Atlas clients can now quickly and easily piggyback the Facebook conversion pixel in the Atlas Universal Action Tag (UAT).
The Facebook conversion pixel is now available as a drop-down option in the Atlas UAT, in addition to the existing UAT Program and Uncertified options.
While piggybacking the Facebook pixel will still work in the Uncertified drop-down (as any pixel would), Atlas clients can benefit from the new drop-down by using additional features like Selective Pinging and the validation of whitelisted Facebook domains. The new UAT network type does not require any additional paperwork or subscriptions, and is available now to all Atlas clients.
Chris Carpenter just released a new video online… and it’s been quite awhile since he’s done that!
In case you don’t know who Chris Carpenter is, he’s a master affiliate marketer, best selling author and inventor of the Google Cash system.
He’s a veteran product developer, having written several eBooks, developed killer software, run massive membership sites and even bigger newsletters.
And on top of all of that Chris is truly living the Internet lifestyle. He lives on the beach in front of a secret surf break that he has all to himself. He travels the world with his family searching out adventure like surfing and skiing.
And the best part is no matter where he is he runs his online businesses from his laptop with no offices, no phone, no meetings, no overhead and no stress.
In the video he explains the four real reasons why most people fail to make any real money on the Internet.
This is not the same stuff you hear over and over again. I guarantee you have not heard this before.
A few weeks ago we have started a new section within SEOchat called “Content marketing“. This article is a quick intro into that forum.
Content marketing is the practice of creating informational and creative material that is relevant and interesting to potential customers (as well as people who can influence your potential customers) with the aim of drawing loyalty and future business from them. It is not direct sales.
It is a quickly growing and targeted method of marketing that is replacing some of the outdated traditional methods that businesses are finding decreasing success with.
The Art of Content Marketing
Those who effectively content market are able to engage their readers and leave them wanting to come back again and again for more. This drives brand recognition and understanding of the company and shows that that, regardless of what product it sells, it has something to offer them. They create something that is interesting in and of itself, regardless of what it may also be promoting.
Good content writers make the customers want to continue reading and good content marketers leave them wanting more.
Most content marketing involves educating the customer in some way. Many big name brands use educating their consumer base to draw people to their sites and improve the public’s understanding of what their company is, what it provides, and what it can do for them.
Some of the biggest uses of this type of marketing are IBM’s “Cityone” game that boasts thousands of players from all around the world, General Electric’s “Ecomagination” that inspires people to contribute and learn about the latest environmental innovations, and Google’s “Zero Moment of Truth” that describes the behavior and habits of customers just before they make the decision to buy something.
The Benefit Of More Information
The world is changing from an economy where merely seeing a flash of an advertisement out of the corner of one’s eye will implant that idea in their head. Consumers are being bombarded with those kinds of ads everywhere they look and are quickly learning to tune them out altogether.
Content marketing is becoming essential for businesses to bring in customers who actually want to come back time and time again. They successfully work around the overwhelmed consumer base’s natural inclination to tune out anything that hints at being an advertisement and directly target something that no one can effectively resist – that which actually interests them.
Bringing Your Content In Front of Audience
Simply creating good content is not enough. It’s the combination of all sorts of promotion that creates the first wave of exposure (that ideally will fuel itself at some point and will start driving continuous exposure on its own). Making your content findable is still essential:
Go to high-profile publishers (and possibly automate that). Services like Outbrain and Nrelate bring your content to the highest quality publishers but putting links to your site in “Related” or “Further reading” sections below the high-traffic articles.
Pay for social media spread (all major social media sites have advertising models that give more exposure to your content through sending more views to your shares: Facebook ads, Twitter ads, StumbleUpon paid discovery, etc). If you have time, you can also try tools like Viral Content Buzz where you don’t really pay for anything but can put your content in front of people who are eager to spread a word
As more and more companies turn to innovative and fresh ways of integrating their products and brands into something that people actually want to see, the demand for not just good, but excellent content marketing becomes increasingly important for smaller companies as well.
