#INFOGRAPHIC: Global Spending on Facebook Ads Up 50 %

Quarterly spending on Facebook advertising has increased 51 per cent year-on-year in Q2 of 2014, a new study shows.

According to research by predictive media optimisation company Kenshoo, both search and social advertising have seen increases in most metrics both quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year, with advertising spend on search up 25 per cent compared to last year, and a 15 per cent increase on search clicks from last year.

You can find these facts and more in the infographic below.

13 Steps to Your First Facebook Advertising Campaign

By Stephanie Winans at Social Media Today:  


The truth is, whether the question about Facebook advertising is asked directly or it's the answer to another question, I often find myself explaining the basics of Facebook Ads.

If you’ve wondered about how to set up a Facebook Ads campaign, here are 13 steps to getting started:

1. Know why you're doing it. Because "your biggest competitor is doing it” is not an answer. Whether its increasing website traffic, driving ratings, adding VIP members, generating brand awareness in the market or improving social engagement, you should have a concrete goal in mind for what you’re trying to achieve.


2. Define your KPIs. A KPI (key performance indicator) is how you will define the success of your campaign. Sometimes KPIs are obvious (for example, if your goal is to increase Facebook likes then your KPI is the number of likes your page receives during the campaign), but sometimes they aren’t so cut and dry. It’s important that your whole team be on the same page in the early planning stages so your expectations are clear and you know what “successful campaign” really means.

3. Make sure Facebook is the best choice. Facebook is often the first social advertising platform used, but it’s not the only digital advertising option out there. Once you’ve defined your goals and KPIs, you can consider other platforms before settling on Facebook. For example, if your goal is to drive traffic to website content you could consider a content distribution advertising platform like Taboola or Outbrain. If your goal is to generate brand awareness in the market, you could consider a geo-targeted display ad campaign.

4. Determine your budget. Advertising doesn’t come free. (Just ask your Sales department!)

5. Set goals. No, really. Goals ALWAYS make you work harder. Whether you say them aloud or keep them in your head, give yourself reasonable benchmarks to strive for. Personally, I prefer post-it notes on my desk so I have visual accountability reminders.

6. Do your homework. Spend some time scrolling through your own newsfeed and notice the ads you’re being served. Which ones seem effective?

7. Develop your creative. You’ll need to develop different copy for the newsfeed and the right column because the character count is different, and you’ll need multiple versions for each. Think about your call to action. What do you want the user to do?  And don’t slack off when it comes to the images! An attention-grabbing visual for your ad can make or break it.

8. Define your audience. Part of this is easy; you already have your target demographic defined. But depending on your goals you may be targeting people who already like your page or people who don’t. Additionally, you may want to target people who like your competitors’ Facebook pages or who have specific interests relevant to this campaign. If you’re targeting more than one demographic, set up two different Ad Sets in Facebook Ads with the same creative but with a different audience. You’ll be able to measure how well your campaign is converting with each.


9. Sleep on it. No matter how good of a job you do, you can always improve when you leave it and come back to it. If you’re on a deadline and you can’t sleep on it, walk away from it for thirty minutes and review it with a clear head. Or ask a friend of co-worker with social advertising experience to take a look with fresh eyes.

10.  Pull the trigger. Input your ad copy and visuals with the audience targeting you’ve defined. Start with multiple ads in each Ad Set. Just like everything else in marketing, A/B testing is key.

11. Walk away for half a day. While it can be really exciting to watch your campaign when it’s first launched, it can also be frustrating as it takes time to achieve results. Plus, you don’t want to make any rash changes to your campaign before you can really tell if it’s working.

12. Babysit. Even if your campaign is performing well, don’t forget that the Internet is the Wild, Wild West and things can change quickly. Check your campaign twice a day and make optimizations to your ads and audience targeting until you reach the goals you’ve set.

13. Remember my golden rule. “You can always do better.” Keep optimizing your campaign until you plateau. For example, if you’re trying to drive entries to a contest or sweepstakes, keep adding variations of copy and images to lower your cost per acquisition until the cost plateaus no matter what you try. While I use this mantra to push my myself into milking advertising campaigns for everything I can get, it’s a great rule to live by in all of your professional endeavors.

