August Online Marketing Roundup

No need to keep looking, all the news that you need to know as always are here! Read all about the latest changes in the online marketing world! Get ready to read our August Online Marketing Roundup.

Facebook Has Taken Over From Google as a Traffic Source for News

Parse.ly’s chief technical officer Andrew Montalenti said in an interview with Fortune that the company’s latest estimates show that social-media sources (of which Facebook is by far the largest) accounted for about 43% of the traffic to the Parse.ly network of media sites, while Google accounted for just 38%.

This isn’t the first time that Facebook has edged past Google in the traffic-referral race, Montalenti said.

The social network took the top spot by a small amount last October, but this month’s lead is far more dramatic—and the Parse.ly CTO said that from the company’s data, it’s clear that search has hit a kind of plateau and isn’t really growing any more as a referral source for media.

Meanwhile, Facebook’s influence has “shown it’s on a continued growth trajectory.”

That trajectory has been fairly dramatic: According to Parse.ly, as recently as January of last year, Facebook accounted for just 20% of all the traffic from documented sources to the company’s network of media sites, and now it is more than double that.

Montalenti said this doesn’t mean Facebook accounts for 43% of all traffic, but just the sources that Parse.ly is able to get data on.

There’s no question that social sharing has become a much more important source of traffic in its own right, the Parse.ly CTO said that a change in Google’s referral practices may also have played a role.

While the search company used to show publishers what keywords were used to direct the most traffic to their articles, in most cases it doesn’t provide that kind of data any more.

The company says this is for security reasons, but Montalenti says it could also be because Google doesn’t want publishers to game its algorithm.

Read more about this interview with Andrew Montalenti, the chief technical officer at Parse.ly.

Sizzling Marketing Stats From This Summer

Guys at Emma have gathered these sizzling summer stats over the past few months; they'll help you form the best marketing game plan possible as the weather grows cooler and the holiday season goes into full swing.

• We know that inboxes are more crowded than ever, but these numbers are crazy! According to a recent study, over 205 billion emails are sent and received every single day.
• Always split test your subject lines; choosing the right one will have a huge impact on the success of your mailing. 69% of email recipients will report an email as spam solely based on the subject line.
• There’s a lot of people who believe in the power of smart email marketing. 73% of senior-level marketers believe email marketing is core to their business, as email is a critical touchpoint along the customer journey.
• Designing for mobile is more important now than ever before. 80.8% of users report reading email on mobile devices.
• Avoid copy-heavy messages and focus instead on high-quality, eye-catching imagery. 65% of recipients prefer emails that contain mostly images vs. 35% who prefer mostly text (Hubspot).
• Every business needs to generate money, and email marketing is a great way to help you do just that. 59% of B2B marketers say email is their most effective channel for generating revenue.
• Make it crystal clear what you’re trying to get your recipients to do. Emails with a single call to action increase clicks 371% and sales 1617%.

Twitter’s Publisher Network Rebrands And Now Lets Advertisers Drive Video Views on Its Platform

Twitter is releasing what it calls “significant expansions” to its Publisher Network.

The company revealed that not only will this offering get a nice new name, but now advertisers can help drive users to view their videos or engage with their Tweets.

Say hello to Twitter Audience Platform (TAP), which is the new name the company has given to its advertising offering to highlight the evolution that’s taking place.

It seems that Twitter no longer wants to highlight marketing on third-party sites, but rather aims to focus on helping its clients better reach Twitter users.

New creative features

On the Twitter Audience Platform, they transformed your Promoted Tweets into one of their immersive ad formats including video, native ads, banners, and interstitials. For example:

• Tweet engagement campaigns on Twitter become interstitial and native ads
• Promoted Video campaigns are turned into in-app video ads
• App install or re-engagement campaigns become interstitial or banner ads
• They have also added creative features to interstitials to help you extend your best content beyond Twitter.

First, Twitter users can now Retweet and favorite directly from your Twitter Audience Platform ad.

They have also added customizable call to action buttons to help you more efficiently drive your desired user action.

Social Media Versus Messaging Apps

Game on, Social Media versus Messaging Apps: Pew Research Center released its 2015 report on mobile messaging and social media last week.

Growth at five of the largest social media platforms has slowed or plateaued, but messaging and ephemeral app usage (like Whatsapp and Snapchat) is increasing.

Consumers are shifting to more refined, private forms of social media, where spontaneity is key.

The challenge for brands? Crafting messages that fit within these more private modes of communication, and making an impact in a shorter time span.

Google Moves Under Umbrella Company Alphabet

People from google believe that they are operating well today, but they think they can make it cleaner and more accountable. So they are creating a new company, called Alphabet.

What is Alphabet? Alphabet is mostly a collection of companies. The largest of which, of course, is Google.