Good content writing on a website can cause a reader not only to come back, but to share good or interesting information with friends who may, in turn, continue sharing with others. A single reader can turn into hundreds of others from around the world that are now introduced to your company. If your content is truly captivating, they may share it with hundreds more each, creating exactly the kind of advertising that every company wants, but can no longer achieve with banner ads and pop ups.
Turtle Wax has seriously lagged behind some of its more hare-like automotive competitors when it comes to Twitter and Facebook. In short, it's been in social-media standstill.
But now, the 67-year-old company is picking up the pace. A month into a campaign that entailed buying multiple hashtags in the men's interest and cars categories, it's seen a Promoted Tweets engagement rate of an impressive 7 percent.
San Francisco-based Twitter says brands typically garner an engagement rate of 3 percent to 5 percent for Promoted Tweets. Engagement activities include retweets, replies and favorites.
Here are some examples of how Turtle Wax's engagement rate breaks down, per the marketer:
Men's interest hashtag ad buys are getting a 6 percent engagement rate.
Cars and automotive hashtags are producing a 7 percent engagement rate.
Turtle Wax bought the "car wash" search term, and while it received by far the fewest impressions among the ad placements, its engagement rate is an eye-popping 11 percent.
More generally, Turtle Wax is encouraging consumers to celebrate the fact that warm weather is finally here after a spring of fickle weather. In an initiative called #WaxOnShirtOff, shirtless dudes, bikinied ladies and other skin-baring individuals are sending in photos either of them washing their car or next to their newly cleaned ride. The campaign runs through the end of summer.
Turtle Wax will give away 250 "vintage," branded T-shirts to participants with the best photos. Three grand prize winners will receive two years worth of Turtle Wax products.
The effort goes beyond Twitter, encompassing a microsite and entailing Facebook promoted posts. In addition, a :50 "ambush video" starring ESPN's Mike Golic (watch below) has been a part of the mix.
All in all, Turtle Wax has lifted its Twitter following by 36 percent to 2,100, while increasing its Facebook audience fivefold to 82,000. Christine Whitemarsh, social media lead for the Chicago-based company, said her brand is just now getting its social-media footing.
"We still don't have as many Twitter followers and Facebook fans as some of our competitors," she told Adweek. "But our engagement rate on Twitter is great, and we are smoking our competitors on Facebook when it comes to People Talking About This [PTAT]."
Car-cleaning rival Armor All, for example, towers over her brand when it comes to audience, with 149,000 Facebook fans. However, Turtle Wax's PTAT score—Facebook's marketing metric of all-things-engagement—stood at 4,889 on Monday versus Armor All's 387.
"We've built up huge momentum," Whitemarsh said. "Our ratio of Facebook likes to unlikes right now is off-the-charts good. It signals that we are approaching social the right way."
For this weeks-long campaign led by marketing agency Zeno Group, the brand is donating $1 to the Hartford Camp Courant for every photo submitted via Twitter and Facebook.
Zeebox, the social network-enabled second-screen app, is adding a feature called TV rooms, which the company describes as a Facebook to connect TV fans, creators and actors. Variety reports that Bravo will use the app to promote the 100th episode special of The Real Housewives of Orange County, which premieres June 24.
Over 4,000 TV Room community pages allow fans to gather and discuss shows in real time. Bravo's TV Room will go live in tandem with the Real Housewives premiere, offering online discussion with host Andy Cohen and stars Jo de la Rosa, Gretchen Rossi and Tamra Barney.
“By creating a dialogue between fans and Housewives within Zeebox during the special, we’re providing our dedicated fans with an added layer of engagement…while upholding Bravo’s commitment to pioneering cross-platform experiences for fans,” Lisa Hsia, Bravo's vp of digital, told Variety.
