Amy Gesenhues says, “Last night, Google announced a new Panda Update that helps the search engine identify websites with low-quality content. According to Googler Pierre Far, this recent update, which started rolling out earlier this week and is expected to be complete by next week, will affect three to five percent of queries depending on their locale. Designed to help Google identify thin content “more precisely,” the update will penalize sites with low quality content, while allowing sites with more high-quality content to rank better”. Google Rolling Out New Panda Update Designed... [...]

Martin Beck says, “Ello is having its moment this week. Sparked by a influx of people in the LGBTQ community protesting Facebook’s real name policy and blown into a conflagration by the tech blogging and tweeting digerati, the three-month-old social network is being swamped with so many requests its have difficult processing them all. Thursday Ello said it was getting 4,000 signup requests on hour; Friday it was more than 40,000. The demand forced the site to cap user invitations several times to prevent crashing the system and now there’s waiting list of more than 1 million people.... [...]

Greg Sterling says, “Under Vladimir Putin Russia has taken many steps backward toward its repressive, Cold War past. It’s apparently taking another by notifying Google, Facebook and Twitter that they’re now required to register as “organizers of information distribution,” according toThe Dutch-owned Moscow Times. This is reportedly a precursor to imposing what amounts to censorship restrictions comparable to those now governing mass media in Russia. There’s virtually no independent journalism left in the country. The US internet companies have until the end of this year to register... [...]

Martin Beck says, “Twitter is planning to test targeting advertising to fans tweeting about movies. The move was reported first by the Hollywood Reporter. The program, similar to Twitter’s existing TV conversation targeting, will give studios the ability to show ads to people discussing upcoming movies or characters in those films. It will also include targeting of people who show interest in movies in general. Twitter says its data shows that conversations on Twitter are a major influence on movie choice. “Not only are people hearing about new movies on Twitter, they are using it to... [...]

Amy Gesenhues says, “After 2013′s record-breaking Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales numbers, eMarketer predicts U.S. retail and e-commerce sales are going to continue to climb this holiday season. According to its recent “Holiday Shopping Preview” report, eMarketer predicts U.S. retail sales will grow five percent over last year, reaching $862.53 billion. The same report claims e-commerce sales will jump 16.6 percent during the 2014 holiday season, generating $72.41 billion during November and December”. Report: Holiday Retail Sales To Climb 5% & E-Commerce Sales Predicted... [...]

Ginny Marvin says, “Despite relatively small budget allocations, cross-channel retargeting has become a nearly ubiquitous tactic among marketers. In a new survey by Marin Software, just 12 percent of marketers said they were not currently using retargeting in their mix. Over half those said they plan to start retargeting within the next 12 months. In addition to usage trends, Marin also looked at the effect on performance when retargeting across channels among the 233 marketers surveyed”. CTRs 2X Higher When Retargeting On Facebook And The Web, Than Web Alone Marketing Land  [...]

Jordan Elkind says, ““Free shipping and free returns” has become the proud declaration of many online fashion retailers. These policies have contributed to the explosion of online fashion sales: customers appreciate the convenience and savings associated with flexible shipping and return policies. Unfortunately for retailers, this consumer-friendly approach has an unwelcome side effect, a little-known fashion e-commerce secret: crippling return rates. This issue will be painfully relevant during the upcoming holiday season, when online shopping — and returns — reach peak volume”. 4... [...]

Greg Sterling says, “According to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook will roll out its web-wide, cross-platform ad network challenge to the Google Display Network next week. We initially wrote about this last month. Based on the company’s Atlas acquisition from Microsoft, “it promises to help marketers understand which Facebook users have seen, interacted with or acted upon ads that appear both on Facebook’s services and on third-party websites and apps.” The new network will also be a “demand side platform” permitting dynamic bidding for impressions on third party sites. Given... [...]

Martin Beck says, “Pinterest’s advertising plans, further teased late last Friday when the company announced it would update its privacy policy on Oct. 19, became a little clearer today. The social bookmarking site will offer advertisers the ability to target consumers in their database — for instance, from an email list — with ads on Pinterest. The company is also building a tool that will provide advertisers insight into whether clicks from Promoted Pins lead to purchases on businesses’ e-commerce sites. The plans were first reported today by Ad Age, which appears to have dug them... [...]

Greg Sterling says, “A new mobile advertising study, commissioned by xAd and carried out by Nielsen, holds some important and perhaps surprising findings for marketers. Many people have long known that the click-through (CTR) is not a very useful metric for display ads and mobile display ads in particular. This study proves it. At very best CTR may be a directional indicator of consumer awareness and interest. But if CTR is used at all it should not be used by itself. The ad-performance study ran on xAd’s platform and measured 80 campaigns featuring 12 national brands. There were... [...]