Despite having close to a half million Instagram followers, upscale retailer Nordstrom knows that “likes” and “follows” are great for growing community and measuring engagement or affinity, but these actions don’t necessarily translate into hard business metrics. Retailers want to know if that showroom-grade snapshot on social actually sold a tube of lipstick. “What we’ve primarily […]
Professional social networking platform LinkedIn on Thursday posted Q2 revenue of $534 million, a 47% YoY increase from $364 million. Marketing Solutions revenue, now 20% of LinkedIn’s total business, was $101 million for the second quarter, a 44% uptick from last year. Talent Solutions and Premium Subscriptions account for 60% and 20% of revenue, respectively. LinkedIn […]
Despite the troubles Twitter has had maintaining its audience growth rates, particularly in the US, it has consistently reported revenue increases. Its Q2 2014 revenue was no exception: The company hauled in $312 million – a 124% YoY increase. Twitter again beat analyst predictions that the social media company would see revenues of about $282 million. Advertising […]
What’s the hottest new digital toy? If you’re Facebook and Twitter, it’s the buy button. To recap: Facebook published a blog post explaining its experimentation with a buy button – currently with select small and medium-sized businesses – with which users can purchase goods directly through the Facebook platform. This announcement followed Twitter’s own dalliance with […]
Quantifind, whose technology is designed to find relevant marketing signals amid the noise of unstructured data, has raised $12 million in a strategic growth round led by Comcast Ventures and Iris Capital. The company had raised about $10.5 million in the last eight months, according to cofounder and CEO Ari Tuchman, although this does not […]
Three months after launching a pilot program for mobile app install ads, Twitter has made the offering available to all advertisers. The format is a bid to capture surging app promotion budgets that have been a boon to Facebook, Pandora and dozens of mobile-specific ad networks and demand-side platforms (DSPs) over the past two years. Ride-sharing service Lyft, EA […]
Before Brazil defeated Croatia at Arena de Sao Paulo to open the 2014 World Cup, the Coca-Cola Co. unfurled across the pitch the fruits of its biggest marketing campaign in its history: a giant mosaic called the “Happiness Flag.” But this campaign, which ended on the soccer field, began online. Activated across 175 countries, the Happiness Flag […]
In a wide-ranging panel at Cannes, CEOs Dick Costolo (Twitter), Philippe Dauman (Viacom) and Martin Sorrell (WPP) discussed the evolution of rich media consumption on mobile devices and why marketer investment in mobile video does not yet match consumer demand. Sorrell, who opened the panel by stating WPP spends $750 million with Viacom (said Dauman: […]
Twitter has seemingly renewed its commitment to the second screen, revealing plans Thursday to acquire live video clipping and distribution platform SnappyTV. “Our goal is to help publishers quickly share great moments from events so people can experience those moments as they happen,” wrote Baljeet Singh, a director of product management at Twitter, in a […]
As advertisers seek ways to extend their broadcast media buys through cross-platform campaigns, cross-screen ad-delivery companies are bridging the technical gap. Such is the case with cross-screen tool Civolution, which has teamed up with Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer Brand Networks to help brands buy social ads in conjunction with live television events. Omnicom’s Resolution Media is […]
Twitter has snatched up mobile native advertising provider Namo Media, adding technology to enhance exchange-based monetization for app developers. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, and Twitter declined to comment. Namo Media has roughly eight employees, and will merge its product into the MoPub platform. The company’s SDK helps mobile app developers integrate native advertising by […]
Unified, a company that helps brands with social ad buys, has acquired social analytics startup Awe.sm for an undisclosed sum, the companies announced Thursday. Unified is a Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer and Twitter Ads API Partner. The core of its product is a “Social Operating Platform,” a cloud-based tool that combines social marketing capabilities ranging […]
Twitter tried to avoid last quarter’s narrative, centered around flagging audience growth, in its Q1 call Tuesday; instead, the company emphasized a 28% quarterly increase in ad engagements (specifically retweets and favorites), driven by higher-quality ads and the use of rich media. Such was the overall theme: engagement over timeline views and audience growth. Yet, the fact remains the latter […]
Four months after first introducing support for native advertising, Twitter’s mobile exchange MoPub is pitching the solution to all publishers. Consisting of an native ads SDK, a publisher-side ad server, and an RTB extension, the MoPub native product is a “a complete solution for direct sold and exchange traded native ads, delivering the same control […]
Despite some volatility in ad pricing and performance last quarter, Adobe Index’s Q1 2014 Social Media Intelligence Report indicates Facebook remains the leader in driving revenue per visit (RPV). Meanwhile other platforms – namely Twitter, Tumblr and Pinterest – are in some instances noticing quarterly double-digit declines in RPV. In paid social, Facebook saw a […]
