 2014, only 23% of the 2,000 brands it analyzed were on it. We spoke about this with Bob Sybydlo, Director, Market Intelligence and Deliverability at Yesmail.
“Instagram is still a fairly new platform, and is late in the advertising game – the platform introduced sponsored posts just two years ago,” he said. “It’s possible that before 2013, marketers didn’t view Instagram as a must-have, but rather as a nice to have. As engagement and users increase, I have no doubt that we’ll see more brands adopt the platform.”
“One of the main goals when Instagram introduced sponsored posts in 2013 was to make their advertisements feel as organic as possible, and in my opinion, the social platform has been successful,” he said. “Instagram’s unobtrusive nature is part of the reason marketers can be hugely successful on Instagram. Consumers expect to see all types of images on Instagram, and as a result, won’t be thrown off when a brand gets involved in sharing. Additionally, Instagram’s new carousel ad offers a flexible way for brands to not only share, but tell an interesting story.”
From the sound of it, Instagram is only going to be giving brands more reasons to explore advertising on the service in the near future. It will be interesting to hear about the results once more have had the opportunity to get involved with the e-commerce-specific offerings.
If you pay $10 a month for Spotify premium, one of the major reasons you do that is to avoid ads. But Spotify’s new in-app ads, which act more like suggestions for you to tweet out an ad on Spotify’s behalf, are being served to all users – premium subscribers included.
The new pop-up ads are appearing on both desktop and mobile, and are called “Tweet the Beat’. The ads focuses on Rihanna and her new single “Bitch Better Have My Money”. The ads prompt users to tweet a thank you to Rihanna for the new single.
No I will not tweet the beat. I pay for premium. I shouldn't have to put up with these advertisements. @Spotifypic.twitter.com/pYy2alr6I6
Spotify confirmed the new feature to The Verge, saying,
“What you’re seeing is a new feature called Tweet the Beat which lets listeners express love and appreciation towards the artists they follow or listen to often, and has been designed as a great way for fans to get closer to their favourite artists.”
Right now it’s only Rihanna, but from Spotify’s statement it’s clear the streaming company wants to expand this to more artists.
Google said it’s about to roll out three new features in AdWords that will help multi-channel advertisers manage their reporting and find insights that matter most more easily. These include the ability to find your account by campaign type, the ability to see more relevant columns more quickly, and the ability to apply column sets based on goals.
“For advertisers with multiple types of campaigns and advertising goals, reporting can be a tedious and time-consuming task,” says product manager Pallavi Naresh. “For example, to report on specific goals related to your Search, Display or Shopping Network campaigns, you may find yourself filtering for your campaign type, and re-adjusting your columns several times to view the information you need.”
These changes should help in that regard.
To filter your account by campaign type, the campaign type selector lets you select from all campaigns, search campaigns, display campaigns, or shopping campaigns.
Last viewed columns were previously only stored by tab (campaign, ad group, keywords). Now they’lll be stored by both tab and campaign type. This should keep you from having to keep switching columns when you go from reporting on search network campaigns to display network campaigns.
“Let’s say you’re on the Ad groups tab looking at the Clicks and Avg. CPC columns for a Search campaign,” explains Naresh. “Then, you look at the ad groups in a Display campaign and adjust your columns to see Impressions and Avg. CPM. Now, when you look at the Ad groups tab for Search campaigns, you’ll see columns for Clicks and Avg. CPC. But when you switch to Display Network campaigns, you’ll see Impressions and Avg. CPM. This lets you quickly see more relevant columns based on your campaign type.”
New pre-defined column sets will make it easier (and faster) to view data for specific ad goals, according to Google. They help you quickly load reporting columns tailored for different goals.
As Naresh explains, “For example, you may have multiple Display campaigns, some that are focused on branding goals, and others that are focused on performance goals. With pre-defined column sets, you can easily switch your reporting view to see columns specific to each of these advertising goals. And, you can always get back to your last column selection by choosing Custom from the ‘Columns’ drop-down menu.”
The changes will be rolling out over the coming weeks to advertisers who have more than one type of campaign in their account.
Apart from Justin Bieber videos and comment trolls, ads are the most annoying thing about YouTube. But most of us have come to accept that we’re going to have to watch five, 15, or god forbid 30 seconds of an ad before our video plays – and even during our video plays if the video is long enough. It’s just a fact of life – death, taxes, and YouTube ads.
But if there were a way to remove ads from the equation, what would you pay?
If your answer is around 10 bucks a month or something, then you’re in luck. YouTube’s long-discussed ad-free subscription plan is on the horizon, and it looks like that’ll be the price point.
YouTube confirmed the offering in a letter to its partners, saying the new ad-free paid subscription will “generate a new source of revenue that will supplement [thier] fast growing advertising revenue.”
“We’re confident this latest contract update will excite your fans and generate a previously untapped, additional source of revenue for you,” said the YouTube team in the letter.
According to YouTube’s updated Terms of Service, that will amount to 55% of total net revenues from the new subscription fees. Partners must participate in the subscription program, or risk their videos being set to private – according to source quoted by The Verge.
“YouTube will pay you 55% of the total net revenues recognized by YouTube from subscription fees that are attributable to the monthly views or watchtime of your Content as a percentage of the monthly views or watchtime of all or a subset of participating content in the relevant subscription offering (as determined by YouTube). If your Content is included in and viewed by a user in multiple subscription offerings, YouTube will pay you based on the subscription offering with the highest amount of net revenues recognized by YouTube, as calculated by YouTube.”
No official word on when YouTube will begin offering users the option to make the ads disappear or how much it will cost exactly. The Verge says it’ll cost around $10. Bloomberg says it should be coming in the next few months. The new terms for partners take effect June 15.
YouTube would only give this standard response:
“While we can’t comment on ongoing discussions, giving fans more choice to enjoy the content they love and creators more opportunity to earn revenue are always amongst our top priorities.”
Ad-free sounds great. But who would pay for YouTube? Aren’t we all just used to YouTube being free?
The question then becomes … who would pay for YouTube?
