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NEWS & TRENDS

Facebook rolls out new corporate logo that will appear with all of its brands Facebook introduced a new corporate logo this month that will soon appear across its products. The plain all-caps logo has been “designed for clarity” to help differentiate the corporate entity from the social networking app. Facebook the brand will still be indicated by its familiar blue and white lower-case “f” and “facebook”

Content is king: Disney+ hits 10m subscribers in 24 hours The streaming wars are officially on as Disney launched its $6.99 per month Disney+ streaming service in the US, Canada and Netherlands. And despite some technical glitches, the launch proved to be one for the record books as some 10m people subscribed to the much-anticipated service.

Why creativity is being liberated by data and machine learning I think to characterize machine learning and creativity as being somehow opposite is to how machine learning can impact advertising.

Old is new again as traditional advertising channels make strides Advertisers are wise to pay attention to outdoor, radio and print-based media. “Outdoor, radio and print-based media rarely see the focus that pure-play digital and television-related media do, but continue to offer significant opportunities for marketers.”

Is digital advertising a lot less effective than the ad industry believes? Editor’s Choice: “Digital advertising is the most accountable and effective form of advertising in existence.“ Many if not most in the world of advertising would either agree with this statement or find it hard to dispute it. But what if the widely accepted beliefs about digital advertising’s efficacy are dubious?

Beware the exception to the rule when it comes to personalization

Whilst automation is critical to delivering a 1-to-1 marketing experience to each shopper, every so often we are reminded of the importance of human supervision.

What 2.7M YouTube ads reveal about gender bias in marketing Geena Davis, Academy Award winner and founder of the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media at Mount Saint Mary’s University, breaks down the results of a gender representation in advertising study — unprecedented in its size and scope — and the effect these images have on experiences around the world.

Why a digital world needs physical retail There’s no question that digital has disrupted shopper behavior at a fundamental level and seismic scale; so much so that many shoppers no longer see digital channels as ‘digital’ – they just ‘shop’.

Why are more and more digital agencies offering strategy as a service? These multi-disciplinary agencies present an attractive proposition for businesses who have previously had to deal with a multitude of specialist agencies. If a business partners with the right agency, they can be treated as an extension to the team, involved in key decision making, instrumental to strategy definition and consulted on major digital decisions.

How are fake online reviews impacting the beauty industry?

According to research by Global Web Index, 45% of beauty consumers look to reviews for online research purposes before buying a product. What’s more, one in two beauty consumers say they’re motivated to buy products based on reviews from others.

How voice assistants could influence FMCG purchase decisions Is Alexa a salesperson? The consumer is fickle and is prone to making impulsive purchase decisions. Could we be very close to a time where we will be making purchase decisions spontaneously just by asking Alexa in the bathroom to buy a product as soon as we realize our toothpaste or toilet paper is running out?

REPORTS. HOW TO’s. WHITE PAPERS. STRATEGY.

Why do today’s marketers lack foresight? And what can they do about it? As digital becomes less of a ‘trend’, marketers are realizing that a focus on short-term ROI through optimized digital media campaigns may have come at the expense of long-term strategy, brand building and customer lifetime value.

What makes people around the world click “add to cart”? Global shoppers are active in different stages of shopping, online and offline. A recent Google study on global shoppers found that 81% shopped in the past week in an average of 7 categories. And they're spending a lot of their shopping time online, not just in-store.

What is ‘customer success’ and how does it differ from customer service and customer experience? Throughout the second half of the 2010s, “customer success” – both as a business concept and as a function – has steadily been growing in popularity. Its origins can be traced back to some of the earliest software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies, and as the cloud computing revolution has steadily gained momentum, so too has customer success.

Your customers use video throughout the entire journey. Do you? New research from Google and the 4A’s shows the impact of video ads throughout the consumer journey, revealing valuable opportunities for marketers.

Brick-and-mortar as brand building: Five examples of innovative store experiences Physical retail is becoming less about the products that consumers take home, and more about the overall experience they have in-store. With more digitally native brands expanding into brick-and-mortar, and a growing number of omni-channel retailers investing in digital features in-store – physical retail is becoming an exciting space (and a bigger part of brand building).

Four strong indicators that your marketing analytics program will fail Marketing analytics has been making strong inroads into agencies’ toolkits for the last three years. Machine learning-powered sentiment analysis, predictive analytics, programmatic advertising and a cohort of other AI use cases in marketing are a frequent subject on the lips of CMOs.

How can modern retailers drive long-term brand health? We can expect the usual fight amongst the large retailers for our seasonal attention, especially with huge budgets allocated to Christmas TV advertising. Yet, this repetitive end-of-year strategy seems to be wearing thin.

How machine learning will inspire bigger and better creative ideas Advertising circles are saturated with conversations and debates sparked by terms like machine learning, artificial intelligence, and data science. But what’s the role of data and technology in a creative process fueled by storytelling and big ideas?

What can B2B email marketers learn from their B2C counterparts? Email marketing has long reigned as the leading marketing channel for reaching customers across industries, and recent research indicates it will continue to do so.

SOCIAL MEDIA

A Guide to Facebook’s Creator Studio The user guide starts off from the most basic - how to actually access Creator Studio:

Instagram Announces Global Expansion of Hidden Like Counts Test After expanding its test of hidden like counts to US users this week, Instagram is now broadening the experiment to all regions.