The U.K.-based startup Zeebox—backed by NBCUniversal, Comcast and Viacom—boasts more than 5 million app downloads globally, more than 2 million of them in the U.S. alone. The TV Rooms will allow marketers and third-party publishers to reach out to this audience by creating virtual spaces of their own.
According to Jason Forbes, executive vp of Zeebox USA, the company ultimately intends to make TV Rooms a place where actors and filmmakers can connect with audiences.
Zeebox sees the integration of video viewing and Twitter-like social chatter as a way to boost time use of the app, making it more attractive to advertisers.
“The number one request from consumers has been to further personalize their zeebox experience," Forbes said. "We're extending to richer ways to define what sort of second-screen experience people want."
When ranking the favorability of tech giants Google, Apple and Facebook, a recent Washington Post survey discovered that Google trumps both Apple and Facebook. According to the poll, 83 percent of the 1,007 Americans surveyed gave Google a favorable rating. Apple ranked second, with a 72 percent…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
Microsoft might want to rethink running those ads that boast, "Your privacy is our priority."
A stunning report in the Washington Post that says that the government, under the auspices of the National Security Agency, tapped into the servers of Microsoft and eight other Internet companies, has vaulted the privacy debate to a whole new level. The program, code-named "Prism," might as well be called Big Brother from the way it was described.
Just how much data should the government be allowed to survey in the name of security and are citizen's privacy rights being run over in the process?
One sentence in the Post report, quoting the source that leaked details of the so-called Prism project—which can access audio, email, video, chat, photographs, and file transfers—had people alarmed, if not scared: "They quite literally can watch your ideas form as you type."
Ashkan Soltani, a privacy researcher and consultant tweeted that his read of what was happening was that the companies were providing an API (application programming interface) to specific content and target activity under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or as he described it a "push notification for NSA."
Whatever is going on, privacy groups sounded the alarm.
"In the face of this avalanche of frightening revelations about the breadth of the NSA's surveillance program, one thing is clear: it's time for a reckoning," said Center for Democracy and Technology president Leslie Harris. "The American people should not have to play guessing games about whether and how their own government is monitoring them."
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has been fighting the NSA's domestic surveillance program in courts, called the NSA revelations "incontrovertible evidence" of the government's "dragnet surveillance" of the American public. The EFF has posted a petition asking individuals to email Congress.
Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Mark Udall (D-Co.) issued "I told you sos," having tried to rally Congress to address the issue over the past year. "We believe most Americans would be stunned to learn the details of how these secret court opinions have interpreted section 215 of the Patriot Act. As we see it, there is now a significant gap between what most Americans think the law allows and what the government secretly claims the law allows," the duo wrote in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder last year.
The White House is defending the surveillance. James Clapper, director of national intelligence, told Politico the NSA and FBI monitoring was "important and entirely legal."
President Obama defended the NSA surveillance Friday in San Jose following scheduled remarks about the Affordable Care Act. The program "does not apply to U.S. citizens" or "people living in the U.S." he said, adding that there was strong oversight of the program by all three branches of government. "It's important for people to understand there are some tradeoofs. You can't have 100 percent security and have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience," Obama said.
Since native became the hottest buzzword in advertising, digital marketers have struggled to agree on what it is, giving rise to an untold number of articles and panels devoted to the subject. Native is often used interchangeably with other, non-disruptive forms of advertising, like sponsored or branded content, and so while some would say native has been around for years in the form of newspaper and magazine advertorials—even fashion ads in glossies—others would define it more narrowly (cynically?) as advertising that closely resembles editorial. In practice, native advertising is often limited to a single media platform and is sharable across social media, but whether that’s fundamental to being native is up for debate.
Now, the IAB is trying to bring some clarity to the Babel-like confusion with the creation of a new Native Advertising Task Force. The task force will aim to come up with a concrete definition for advertisers, publishers and ad tech providers.
