10 Second Takeaway: It’s official: More advertising money is being spent on digital (online) advertising than on television advertising. And more than half of the money on digital is being spent on mobile advertising. Rising tides lift all boats, but Google and Facebook have the lion’s share of revenue. Facebook’s growth is still exploding–reaching a level in 2016 that was about the same as 2014 and 2015 combined. Online ad revenue is where the majority of money is now spent in the U.S. 

Spotlight on Social Media

LinkedIn just crossed the 500 million member mark. About a quarter of those people are in the U.S. We know that there are fake profiles there and plenty of duplicates, but the milestone is significant. And now as a Microsoft unit, LinkedIn has the financial heft to make even bigger deals outside its traditional employment markets.

Look for more changes and more features to move to the paid section of LinkedIn now that Microsoft expects to recoup its $26 billion investment. This is an excellent time to check your profile now that the interface has changed.

Meanwhile, Facebook has announced that advertising sent to your site can now report back on actions on your website like “added to cart” or “purchased”. The enhanced reporting is in place now for new users and rolls out globally during May.

Spotlight on Digital Retail

Amazon’s earnings easily beat the Q1 forecast largely on the back of its cloud platform, Amazon Web Services (AWS), which now generates more than one billion dollars in revenue per month. Amazon is continuing to cut prices on its consumer and small business products, which it can afford to do because the AWS margins are huge. And that’s how you get free two day shipping.

Amazon’s free Giveaways product for small businesses is an example of Amazon’s outreach. Organizations can create an online sweepstakes for free. They simply choose and pay for a prize that Amazon sells. They can require a video be watched, a tweet be made, or even that an individual follows an account on Twitter or Amazon. The company won’t give prize sponsors a list of names, but the solution is as turnkey as any we’ve ever seen.

We’re also very impressed with improvements in Facebook’s Advertising Insights and new data in Google Shopping Insights. Talk with us or your agency to discover how you can learn more about your organization’s customers and prospects.

 

Spotlight on How Search Works by Google

So you think that you do a lot of website and marketing testing at your place? That’s what we thought, too, but Google shared this week that they ran more than 150,000 tests last year and made 1,653 changes to search.

That last number is critical. We remember Google announcing with pride that they had made 300 changes to search one year. 

What this means for your organization is that search will continue evolving all the time. The media and trade press pay attention to global changes, but a great search strategy for your organization begins with tracking how many people come to your website from search and what they do when they arrive. 

As Google wrote in their newly updated search manual, “For a typical query, there are thousands, even millions, of webpages with potentially relevant information.”

Digital Citizen: Privacy Reminder

The Circle, a thriller about social networks connecting everything, stars Emma Watson and Tom Hanks. The film debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival this week and reminds us that plenty of third party companies likely have access to your email, social media accounts, or even services like Dropbox.

The best article we’ve seen in a long time for dealing with this problem is at Lifehacker this week: “How to Secure Your Online Accounts…” Visit the link for instructions on dealing with many different accounts in your spring cleaning, including Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, and many more!

10 Second Takeaway: Personal assistants–also called bots, Siri, Google, or Alexa–proliferate beyond major companies, cars continue getting consumer data integrated into their computers, and Facebook’s moonshot programs now include plans for the hearing-impaired and typing without using a keyboard…or your voice. That’s far-fetched, but back in 2007, did you think self-driving cars would advance as fast as they have?  See: Blockbuster video, newspaper and book printers, cassette tape manufacturers, and typewriter makers for case studies on how fast our world can change. 

Spotlight on Google Search Future

Google continues focusing on two elements related to websites: speed and privacy.

We learned this week that more than half of all pages now shown on Google are encrypted. You’ll notice that their URLs have an https prefix instead of an http prefix.That’s doubled in 15 months according to an analysis by SEO Roundtable.

Google also doubled down on privacy by confirming that its Chrome browser will soon include an ad blocking feature. Little information has been made public since the Wall Street Journal broke the story. Chrome’s US marketshare is about 48%, but there are no details about whether Google ads will be exempt. Google online ad revenue was $60 billion in 2016. The company is refusing to comment about the initiative.

Organizations with websites have also been told for years that the prominence of their website is linked to its speed.

A famous Google video years ago said that e-commerce sites would experience user dissatisfaction if page loads took longer than 2 seconds. Usability experts claim that visitors will leave a site at 10 seconds unless there is an absolutely compelling reason to stay (looking at you, my bank). 

All of us want to use fast-loading websites and that knowledge combined with Google’s fanaticism about speed caused The Washington Post to stop accepting advertising from some networks that were loading too slow for Post digital staff. The Google search future looks to be volatile.

Read more: Encryption at SEO Roundtable, WSJ on Google Chrome (paywall), Digiday on Post

Our Take: Google announced that it might one day favor websites that used encryption but with more than half now encrypted, it is much more likely that websites that don’t encrypt their pages in the future will be penalized in some way. And Google has been insistent about speed for most of its existence. Your marketers and tech staff can – and should –  help your organization check your website’s speed with free tools from Google and add encryption inexpensively.

