Webmasters Corner
-
Hashtags certainly aren’t new on social platforms, but do you really know how to maximise their effectiveness? It’s not easy to apply a hashtag strategy for all social networks, as each one has its own rules. However, you can still analyse what works for each platform and adapt your habits for the future posts. Trackmaven analysed more than 65,000 posts on social media, offering useful insights on how the use of hashtags changes on each platform. Let’s see their impact on the biggest social networks. Facebook: one hashtag can increase the engagement Facebook may not be the most popular platform to use hashtags, but they still seem to increase the audience’s e…
-
- 0 replies
- 19 views
-
-
Ten steps to help advertisers, agencies, ad platforms and publishers get on top of mobile ad fraud, with tips from the experts and guidelines to follow. With mobile rapidly approaching half of digital advertising, the fraudsters that have plagued web advertising are now targeting mobile ads – particularly the “download or app” ads, which have become a cash cow for the ad industry. In this column we ask: what do advertisers, agencies, ad exchanges, ad networks, demand-side platforms DSPs and other adtech providers need to do to stop mobile getting to the same state as web ad fraud? What is mobile ad fraud? Mobile ad fraud occurs where mobile ad impressions or cli…
-
- 0 replies
- 79 views
-
-
Credible and reliable endorsements are now, more so than ever, vital to a brand’s success. Identifying and using the appropriate influencers in your marketing strategy is pivotal to ensuring that your brand and product are being seen in the right place, at the right time and most importantly, by the right people. It is becoming increasingly apparent that brands are choosing to recruit digital influencers to act as their ambassadors. Previously, brands would try to on-board a celebrity to become the face of their brand or product – so why, in recent years, have we seen a shift to digital influencers? Perhaps, it’s because digital influencers are still often seen a…
-
- 0 replies
- 61 views
-
-
The days of desktop dominance are over. This sharp and concise statement, which came from a 2014 comScore report, sums up the modern ad environment perfectly. The report found that smartphones and tablets accounted for a full 60% of time spent on digital media in the US, with apps driving a lot of this growth. While that report came out two years ago, mobile has continued to grow to become a veritable behemoth of an industry, dominating the marketing strategy of businesses around the world. BI Intelligence predicts that US mobile ad spend will reach around $42 billion in 2018. For a more traditional marketer, mobile advertising might seem like a risky bet com…
-
- 0 replies
- 61 views
-
-
US Advertisers are spending US $2.6 billion on mobile ads each month, $0.4 billion in the UK, they understandably want to know that their ads are seen by real people, not robots, ideally the people most relevant to their ad message. Advertisers are now investing up to half of their digital advertising revenues – according to the latest stats – in mobile ads. They want/need to know that their money is invested wisely and that the ads they are paying for are seen by real people, not robots, ideally the people most relevant to their ad message. Advertisers need to be able to trust that the various parties that create, manage and deliver etc. their ads have put all meas…
-
- 0 replies
- 63 views
-
-
Site speed is an important factor for SEO and conversion, but do we really understand its impact? There is increased online competition and a decreased attention span that makes it hard for a site to convert visits into sales, or even to increase traffic. Site speed can significantly affect a user’s decision on whether a visit to a page should be prolonged (or repeated) and this cannot be overlooked by any site owner. In fact, a page’s load time affects several key areas: Sales It’s no surprise that 79% of customers are less likely to buy again from a site that lacks a speed optimised performance. As everything gets faster, you cannot afford to stay still. …
-
- 0 replies
- 18 views
-
-
If you use AdSense on your blog or website, I’m sure you have looked into other AdSense alternatives to increase your revenue. And in most cases, there are two other alternatives: High quality CPM ad networks such as Conversant Media (formerly ValueClick), Exponential (formerly Tribal Fusion), Technorati, Adtegrity, Advertising.com and more Other creative ad units such as in-text links, pop-unders, pop-overs, interstitials and more from networks such as RevenueHits, Intellilinks, Clicksor, Chitika and more. However, in most cases, both the above options possibly didn’t work out for you. Most likely your site was rejected by high-quality CPM ad networks bec…
-
- 0 replies
- 67 views
-
-
Search and email are good marketing partners because they make each other more productive. Add a layer of “big data,” and you have a firm foundation for digital marketing success. Take email acquisition, for example. Instead of just going it alone, email and search teams should partner up on PPC ads to build email acquisition. “Email + search” not “email versus search” Why spend a few bucks on a PPC campaign to acquire new customers through email when your website has opt-in forms all over it? Because it can deliver a higher-quality stream of customers: people who are truly interested in your brands but might not discover them any other way. The email address…
-
- 0 replies
- 62 views
-
-
Welcome to our weekly round-up of all the latest news and research from the world of search marketing and beyond. Whether you’re taking a break from Black Friday shopping mania, recovering from a post-Thanksgiving food coma, or just getting on with your normal working day because you’re in one of those boring countries that doesn’t celebrate Turkey Day (*raises hand*), we’ve got all of the most up-to-the-minute search news for your reading pleasure. This week, Google has released some canny changes to AdWords ahead of Black Friday, introverts have a new best friend in the form of real-time Popular Times data, and we take a look at the steps Facebook has taken so far…
-
- 0 replies
- 55 views
-
-
To all of our readers and anyone else who has swung by accidentally thinking that this is an actual search engine (you’ll be surprised at how often this happens; you won’t be surprised at their most popular search terms), a very happy thanksgiving from us all! We’ll publish a couple more things for Europe tomorrow morning if you do happen to swing by the site. We apologise in advance for the pyjamas and meat-sweats. In the meantime, have a safe and peaceful Thanksgiving. View the full article
-
- 0 replies
- 59 views
-
-