“Native advertising is gaining in popularity, but stakeholders need to coalesce around definitions and best practices, if we’re going to be able to drive the native movement to scale,” Susan Borst, IAB primary staff liaison, wrote in a blog post.
It’s doubtful this is going to be a quick and easy process. The group, co-chaired by Dan Greenberg of Sharethough and Patrick Albano of Yahoo, had its first meeting this week, and a number of weighty issues immediately came up, from how native should be delineated from pure editorial to how metrics should be defined. The companies represented by the participants—there are more than 70 of them—all not only define native very differently (there's The New York Times, Facebook and Gawker, to name a few), but are shaping the very market they're trying to define.
Potentially further complicating matters, IAB also created a Content Marketing Task Force, and by IAB’s own admission, it’s unclear if the latter is a cousin to or umbrella of the first. In any case, the content marketing group has a stated goal of defining the market by August.
Facebook is reshuffling the deck when it comes to its 27 different ad units, and six months from now, fewer than half the cards will be in play.
The Menlo Park, Calif.-based company revealed today it plans to dramatically slash and reshape its bevy of paid promotional products. Among the more noteworthy moves: Facebook Offers, at least in the e-commerce sense, are being phased out while Sponsored Stories will soon no longer exist as stand alone units—though the social-context ads will be integrated into several different ad units.
So in essence, Facebook is consolidating its ad roster to theoretically give brands fewer-but-better options. With Facebook Offers, retailers can still utilize the promos but only for in-store applications. Evidently, the social giant decided that e-commerce offers were driving traffic away from its property at an uneasy clip. Facebook is also removing its two-year-old Questions product from business pages.
The developments are meant to minimize ad unit redundancies while fostering more consistency to the benefit of Web and mobile campaigns, per the social site.
More specifically, Facebook product manager Fidji Simo, in the previously mentioned blog, described how Sponsored Stories will be implemented into future ads: "When you create a Page post photo ad, we will automatically add social context and eliminate that extra step of creating Sponsored Stories. We believe social enhances ad resonance; people are influenced by this type of word-of-mouth marketing. These changes will happen in the fall."
Expect some of the other changes to begin appearing late this month, which coincides with the end of Facebook's Q2. Per eMarketer, CEO Mark Zuckerberg's firm should grow ad revenues to $5.6 billion this year with about $1.5 billion coming via mobile.
"Campaign data shows that our own clients have already gravitated towards ad units that achieve larger business goals, including conversions or actions that result in quantifiable ROI," she explained via email. "These goals are attainable through Facebook campaigns; brands are looking for a streamlined and efficient approach to reach them. Facebook is a step ahead in recognizing this need and in placing a heavier focus on only those advertising solutions that deliver preferred results."
Shift—previously known as GraphEffect—today is announcing its Media Manager application, which is designed to take Facebook posts and Twitter tweets (authored by the brand or consumers) and quickly turn them into ads.
For instance, if a consumer praises a brand or posts something that resonates with a brand's community on the social sites, Shift's system should automatically alert designated members of the marketing team to let them know about the Sponsored Stories or Promoted Tweet opportunity.
"The content team, the media buyers and the analysts can work together on their Facebook and Twitter initiatives in real-time," Shift CEO James Borow told Adweek. "Social moves so fast that you have to be able to coordinate in real-time, or you will essentially miss the boat again and again. It's a powerful thing to know that a post or tweet is doing well and that you need to put some money behind it."
Borow said Media Manager employs an algorithm his firm calls StoryRank, which pulls Facebook and Twitter insights and matches such data against the brand's social ad goals. "In one click, [the potential ad] can be sent over to your boss so that budget can be allocated," he added.
The app becomes part of Shift's Open Marketing Cloud platform, which is utilized by brands such as L'Oréal, Toyota, Kraft, American Express and Nissan. Media Manager also entails social ads budget notifications, collaborative worksheets and real-time chat to hook up agencies with brand clients, as well as other digital-campaign-based bells and whistles.
Chris Carpenter just released a new 