This newer Google is a bit slimmed down, with the companies that are pretty far afield of their main Internet products contained in Alphabet instead. What do they mean by far afield?

Good examples are their health efforts: Life Sciences (that works on the glucose-sensing contact lens), and Calico (focused on longevity). Fundamentally, they believe this allows them more management scale, as they can run things independently that aren’t very related.

Alphabet is about businesses prospering through strong leaders and independence. In general, their model is to have a strong CEO who runs each business..

They will rigorously handle capital allocation and work to make sure each business is executing well.

In addition, with this new structure they plan to implement segment reporting for their Q4 results, where Google financials will be provided separately than those for the rest of Alphabet businesses as a whole.

Alphabet Inc. will replace Google Inc. as the publicly-traded entity and all shares of Google will automatically convert into the same number of shares of Alphabet, with all of the same rights.

Google will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Alphabet. Their two classes of shares will continue to trade on Nasdaq as GOOGL and GOOG.

Google Tests Video Ads Within Search Results

Google has begun testing promoted video ads in search results, in a move aimed at broadening its ad capabilities to include more multimedia rather than just links.

The search juggernaut is keeping silent on any details, but it makes sense for it to be getting on board with video ads, as other search engines do the same.

Earlier this month, The SEM Post's Jennifer Slegg reported that Bing and Yahoo were showing video ads within their search results. The Bing results include an expandable thumbnail with a play symbol; once clicked, the auto-play video pushes down the search results and becomes larger.

After the ad is over, it collapses and the SERP returns to normal. Yahoo's ads work similarly, except they include the word "Play," as well as captions and the option to replay.

According to Jay Marwaha, chief executive of analytics platform SYNTASA, Google may be late to the game, but the fact that it owns YouTube will help it quickly surpass the others.

User Engagement Metrics Aren’t a Ranking Signal, But You Should Treat Them Like One

Up until now, a lot of people within the digital marketing industry believed that user engagement metrics were a ranking signal. Google just blew this out of the water with the announcement that, in fact, they're not.

During a recent Hangout, Webmaster Trends Analyst John Mueller said:

"I don't think we even see what people are doing on your web site" and "So from my point of view, that is not something I'd really treat as a ranking factor."

This vague and sweeping statement has left a lot of people confused, as they were firm believers that user engagements were an influential signal. Others, were left fulfilled in the sense that Google has finally answered this long-standing myth.

Does this mean that webmasters should focus on pure content creation and link acquisition? No. Nothing changes.

Continue to create a holistic digital strategy that encapsulates engaging content creation that answers people's most-asked questions and educates users where necessary.

Digital PR campaigns and blogger engagement campaigns should continue, as link acquisition is still a huge ranking signal.

Read the complete article here!

5 Facebook Ads Changes: What Marketers Need to Know

Are you curious about the latest Facebook ad changes? Well Larry Kim has put together the 5 changes you should know by now. Let’s take a quick look.

1 Call Now Button Connects You to Mobile Users

Facebook launched a local awareness initiative in 2014 that gave advertisers the option to add a Get Directions call-to-action button to their ads. This year Facebook took it up a notch with the Call Now button.

2. Dynamic Product Ads Sync With Sales Catalogs

Though they serve a similar purpose, Facebook’s product ads do not work in the same way as Google’s product listing ads.

Facebook’s product ads are actually more like Google’s dynamic remarketing display ads. They use Facebook’s targeting parameters, or the consumer’s history on your site or in your app to serve ads.

3. Carousel Ads Come to Mobile

Facebook launched carousel ads last year, but this summer they extended the option to mobile. This format has a lot of interesting possibilities, thanks to its ability to display multiple images with different links within one ad unit.

4. Updated Ad Tools Boost Productivity

Ads Manager has a more streamlined feel, with performance metrics featured more prominently. Facebook said the update means:

“Advertisers can quickly reference how their ads are performing in the same environment where they create and edit them.”

Essentially, you now create your ads and manage them in one place.

5. Ads Manager App Brings Campaign Management to Mobile

Small- and medium-sized advertisers rejoiced earlier this year when Facebook released the stand-alone Ads Manager app. You can now track ad performance, edit ads, revise budgets, adjust scheduling and create ads, right from the app. (You can download the app from the App Store or Google Play).

Twitter Removed the 140-Character Limit From Direct Messages

You can now chat on (and on) in a single Direct Message, and likely still have some characters left over.

They will begin rolling out this change today across their Android and iOS apps, on twitter.com, TweetDeck, and Twitter for Mac. It will continue to roll out worldwide over the next few weeks.

If you can’t wait to try out longer Direct Messages, be sure you’re using the latest versions of their apps so you get the update right away.