Emotion can be very powerful when trying to reach an audience, and it can be boosted by linking it with the way memory affects human behaviour. How can all of this apply to the demanding mobile audience? It’s not easy to be effective with the ever-increasing mobile audience, but emotion along with memory can contribute to a more meaningful relationship between a brand and a target user. Heather Andrew, CEO of Neuro-Insight, talked to Integrated Live about the way neuroscience can boost marketing efforts towards a mobile audience, provided that there is the right understanding of what makes a successful connection. As people become more attached to their smartphon…
-
- 0 replies
- 60 views
-
-
Last week Metro Bank became the first financial institution to offer a gender neutral option for both its staff and customers. The move was made in response to an interview with a Scottish teenager who couldn’t open a bank account because they didn’t identify as either male or female, which was a required question on the form. Image from Buzzfeed. Metro Bank now offer a title of ‘Mx’ and a gender option of ‘nonbinary’ in addition to the standard ‘male’ or ‘female’ options. While the response to the change has been polarised, these changes are something that will impact marketing data and how we use it going forward. We seem to have accepted that ethnicity,…
-
- 0 replies
- 58 views
-
-
Are you interested in a more efficient way to view your social media profiles? This article lists some tools allowing you to combine your social media feeds into one! Do you often feel overwhelmed? If you are pretty much anyone with modern social media habits, the answer is going to be yes. With so many people using social networking for both personal and professional purposes (and a fair amount of you reading this are probably marketers in charge of a brand), being more productive on social media is a necessity. Clutter is no reason to ignore social media though. These days, social media marketing is no longer for “fun” niches only. Most ecommerce sites use s…
-
- 0 replies
- 59 views
-
-
You can now check whether a shop, bar or restaurant is busy right at this very moment with Google’s new real-time view. There are few other tweaks and improvements to aid the search experience too, as outlined below. Most of them designed to keep you out of the cold and away from Black Friday frenzy for as long as possible. Crowd control Popular Times has been a feature in Google Search and Maps since last year. It’s a way of seeing what time and day during the week a business is typically busy. But now, Google is adding real-time data to this functionality so you can see whether it’s worth leaving the house or not right now. Perfect timing for this coming Bl…
-
- 0 replies
- 59 views
-
-
Google is adding more store visits data to AdWords distance reporting, available when measuring geographic performance of your ads. At the moment you’re able to view your ads’ performance based on different locations, revealing the places your customers are located and the locations they’re most interested in visiting. But now if you use the location extension you can see a distance report that will show store visits based on how far away people are from your store when they search. To use an example from Google, if your store visit rate is highest within one mile of a store, you could apply targeting around that specific radius. Store visits distance reportin…
-
- 0 replies
- 57 views
-
-
There’s been extensive discussion during the past weeks about Facebook’s fake stories and whether they have contributed to the results of the US elections. Mark Zuckerberg has decided to address this issue and announce Facebook’s future plans. There is a great controversy regarding fake stories on social media and how they may affect users’ opinions over a subject, and Facebook received a significant amount of criticism on its lack of measures to avoid turning misinformation viral. Mark Zuckerberg has decided to speak about this issue, in attempt to defend the popular social platform and most importantly, to announce the network’s future plans on handling similar c…
-
- 0 replies
- 54 views
-
-
Welcome to our weekly round-up of all the latest news and research from the world of search marketing and beyond. This week, we’ve got key trends in content marketing for 2017; why social media is the preferred channel for product launches; and how to use an Exact Match Domain (EMD) without being penalised for spam by Google. And in probably unsurprising news, John Lewis’ annual heartwarming Christmas ad is this year’s best performing yet. The eight most important content marketing trends in 2017 It’s December already, and you know what that means – every publication you follow will be winding down for the end of the year by reviewing the highlights of 2016, while …
-
- 0 replies
- 53 views
-
-
It is common knowledge that the amount of information available in the digital ecosystem is exploding. By 2020 it is expected to have grown from 130 exabytes to 40,000 exabytes. Digital (and in our case search and content) data holds the keys to marketing success. It contains the critical patterns on consumer intent and behavior, preferences, and content/topics that brands need to provide customers with that critically personal, one-to-one experience that people today want to see. The problem, however, is that the human brain is only capable of processing 1m gigabytes of memory. In other words, the amount of information available far exceeds the processing ability …
-
- 0 replies
- 56 views
-
-
Remember the Ice Bucket Challenge? Planking? Tebowing? At one time, these memes crossed the line from obscurity to mainstream. Even though Facebook and Twitter play a huge role in amplifying a challenge or helping memes go viral, the origins of that meme can usually be traced to anonymous social networks, like Reddit and 4chan. Viral content tends to start in smaller, closed networks (that often don’t use real names or identities). Vine and Snapchat – even Facebook Groups – are other places that bring together smaller, more tightly-knit communities with shared and interests and identity that tends to help incite participation. The meme or challenge takes off …
-
- 0 replies
- 72 views
-
-
When it comes time to launch a new product, the majority of marketers in the US, the UK, and Australia are now turning to social media. Five by Five, a marketing communications firm that specializes in product launches, polled more than 700 marketers in these countries and found that nearly three-quarters (74%) of them consider social media to be the highest-priority medium to promote new products. Sales promotions and email were the second and third most popular launch marketing medium, respectively. According to Five by Five creative director Martin Flavin: “Social media has become the most important way to generate buzz for new products and services bef…
-
- 0 replies
- 56 views
-