#INFOGRAPHIC: Top Social Efforts to Boost Referral Traffic to Your Website

By Thomas J. Armitage at Social Media Today:  

Social media has many benefits for a brand. Raising awareness, generating buzz around events or news, keeping your name or products top of mind, managing customer service, gathering consumer-generated content, market research, and the list goes on. But for some reason, many of us get hung up on the fact that social media has to have an immediate, short term return on investment. Many social strategies are long term investments, so when looking at a tight time frame, we migrate towards metrics that try and allow us to justify our efforts. Enter: referral traffic.

Referral traffic is a very important thing to measure within a social media campaign. For many companies, bringing visitors to your website helps them learn about your products and services and establishes one more touchpoint in that very important buying process. It gets the user away from all the chaos on social media and lets them solely focus on one thing…you. And that’s valuable stuff. So after using many social media channels over the past few years, I’ve learned which ones generate the highest return on investment, based on time/cost vs referral traffic. Of course numbers will very based on your industry and the content you’re producing, but for the most part, this will give you a simple indication of which channels are best for driving traffic back to your website.

1) Blogging

The only one with 5 stars in terms of referral traffic is blogging. Are you surprised? If on a subdomain, blogging can be tremendously helpful to sending traffic to your website, if using links properly. If housed on the company site itself, blogs will generate organic traffic from search and attain visitors from referral links from any sites or bloggers who re-run your material or cite your writing. A misconception is that this effort is free but it is one of the biggest investments your company can make in the social space. The best blogging companies invest tons of time and resources into blogging efforts. Beyond time for writing, you will want to budget money for stock photography or time for your design team to create custom graphics, infographics, charts or visuals to supplement your material within the post and/or for social media when distributing. It makes the world of a difference in getting people to read, react and share your content. It's also helpful to promote your blog articles on social using ad dollars to "light the fire" and get the traction rolling.


2) E-Newsletter

Email marketing may not be the best approach to reach your teen audience (most do not use email with the exception of using it for registration purposes) but email is still widely used among most working professionals. It’s a great way to reinforce messages, introduce the latest news to a loyal audience, and keep them coming back to your site. Carefully design a layout – don’t have too much information there – and drive people deep into your site on specific landing pages, not just the homepage. Tell them what you want them to be looking at. Costs here are associated with monthly software fees (MailChimp, Constant Contact, etc), stock photography, design costs, and the time it takes to prepare and distribute. Your list is critical. Always be conscience about growing this – whether it’s through other social channels, events, contests with registration walls, etc. Your list is powerful in bringing visitors to your site.


3) Twitter

Many of us know how great this tool can be at luring traffic to your site. But this audience is very cautious what it clicks on – simply because we are being bombarded with hundreds (or perhaps thousands) of tweets each day. Because of this, be strategic when you include a link to your own site. Always use the old adage “What’s In It For Them?” Push them to an educational blog posts, a cool new product, a fun contest going on, etc. Be creative and straightforward in your limited description too, because you have to convince them to click in less than 100 characters or so. Costs here are related to stock photos or designs you’ll want to use to pair with your content. Also, do not overlook Twitter advertising. It’s a great way to get new users in front of your material and you can select the type of person that is most appealing to your business, so it works well.


4) LinkedIn

Of all the promoted post-style advertising on social media, LinkedIn can often times be the most expensive. But it’s a great way to get highly targeted people in front of your content and lead them to your site. The filters available through LinkedIn are extraordinary, allowing you to target by age, geography, profession, industry, hierarchy, group, and more. Naturally, you’ll pay for this luxury in your higher cost per clicks. But regardless, it can be effective. LinkedIn readers love tips on how to do their jobs better, motivational articles, and the inside scoop on new jobs available in their fields. Keep this in mind when sharing material that refers back to your website. You don’t want them to be disappointed when they go for that click. So make sure it’s meaningful and in line with the type of professional readers that are here.