Spotlight on The Future

Mercedes Benz announced this week that all vehicles will now be equipped with Google Home and Amazon Alexa integration.

The integration isn’t seamless. You won’t be able to use Google or Amazon’s products without going through Mercedes’ in-car computer system. There are some fun benefits, though, including the ability to start your car with a voice command on either Google or Amazon or using their app.

Here is the current Mercedes commercial along with some famous AT&T commercials that seemed impossible when they were released 20 years ago.

Why yes, that was Tom Selleck’s voice back when he was still Magnum, P.I.

Facebook and Apple both create fantastic buzz around their annual conferences. Facebook’s F8 conference has long been required viewing for online marketers and developers. This year, the company announced moonshot programs that show that it is serious about being a multi-generational behemoth. Here is the farthest reaching project in Facebook’s own words:

We are working on a system that will let people type with their brains. Specifically, we have a goal of creating a silent speech system capable of typing 100 words per minute straight from your brain – that’s five times faster than you can type on a smartphone today.

Our Take: We work with clients on what is new and what is a current best practice for digital marketing. But many organizations–and marketers–that missed the smartphone explosion suffered for their miss. Blackberry and Kodak come to mind. We have no idea if Facebook will create a way to communicate without sound, but we’ll keep monitoring all of this, especially our new favorite: voice search. After all, people laughed at Amazon’s drone delivery concept just three years ago until Amazon, UPS, FedEx, and others began investing millions in the concept.

Spotlight on Federal Advertising Crackdown

The dress shown on the left was sent to 50 fashion bloggers in 2015 along with a payment ranging from $1,000 to $4,000 provided that the blogger posted a picture of themselves wearing the dress with certain links. Lord & Taylor, the company behind the campaign, settled a case brought by the FTC and its advertising is now monitored by the agency.

Warner Brothers did something similar with a video game and did not even allow their influencers to disclose any bugs in the game. And home security company ADT agreed to an FTC settlement regarding testimonials from security experts that the agency says were paid advertising.

The FTC is back with a warning for organizations that use online endorsements. 

You can read the 22 page PDF online or download it for reference.

Our Take: The government has been very clear for years. Internet communications made by companies connected to other companies require specific advertising disclosures. Your marketers need to be able to ensure your compliance. The link to the guide above is a start.

10 Second Takeaway: A former employees says that Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel made derogatory comments about people in Spain and India, Also Google and Burger King got into a predator-prey game that BK wins. And we have a fun look back at what popular websites looked like years ago.

Spotlight on Burger King Ad Device Activations

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_O54le4__I

These ads won’t activate Google Home any more so feel free to watch.

Great social media and device marketing is coming out of the fast food world. A Burger King ad took its turn this week with a spot that activated Google Home devices.

Consumers began changing the ingredient list on the Wikipedia page about the Whopper so that Google read that the sandwich contained cyanide and children. Google stopped the campaign from working entirely, but Burger King immediately released a second spot with a changed voice and had more queued up. 

Read more: Advertising Age, The Next Web, AdWeek

Our Take:  The campaign was benign, clever, and a good story. We believe that Burger King wanted publicity not sales.

The best argument against the campaign came from George’s youngest son who said that the stunt added a search for the Whopper to people’s search histories and that could change their search results. And he’s right although the effect would be minor and temporary unless you often search for fast food. George has been insufferably happy that his children can describe SEO effects. 

Spotlight on Snapchat & Local Marketing

Snap Inc CEO Evan Spiegel is a young self-made billionaire with a very big spotlight caused by the company’s IPO. That spotlight includes something all business leaders can understand–a former employee filing suit. 

The news that rocked the online world this week was the revelation that Mr. Spiegel allegedly badmouthed Spain and India as markets and according to a newly public court filing said, “This app is only for rich people. I don’t want to expand into poor countries like India and Spain.” 

Snap denies that the comment was made, and we would be remiss if we didn’t add that anyone can be accused of saying anything, but we also know that Snap is receiving a lot of consumer anger in India over the allegations.

Snapchat is also the latest Internet company promising to link online activity at their site to retail activity at your location. The folks at Marketing Land did a fantastic job listing all the caveats. The biggest is that Snap-to-Store only works if the user interacts with Snapchat in your store. There are others, and they appear to be more restrictive than other advertising companies.

Read More: The Snapchat complaint unredacted,  Daily Beast, Marketing Land

Our Take: This is only a contested allegation, but it came at a bad time for Snap which will announce earnings on May 10 for the first time since its IPO. An underwhelming review in the trade press stings. A comment insulting 18% of the world’s population could be catastrophic if it is proven or even corroborated.

Digital Citizen

Journey Back in Time to Your Favorite Websites

This look at NASA’s website from 1999 is one of the delightful comparisons put together by Leszek Zawadzki, a marketer based in Poland.

Lesek used Amazon’s Way Back Machine to put together pages from websites over the years to show changes in user experience and design.

You can view all the pages at his article in Startup Grind.