Five for Friday: Social Media Ad Wars, De-Spam Yourself, Text for Food, & More!
April 3rd, 2015 by
1. Google Fiber Launches New Product! – Google Fiber
This week, Google Fiber introduced its newest Web connectivity feature, Fiber Dial-Up, to help us all get back some of the time that’s constantly being consumed by ever-present technology. The folks at Google were able to recognize that many of us can’t seem to find enough time during our busy days to get back to the little things, like “texting your mom, hugging your child, running to the restroom …” This is where the dial-up mode idea started, and now Google has found a way to give us our time back so we can go back to enjoying the little things in life. Check it out here and get ready to meditate to the relaxing and nostalgic sounds of dial-up. What will you do with your time?
Thanks, Google! (April Fools!)
2. E-Commerce and Text: Two Sides of the Same Coin – Tech Crunch
Two important messaging announcements hit the tech world recently:
- 600 million users of Facebook Messenger will soon be able to order food, buy products, and text directly with businesses.
- Magic messaging company is raising an astonishing $12 million from Sequoia to allow you to order any on-demand service simply by sending a text message.
In short, this means that mobile messaging is now a commerce platform in which the user can seamlessly go from text messaging to ordering food, products, and direct business communication. This is the beginning of the “conversational commerce” revolution—a term coined by Chris Messina—that will open up much more opportunity for companies to join the texting revolution and ditch their countless applications. This will absolutely simplify companies’ paths to their consumers by eliminating the need for apps and non-compatible services and allowing marketing messages to reach users directly through their texting service. Put more simply: we all text more than ever, so why not expand texting’s potential to sending payments, buying products, ordering on-demand services, paying bills, and more? What do you think about this development—will the ability to text a business or make online purchases via text increase your participation in e-commerce?
3. Twitter and Facebook vs. Google and Yahoo – Marketing Land
Last week, online research firm eMarketer released data predicting that Twitter and Facebook are poised to surpass both Yahoo and Google in terms of display advertising revenue in the United States. Additionally, Yahoo and Google are both predicted to see a share decrease in online display ad revenue in 2015.
The financial success in ad space for both Facebook and Twitter is attributed in large part to marketers allocating more of their budgets to mobile display advertising. This goes to show that advertising on social media outlets is paying off for both marketers and social advertising platforms. How do you think these trends will play out over the course of the year? Will Google and Yahoo hold their own against these competitors, or is social media the wave of the future for online advertising?
4. Moz Releases New Spam Score Feature – Moz
Over the past year or so, Moz has been developing a metric that can determine whether or not a site may trigger a negative reaction from Google. Utilizing 17 different factors, the folks at Moz have compiled an algorithm that calculates the “spamminess” of a given website in order to predict any penalties or bans that Google might graciously bestow upon that site. This calculation will assign a site with a “Spam Score” of either “Looks Good,” “On The Borderline,” or “Trouble’s Lurking.” For now, this tool only operates on the subdomain level, but it will soon launch on a larger scale to be able to grade full pages or root domains. Subscribe to Moz.com or start a free trial to learn more about this feature and access your Spam Score now!
5. Dive Into Your Content With Analytics – Moz
When such a large part of our business has to do with content marketing, it’s important to stay up to date on the latest creative trends and most successful channels. However, sometimes the best information is in your Google Analytics data. Last week, Jeff Sauer from Moz published a thorough analysis showing how reviewing performance metrics in Google Analytics can inform your content strategy, thereby validating your content marketing efforts and producing greater traffic and revenue results.
Sauer dives into Google Analytics and provides examples of how we can explore content groupings, specific dimensions, and even coding features to highlight common content topics, adjust our definitions, and monitor the effectiveness of our content. These practices can be extremely helpful for advertisers who are looking to get the most out of their marketing and really optimize their content to its fullest potential. Check out Sauer’s article here for his full analysis, along with some helpful tips!
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