5) YouTube

I have YouTube listed as the most expensive of all the tactics. Because quite frankly, video production ain’t cheap. Sure, you can get away with haphazardly winging some videos together and throwing them up online. You might get a few views. But ever notice the ones that we gravitate towards every week (if they are a regular series) or the ones you pull to use in presentations or demonstrations. You and I both are using the ones that look professional, are in high definition, boast great audio quality, and subtly use visuals as examples to support the verbal discussions. You’ll need lights, microphones, a great camera (preferably two), lots of time and research, a personable and lively spokesperson, and more. But here’s the bright side. Of all the types of content available to you, in my opinion, videos are the one type that is most likely to really take off if done right. You can include links in your description area or within the videos themselves. And finally, you can expose your messages to more people through advertising (which again, costs money on this platform). But think about all the embeds and shares you can get if your videos are valuable to your target audience. In all, YouTube can be one of the biggest spends in your social media budget but can also see one of the greatest returns on investment, especially in terms of referral traffic.

Social media has a variety of benefits. Gaining visitors to your website is only one – though an important one if it matches your goals. Share content that is worthwhile and carefully select the channels that you wish to invest in to see high levels of return. Keep in mind that you don’t want to *just* share content about yourself – social media is all about sharing the wealth and getting involved in conversations that are out there on the web. But being selfish every now and again to impact the bottom line is a no-brainer.

Which channels, in your experience, have you seen bring about the highest levels of referral traffic?




Authored by:

Thomas J. Armitage

Thomas J. Armitage is a digital marketer and PR professional with a concentration on social and new media. He helps lead the social and content efforts at Site-Seeker Inc and has a track record of researching, interpreting and executing the latest and best tools/techniques available to clients. He is also an adjunct professor at Utica College where he teaches on PR and social media.

Google Accused Of Stealing Money From Publishers

By Chris Crum at WebProNews:


Someone claiming to be a former Google employee has accused the company of stealing money from AdSense publishers.

In a “leak” on Pastebin, this person says, “To sum it up for everyone, I took part in what I (and many others) would consider theft of money from the publishers by Google, and from direct orders of management. There were many AdSense employees involved, and it spanned many years, and I hear it still is happening today except on a much wider scale. No one on the outside knows it, if they did, the FBI and possibly IRS would immediately launch an investigation, because what they are doing is so inherently illegal and they are flying completely under the radar.”

It’s a pretty lengthy and detailed explanation. Here’s a portion:

In the first quarter of 2009 there was a “sit-down” from the AdSense division higher ups to talk about new emerging issues and the role we (the employees in the AdSense division needed to play. It was a very long meeting, and it was very detailed and intense. What it boiled down to was that Google had suffered some very serious losses in the financial department several months earlier. They kept saying how we “needed to tighten the belts” and they didn’t want it to come from Google employees pockets. So they were going to (in their words) “carry out extreme quality control on AdSense publishers”. When one of my fellow co-workers asked what they meant by that. Their response was that AdSense itself hands out too many checks each month to publishers, and that the checks were too large and that needed to end right away. Many of the employees were not pleased about this (like myself). But they were successful in scaring the rest into thinking it would be their jobs and their money that would be on the line if they didn’t participate. The meeting left many confused as to how this was going to happen.

What did they mean by extreme quality control? A few other smaller meetings occur with certain key people in the AdSense division that furthered the idea and procedure they planned on implementing. There were lots of rumors and quiet talking amongst the employees, there was lots of speculations, some came true and some didn’t. But the word was that they were planning to cut off a large portion of publisher’s payments.

After that point there was a running gag amongst fellow co-workers where we would walk by each other and whisper “Don’t be evil, pft!” and roll our eyes.

What happened afterwards became much worse. Their “quality control” came into full effect. Managers pushed for wide scale account bans, and the first big batch of bans happened in March of 2009. The main reason, the publishers made too much money. But something quite devious happened. We were told to begin banning accounts that were close to their payout period (which is why account bans never occur immediately after a payout). The purpose was to get that money owed to publishers back to Google AdSense, while having already served up the ads to the public.

This way the advertiser’s couldn’t claim we did not do our part in delivering their ads and ask for money back. So in a sense, we had thousands upon thousands of publishers deliver ads we knew they were never going to get paid for.