You may or may now know that YouTube has already been experimenting with paid subscriptions on a smaller scale. Since May of last year, YouTube has offered paid channels. YouTube lets the channel creator set their own price (which could be anywhere from $0.99 a month to a few dollars a month), and then takes a cut of the profit. Paid channels started with a few dozen partners and soon expanded, but the initiative hasn’t really taken off – at least not as much as YouTube would’ve hoped.
And the problem that befalls paid channels could also affect YouTube’s move into offering a site-wide paid subscription service.
Is the content really worth paying for?
It’s one thing to pay a monthly or yearly fee to watch Game of Thrones or to listen to Led Zeppelin. It’s a whole different thing to pay money to watch babies laugh, cats chase laser pointers, and drunk people falling down stairs.
I know there’s much better content on YouTube than that – but you get the point.
YouTube caricature aside, a lot of people would likely have a problem justifying a monthly payment for YouTube. We’re all so used to YouTube being free. You know what we’re also pretty used to? Ads. It’s just a part of the experience now. Are you really that annoyed by ads to warrant paying for YouTube?
YouTube has already made a move toward paid models. You might recall its music service, YouTube Music Key, is currently in beta. It’s an interesting concept, for sure – one that would put YouTube in the same breath as streaming platforms like Netflix.
But will people play for YouTube? And is going “ad-free” enough of a carrot to dangle? Maybe if YouTube made a show like Game of Thrones and put it behind a paywall.
As you know, Facebook video is booming, as is marketers’ interest in it. The company revealed earlier this year that the number of video posts per person increased 75% globally and 94% in the US over the course of one year. Globally, the amount of video from people and brands in News Feed grew 3.6x year-over-year. And that was as of three months ago. A much bigger deal has been made of Facebook video in that time.
Mixpo conducted a survey among 125 agencies, brands, and publishers to get a feel for their existing video marketing habits and their plans for the future.
“In August of last year, comScore found that for the first time Facebook had more video views than YouTube on desktop,” the report says. “Since that time, the two have been battling it out month by month for the top spot. Facebook’s meteoric rise is driven by their growth in video views per person, which have nearly doubled year-over-year from January 2014 compared to January 2015. With Facebook’s reported video views exceeding three billion per day in January of 2015, a figure that had tripled since September of 2014, that means comScore’s desktop numbers only represent one tenth of Facebook’s total video views.”
Advertisers and agencies plan to run video campaigns more across the board, including on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Vine, Google+, Snapchat, and even Pinterest (in that order), according to the report. Last year, when Mixpo conducted a similar survey, more respondents (77.8%) said they planned to run YouTube videos compared to 63% for Facebook. This year, however, it’s 87% for Facebook compared to 81.5% for YouTube.
This doesn’t come as much of a surprise. SocialBakers recently shared data showing that brands are already sharing native Facebook videos on Facebook more than YouTube videos, which was pretty much unheard of a year prior.
Mixpo notes that there is also substantial interest in Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
One interesting finding from the report is that even though Facebook is a social network/marketing platform, and video advertising plans are all over various social platforms, 83% of companies don’t consider their social team the primary strategy driver for ads run in social.
“Several years ago, social campaigns were all about generating earned media through viral content,” says the report. “These campaigns were primarily managed by people with the word “social” in their title. Only recently have the paid media offerings of the social networks truly matured, which their advertising revenue growth reflects. In 2014, social advertising spending grew 40% to $8.5 billion3. Accordingly, 60% of social campaigns; which are now mostly paid; are falling under the purview of digital media teams rather than social teams. In fact, social teams only drove the primary planning for social campaigns for 17% of the respondents.”
Also interesting are the metrics advertisers are placing the most value on. Views and completion rates are both absent from the top three.
The free report also walks you through some case studies for Facebook video.
Last month, Instagram announced a new ad unit called Carousel. It lets brands add multiple photos to a single post, which users can cycle through by swiping left. The Carousel ads also feature a link to a site of the business’ choice, making it easy for them to get users from Instagram to their official product pages.
Now, Instagram is announcing its first wave of brand partners. The first Carousel ads began appearing this weekend, and Instagram says we should expect to see more and more brands utilizing the new format soon.
The first brands adopting Carousel ads are Showtime, Banana Republic, Old Navy, L’Oreal Paris, and Samsung.
Showtime is promoting the new season of Penny Dreadful.
“The Instagram carousel expands our ability to showcase the richness and complexities of Penny Dreadful and the series’ multi-dimensional characters,” said Donald Buckley, Executive Vice President, Program Marketing, Media, Promotions and Digital Services, Showtime Networks Inc. “As the series delves deeper into the psyches of the family, this new feature will allow us to further engage with fans.”
Banana Republic is advertising its new Spring collection.
“With a carousel, our customers can discover more if they want as we spotlight some of our favorite products and share styling ideas across multiple images,” Aimee Lapic, Banana Republic SVP and GM of Customer Experience. “Creating relevant content for our customers, while also making it easier for them to shop, is a win-win.”
As is Old Navy.
“Instagram is distinctly visual medium, and the carousel function enables us to deliver richer, more cohesive storytelling,” said Taylor Bux, Old Navy’s Director of Digital & Social Strategy. “Additionally, the direct linking to OldNavy.com creates a seamless experience for fans to purchase the items that they love without having to hunt.”
As you can see, brands are especially excited about the ability to link users directly to their product pages at the end of Carousel ads.
Like Instagram ads in general, this should be a slow and calculated rollout. Instagram, if anything, has been cautious about flooding your feeds with ads.
And as I said before, I’m sure your average user would love to be able to Carousel multiple photos in a single post. The company didn’t rule it out, but stopped short of saying this sort of photo feature would roll out wide. For now, it’s a limited brand offering – but and interesting one for sure.
There’s a new report out from Strategy Analytics, which looks at the growth in usage and advertising spend across major social networks. One of the more interesting findings is that social network usage surpassed 2 billion users for the first time in 2014, with Facebook accounting for 68%.
Ad spend across the various social networks grew by 41% globally reaching a total of $15.3 billion. This accounted for 11% of the global digital ad spend, according to the report.
Of social network ad spend during the year, Facebook accounted for three quarters. Twitter accounted for 8%. This year, the firm projects ad spend on social networks to grow by 29%.
