Tim Peterson says, “Eight months after Instagram copied Snapchat’s Stories, Instagram’s clone is officially bigger than Snapchat. Every day, more than 200 million people use Instagram Stories, the Facebook-owned photo-and-video app announced on Thursday. By comparison, Snapchat averaged 158 million daily users in the fourth quarter of 2016, though that figure may have grown since the app’s parent company Snap Inc. disclosed it in February 2017. The 200-million mark continues Instagram’s trend of adding around 50 million daily Stories users every three months. In January 2017, the... [...]

Tim Peterson says, “In the growing rivalry between Facebook Inc. and Snapchat’s parent company Snap Inc., Facebook’s strategy seems to be copying Snapchat’s product features, and Snap’s strategy seems to be copying Facebook’s business playbook. Less than a year after Facebook officially started measuring the brick-and-mortar traffic its ads generate — borrowing from Google’s playbook — Snapchat is rolling out its own version of this online-to-offline measurement and adding more ways for marketers to send people from Snapchat to their stores. 7-Eleven, Paramount Pictures and... [...]

Grace Kaye says, “The question of where programmatic spend goes has stumped advertisers since the dawn of programmatic. I thought it was time to try to answer it, as simply as possible. I’m sharing this partly in response to the recent headline that “60 percent of programmatic spend is wasted.” Undoubtedly there are campaigns out there where this is true; in fact, the percentage is probably greater in some cases. However, for a well-run campaign, this should never be the case. Leaving aside ad misplacement, which I’ve already discussed at length in a previous article, let’s focus... [...]

Khalid Saleh says, “Efforts to drive more traffic and rank better on search engines sometimes seem to be in conflict with those for increasing conversion rates for your website. But, as improved user experience becomes a stronger criterion for search engines, search engine optimization and conversion rate optimization are becoming a complementary, multistep process in marketing your business. Don’t sweat it: Your SEO efforts won’t ruin conversions on your site. And your CRO (conversion rate optimization) strategies won’t harm your findability, either. When setting your marketing plan,... [...]

Len Shneyder says, “Retailers are pushing out millions of emails every day, most of which end up being ignored — or worse — sent to the spam folder. Many more are simply dropped by an ISP. And most marketers are misfiring on the timing, the subject lines and the content. Only a few are consistently getting it right, and among these brands, in my opinion, are Uber, eBay and REI (disclosure: Uber and eBay are clients). Here’s how these three retailers provide a good case study in effective email marketing. Uber A portion of Uber’s email traffic is transactional in nature; their emails... [...]

Ginny Marvin says, “Last September, Google announced it would start using signed-in user data to enable retargeting across devices on the Google Display Network. Starting May 15, audience lists created in Google Analytics will start using that data. Google has started showing the following alert in Google Analytics: Starting May 15, 2017, all properties using Remarketing with Google Analytics will be enhanced to take advantage of new cross-device functionality. This is an important update to your remarketing settings, which may relate to your privacy policy. The change means that advertisers... [...]

Ginny Marvin says, “Google has launched a partner program for marketing mix modeling vendors to integrate Google data into their solutions. Launch partners include Marketing Management Analytics, Neustar MarketShare and Nielsen. Partners gain access to Google display, search and video campaign data in a standardized format. The data can then help advertisers compare Google campaign spend and performance to other channels, such as TV, print and other digital platforms. The Marketing Mix Model Partners program is designed to ensure advertisers can accurately measure the ROI of their digital... [...]

Rachel Lindteigen says, “Are you ready to take your content marketing program to the next level? Have you seen some program success? You’re driving more traffic, maybe even attracting some links and seeing your KPIs increase. Great! Here are three tips you can implement today to move your content marketing program to the next level. 1. Net new content Find new content opportunities the competition hasn’t discovered yet. By being a digital sleuth and doing a bit of extra research, you can discover competitive opportunities for your business. When you’re the first one to address a customer’s... [...]

Tamar Weinberg says, “LinkedIn has just come out with a new product that it hopes will bring leads to advertisers. Called LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms, the objective of the product is to give marketers the ability to collect quality leads across all devices, be it a mobile phone or a desktop. With these forms, LinkedIn promises “high-quality leads from your Sponsored Content campaigns by removing the main barrier to mobile conversion: making someone complete a clunky contact form on a smartphone.” With over 500 million users of the professional network, LinkedIn hopes that this can give business... [...]

Ginny Marvin says, “Integral Ad Science is one of the third parties Google is bringing in to help monitor ad placements on YouTube in the wake of advertiser backlash over brand safety concerns. The 400-person firm topped the $100 million revenue mark last year and works with more than 4,000 publishers, advertisers and ad tech vendors, including Facebook, AOL, Nielsen and TradeDesk, in addition to Google. Ahead of the release of the company’s Media Quality Report for the second half of 2016, Marketing Land spoke with Maria Pousa, Integral Ad Science’s CMO, last week about recent events,... [...]