Google reaped both sides of the coin, got money from the advertisers, used the publishers, and didn’t have to pay them a single penny. We were told to go and look into the publishers accounts, and if any publisher had accumulated earnings exceeding $5000 and was near a payout or in the process of a payout, we were to ban the account right away and reverse the earnings back. They kept saying it was needed for the company, and that most of these publishers were ripping Google off anyways, and that their gravy train needed to end. Many employees were not happy about this. A few resigned over it. I did not. I stayed because I had a family to support, and secondly I wanted to see how far they would go.

From 2009 to 2012 there were many more big batches of bans. The biggest of all the banning sessions occurred in April of 2012. The AdSense division had enormous pressure from the company to make up for financial losses, and for Google’s lack of reaching certain internal financial goals for the quarter prior. So the push was on. The employees felt really uneasy about the whole thing, but we were threatened with job losses if we didn’t enforce the company’s wishes. Those who voiced concerned or issue were basically ridiculed with “not having the company’s best interest in mind” and not being “team players”. Morale in the division was at an all-time low. The mood of the whole place changed quite rapidly. It no
longer was a fun place to work.

The bans of April 2012 came fast and furious. Absolutely none of them were investigated, nor were they justified in any way. We were told to get rid of as many of the accounts with the largest checks/payouts/earnings waiting to happen. No reason, just do it, and don’t question it. It was heart wrenching seeing all that money people had earned all get stolen from them. And that’s what I saw it as, it was a robbery of the AdSense publishers. Many launched appeals, complaints, but it was futile because absolutely no one actually took the time to review the appeals or complaints. Most were simply erased without even being opened, the rest were deposited into the database, never to be touched again.

Several publishers launched legal actions which were settled, but Google had come up with a new policy to deal with situations such as that because it was perceived as a serious problem to be avoided. So they came up with a new policy.

There’s much more to the explanation. Read the whole thing here.

Obviously Google denies the whole thing. Google has given several news outlets the following statement:

This description of our AdSense policy enforcement process is a complete fiction. The color-coding and ‘extreme quality control’ programs the author describes don’t exist.

Our teams and automated systems work around the clock to stop bad actors and protect our publishers, advertisers and users.

Google’s Matt Cutts has been defending the company on Hacker News. He wrote:

Everything about this post strikes me as a conspiracy-laden fake, from the typos to wrong terminology to untrue policies to the lack of specific names of people. I passed this pastebin to the ads side to confirm for sure, but I would treat this as completely untrue.

Added: Yup, I’m hearing back from multiple people on the ads side that this is pretty much untrue from start to finish.

Also notice that the “rmujica” account that submitted this item has never submitted any other story or written any other comment on Hacker News before today.

In another comment, Cutts added:

I’ve worked with the people this post talks about since 2005. Even though I’m the head of the webspam team, I’m familiar with how AdSense deals with fraud.

For example, I often see disgruntled publishers complaining on the web, and from time to time I’ve followed up on specific blog posts to get the other side of the story. In addition, the group that manually fights webspam at Google is a sibling organization to the group that fights adspam.

Finally, I passed these claims directly to the ads side and so far I’ve gotten three (now four) different “this is fake” responses from people I trust and have worked with in different capacities for years, including an engineer that I worked with in search quality who later went to work in ads.

Someone commenting a Valleywag article said, “I never participated in adsense (fuck google) but I was part of a big online group who used it hard. Thousands were banned without reason in a single sweep near their payout date. It matches this description perfectly. I always suspected foul play and now this describes exactly what happened around that exactly time. Coincidence. I don’t think so…And what a group of small people could do against mighty Google?”

This person continued in another comment, “I didn’t participate in it as I was just a witness to the uproar. But what people were saying at the time matches what this guy is saying. It was a forum called WarriorForum, dedicated to Internet Marketing. I was planning on selling apps for them but nothing came out of it but it was around the time the ban fest happened.”

It’s unlikely that the “leaked” story will be proven, unless more of the mentioned employees come forward with real identities. At the same time, it could be difficult for Google to prove its case beyond a “you’re going to have to take our word for it” kind of scenario.

AdSense is said to account for roughly a third of Google’s revenue.

What do you think? Conspiracy theory or not?