“Overall, the social network market continues to show strong growth across all regions as the major social network platforms drive usage and engagement via improved integration of digital media content,” said Leika Kawasaki, author of the report. “While Facebook currently dominates the global social network market, its absence in China allows local social networks such as QZone and Tencent Weibo to gain traction in the rapidly expanding Chinese digital advertising market.”
About 46% of social network users reside in the Asia Pacific region, with China accounting for nearly 25% of global social network users at 495 million users.
North America had the highest ratio of social network users to its population (64%), followed by Western Europe at 55%.
The United States accounted for the largest share of global social network ad spend at4 1% and totaling $6.2 billion in 2014. That’s an increase of 35% year over year. The UK came in second in that departmentat 8.2% of global social network ad spend. China was third at 8%.
The U.S. also had the highest social network ad spend per social network user at $31.37. The firm projects this to grow 27% to $39.84 in 2015.
One of Twitter’s main goals – just like Facebook or any other social network – is the find that perfect balance between advertising and a pleasant user experience. That’s why the company is reportedly torn on whether or not to implement autoplay videos in users’ timelines. That’s why you hear Twitter execs discussing “ratios” all the time (one sponsored tweet per 20 organic tweets, for instance).
Now, Twitter’s running a test that likely toes that line for many. As of now, Twitter is experimenting with putting ads in your profile.
Twitter is bringing promoted tweets, the app’s signature ad unit, to people’s profile pages as part of a new test. That means when you visit the page of another user, you may find a targeted Twitter ad waiting for you a few tweets into that user’s stream.
The ads are separated from other tweets by a small bumper that creates a break in the stream, and a label that reads “Suggested by Twitter” — you can see an example at the bottom of this post. A company spokesperson confirmed Twitter is testing the new ad placement.
These “targeted” ads are only appearing on a small fraction of profiles for now, and only showing up for logged-in users.
Of course, as Twitter gets further into this test, that could change. Not everyone that uses Twitter is an actual Twitter member – and the percentage of non-logged-in users visiting the site could increase greatly as real time tweets are reinserted into Google search results.
The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) released a new study conducted by Ovum looking at over 200 brand marketers and their perceptions of mobile advertising. It found that most (76%) perceive programmatic buying to be an important development in mobile advertising, but that few are currently buying programmatically.
According to the study, two in five (41%) marketers said mobile programmatic advertising would help them reach their target audiences, but only 27% are actually buying inventory that way. 18% use private exchanges and 17% use open exchanges. Some use both.
“It is clear that programmatic advertising is strongly embedded in the minds of many mobile marketers,” said Anna Bager, SVP, Mobile and Video at the IAB. “However, there is still much work to be done before mobile programmatic can reach its full potential. IAB is committed to educating mobile marketers about the benefits of this growing format and, towards that end, recently released a Mobile Programmatic Playbook. Our efforts on the mobile programmatic front have only just begun, and we look forward to increased adoption as familiarity improves.”
73% said they’re interested in connected TV advertising opportunities, while 69% are interested in opportunities in cars. 66% are interested in wearables. The IAB notes that mobile marketers that rate themselves as being “fairly or very experienced” at mobile see greater potential for these platforms (80% connected TVs, 78% connected cars, 75% wearables).
Here’s a look at buying habits:
The study found that 65% have been spending more on mobile over the past two years, and 9% have increased their mobile budget by over 50%. Budgets being affected by mobile ad substitution include PC/desktop digital (31%), TV (31%), Outdoor (20%), and Radio (18%).
87% of marketers say they’re satisfied or fairly satisfied with the performance of their mobile ads, while 8% say they’re completely satisfied. 14% expect their companies’ mobile ad budgets to increase by over half in the next two years. 57% they expect them to rise by under half.
Privacy concerns remain with 37% indicating privacy is a very important issue compared to 22% in 2013. Other concerns include device operating system fragmentation, lack of standardized metrics for measurement, lack of agency expertise in mobile, and there being too many different ways to source or buy mobile inventory.
“With mobile taking a more prominent role in consumers’ lives each year, an uptick in marketers’ potential concerns surrounding mobile privacy is no surprise,” said Mike Zaneis, EVP, Public Policy, and General Counsel at the IAB. “The IAB is in full support of the Digital Advertising Alliance’s work on this front. Its recent release of new user-friendly tools for mobile choice and transparency brings new level of consumer control to the fast-growing mobile medium.”
Here’s a word cloud looking at thoughts on the state of mobile advertising on one word:
Pinterest has been developing new machine learning models to improve its home feed, under the banner of “Pinnability”.
“The more people Pin, the better Pinterest can get for each person, which puts us in a unique position to serve up inspiration as a recommendation engine on an ongoing basis,” a spokesperson for Pinterest tells WebProNews. “Home feed is the most heavily user engaged of our products, and is a key way Pinners discover new creative ideas. But with more than 30 billion Pins in the system, we developed smart feed last August to help surface quality, personalized Pins quickly. Pinnability powers smart feed, and applies advanced machine learning models to predict how likely a Pinner will interact with a Pin.”
“For example, if a Pinner follows a dinner recipes group board that has multiple contributors, but isn’t interested in meat recipes, Pinnability picks the most personally relevant recipes for their home feed while de-prioritizing ones that aren’t as relevant (e.g. recipes with meat),” the spokesperson explains. “Our data set is unique in that it contains abundant human-curated content, so that Pin, board and user dynamics provide informative features for accurate Pinnability prediction.
Pinterest says it has seen significant boosts in engagement since launching Pinnability, which has received continual improvements. It’s seen a 20% increase in people who repin from home feed, as well as “significant gains” in total repins and clickthroughs.
The company has a detailed look at Pinnability in a new post on its engineering blog.
Pinterest announced in January that it would start showing Promoted Pins in its home feed. This followed the news that the company had acquired Kosei, which includes, in Pinterest’s words, “some of the best minds in machine learning, data science and recommendation engines, who’ve created a unique technology stack that drives commerce by making highly personalized and powerful product recommendations.”
“With these leaders in machine learning and recommendation systems, we can move faster in discovery and monetization, and building an infrastructure to help brands better understand customer intention and deliver the best content to Pinners,” said Michael Lopp, head of Pinterest engineering, at the time.
The company says Pinnability continues to be a core project in building its discovery engine and that it’s begun to expand the use of its Pinnability models to help improve other products outside of the home feed.
