Facebook allows third-party measurement and commits to an audit by the Media Rating Council
Facebook has been under fire since the revelations last year that it had been mistakenly inflating the view counts/durations on its videos. This may have influenced how brands spent marketing budgets, but the metrics were just plain wrong. As we saw in my chart of the day yesterday Facebook had been wrongly overstating views by as much as 80% .
In response to this and other revelations of widespread ad fraud in the online advertising industry, P&G's Chief Brand Officer announced a series of demands to online ad providers, which they would have to comply with or else P&G would spend its seven billion dollar ad budget elsewhere. The demands were as follows:
Adopting one viewability standard – P&G will be accepting the Media Ratings Council (MRC) - validated viewability standard, and expect all its agencies, media suppliers…
Live video now available to everyone on Instagram.
Instagram announced another update their platform this week. Instagram Stories will allow you to broadcast live video to your followers as well as being accessible via Explore.
Live Video for Instagram Stories is being pitched as a way to help you connect with your friends and followers who are there to share a moment with you. It is interesting that once you've stopped recording any trace that you were there will have disappeared, which may help the more camera shy of us use live video. I'm looking forward to seeing how brands adopt this new way to communicate with their audience.
Going live couldn't be easier - Just swipe right to access the camera and hit "Start Live Video". The only limitation you have is that you can only broadcast for up to an hour, which should be plenty for even the most seasoned influencer or brand. Instagram…
The new design overhaul of LinkedIn is the biggest in the site's history
Importance: [rating=3] (For B2B marketers)
Recommended source: LinkedIn blog
LinkedIn have just launched the largest desktop redesign since the site was first built back in 2003. They've re-designed the whole experience from the ground up, at the same time as re-designing their mobile app. The idea is to build a site that is more intuitive, simpler and faster to use. The new layout is currently rolling out across the world and should soon be live for all users - we are seeing it for some our team, on which this review is based, but not others.
Some of the most important changes for those using LinkedIn for marketing include:
Changes to the LinkedIn feed, tweaking the algorithm to get better at showing quality content users are interested in. They've also mentioned they'll be using humans as well as algorithms to select the most…
Google has begun penalizing the rankings of mobile sites with "intrusive interstitials" (Pop-up ads or email capture lightboxes)
Continuing their ongoing push for the "perfect" mobile experience Google announced via the Official Webmasters Blog "two upcoming changes to mobile search results that make finding content easier for users". Although their headline doesn't mention pop-ups and the article labels them 'interstitials', that's the change we wanted to alert you to since most marketers and web users know them as pop-ups.
The first change is basically general house-keeping for Google. They're looking to remove the labels they first introduced two years ago as part of the Mobile-friendly update AKA Mobilegeddon, to show which sites were mobile friendly (as shown below). It's likely that you have acted to ensure your site is mobile friendly, but if not, sites that aren't mobile-friendly were penalized on smartphone rankings from April 2015 with the signal increased from May 2016 according…
Digital Economy Bill update: New Marketing Code Sanctioned By Commons Committee
The Committee stage of the Digital Economy Bill has passed with a change to the Data Protection Act 1998. The key consideration is that the Information Commissioners Office is being given powers to put forward rules for a new direct marketing code that will apply to relevant areas of digital marketing.
The significant element of the act will be the instruction to the ICO to prepare a code that includes practical guidance in accordance with the Data Protection and Privacy and Electronic Communications Acts, plus introduce any other appropriate measures necessary to promote good practice.
The act gives the ICO a broad remit to put forward new rules, but must take into account the views of trade associations, members of the public and bodies that represent members of the public.
…
'Rich Cards' to feature in SERPs for new verticals
Importance: [rating=4] For Marketers working for restaurants and e-learning sites
Recommended Source: Google Webmasters Blog
Back in May 2016, Google announced the launch of 'Rich Cards' - a new way Google displays content in certain SERPs that is a lot more visual and mobile-friendly than traditional text SERPs. These differ from the already common 'rich snippets' in that, well, they were 'richer'- that is they feature even more visual content.
Rich cards were only available to a select few verticals when they originally launched. Just two in fact: Recipes and Movies. But now Google have announced they will be expanding the new content medium to more verticals, these being local restaurants and online courses.
Non-specific local restaurant related SERPs, like 'Best Restaurants in Toronto' etc. now will feature rich cards which display the search results…
Facebook's updated inbox will allow marketers to manage messages across different Facebook-owned networks on a single platform.
As social has grown, it has diversified. Where once a marketer focused on social media may have just had to manage the company Facebook and Twitter accounts, with LinkedIn on top if they were B2B, now there is an abundance of networks. We can add Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, Snapchat to the list of major platforms, and then there are Messenger apps likes Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp that also require attention. More niche sites like Reddit, Tumblr, SoundCloud, SlideShare and Imgur may also deserve a social presence, depending on the brand in question.
No one ever had success on a social network by quickly setting up a profile, posting a few times and then forgetting about it. To drive results these platforms need constant attention and effort from marketers, so inevitably the increasing number of platforms that…
Facebook's new analytics tool for Chatbots signals its desire to make bots a key part of Messenger's attractiveness to brands
Chatbots are the hot new trend that's got marketers excited this year. Their success comes from the confluence of two separate trends - the massive growth in the popularity of chat apps (which is in turn driven by the rise of mobile & social), and the development of ever more powerful AI technologies. Since Facebook announced it would support Chatbots on its Messenger app in April 2016, over 34,000 Messenger bots have been created. Whether it's Taco Bell's bot giving menu recommendations, being able to order an Uber via tapping a car icon in Facebook messenger or getting a rundown of the day's news from CNN's chatbot sent straight to you, brands have been quick to seize the potential afforded by building Chatbots within the Messenger platform.
It easy to see why…
We asked top SEO experts about how they see the implications of Google's announcement of a separate mobile index
Gary Illyes, a Google webmaster trends analyst, announced this month in a keynote on Google's search plans at Pubcon, Las Vegas that rather than its current single index for all sites, Google will run two indexes in parallel. One will be for informing mobile search results, the other desktop, but the mobile one will be the primary database and will be updated more regularly.
It's a big, bold move from Google, and there's no doubting it will have a huge affect on SEO, with the possibility of a big divergence between mobile and desktop search results. For marketers the implications will be less instant, as they'll take longer to filter through. But that is no reason for complacency. A change in rankings one day is a change in sales the next, and…
The new Facebook marketplace will give online classifieds a social twist.
Importance: [rating=3] (For eCommerce businesses)
Recommended Source: Facebook Newsroom
E-marketplaces like eBay, Craigslist, Gumtree and Amazon marketplace are often big drivers of revenue for e-commerce businesses. Many find that although they also sell on their own site, big chunks of sales come from those external platforms which haves successfully amassed huge user bases.
As a social network, Facebook's decision to launch its own e-marketplace seems slightly strange at first glance. But there is a strong justification for the move. With over 1 billion active monthly users and 450 million users already using Facebook groups to buy and sell goods, Facebook already has the kind of large user base required to establish a successful platform for buying and selling.
The marketplace Facebook have designed is built in much the same way as the rest of the social…
