LinkedIn delved deeper into marketing with its launch Tuesday of Showcase Pages, through which companies can feature specific products within their branded pages. Designed as an extension of LinkedIn’s Company Pages, users that follow Showcase Pages will receive updates on products, events or other content. “We tell marketers, ‘Yes, we’re a professional network, but people […]
There’s still money to be made in Facebook’s vendor ecosystem. Ampush, a preferred marketing developer that supports data-driven advertising focused on Facebook’s News Feed, says its 2013 media revenue will grow to $70 million, up from $15 million last year. Headcount has more than doubled since December 2012, to 90. Ampush is an example of […]
Dallas-based marketing technology startup HipLogiq has raised $7 million in Series B funding, led by Hadron Global Partners. It will use the money to bolster sales and marketing staff. This latest cash injection follows a $5 million Series A round last May, also led by Hadron. While the Series A round was largely applied to […]
After going public, Twitter saw its stock price nearly double in early trading to a $45.10 high during the early morning hours of day one on the New York Stock Exchange. Twitter sold 70 million shares to raise $1.82 billion with a market cap of $18 billion through the IPO. As trading began, that valuation […]
It’s good news/bad news for the Twitter IPO today. The company has raised its price range to $23-$25 per share, suggesting strong demand. It also faces an intellectual property infringement claim from IBM — relating in part to ad technology. To address the upside first: At the upper end of its new range Twitter would […]
Last week was a busy one for photocentric platform Pinterest, which unveiled both related pins and a data agreement with Getty Images. The Getty deal looks good for brands and Pinterest’s 70 million users, experts said. On the one hand, it looks like “a quality-control mechanism, which is likely aimed at supporting monetization while maintaining […]
Facebook reported its third quarter financials today, which included continuing growth in ad revenue, particularly its mobile ads. The company pulled in $2 billion in total revenue for the third quarter, a 60% increase from $1.3 billion in Q3 2012. Its ad revenue was $1.8 billion, a 66% increase from the same quarter last year. […]
Most Facebook observers would be hard-pressed to find “negatives” in the evolution of the company’s ad products over the past year. Performance continues to improve, as detailed in a new report from Adobe. Mobile monetization is proceeding apace. And it has executed on programmatic selling, through its Facebook Exchange, Custom Audiences database match program and Partner […]
Facebook and Twitter have been the social community meccas for many marketers and media companies alike. But a growing group of companies, including Livefyre, RebelMouse and Mass Relevance, is trying to bring ownership of the social community back to their clients’ owned and operated properties as well as service the raging native ads and content […]
It has been a year of big changes for marketers experimenting with social ad campaigns. New data suggests platform- and purpose-specific campaigns are driving distinct return on investment. Take Facebook, for instance. Because of changes to the News Feed and increased targeting capabilities through the Facebook Exchange, click-through rates were up 275% year-over-year, according to […]
Facebook is taking aim at small and medium-sized businesses with the latest update to its Custom Audiences database-matching program. In addition to the current setup, advertisers will be able to use Custom Audiences in a simplified way through the Ads Create tool. “To use Custom Audiences, advertisers had to use Power Editor or have access […]
Facebook has made steady progress on closing the loop between media spend and consumer transactions, according to Brian Boland, the company’s VP of ads product marketing. “Digital marketers expect accurate reach,” Boland said in a presentation at the DMA 2013 annual summit in Chicago this week. More and more are “expecting proven results. They’re now […]
Retailers are pouring more money into Facebook’s ad products and driving up CPM costs, according to a new report from Nanigans, an ad platform and Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer partner. The report is based on data from more than 100 online and brick-and-mortar retailers over the first nine months of 2013. CPMs of Facebook ads […]
Brand Networks, a social marketing firm focused on large retail clients, has acquired rival Optimal Inc. for $35 million. The deal brings together two early movers in Facebook’s Preferred Marketing Developer (PMD) program, each adept in its own way at seizing the social opportunity. In Brand Networks’ case, the strategy has been to focus on […]
Demand Media co-founder Richard Rosenblatt is stepping from his roles as chairman and CEO of the content aggregator. Read the release. The company has worked for years to be perceived as a curator of “prime”, albeit utilitarian content instead of being perjoratively identified as a keyword-laden “content farm.” Rosenblatt’s departure suggests no immediate wholesale change […]