Pinterest has also been hard at work improving Promoted Pins. According to a recent report, it’s about to start offering more precision in its targeting. More on that here.
Well, it was probably only a matter of time. Someone is making a documentary about Yelp and its alleged “extortion” practices. It’s called Billion Dollar Bully, and it’s raising funds on Kickstarter as we speak.
The project comes from Prost Productions and Director/Producer Kaylie Milliken, who is based in San Francisco – Yelp’s home turf. The Kickstarter campaign describes Billion Dollar Bully as “a documentary on marketing giant Yelp’s $3.6 billion racket against small business owners.” A press release for the film came out on Wednesday. It says:
Billion Dollar Bully is a feature length documentary examining Yelp’s business practices involving claims of extortion, review manipulation and review fabrication.
Billion Dollar Bully features business owners from across a broad spectrum who have stepped up and agreed to tell their personal stories of Yelp’s questionable business dealings, all of which are vehemently denied by Yelp, who instead states all allegations are merely conspiracy theories.
If nothing else, that last part is definitely true. Yelp does deny such allegations and commonly dismisses them as conspiracy theories. The allegations have been going on for years now (like at least six), and have not shown any signs of stopping.
Business Insider shared this statement from a Yelp spokesperson about Billion Dollar Bully:
The director has a conflict of interest, as she has a history of trying to mislead consumers on Yelp. There is no merit to the claims they appear to highlight, which have been repeatedly dismissed by courts of law, investigated by government regulators, including the FTC, and disproven by academic study.
We reached out to Yelp for additional comment and details about this “conflict of interest” and misleading of consumers. A spokesperson said the company is not commenting further at this time, which is interesting itself, because typically they have no problem calling out specific businesses about “shady business tactics”.
The spokesperson pointed us to the following blog posts for reference of the company’s stance on the claims at hand:
According to her bio, Millken has over twelve years in the film and video industry. She says, “Like millions of others, I used to use Yelp. Then, I was speaking with my physician one day, and she told me about the extremely aggressive sales tactics that had been used on her in an attempt to get her to sign up to pay to advertise with Yelp. I began researching Yelp, and found that her claims were not unique. Thousands of businesses claim extortion, review manipulation, and even review fabrication by Yelp.”
Milliken told International Business Times, “I was at a doctor about a year ago, and she started telling me about her experiences with Yelp. The more she talked about it, the more my jaw just kind of dropped. I knew that they had aggressive sales people — my husband is a small-business owner and he’s complained before about how pushy they can be. But then she started telling me about receiving reviews, really negative reviews by clients, and she couldn’t figure out who these clients were. She was really upset over it. And then she received a review where the client listed ailments about themselves that she had never seen before, and this was the day after she had gotten off the phone with someone from Yelp.”
Of course the film has not even been finished yet, so we’ll see what Milliken and the businesses have to say about it, and what (if any) kind of evidence they can point to. It’s actually half filmed so far. Funds raised through Kickstarter will be used for things like videography, editing, travel expenses, closed captioning, and music composition, according to Milliken.
She says without raising the funds, she won’t be able to complete the project.
“To ensure we do this on the tightest budget possible, the staff is not taking a salary so all money can go towards outside contracted work,” the Kickstarter page says. “We are confident we can produce a high quality, impacting, hard-hitting movie.”
Here’s a trailer:
And a message from Milliken:
According to Milliken, most business owners she spoke with about their Yelp issues declined to go on camera for fear of retaliation from Yelp. One restauranteur that does appear obviously doesn’t care about that, after making headlines last year for courting negative reviews as a middle finger to the company.
“They said that they’ve worked hard to get back in Yelp’s good graces, and they don’t want to jeopardize that,” Milliken told IBTimes of the declining businesses. “Ideally I would love to interview somebody at Yelp, but so far they’ve declined…they’ve told me they would answer questions via email, but they won’t let me record a phone call and they won’t let me go in with a camera.”
Milliken claims to have screenshots that back up claims made in the documentary, and says she’s well aware of the Harvard study Yelp has pointed to time and time again as “debunking extortion conspiracy theories”.
Last month, Yelp released its earnings report for the fourth quarter and full year 2014, which showed 48% growth in local advertising accounts over the course of last year. Company execs discussed the progress of its ad offerings during the ensuing conference call, and said they intend to increase sales headcount by 40% this year. This will mostly be in the United States.
COO Geoff Donaker told investors on the call that many of its salespeople come to Yelp straight out of college or within a few years thereafter, but “we take all comers and there’s all different kinds of folks.”
“But it is a sales training program and so most of that headcount is folks who are reaching out to local businesses of different stripes,” he added.
Yelp announced in January that the FTC had closed an investigation into its business practices without taking any action against it. We haven’t had a chance to ask Milliken so far, but my guess is that she’s also aware of that. It will be interesting to see the completed project and if we learn anything new.
At the time of writing, the Kickstarter campaign has 82 backers, and has reached $10,525 of its $60,000 goal with 31 days left to go. At this rate it should have no problem reaching it. Two backers have contributed $1,500 or more each, and five more have contributed at least $500. Fifteen have pledged at least $100.
Update: Milliken sent us the following statement in response to Yelp’s official statement, “As previous consumers of Yelp, we (Kaylie Milliken and Mellissa Wood [Associate Producer]) were and continue to be interested in highlighting business practices involving claims of extortion, review manipulation and review fabrication. This documentary will examine these claims, the rulings of the court in which Yelp won, and why Yelp won those cases.”
Also, as of 8:40 AM on Friday, the Kickstarter campaign has raised over $16K from 134 backers.
Has Yelp’s defense been sufficient in making you believe the company? Do you think there is merit to the claims the documentary is looking into? Share your thoughts in the comments.
Facebook announced that it is going to begin offering topic data to marketers in an effort to let businesses get a better idea of what people are saying about their products on Facebook, so they can better optimize their strategies.
Would you, as a business, like to get ahold of this data? As a user, are you okay with Facebook using what you say in this way? Share your thoughts in the comments.
