Lara O’reilly says, “Facebook reported better than expected Q3 revenue and earnings per share Tuesday,although its stock price fell in after hours trading last night as the company spooked investors with its 2015 outlook – a year described as a major “investment” year for the world’s largest social network. But marketers and advertisers had plenty of reasons to be excited by the future Facebook the company described in both its earnings release and call. Here’s a few of the key outtakes: DAILY ACTIVE USERS Facebook’s daily active users continue to... [...]

Lara O’reilly says, “YouTube’s CEO Susan Wojcicki confirmed at Re/code’s Code/Mobile conference last night that the Google-owned video platform is exploring the launch of an ad-free subscription service. Re/code reports Wojcicki said: “YouTube right now is ad-supported, which is great because it has enabled us to scale to a billion users; but there’s going to be a point where people don’t want to see the ads” Just like Pandora and Spotify before it, there are just two options left on the table for users: you choose ads, or you choose to pay a fee... [...]

Katie Richards says, “YouTube videos are under attack. Ads shown on the video platform are the latest victims of malicious advertising, or malvertising, which redirect users to harmful sites. News of the attack will be of concern to legitimate advertisers, as users affected may be less likely to click on their ads in the future. Joseph C. Chen, a fraud researcher for Trend Micro explains in a blog post that an aggressive “Sweet Orange exploit” attack is being carried out online and YouTube is the latest platform where users are getting hit”. YouTube’s Biggest Videos... [...]

Lara O’Reilly says, “Online ad fraud costs advertisers more than $7 million every month, as they pay for digital ads that were never actually seen by humans. Much of this online ad fraud is created by botnets: armies of PCs infected with malware that generates thousands of fake clicks on ads. The botnet controllers tend to be unethical web publishers that want to ramp up the prices of advertising on their sites by inflating the amount of clicks on their sites. Ad fraud has a number of drastic consequences. For users, it can significantly slow down their machine. For advertisers, it... [...]

Lara O’Reilly says, “Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL and five other big names in digital media in the UK are rallying together next week as they bid to steal share of advertising dollars from TV broadcasters – by replicating the same tactic TV broadcasters use to sign huge “upfront” deals with advertisers. They’re hoping to shift tens of millions in spending their way. Next week the UK will host its first “Digital Upfronts”, a week-long event where digital media owners will tout their wares to advertisers and agencies in the hope... [...]

Katie Richards says, “It appears that among other big Yahoo news, the company may also be looking to get back into brand advertising. Ad Age reports Yahoo has reached out to a number of agencies and reportedly asked a handful of them to prepare campaign pitches for the end of the month. It seems Yahoo may be revving up to create a new brand ad. This could mean print, digital, and even TV campaigns. Yahoo reached out directly to these agencies according to Ad Age”. Yahoo Is Thinking About A Big Marketing Push, Including New TV Ads Business Insider  [...]

Thiago Guimaraes says, “LinkedIn is perhaps the most overlooked social network. But overall it is actually more popular than Twitter, generally considered the number two social network in the U.S. The latest data shows a higher proportion of U.S. adults on the internet (22%) have used LinkedIn, compared to the percentage who have used Twitter. LinkedIn is a valuable platform for brands interested in its highly educated, relatively mature, professional audience. In a new report from BI Intelligence, we unpack data from over a dozen sources to understand how social media demographics are... [...]

Mark Hoelzel says, “A convergence of three high-tech trends – precise ad analytics, programmatic audience-buying tools, and the stickiness of social apps – means social media is becoming one of the major ad platforms of the future. New data from BI Intelligence finds that US social-media ad spend will top $8.5 billion this year and reach nearly $14 billion in 2018, up from just $6.1 billion in 2013. Social will grow faster than all other offline ad mediums, andfaster than traditional digital formats, like desktop display ads and search ads”. THE FUTURE OF SOCIAL-MEDIA ADVERTISING:... [...]

Thiago says, “Social media is no longer just the realm of the young. Now, older sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and even Pinterest have more users in the 25-to-34 age bracket than ages 16 to 24, according to data from GlobalWebIndex. YouTube, Instagram, and Tumblr are among the few social networks that skew younger, with teenagers and early 20-somethings accounting for more users than any other demographic. Social demographics are shifting. Men are growing their lead on Twitter, while Instagram is becoming more gender-balanced”. This Is Who’s Using Social Networks Like... [...]

Katie Richards says, “The rise of programmatic advertising, the automated buying and selling of ads online, has sparked a number of concerns from brands, publishers, and advertisers alike about wasted ad dollars and fraud. From the quality of ad inventory to fraudulent traffic, ad fraud can cost brands and advertisers millions each year. The Interactive Advertising Bureau released a new set of “Anti-Fraud Principles” on Tuesday, hoping to provide a set of guidelines to “root poor-quality ad traffic out of the system once and for all,” according to a press release from... [...]