#INFOGRAPHIC: Guide for Small Businesses on Facebook

By Mona Zhang at SocialTimes:  


For small business owners, launching a social media presence can be a daunting task. Which platforms should I be on? How much time and money should I be investing? And, of course, the ever-vexing question: What’s my ROI?

Step one is to decide which social platforms to invest in. Here’s some advice from Peter Friedman, whose guest post on SocialTimes can help you figure out which sites make the most sense for your business:

When companies worry about overextending themselves on social, I tell them to start out in one channel rather than spread themselves too thin. Different channels also lend themselves to different levels of interaction. Twitter is primarily experienced as a newsfeed, constantly streaming by, so conversations tend to happen in real-time. Meanwhile, Facebook’s page format supports asynchronous communication, so it may be a better choice if you don’t have full-time resources for social. Get to know each of the platforms and how various brands are using them before you commit to a direction for your company.

If you’ve decided that Facebook is the right platform for your company, this guide for small businesses on Facebook can help you get started:



Are you a small business owner thinking about setting up a facebook page? Don’t know where to start? Check out our step-by-step guide. (via SimplyBusiness).

Twitter Launches Mobile App Promotion Suite

By Chris Crum at WebProNews:  


As expected, Twitter announced the launch of a new mobile app promotion suite, enabling app developers to use mobile app-install ads on Twitter, and throughout the MoPub Marketplace, which spans over a billion Android and iOS devices.

The suite is in the beta testing phase, but includes tools for targeting, creative, and measurement. Partners so far include Spotify, HotelTonight, Kabam, SeatGeek, GREE, GetTaxi, and Deezer. It’s entirely possible that you’ve already seen ads from them.

“Advertisers can now set up campaigns directly on ads.twitter.com to run across the Twitter Publisher Network, which is comprised of the thousands of apps and over 1 billion monthly devices the MoPub mobile advertising exchange reaches,” says product manager Kelton Lynn. “Advertising campaigns run across the Twitter Publisher Network are automatically translated into programmatic bids on the MoPub exchange, on a level playing field with MoPub’s existing DSP partners. This is now available to U.S. advertisers in a private beta. Combined with the targeting and measurement features in the mobile app promotion suite, this affords advertisers the ability to easily run on-Twitter app promotion via Promoted Tweets, while simultaneously running off-Twitter advertising via the MoPub Marketplace.”

“We are excited to offer new ways for marketers and developers to drive mobile app installs and app engagements, using Twitter Cards and Promoted Tweets on Twitter, and leveraging the scale of MoPub and the Twitter Publisher Network across the rest of the mobile ecosystem,” Lynn adds. “This is the first of many opportunities to join Twitter and MoPub to create a large-scale, rich and well-targeted advertising platform — one that provides high ROI for marketers, and a great experience for users.”

Expect Twitter to announce plenty more different ad types. A recent report indicated that they had fifteen lined up.

Data fro Resolution Media found that Twitter’s ads consistently drive higher click-through rates than Facebook’s.

Google Starts Blocking Access to Paid Search Keyword Data

By Jennifer Slegg at Search Engine Watch: 


Many of us have been concerned about the possibility of Google expanding "(not provided)" to also encompass paid search. Until now, AdWords advertisers have gotten full access to keyword data, whether it's through Google itself or through one of the third-party tools using the API for this data.

When Google made the move to secure search, and effectively turned off the ability for webmasters to know exactly which keywords were driving organic traffic to their websites from Google, the next obvious question was when would this hit AdWords advertisers, and how Google would handle it.

That answer came today. In a blog post, Google said the following:

Today, we are extending our efforts to keep search secure by removing the query from the referer on ad clicks originating from SSL searches on Google.com.

Advertisers will continue to have access to useful data to optimize and improve their campaigns and landing pages. For example, you can access detailed information in the AdWords search terms report and the Google Webmaster Tools Search Queries report.


Some felt it was double standard, where AdWords got to keep their keywords while organic did not. However, while the loss of this data would be felt – and has largely been expected – the change isn't as doomsday as some are making it out to be. The impact with the loss of organic keyword data was significantly greater.