Topic data informs marketers about what people are saying about events, brands, subjects, and activities. It looks at both public and private user posts. Any post that isn’t set to be shared with “only me,” is fair game, based on what a Facebook exec reportedly told Re/code. Don’t freak out though. While Facebook may be selling what you’re saying in your private posts to marketers, it’s on a completely anonymized basis. They’re not selling you the person. They’re just selling what you said as if any random person said it. Kind of. Even what you said is analyzed and interpreted before being passed on to marketers.
Facebook says, “We are not disclosing personally identifying information to anyone, including our partners and marketers. And, the results delivered to marketers are analyses and interpretations of the information, not actual topic data.”
Facebook makes a point to note that it’s not utilizing Messenger for this. It also notes that while topic data can give marketers a lot of guidance, it can’t be used to target ads directly.
“Marketers want to understand what people think about topics related to their business, so they can make their products and marketing more relevant to their customers,” says Facebook in a blog post. “In the past they’ve looked at the things people share online to get an idea of what people care about, but, until now, the information available offered a limited view…Marketers use the information from topic data to make better decisions about how they market on Facebook and other channels, and build product roadmaps….While this type of data has been available from third parties before, the sample size was often too small to be significant and determining demographics was nearly impossible.”
“A business selling a hair de-frizzing product can see demographics on the people talking about humidity’s effects on their hair to better understand their target audience,” it says. “A fashion retailer can see the clothing items its target audience is talking about to decide which products to stock. A brand can see how people are talking about their brand or industry to measure brand sentiment.”
Facebook has partnered with DataSift on the offering You may know DataSift as a Twitter partner, which provides Twitter’s firehose to third-parties, though it count over 20 social, news, and blog networks among its partners. Facebook says it’s using the company’s technology to power the platforms that turn the data into insights.
“The partnership with Facebook leverages DataSift’s technology to aggregate and deliver summary results from topic data, enabling developers to build innovative marketing applications that surface insights into what audiences are saying on Facebook,” says DataSift’s Nick Halstead. “We believe there is limitless potential for how Facebook topic data can help marketers – from researching the latest fashion trends to identifying the next big thing.”
DataSift is already working with companies like Oracle, Sysomos, and Hootsuite on Facebook Topic Data.
“We have been successfully working with DataSift to provide our customers with social data insights into their businesses for years,” says Hootsuite CEO Ryan Holmes. “We are very excited about Facebook topic data and its potential to elevate social media monitoring to a more useful and insightful level.”
Facebook topic data is accessed by way of a new API from DataSift called Pylon, which marketers to reach out to the company about. Facebook itself says it’s still figuring out all the different ways topic data can help marketers, and is only offering it to DataSift partners in the US and UK. It will even be limited to select partners in those countries at first. As time goes on, Facebook will expand availability.
Just know that these days, the things you say on Facebook carry more weight than ever before, even if you never know the extent of it. Not only may it be used to shape some company’s strategy, it’s also searchable as of December.
Some think Facebook is actually listening to the things you say outloud via your smartphone’s microphone, but that “has no basis in fact,” according to the company, despite a bunch of creepy stories.
Twitter announced a new offering for its advertisers, enabling them to reach people from audiences created by its Marketing Platform partners. Advertisers will be able to target Twitter Ads at users who have shown “powerful signals of intent” off of Twitter.
“For example, by using a partner to provide the desired audience, an auto brand can connect with audiences that are in-market for a new car,” says product manager Kyle Boston. “A CPG company can reach customers that have previously purchased products in their category. And luxury brands can limit campaigns to shoppers who earn a household income above a certain threshold.”
Partner audiences can be combined with look-alike targeting, and advertisers can exclude partner audiences from campaigns if they want.
There are over 1,000 partner audiences from Acxiom and Datalogix alone, which are already accessible via the Twitter Ads interface. You can find them in a new section of the campaign creation page called behaviors.
“Over the last few months, we’ve heard how targeting partner audiences has helped brands connect with the right people on Twitter,” says Boston. “Nestle’s @Butterfinger leveraged partner audiences for the launch of its new product, Butterfinger Cup Minis. By targeting Promoted Tweets to Twitter users who frequently purchase peanut butter candy in grocery stores, convenience stores and other in-store destinations, @Butterfinger achieved a 52% lift in engagement rate compared to Nestle’s overall performance in 2014.”
For users worried about privacy, Twitter says users can uncheck the box in their privacy settings for “Tailor ads based on information shared by ad partners”.
Twitter also notes that there’s a minimum audience size for tailored audiences, so this prevents targeting that’s too specific.
Google launched a new AdWords app for Android on Wednesday, offering advertisers a way to manage campaigns on the go. It’s hard to believe Google is just now offering such an app, but better late than never, right?
Advertisers can use the app to view and manage ad performance. It lets you view campaign stats, update bids and budgets, get real-time alerts and notifications, act on suggestions to improve campaigns, and call a Google expert when needed.
“Businesses, large and small, are increasingly using smartphones to manage everything from customer support to product orders to marketing,” says product manager Geoff Menegay. “Now, you can use your smartphone to keep your AdWords campaigns running smoothly—no matter where your business takes you.
“Whenever you open the app, you’ll see an overview of your clicks, costs, and conversions. For deeper insights, you can view metrics by ad group, day of week and device,” he says. “Changes in campaign performance can happen at any time—now you can address them quickly, even when you’re away from your desk. For example, if you see your best performing campaign is maxing out on budget, you can make adjustments so you don’t lose out on potential sales. You can even pause or enable a campaign for a time-sensitive promotion.”
You’ll see campaign performance on the home screen when you open the app. You can swipe left or right on the table’s top row to see all the metrics. Tap the metric you want to see, and it will become highlighted. Swipe the bottom of the chart right or left, and you’ll get different charts for the chosen metric.
You can pause or enable campaigns and ad groups and adjust your budget by going to the “Campaigns” section. Go to the “Keywords” section to adjust keyword bids.
Advertisers can also get customized suggestions, such as if there’s an opportunity to get more impressions by adjusting bids. Google will inform you about it, and you can make the necessary changes from the app.
Go to the “Opportunities” section to apply opportunities. They go away when you’ve already applied them, dismissed them, paused or removed the campaign, or when they become less significant.
The app is available in the Google Play Store, and supports devices running Android 4.0 and up. This is separate from the AdWords Express app, which doesn’t work for AdWords accounts.
