Peter Kafka says, “Did you think that Facebook’s amazing mobile ad story — mobile was a big, troublesome zero two years ago, and 62 percent of the company’s ad revenue yesterday — was fueled by app install ads? Sheryl Sandberg wants you to know that this isn’t the case. Or, at least, that Facebook isn’t dependent on app install ads, which are just what they sound like — ads that try to get phone users to install apps like Candy Crush. Here, via Seeking Alpha, is what Sandberg said yesterday during Facebook’s earnings call, when an analyst asked about the size of her app install... [...]

Ben Davis says, “Great native advertising cannot be automated. To think about selling on a CPM basis and defining native advertising as simply a question of format, rather than content, is wrong. The value of a native ad campaign resides in the quality of the content, therefore the engagement with the piece – and that’s more than just a click, it’s time on page and a share count (and potentially an associated action). At the IAB Content Conference, I listened to a number of speakers with interesting angles on native advertising”. Native advertising: The emperor’s... [...]

Re/Code team says, “Baidu, China’s biggest Internet search company, blew past Wall Street’s targets with a 34.1 percent jump in quarterly net profit, helped by a surge in mobile revenue. It shares climbed 7.3 percent in after-hours trading to $219.20, from a close of $204.27 on the Nasdaq. On Thursday, the company often likened to a Chinese Google said it now gets 30 percent of its revenue from mobile services, up from around 20 percent in previous quarters, as online advertisers migrate to mobile devices. Net income attributable to shareholders rose to 3.55 billion yuan ($571.7 million)... [...]

David Bakke says, “When used in conjunction with savvy social media marketing tools, local marketing tactics can help you reach new and conversion-ready audiences. The face of marketing has changed a lot in recent years. Many companies are busy capitalizing on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest, as well as some of the newer players on the market. But while there’s no disputing that social media is king right now, you may actually be doing yourself a disservice if you focus on it to the exclusion of all else. Local marketing is a tried-and-true way to... [...]

Lauren Orsini says, “Pinterest’s tech department is twice as female as Twitter’s, and more so than the departments at Facebook and Yahoo, the numbers show. On Thursday, Pinterest released its diversity numbers indicating the company’s gender and ethnicity makeup. The release is a followup to Pinterest tech lead Tracy Chou’s Medium post, Where are the numbers?, urging tech companies to reveal their diversity statistics. In the release, Chou notes, “We’re not close to where we want to be,” but Pinterest is still doing scores better than fellow technology companies when it comes... [...]

Eric Schiffer says, “Digital marketing technology is rather like high fashion — trends that were acceptable and even widely emulated suddenly find themselves hopelessly passé without even a hint of warning. For the digital marketing community, innovations can fade into irrelevance as quickly as a pair of flared jeans, only the transition to the latest craze can be far more painful. Just got your Adobe Flash-based site developed? Here comes HTML5. Now you need responsive design — oh, and your obvious stock images are duplicated across the Web a thousandfold! In the case of search engine... [...]

Selena Larson says, “People in the U.S. now spend 40 minutes per day on Facebook, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on the company’s Q2 earnings call on Wednesday. He qualified that statement by saying people spend about nine hours total on digital media, mobile use and television included. But 40 minutes is still four percent of your waking hours”. A Lot Of People Still Use Facebook A Lot ReadWrite  [...]

Selena Larson says, “Attendees of the Black Hat security conference were looking forward to finding out next month how the average person can identify people using Tor, a browser that masks the identity of users so people can do things like buy and sell drugs online and communicate privately without fear of people intercepting their chats and emails. But lawyers from Carnegie Mellon University, where the researchers work, requested that Black Hat pull the talk,Reuters reported. The speakers are researchers at the university. The talk was titled “You Don’t Have To Be the NSA to Break... [...]

Kevin Webster says, “It’s fairly simple to come up with a list of “goals” that describe a website’s success. These typically include lead generation, downloads (i.e., coupons, menus, or whitepapers), and ecommerce transactions. Noted web analytics writer and practitioner Avinash Kaushikdescribes these as “macro goals” that are clear and easy to define. But these end points aren’t the only actions a user can take on your website that have value. Enter the concept of a “micro goal.” A micro goal may well be a step in the conversion funnel, such as adding a product to a shopping... [...]

Selena Larson says, “Since you’re not spending enough time on Facebook, you can now save things to read or view later … on Facebook. On Monday, the company announced the Save feature, which allows users to bookmark things like links, photos or videos to view when they actually have time to sit down and enjoy them. It’s Facebook’s answer to Pocket and Evernote—sort of. Unlike these other services, stuff saved on Facebook can only be saved and viewed while using Facebook mobile and Web services”. Facebook Save Lets You Bookmark For Later ReadWrite  [...]