Advertisers will continue to have access to keyword data within the Google AdWords dashboard – it isn't a case where advertisers would be flying blind without any data at all. Advertisers who don't use a third party management tool likely won't notice a difference, aside from potentially needing to utilize AdWords tags if they aren't already.

At SMX West last month, Amit Singhal from Google hinted in his keynote that we would be seeing some changes to paid versus organic when it came to "(not provided)", although he was light on details.

Over a period of time, Sridhar [Ramaswamy], the Head of Ads, my friend, and I we have been looking at this issue. And we're also hearing from our users that they would want their searches to be secure. A lot has happened in the world, as you all know. And keeping user's searches secure is really important to the users. We really like the way things have gone on the organic side of search, because we are hearing and responding to what our users want. We really like where we are at.

Sridhar and I are looking at our world, and finding the right solution for our users who want their searches secure and are advertisers, so I have nothing to announce right now, but in the coming weeks and months as Sridhar and I find the right solution, expect something to come out of us.


Discussion about this change began earlier this week when A.J. Ghergich published a blog post detailing that AdWords will no longer be supplying third parties with paid search query data.

Because of the way Google AdWords does their tracking, they can still easily remove the referral keyword string from the referring AdWords URL, to provide secure search in regards to preventing those keywords from showing up in the website logs. But Google still has all that data within the AdWords dashboard, and can provide that information to advertisers.

Regardless of how they provide the keyword data within the Google AdWords dashboard, we won't see a day where advertisers get no keywords whatsoever, because the price would drop down as advertisers lose confidence in the transparency of what they're bidding on and what they're getting traffic from.

Ghergich reported that an anonymous source provided him with the information regarding the change to paid search query data. The details from the memo include:

- Google will cease supplying 3rd parties with paid search query data
- Reports within AdWords will remain unaffected
- This will also have an affect on website analytics packages but we've not yet heard about anything with Google Analytics
- Services that use this query data may have no way to access it anymore

Could they turn off access within Google Analytics? It's hard to say because some third parties use Google Analytics data, if they are truly trying to tighten down on any of that data for privacy concerns.

There is the possibility that they could be changing the API where Google would charge for paid API access, under the guise of "keeping it secure", or simply tightening down the number of companies that have access to the data currently.

What other reasons could Google have besides privacy concerns, which was the reason for the organic "(not provided)" change? According to Ghergich, his source feels that "another possible motive for the change by Google is that less data leads to less accurate AdWords decisions which increases ad spend."

Prior to Google making the change official, Search Engine Watch reached out to several companies who are currently using this paid search query data from Google AdWords, to get their take, and their thoughts if Google was to make a change to their current third party access to paid search query data.


Marc Poirier, Acquisio co-founder & EVP, business development told us:

This information is critical for search marketers, it helps them see how search queries map to keywords and to make the necessary adjustments such as adding negatives or exact match keywords to help continuously improve performance. Taking this away will seriously impede the discovery process and will promote the massive proliferation of exact match keywords and the accelerated death of broad match and even phrase match keywords. In other words, if this is true, it will likely have a dramatic impact on the number of keywords needed to find success in paid search.

Jon Henshaw, Raven Tools co-founder, told us:

We keep a close watch on the AdWords API to make sure that Raven complies with its terms of service, which Google takes very seriously.

We have not heard from Google about changes to their AdWords API related to search query data. But I really can't speculate or speak for any other third party provider about this.

In our case, online marketing agencies use Raven to manage AdWords campaigns and report campaign performance to their clients. The AdWords data that our customers value most in Raven is related to that, not whatever paid search query data that they may use for research. If this specific rumor turns out to be true, any impact on Raven's customers would be minimal.

All that said, our software evolves as the industry does.


Matt Ackley, Marin Software CMO, also told Search Engine Watch that they won't be greatly affected by the change.

We are aware of the reports circulating that Google may cease to provide search query data to third parties. The bulk of Marin Software's services involve keyword data. While search query data is related to keyword data the two are distinct. As such, bidding, reporting, tracking, and campaign management - the features and capabilities that set Marin Software apart as a powerful digital marketing platform - would be unaffected should Google no longer provide search query data to its paid search API partners.