It’s unclear when the AdWords app might become available for iOS.
Instagram is testing a new way for brands to deliver ads on the network, and it’s something that the average user would probably kill to have access to.
The company has just announced a new format called Carousel ads. It lets brands add multiple photos to a single post, which users can cycle through by swiping left. The Carousel ads will also feature a link to a site of the business’ choice.
“One way to look at it is carousel ads bring the potential of multi-page print campaigns to mobile phones – with the added benefit of taking people to a website to learn more. For instance, a fashion company could use the carousel to deconstruct the individual products in a ‘look.’ A car company might share an array of different features of a vehicle and provide a link to learn more about the new model. Or, an advertiser could showcase how multiple ingredients come together to make a delicious meal,” says Instagram in a Business Blog post.
Instagram is right. The possibilities for this type of multi-photo post are endless.
And I’m sure your average Instagram user would love to explore that.
Instagram has always been about posting that one perfect shot, but people sometimes have more photos they want to share at one time. There are basically two ways to do this. First, you could just post each photo as its own individual post, back-to-back-to-back, annoying the hell out of everyone who follows you. Or, you can use a third-party app like Pic Stitch to craft photo collages.
But a “carousel” of images within one post would let people see all of the photos you want them to see at the time in all their glory.
Of course, this may never happen. This is just a small test Instagram is running with a handful of brands.
“We are introducing this new format on a limited basis. In the coming weeks, you may see carousel ads and might notice variations of the format as we learn what people are most interested in and what performs best,” says Instagram.
But a company spokesperson did tell The Verge that its at least thinking about making this a wide feature.
“Once we iterate and see how people engage with the content, [we] may explore the possibility of bringing it to other types of users on Instagram,” said the spokesperson.
With its Promoted Pins now available to advertisers, Pinterest is working on improving what its ads can do, as you’d expect. The most important thing an online ad can do is target the right people, so those advertisers will be happy to know that this is one area of focus for the company.
According to a new report from Ad Age, Pinterest is about to offer more precision in its targeting, which will expand options beyond its 30 main categories, and into more niche territory. The example given in the report is that advertisers will now be able to target a specific sport like soccer, rather than just sports in general, as has been the case.
Pinterest certainly doesn’t know as much about its users as Facebook, but it can definitely get a pretty good grasp on personal interests, and even potential purchase intent. According to Forrester, Pinterest’s data has more potential to drive sales.
In addition to the narrower category targeting, the report says advertisers will also be able to target users by audience, such as “outdoor enthusiast.” It’s unclear how many such audience options will be available.
Ad Age says that in the coming months, Pinterest will also begin testing a new ad format for animated pins that move when users scroll. This follows recent reports of a new multi-pin ad format. DigiDay reported last week:
The scrapbooking site is developing a new ad, a “multi-pin carousel” that will allow marketers to place several images in a single promoted pin, according to ad agency executives briefed on the company’s plans. Although Pinterest is actively pitching the ad to agencies, it’s unclear when the ad will hit the market, the execs said.
It’s important to remember that advertising on Pinterest is in its infancy. It’s going to get much better. The new capabilities mentioned above are certainly a step in the right direction.
Forrester VP Nate Elliott wrote in January, “Marketers can’t tap into most of Pinterest’s fantastic user data. Although Pinterest’s paid ads (called Promoted Pins) came out of beta earlier this month, the offering lets marketers use just a few dozen interest-based targeting criteria. The result of such limited targeting is unclear ad performance: Pinterest can’t cite any success data for Promoted Pins aside from an increase in earned impressions.”
“The bottom line: Pinterest’s marketing value lies more in the future than in the present,” he added. “By 2016, Pinterest’s ad offering could trump that of other social sites — but today, most brands struggle to successfully use it as a marketing tool. We’re encouraging marketers to put limited resources into Pinterest right now. Once the site broadens its targeting capabilities, though, it’ll be time to spend.”
eMarketer, which projects that over a quarter of US social network users and 18.1% of internet users will use Pinterest on a monthly basis this year, suggests that Pinterest may end up competing more with Google and Amazon than social networks like Facebook and Twitter when it comes to ad dollars.
“Pinterest users are likely to be in a better frame of mind to receive advertising,” wrote Debra Aho Williamson, principal social media analyst at eMarketer.
That’s all the more reason the rumored Pinterest “buy” button could prove extremely effective. Ad Age notes that the company still wouldn’t confirm the button, by the way.
Pinterest has indeed placed a great deal of focus on its search feature of late. Last year, it launched Guided Search, which was a huge improvement in and of itself. As recently as January, it made a significant improvement being able to serve different results to men and women. The male demographic on Pinterest is growing, so this will only become more important for getting the right content in front of the right people.
Pinterest’s ability to get the right ads in front of the right people should be rapidly improving. Already in January, they started showing the ads in users’ home feeds. That same month, the company announced its acquisition of Kosei, which it’s using to accelerate its discovery and monetization efforts.
“Among Kosei’s accomplishments is building a graph that understands more than 400 million relationships between 30 million products,” a spokesperson for Pinterest told WebProNews. “Over the years we’ve been building a system for helping people discover the most relevant Pins, and the Kosei team is a great complement to our existing technology (see how we’ve been using machine learning here). The acquisition of Kosei will enable us to move faster in our efforts to provide relevant recommendations across the service, as well as in ad targeting and measurement as we roll out Promoted Pins.”
“Recommendations and ads systems are rapidly changing due to the confluence of mobile and personalization,” said Head of Pinterest partnerships Joanne Bradford. “The Kosei team and technology will help us accelerate our ad efforts by offering marketers more solutions to tap into our growing and valuable data set and object graph. This year we’ll provide the best ads canvas with the most actionable insights to reach an engaged and passionate brand-centric audience.”
A couple weeks ago, The Wall Street Journal reported that Pinterest is in talks to raise a new $500 million round of funding, valuing the company at $11 billion. In that report, it said:
According to Pinterest, early results show that users interact with these new ads—called promoted pins—just as much, if not more, than user-posted pins, a sign that users find the advertisements relevant to their overall experience.
As Pinterest gets the ball rolling on its own monetization efforts, it has completely shut out affiliate links, which has cost some Pinners making money of the service that way. Pinterest said the move is “not about monetization” and is “100% about the Pinner experience and ensuring relevant content on Pinterest.”
