Kerry Flynn says, “Facebook is about to turn up the volume on its video competition with YouTube. Videos on the social network can soon include mid-roll advertisements, allowing publishers to finally start making money from their videos, Recode reported Monday. Unlike YouTube where ads run prior to the video and can be skippable after 5 seconds, ads within Facebook videos can be inserted 20 seconds into any video that lasts at least 90 seconds. The move to ad breaks comes as little surprise to publishers. This mid-roll ad system is the same format Facebook has tested with live videos.... [...]

Shafqat Islam says, “2016 was not the year for faint-hearted marketers as they pushed to measure and prove the ROI of their content marketing efforts in order to fight for larger budgets. Google and Facebook continued to dominate, while the rest of the industry may have shrunk. Concerns around ad blocking, viewability, and measurement accuracy continued to dominate conversations about social platforms. 2017 will be the year of “a little less conversation and a little more action.” Marketers will demand visibility, whether results are coming from publishers, agencies, technology providers,... [...]

John Rampton says, “Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) never seem to have enough time to do all of the tasks they need to accomplish in a given day. To be successful, CMO have to delegate and make informed purchase decisions. Automation has made the work of marketing teams easier, but with so many tools now available, it can be very difficult to find the perfect option for a department’s needs. Selecting the wrong tools, or being a late-adapter can really set a marketing organization back. In today’s competitive marketplace, it’s more important than ever that CMOs be ahead of current... [...]

Ariel Bogle says, “If you’ve logged on in the past year, you’d know Facebook really, really wants you to watch Live video. Since it pushed out the feature globally in February, the social media behemoth has prioritised Facebook Live over other content in its Newsfeed to get people tuning in. Now it’s prompting some users to watch Live broadcasts via a small autoplay window that pops up in the bottom right of Facebook’s app. Appearing recently for some users globally on iOS, the notifications show video from Facebook connections or pages a user may have subscribed... [...]

Brett Williams says, “There are few hallmarks of the holiday shopping season more frustrating than those infamous Black Friday check-out lines. It’s bad enough to have struggled through the crowds before sunrise in a battle for doorbuster specials. Waiting in line among the mass of other shoppers after the adrenaline has worn off and counting on an overtaxed seasonal employee manning the register to make the process run smoothly is even worse. There may be one other experience that can measure up on the frustration-scale: an online shopping system delay. The physical commitment and... [...]

Karissa Bell says, “You may want to check Google before you head out on your next holiday shopping spree. The company’s latest search feature makes it easier to find out how crowded stores are at any given time. An extension of Google’s “popular times” update, which shows how crowded restaurants and coffee shops are based on search trends, the new feature will show a real-time estimate for how busy a particular location is. Search for a store, restaurant or other location and Google will now provide a new “live” view in the popular times section of... [...]

Emma Hinchliffe says, “China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba moved $17.8 billion in sales during its Singles Day sale on Friday, smashing its own records. The $17.8 billion (or 120.7 billion yuan) figured crushed Black Friday’s $4.45 billion in e-commerce sales last year and Alibaba’s own $14.3 billion record from 2015. Singles Day is China’s biggest e-commerce day of the year, complete with a nationally televised party and concert. The day originated as an anti-Valentine’s Day, encouraging single people in China to buy gifts for themselves. Alibaba broke records... [...]

Patrick Kulp says, “Facebook is making it easier than ever for brands to lure you into chatting with them. The social network rolled out a new type of ad on Tuesday that lets advertisers with or without Messenger bots solicit messages through sponsored News Feed posts. The posts look like any other ad on the site, but have a “send message” button in place of a link to an outside site. Another iteration of the format lets brands run ads within a particular open conversation on the Messenger platform in an attempt to reconnect with users with whom they’ve talked before. Facebook... [...]

Patrick Kulp says, “A class-action lawsuit is accusing Facebook of breaking housing and job ad discrimination laws. A Pro Publica investigation last week revealed that the social network lets marketers exclude users by “ethnic affinity.” The lawsuit, first reported by Business Insider, alleges that such targeting tools are a breach of federal housing and civil right laws. The law states that advertisements can’t show obvious preference to specific groups of home or job-seekers. Facebook has argued that its “ethnic affinity” tag doesn’t count as an actual... [...]

Daman Beres says, “Holiday shopping? There’s an app for that — but you’ll want to make sure you’re using the right one to avoid compromising your identity and credit card information. Malicious apps designed to trick shoppers have wormed their way into Apple’s iOS App Store, according to recent reports in The New York Times and New York Post. They mimic legitimate outlets like Foot Locker and Nordstrom to fool people into handing over their personal information. Some are even ransomware, the Times reported, meaning apps that actually lock a user out of their phone... [...]