Twitter Prepares 15 New Ad Products to Compete With Facebook

By Yuyu Chen at ClickZ: 


In a further effort to monetize the platform and bring in more ad dollars, Twitter will introduce 15 new ad products over the next six months.

Twitter plans to roll out 15 types of new ads over the next six months in an effort to boost revenue and attract new advertisers, according to reports by The Wall Street Journal (WSJ).

The first batch of these new ad products will supposedly be released in a few weeks. They will follow Facebook's strategy of encouraging users to download apps through Twitter.

Twitter has been broadening its advertising capabilities in the past few years. In mid-2010, the social platform launched the first of its "Promoted Products" in the U.S., namely Promoted Tweets, which soon extended to Promoted Trends. In late 2013, Twitter introduced Tailored Audience Advertising, through which marketers can target consumers based on what they have said in the past. Recently the company unveiled its photo-targeting tool, as well as free "pinned tweets" to select personal accounts.

It's worth noting that the microblogging service launched Twitter Cards in 2012, a technology that enables developers to build apps within tweets. Supported by the Cards technology, Twitter has been experimenting with similar ways it can drive users' engagement with advertisers. For example, most recently it has been beta-testing a "click-to-call" button, which would allow mobile users to engage with a Twitter ad by calling the advertiser directly.

According to the WSJ, Twitter's top executives, including chief executive Dick Costolo, told a group of visiting ad industry executives last week that Twitter Cards would become more open to allow marketers to come up with their own uses of Cards, when they presented a sampling of Twitter's new ad products.

Commenting on Twitter's recent moves, some market participants believe that the social network maybe attempting to mimic Facebook in order to attract ad dollars.

"Twitter has stirred some interest lately, in particular because of new targeting options such as Twitter Tailored Audiences," says Michael Osofsky, chief innovation officer and co-founder at NetBase Solutions, a social intelligence platform that helps marketers analyze and engage with consumers in real time.

"While Facebook offers this, too, it's more likely to be more useful on Twitter because advertisers can use what people have tweeted about for targeting. This is harder to do on Facebook since it is a less public forum than Twitter."

Despite the optimism, Twitter advertising seems to be less cost-effective than Facebook advertising, mainly due to its smaller user base and higher charges.

"One of Twitter's most powerful targeting capabilities is the option to target based on keyword usage. Unfortunately, because Twitter's user base is still relatively small, it is hard to scale out a big enough audience for more niche topics," says Ross Sheingold, chief strategy at Laundry Service, a social media agency.

He further points out that Twitter charges advertisers on a cost-per-engagement (CPE) basis, so inflated costs could be a concern. "When using Twitter ads, advertisers should know their intended business objective and optimize the tweet for that result. If they want to drive link clicks, embedding an image in the tweet might drive up their costs, because they'll get charged when people engage with either of them," Sheingold tells ClickZ.

"To date, Twitter hasn't been as cost-effective at driving direct-response results, but they're clearly trying to change that with the addition of the new ad products. The challenge now is being able to prove that Twitter ads can drive business results as effectively as Facebook has," Sheingold says.

The social network's new ad product rollout comes hot on the heels of a redesign of its users' profile pages, which also happen to look a lot like Facebook's.

Twitter’s advertising revenue more than doubled in the fourth quarter of 2013 to $219.6 million, compared with the same period last year, but the company has yet to turn a profit.

Samsung’s Obama/Ortiz Selfie Ad Miffs White House

By Josh Wolford at WebProNews:

Earlier this week, President Obama welcomed the Boston Red Sox to the White House to honor their 2013 World Series run. It wasn’t huge news, as the President of the United States has been welcoming championship sports teams to the White House for decades.

There was an interesting moment, however, when Red Sox slugger David Ortiz snapped a selfie with the President. The selfie soon went viral, and at this point has garnered over 41,000 retweets. Check it out:

Soon after, the innocent selfie came under fire as it was revealed that it was all probably just a marketing ploy to promote Samsung devices (what Ortiz used to take the selfie). Here is Samsung retweeting the selfie from its Mobile US corporate account:

Sports Business Journal reported that the selfie came on the heels of a recent endorsement deal between Ortiz and Samsung.