The company said in a statement, “We are removing affiliate links to ensure we’re providing the best possible experience for Pinners. Recently, we observed affiliate links and redirects causing irrelevant Pins in feeds, broken links and other spammy behavior. We believe this change will enable us to keep the high bar of relevancy and quality Pinners expect from Pinterest.”
Still, in its email to affected users, it suggested other ways to make money using Pinterest, including paid social media marketing, paid board curation, or paid content creation.
Is Pinterest already a significant part of your social media strategy? Do you expect to utilize it more in the future? Discuss in the comments.
The subject of ad viewability continues to be a contentious one throughout the industry, and many are simply confused by various elements of the debate, and rightfully so. It’s pretty confusing. There are so many factors and parties that come into play it’s pretty much a big mess.
There are organizations trying to change that, but in some cases, it’s only adding more layers to an already complex discussion. Last week, we attempted to provide something of a round-up of some of the latest discussion points.
While the viewability issue spans across devices, mobile is a major part. The Mobile Majority released a new study on mobile ad viewability based on IAB and MRC standards as well as its own internal architecture in an apparent attempt to clarify what’s going on here. The company says it didn’t set out to define terms of the viewability debate for an entire industry, but considers its study, which was originally intended for internal use, “the first solid framework for a viewability debate that is already underway.”
The study, it says, enables advertisers, ad tech partners and other stakeholders to discuss the viewability issue using “a common set of assumptions.”
The findings are packaged in a relatively easy-to-read infographic.
“There is broad agreement within the industry on what viewability is, but until now, it has been difficult for stakeholders to physically see what needs to happen in order for viewability to be achieved,” said Matthew Russo, Lead Educator at The Mobile Majority. “This infographic maps the complexities out and gives industry stakeholders a way to define the process, understand how to track what is happening, and identify the potential opportunities for error. By breaking down each step and putting it in a visual format, we were able to illustrate the major bottlenecks within the current set-up and validate our approach of integrating each step of the process. That’s how we’ve been able to produce results higher than most of the industry averages.”
“There isn’t a simple solution for this problem, due to the complex and circuitous path by which mobile ads are built and trafficked,” he wrote. “What’s more, the journey from creation to an actual viewed ad is perplexed by a number of moving parts managed and maintained by far too many vendors and commensurate associated fees. This drives up complexity and cost on top of media which hurts both publishers and buyers. For instance, to run any single large scale mobile campaign, a buyer would need somewhere between 4 and 10 vendors. At the very least, they would need vendors to manage strategy, creative technology, ad serving, bidding, targeting, data activation, measurement, reporting / BI and fraud detection. Every time there is a handoff, whether by computer or more often (still) by humans, of an ad from one vendor to another, there is a loss of data or at least some sort of compromise in quality. Sorting out accountability for final results becomes impossible because no one vendor can be blamed or held accountable. This leads to an opaque and broken marketplace that no one individual participant can fix.”
“Not only has this created an inefficient system, a distrust in the technology itself has emerged,” he added. “This is because viewability reporting is just as chaotically layered as the building of an ad. 3rd party viewability vendors often produce inconsistent viewability reports originating from different sets of available data from different layers of the full ad technology stack. This in turn confuses buyers even more and creates a compounding loss of confidence.”
Back in December, the IAB released its “State of Viewability Transaction 2015″ report aimed at offering guidance on how to manage the “shift of digital media’s ‘audience currency’ to 100 percent viewability.”
It said 100% viewability measurement simply isn’t possible. Instead, it recommends 70% as the best threshold for buyers and sellers. 2015, it says, will be a “year of transition.”
Since the IAB’s report, viewability has only become a more hotly debated topic. Advertisers are demanding more viewability while publishers struggle to deliver and maintain that advertisers are sometimes not seeing the big picture about the difficulty of meeting such demand, or in some cases even the validity of the data they’re seeing. More on all of this here.
Twitter just added a couple of new features to conversion tracking for web. Advertisers can now take advantage of support for transaction values and key conversion tags.
The former lets advertisers view the sales that their Promoted Tweet campaigns drove.
“If you’ve implemented our website tag already, you can make some simple changes to the tag to start collecting conversion values and order quantities for each conversion,” says product manager Abhishek Shrivastava. “These values are aggregated and reported back in your Twitter Ads analytics dashboard to provide insights on your ROI from your Promoted Tweet campaigns. If you aren’t using conversion tracking yet, it’s easy to get started by creating a tag in your Twitter Ads UI and implementing it within your site.”
“Over the last several months, we’ve seen positive results from advertisers who have tested the transaction values feature in beta,” says Shrivastava. “One is @WavesAudioLtd, which found that it’s shedding new light on the business results they are driving with Twitter Ads. Waves Audio provides audio solutions for the professional, broadcast and consumer electronics markets. In the 30 days from mid-December through mid-January, Waves Audio built New Year holiday excitement on Twitter with special promotions on software plugins for sound engineers. The Waves Audio team used Twitter’s website clicks or conversions objective and targeting such as interests and tailored audiences to drive high-intent site visits.”
According to Twitter, that account’s analytics now show a 770% return on advertising investment from Twitter ads from that period.
They share a quote from Waves’ Online Marketing Manager David Corman: “We’re very pleased with our return on investment in Twitter Ads. We’re able to develop strong relationships with a community of audio enthusiasts on Twitter, and the recent enhancements to Twitter’s analytics and measurement are helping us refine our outreach for maximum effectiveness.”
Twitter said Live Nation was able to achieve a a return on ad investment of 819% during a testing period while using a website card.
Advertisers can use the new key conversion tag to choose one conversion event for the campaigns they want to optimize, and view “distilled” analytics within the Twitter Ads interface.
“Suppose a flower shop wants to use Twitter Ads to drive more sales of their Easter bouquets,” says Shrivastava. “Once the shop places a website tag on the final conversion page for the bouquet and selects that tag as the key tag for their campaign, Twitter can automatically start to optimize the campaign towards driving more conversions on the bouquet sale page. The shop will also have the ability to view the number of bouquet purchases in their Twitter Ads analytics dashboard, as soon as those conversions occur. Because Twitter conversion tracking works in a cross-device fashion, even if a user sees the flower shop’s ad on a mobile device but later converts on a desktop, Twitter Ads analytics will be able to track and report that conversion.”