LinkedIn Brings Back Option to Invite Connections to Follow a Company Page LinkedIn is re-introducing an option which will enable Page admins to invite their connections to follow their LinkedIn Company Page.

Facebook to limit number of ads Pages can run simultaneously Facebook announced on Thursday that it will be implementing a limit on the number of ads a Page can run at the same time. To prepare advertisers for the limitations, coming mid-next year, the company is releasing a new version of its Marketing API that includes an Ad Volume API to show the volume of ads running or in review in an ad account.

Responsive ads come to Facebook with Multiple Text Optimization Facebook has rolled out a new responsive ad feature similar to what Google Ads launched. The feature, Multiple Text Optimization, allows advertisers to create several versions of headlines, ad copy and descriptions

Brands on Facebook Messenger get three new features to better connect with customers Businesses will be able to add "icebreakers" – commonly asked questions – to their profile via the API to help jump start conversations with users.

The best social media stories and campaigns from October 2019 Another month full of social media platform news, stories and campaigns. This month, we’ve got Twitter, Instagram and Facebook news, plus campaigns from Movember, Domino’s and more.

Facebook ad impressions rise, driven by News Feed, Instagram Stories and Feed ads Facebook CFO confirmed an increase in ad load on Instagram as a result of product optimizations.

Why the Future of Influencer Marketing will be Organic Influencers Influence has long been at the core of marketing - seeking it, amassing it, then effectively wielding it to achieve your goals. It's also, uncoincidentally, what gave rise to the influencer marketing industry.

PERFORMANCE: SEARCH, SEO, SEM, PPC

How one company’s rebrand and domain name change led to SEO disaster A once high-flying startup has laid off 80% of its employees and its survival is in doubt following a botched rebrand involving a domain name change that reportedly caused it to lose 80% of its organic Google search traffic.

A simple solution to improve paid search lead quality: importing offline conversions Although most people would assume that this is a set up problem, or choosing the wrong keywords, 99% of the time it’s not. It’s a data problem (or lack of data as is the case most of the time).

Yes, shoppers are using search in store. Here’s how to help Retailers have long dreaded showrooming — when people pull out their phones in a store and, presumably, start looking for a cheaper, better product from the competition.

Is Google’s new BERT technology another nail in traditional SEO’s coffin? Google unveiled Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers, or BERT, which Google VP of search Pandu Nayak calls “the single biggest change we’ve had in the last five years and perhaps one of the biggest since the beginning of the company.”

18+ stats that show how search and SEO are changing It has been more than two decades since some of the earliest web search engines were launched. Last year, the company behind the world’s biggest and most well-known search engine, Google, celebrated its 20th anniversary.

Same search terms, different emotions: Anticipate customer needs throughout the journey Marketers invest a lot of money, time, and resources in an attempt to decipher and anticipate consumer intent. A key to understanding that intent is getting at the underlying needs that drive it in the first place.

MOBILE, WEARABLE, IOT

Google plans to tag websites that don’t download quickly Google plans to identify websites that don't download quickly with badges as part of its effort to improve the user experience (UX) of its Chrome web browser

How mobile applications can keep improving your customer experience Having incorporated mobile applications into our daily lives, it’s extremely difficult to imagine a world without them. This is also why statistics such as those reporting that the average smartphone owner uses about 30 apps per month come as no surprise to anyone

Adidas’ AR activation drops shoppers into a trash-filled virtual ocean

Adidas is hosting a gamified augmented reality (AR) experience at its flagship store in Paris this holiday season to highlight environmental sustainability. The sportswear brand helped to develop the App For The Oceans, which showcases how its shoes are made from recycled plastic

Instagram curates shoppable holiday collections inspired by 2019’s top trends Instagram revealed a curated collection of products inspired by some of the year's biggest style trends that users can purchase without leaving the app

Snapchat’s Discover tab extends ads up to 3 minutes Snapchat introduced Extended Play Commercials that can run as long as three minutes after showing six seconds of non-skippable video, giving mobile marketers more time to showcase their brands

Walmart links mobile Scan & Shop with printed holiday toy catalog Walmart's holiday toy catalog is integrating mobile technology for the first time to let shoppers scan pages with their smartphones and order items online.

TikTok opens door to social commerce with test of shoppable video links TikTok is running beta tests that let influencers embed social commerce links in videos on the app

TikTok craze continues as app surpasses 1.5B global downloads TikTok, the social video app owned by Chinese startup ByteDance, surpassed 1.5 billion downloads globally across Apple's App Store and the Google Play store

Gucci’s holiday campaign opens a Snapchat portal to a virtual beach Gucci is sponsoring the first luxury fashion Portal Lens on Snapchat as part of the brand's holiday campaign. The augmented reality (AR) lens gives the illusion of stepping through a computer-generated portal to visit a psychedelic tropical island that shows virtual handbags and accessories.

Mobile video ad inventory jumps 31% as viewership grows, study says Mobile video is still the fastest-growing ad format with inventory jumping 31% in Q3 from the prior quarter, driving expectations for similar gains in media spending, per the latest report from sell-side platforms