Advertising News & Articles

Super Bowl 2012 was met with a giant ‘eh,’ (unless of course, you were a Giant). The game, while a close match-up, was decidedly lackluster; the commercials were mildly entertaining; and integrated marketing was often without effective execution. A report released yesterday by Altimer Group charted advertising trends from kickoff to finish, noting the traditional website emerged as the most prominent plug, yet nearly a third of ads linked to no site whatsoever and only a sixth promoted social media. Considering most of us turned to our iPads fifteen minutes into the first quarter, it seems like an opportunity was undeniably missed. So what were the results? 

Not sure if you heard, but Facebook went public yesterday. The news, while no surprise to most, quickly became the subject of widespread debate, with everyone from Wall Street analysts to Silicon Valley Porsche dealers considering the financial impact of the decision. Will it be the investment of a lifetime or one to pass over, and furthermore, how much are those fortunate little staff members going to inherit from the trade?

Careful when hitting Ctrl-C or Cmd-C. You might just be sending identifiable user data to a server somewhere. Such technologies have their uses in brand marketing, after all, considering the amount of content that users read every day. Social ad targeting company 33Across is now looking to apply the same technology to the publishing world with its acquisition of Tynt.

Use of mobile devices to consume information (news, books and other media) is rapidly leaving the printed word for dead. Yet, old habits die hard among advertisers who stick limpet-like to print advertising. This is something that is probably annoying mobile ad agencies, as a report by a mobile marketing (ahem) firm points out.

Google used to hate advertising, in fact it was proud that others did its advertising for it. That's not the case with Google+, so the company has had to produce some promos to show off the service.

It’s a “corner the market strategy" in on-line ads that just might work. Today Yahoo!, Microsoft and Amazon joined in an Internet troika with hopes that ad sharing among their respective customers will boost both efficiency and revenue, creating a virtual “Maginot line” of defense against the Facebook and Google advertising onslaught. 

But can a unity and customer sharing strategy stand up against the power of social networking technology, delivering online ads on a rocket ship growth trajectory that’s gone from US$ 145 million in 2007 to a projected US$ 2.01 billion by the close of 2011, eclipsing market leader Yahoo in the process?

A recent report from eMarketer says Facebook's total revenue, which includes advertising and other sources -- such as Facebook Credits -- is expected to hit US $4.27 billion this year. That's more than double the US$ 2 billion that the social networking giant is estimated to have earned in 2010. 

Despite our concerns about personalization, both from a privacy and efficacy perspective, marketers are still easily seduced by its utility. Additionally, try as they might to resist it, consumers have grown accustomed to it. Yet, thanks to the need to engage users across various channels, marketers are under pressure to deliver personalized, location-based messaging. To do so, marketers must overcome a few challenges.

Social media moves so fast, it's hard to keep up. Here are the week's top stories in scan-friendly format:

• Have You Friended Your Boss On Facebook?
• Wikipedia Rolling Out Article Rating System
• Couples In Relationships Like to Snoop On Each Other
• Facebook Ad Rates Rise 22%

Apple (news, site) has done something right with smartphones and tablets, as evident with the popularity of the iPhone and iPad. However, while the company planned to make it big in the mobile advertising industry, it seems the popularity of its iAd platform is short-lived, as Apple is apparently losing ground in the mobile advertising industry.

Business social site LinkedIn (news, site) reckons it can make more money with targeted advertising based on whom you follow, but will users follow the plot?

And now for another announcement in the white-hot world of....URL shortening? Yep. In the second URL shortener announcement this week, bit.ly (news, site) is announcing that its bit.ly Pro service, which lets organizations set up custom short domains, is now going to be free. 

Is your URL shortener failing to meet your business needs? Enter Bizo Switchboard. The folks at Bizo have introduced the open beta of their product, designed to provide third party-certified, anonymous business demographic data on more than 85 million business professionals.

Advertising platform 5:1 has been snapped up by Yahoo (news, site) to help focus on premium accounts and work with leading partners.

By now you’ve heard that there are reportedly more minors on Facebook than intended. While this clearly raises issues of online security and safety, it also suggests that Facebook marketers may be targeting a different population than they intended: Children.