Social platforms like Tumblr and Twitter give content producers tremendous opportunities to engage with audiences. But they also present a tremendous challenge – namely being able to distribute and measure that content cross-platform. As the TV upfront season approaches, Viacom sales chief Jeff Lucas said overcoming this challenge will be a priority. Viacom is working […]
Twitter, as rumored, is developing an ad product specifically designed for app installs. On Thursday, Twitter acknowledged the existence of the mobile app promotion suite, the first product that connects Twitter with the mobile ad exchange it inherited when it acquired MoPub last September. Advertisers shouldn’t try to jump on board quite yet, however: The […]
Online video, especially online video embedded in social networks, is essentially a free-for-all. There are few rules or best practices and brands and vendors are still figuring out what works best for consumers. SnappyTV is figuring its one-tap native video playback on Facebook and Twitter, a feature the video content platform is releasing Tuesday, will […]
There’s a change afoot in the B2B marketing camp, at the heart of which is demand for a more nimble lead-nurturing mechanism. Bizo, a provider of online ad targeting solutions for B2B marketers, released Monday Multi-Channel Nurturing, designed to incorporate a wider swath of lead generating channels, from email to display and social advertising. The […]
Online video player and distributor Brightcove has extended short-form video support for Twitter’s growing slew of video-monetization tools, Twitter Amplify and Twitter Video Cards. Underpinned by tech from its recent acquisition of digital ad-insertion platform Unicorn Media, the Brightcove Once cloud platform is designed to enable publishers and media companies to ease the playback of […]
Are Twitter and Pinterest on their way out and is there room for other social networks? These were among the topics that advertising and marketing executives tackled on a panel discussion on day two of Ad Age’s Digital Conference. The panelists included Bob Lord, CEO of AOL Platforms; Scott Galloway of L2ThinkTank; Kelly Mooney, CEO […]
Mobile app install ads have proven to be lucrative for Facebook, and sources say Twitter is close to releasing its own version of such ads along with a new mobile app install partner program. “Given the prevalence of Twitter app usage in mobile, which has an even higher percentage of mobile vs. desktop than Facebook, […]
Although the performance-based pay-per-call model is not new, there is renewed interest from publishers due to the ubiquity of mobile and new experimentation in ad formats. Twitter last week, for instance, revealed plans to serve direct-response marketers through beta tests with brands for click-to-call functionality, as first reported by Digiday. At its most basic, the […]
Marc Landsberg knows agencies. Landsberg previously served as the former EVP at Leo Burnett and president and CEO of Arc and MRM Worldwide. As the current CEO of Chicago-based social agency socialdeviant, he says the traditional media-buying process has been turned upside down and the players flipping the tables aren’t the platform providers. Comcast’s planned […]
If you’ve ever shortened or shared a link on a social platform, chances are you’ve used Bitly. “We are so ubiquitous, but at the same time, people gloss right over us,” said Mark Josephson, CEO of URL shortening service Bitly. He joined the company six months ago from AOL, where he served as SVP of […]
Twitter’s average cost per ad engagement decreased steadily over the past seven quarters, culminating in an 18% decrease in the quarter ended Dec. 21. While ad revenue, by contrast, increased during those same quarters, this chiastic trend isn’t sustainable, as Twitter itself conceded in the 10-K it filed Thursday. The company noted its ad revenue […]
What is the cost of acquiring a loyal app user? Based on the testimonial of various industry insiders, the price is rising so quickly ad revenue can’t keep up. As such, app developers are looking for new ways to profit, often by developing ad tech. Gartner predicts mobile ad spend will reach $18 billion this […]
Professional social platform LinkedIn is cooking up a number of paid product extensions, at the base of which is its nearly 300 million-member-strong social graph and a quickly growing content operation. At LinkedIn’s FinanceConnect in New York Thursday, an event that drew roughly 200 marketers, financial professionals, customers and partners to the Time Warner Center […]
Twitter’s first quarter as a public company was hot and cold. Ad performance was the hot part. Q4 2013 ad revenue on the Twitter platform grew 121% to $220 million, of which mobile advertising accounted for more than 75%. The MoPub mobile ad exchange, acquired during the quarter, delivered $8 million in revenue. Audience trends […]
Facebook CPM-based ad prices jumped more than 400% in Q4 2013, according to some 240 billion impressions analyzed in Adobe’s Q4 2013 Social Media Intelligence Report. However the holiday season delivered “warning signs” for Facebook in the form of tepid growth in the visits and revenue it’s driving to retail sites, relative to some of […]
