Organic Reach Waning; Weather Data

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.

Organic Search Vs. Ads

Marketers have complained as organic reach of their pages has been throttled, apparently, while Facebook ramps up its ads strategy. Last Thursday, Facebook ads product team lead Brian Boland (AdExchanger 2013 interview) defended his company with reasons behind organic reach’s decline, beginning with the idea that “more and more content is being created and shared every day.” In other words, Facebook can’t show everything. Read more reasons. PandoDaily’s James Robinson finds the argument disingenuous but Facebook’s strategy inevitable –read that one.

Attributing Weather

The data of weather remains a compelling opportunity for marketers. Weather Company believes it’s at the center of the storm (rim shot). Weather’s VP of monetization, Alex Linde, describes to Ad Age a new partnership with Placed’s Placed Attribution product, which will “help advertisers see the amount of people their mobile campaigns are sending to physical locations, freeing them from some of the attribution methods currently employed in online advertising.” Read it. And read AdExchanger’s 2013 article on Placed and its attribution initiative.

Marketing Cloud To The Rescue?

Salesforce has been able to stay one step ahead of the competition by offering its customer relationship management software in the cloud. But it may not be in the lead for long. Based on the company’s Q1 earnings, Wedbush Securites analyst Steve Koenig says Salesforce’s product is slower than expected. Read more at Investor’s Business Daily. Marketing cloud (i.e., ExactTarget, Buddy Media, Pardot, et al.) to the rescue? Maybe.

To The App

In a new report, eMarketer analysts say that niche search apps – like KAYAK – will increasingly impact Google’s search ad revenue over the next four years as the user moves from the desktop Web to the mobile app. eMarketer says that the niche search engine impact “caused Google’s (search) share to drop to 68.5% in 2013, while the long tail of ‘other’ (i.e., app) companies increased share from 5.4% to 22.9%. This year, we expect Google’s share to fall again, to 65.7%, while the ‘other’ category reaches 27.3%.” Read it.

Campaigning Content

Ecommerce is evolving thanks to online scrapbooking sites and social sharing platforms like Pinterest and Instagram. Curalate is among a growing set of software startups looking to help brands capitalize on the trend. Already working with some major retail clients such as Urban Outfitters, Curalate helps brands locate their product images around the Web and use them for more candid campaigning and consumer targeting. Read on at Re/code.