This is all now available to all Twitter advertisers globally.
Earlier this month, Twitter launched Quick Promote for advertisers to promote their best performing tweets from the Tweet Activity dashboard.
This is available to all SMB advertisers.
Twitter also announced syndicated promoted tweets this month, which see Twitter ads appearing on third party sites. This started with launch partners Flipboard and Yahoo Japan. We recently spoke with the CEO of The Mobile Majority, who thinks this will be detrimental to ad creativity. More on that here.
Google announced the launch of paid search results on Google Play, which will help app makers get their products discovered and help Google add another revenue source.
Google is only making the offering available to a limited set of users at first (from a pilot group of advertisers). This will happen over the course of the coming weeks.
“App discovery plays a critical role in driving your continued success, and over the past year Google has provided best practices to enhance app discovery and engagement, as well as app promotion tools to get the most out of search and display advertising for developers,” says Google Play product management director Michael Siliski. “We are always looking for new ways to help you get your apps in front of potential new users. That’s why, in the next few weeks, we will begin piloting sponsored search results on Google Play, bringing our unique expertise in search ads to the store.”
It probably has something to do with that revenue thing too. Google will make money on the ads while continuing to make money on app sales.
Paid search in Google Play is not something I’ve ever given much thought to, but thinking about it now, it’s actually really surprising that Google is just now getting the ball rolling on this. Google Play hosts a reported 1.72 million apps.
As Miguel Helft at Forbes writes in an interview with Google’s Sundar Pichai:
Search advertising has been the most profitable big business in the history of the Internet, generating billions in annual revenue and income for Google. After applying it to Web search, Google expanded it to queries made on YouTube. Pichai said that by using the same model on Google Play, the company will capitalize on the app store’s growing momentum.
“With more than 100 billion searches every month on Google.com, we’ve seen how search ads shown next to organic search results on Google.com can significantly improve content discovery for users and advertisers, both large and small,” he adds. “Search ads on Google Play will enable developers to drive more awareness of their apps and provide consumers new ways to discover apps that they otherwise might have missed.”
According to Marketing Land paid media reporter Ginny Marvin, Google’s pilot test will only include app marketers, who are currently using AdWords, but their campaigns won’t be tied together on the front end. The ability to buy Google Play apps in AdWords may come later, she says.
The company says it will be sharing more about the expansion of the new Google Play paid results in the coming months as it analyzes feedback and the results of the initial phase.
Ryan Whitwam at Android Police writes, “In the early days of Android, developers had to be serious nerds to pay the platform any real attention. After all, the real money was on iOS…Developers will probably be happy to have better promotional tools in the Play Store, but things are going well already.”
Google says Google Play reaches over a billion people in over 190 countries. They’ve paid $7 billion to developers (compared to a reported $10 billion annually paid by Apple to iOS developers).
Kevin Tofel, who covers mobile for GigaOm, says Google’s paid search results will probably be more appealing to those who offer paid apps, but adds that even those with free apps “might be willing to splurge on ads for their software and work toward in-app purchases for revenues.”
He also makes the point that smaller developers with limited funds will be at a disadvantage to larger ones with bigger bankrolls.
Ultimately, however, Google’s news should prove huge for the Android developer ecosystem over time. Think about what paid search has done for business discovery over the years, and apply it to mobile apps. For niche apps, it could be game-changing.
Google isn’t giving numbers on how many searches the Play Store gets, which is unfortunate, because it would surely be nice to know for all parties involved.
Google announced on Wednesday that it will start converting all Flash ads to HTML5 automatically. The company presents this as an opportunity for advertisers to access more inventory.
In a post on Google+, Google says, “Over half of time spent online is now spent on mobile devices. This presents a tremendous opportunity for marketers to reach their customers throughout the day, whenever they may be browsing. But there is an all-too-common barrier: many mobile devices and some browsers do not currently support Flash. That’s why we’re introducing a way to automatically convert Flash ads to HTML5, giving advertisers better access to the portion of Google Display Network inventory that is HTML5-only.”
Last fall, Google announced interactive HTML5 backup tools for when Flash isn’t supported for both the Google Display Network and DoubleClick Campaign Manager. These tools would automatically create HTML5 versions of Flash ads, and when they’re served on devices or browsers that don’t support Flash, they show the interactive HTML5 ad instead of a static image backup.
Now, Google says, “Eligible Flash campaigns, both existing and new, will now be automatically converted to HTML5 when uploaded through AdWords, AdWords Editor, and many 3rd party tools. “With this new tool plus our best practices and versatile mobile ad formats, we’re making it easier for marketers to deliver beautiful display ads that just work — regardless of screen or device — ensuring a better experience for both consumers and brands.”
As Google notes in its help center, not all Flash ads can be converted to HTML5. The company recommends uploading your ad to the Swiffy tool to see if it will convert. If the tool can convert it, it will be automatically converted when it’s uploaded to AdWords.
You can also see in your AdWords reports whether it was converted. Just segment the ad table by devices. If you see mobile or tablet impressions for a Flash ad, it was converted.
Google says that in late 2015 it will begin providing a notification on all converted Flash ads.
Google doesn’t allow Flash ads that don’t support the clickTAG variable, which is the tracking code Google assigns an individual ad and allows it to register where the ad was displayed when ti was clicked. It says that on any click, the ads should redirect to the URL specified in the clickTAG argument, and there should be any other redirection in between. Note that the variable name has to be spelled exactly like “clickTAG” with the upper-case TAG and no space.
Google mentioned “best practices”. It refers to a document called Smart Phone Tips: An Advertiser’s Checklist for Getting Mobile Right. This provides guidance on mobile creatives and extensions, mobile targeting, mobile measurement, mobile bidding, and working without mobile-optimized sites.
Google has been doing everything it can to help phase out Flash for years. This is only the latest nail in its coffin. Last month, the company announced that it is now defaulting to the HTML5 player on the web for YouTube embeds, moving to iframes. Additionally, it announced the deprecation of the old style of Flash <object> embeds and Flash API.
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