In a summer interview, Facebook’s head of vertical measurement, Fred Leach, described the company’s measurement products and its partnership with Datalogix. In the below follow-up Q&A, Leach digs deeper into the company’s work on mobile measurement, attribution and the CPG category. AdExchanger: What are you working on in terms of mobile measurement? FRED LEACH: There are a couple ways […]
However much click tracking, psychographic surveying, and big data analysis marketers do, few have a solid understanding of how their customers engage with social marketing content — or how those customers’ behavior differs between commercial and non-commercial interactions. To address the knowledge gap, Forrester Research has come up with a “Social Technographics Score,” a model […]
Adaptly is one of a handful of ad-tech companies serving as a preferred partner to both Facebook and Twitter, but it doesn’t see its induction into the latter’s API program as an extension. Although Twitter’s strategy has similarities to what Facebook did last year — including a retargeting exchange — Adaptly CEO Nikhil Sethi noted […]
Twitter is in New York this week talking up Amplify, which is at the heart of the company’s monetization strategy around broadcast content. The Amplify program offers audience extension for TV networks by letting them tweet short video clips such as sports replays minutes or seconds after their on-air broadcast. Broadcast advertisers can “ride along” […]
Advertisers that push paid media with organic content on Facebook are driving measurably higher results than singular social efforts, one report has found. But the success of a campaign can vary greatly by post type. According to new ShopIgniter data released in August, “The 2013 Social Rich Media Benchmark Report” reveals more retailers and brands […]
Twitter significantly boosted its advertising profile last week, acquiring mobile ad exchange MoPub and filing (confidentially) for an IPO. The San Francisco-based company is expected to bring in $583 million in advertising revenue this year, and $950 million in 2014, according to eMarketer. It also earns additional revenue by selling the data in its “fire hose” or […]
Pinterest is getting closer to formal ad products with the announcement today that it’s experimenting with promoted pins for select businesses. Although Pinterest co-founder and CEO Ben Silbermann noted promoted pins won’t be “flashy banners or pop-up ads,” and that it’s not a paid product, yet, Pinterest looks to be finding more ways to commercialize the […]
In Facebook’s last earnings call, Sheryl Sandberg surprised some by saying the Facebook Exchange “is actually a very small part of our business.” That may be changing, as the company pushes more ad space into its RTB marketplace — and there are signs mobile News Feed inventory is waiting in the programmatic wings. “We believe FBX […]
Tapping into second-screen viewing and related search habits is the new black. Facebook confirmed Friday it is testing “trending topics” in the news feed after rolling out a hashtags feature, according to The Wall Street Journal. Apple and, especially, Twitter have made notable moves in the space. But, for all of the interest, the fact […]
Twitter’s wading deeper into the TV pool. The end goal? Unlock more viewer data to balance the scale on social engagement and determine the opportune time to push paid media promotions. With its latest acquisition of real-time social data analytics platform Trendrr, which is used by a range of media companies and TV networks such […]
Taking a page from the Weather Company, which has been trying to convince brand advertisers that meteorology is about lifestyles, not umbrellas, Brand Networks is partnering with Planalytics to build out its “social marketing stack” around connecting local and national retailers with data about weather patterns and consumer behavior. The deal comes a few weeks […]
Pinterest has always been a little different than the rest of the social pack –primarily because pinned products means pinned intent. The platform is inherently commercial. When Pinterest debuted price alerts in early August, it appeared to be a move on the visual social network’s part to help retailers reactivate purchase intent based on items […]
Retailers that push fewer posts, but better and more targeted ones, are gaining an edge over those that pursue volume when it comes to publishing Facebook content, new data suggests. The 50 Social Retail Report from enterprise social media management company Expion analyzed 16,000 posts for the top 50 retail brands as designated by Interbrand. […]
Twitter is letting CPG advertisers link their ‘Promoted’ ad placements to offline sales, courtesy of Datalogix. The offering has strong echoes of Facebook’s year-old POS conversion-tracking relationship with Datalogix. Twitter has already run tests with 35 brands using the “offline sales lift” feature to weigh the impact of online engagement with in-store transactions. Advertisers include […]
Since LinkedIn launched its heavily dissected LinkedIn Endorsements product last September, two billion endorsements have been made to date. LinkedIn, which reported 37% year-over-year growth in membership in Q2, now has 238 million members and generated $364 million in revenue in the second quarter. The company is also flirting with an API to enable programmatic […]