Couple that with the fact that Samsung had just done the exact same thing at the Oscars with Ellen Degeneres’ (much more popular) tweet, and you have a pretty open and shut case of corporate interference. Oh, and there was also the fact that Samsung released a statement on the selfie calling it an “historic moment” and basically admitted to teaching Ortiz how to best “share images with fans.”

Ok, Samsung, you win again. End of story, right?

Well, no. Now the White House is pissed.



Read the full story >>

25 Ways to Make Your First Online Sale

By Mark Hayes at KissMetrics Blog:  


As an online merchant, making your first sale is as symbolic as it is necessary.

Completing the first sale sounds straightforward enough, yet the optimism and reassurance it brings can make it the biggest turning point in the life of your business.

However, don’t let the simple concept of a first sale mislead you. Obtaining that first customer can sometimes be a long, arduous battle.

To make the battle easier to win, below are 25 sure-fire ways to make your first sale, and then some.



1. Send Free Samples to Influencers

The Internet is packed with influential bloggers, journalists, entrepreneurs, and vloggers from a wide range of industries and niches.

Many of them have large followings on social media and loyal audiences on their websites.

Sending a free sample of your product to such influencers, who are either within your industry or related to it in some way, gives you an opportunity to let them know you appreciate their work with a small gift. Also, hopefully, you will get a mention on one of their sites or platforms.

Not only will this provide you with a spike in traffic and social media followers, but you’ll also have a seal of approval from industry experts. These influencers will provide you with measurable results following a potential share or shout out, and you’ll likely raise the status of your product in the eyes of potential customers.

A useful resource regarding influencers is KISSmetrics’s definitive guide to influencer targeting, which tells you everything you need to know about getting your brand under relevant, important noses.


2. Start Blogging

If you aren’t already running a blog associated with your store or product, then you’re missing out on the limitless potential of content marketing.

By producing free, valuable content, you will create trust in your brand and keep people informed. Blogging also gives you something to share on social media and helps you rank in search engines.

A simple yet highly effective way to get started with content marketing for your business is to think of all the starting-point queries people have about your products and industry. Using your blog, you can answer these queries as individual articles.

As an example, visitors to the Shopify blog are interested in learning about e-commerce and drop shipping among many other topics. Because of this, we created content that ranks for terms like “how to sell online” and “how to drop ship.”

Additionally, you can use your blog to offer tips, tutorials, and resources related to your products and the lifestyle around your products.

If you can create epic content on a fairly regular basis, you’ll begin to see the power of content marketing via social media shares, search engines, and so forth. All of this is covered under KISSmetrics’s guide to content marketing.


3. Build an Email List

Building up an email list for marketing purposes is absolutely essential.

In fact, according to research by MarketingSherpa, 60% of marketers polled found that email marketing produced an ROI for their company (32% believe it will eventually produce an ROI). When asked what the estimated ROI from email marketing programs for the company were – the overall group reported 119% – a figure that’s tough for any online store owner to ignore.

Having a list of emails from previous and potential customers means you can get your information, products, and content into their personal mailboxes. In contrast, updates made to your Facebook page and Twitter handle will almost never be able to reach your entire following, due to time zone differences and other factors.

Start building your email list today by including an email subscription form somewhere noticeable on your website. Here’s a clever way to convince visitors to sign up for your list. Instead of simply saying “Join our Newsletter,” offer an incentive or some type of value for signing up. Skinny Teatox offers the chance to win a free product every week, so they showcase that offering to encourage people to join.

If you need some more advice on how to get started, KISSmetrics offers the perfect beginner’s guide to email marketing.


4. Sponsor an Event

In some cases, sponsoring an event can work wonders. In other cases, it can be an immense waste of time and resources. To avoid the latter, you’ll need to do your research.

First, you should ensure that you select the right event to sponsor. Search for events where attendees actually will be interested in your products, and then find out how many consumers will be in attendance.

Once you get a rough idea about the different event types and sizes, you can begin sorting them by cost.

It’s also important to avoid sending just a small convoy of marketers to simply set up a table and hand out flyers. If there are potential customers attending, you’ll need to be more creative than that in order to build relationships.

Demonstrate some of your most interesting products to tell your story, get people talking, and provide on-the-spot rewards like coupons and free stickers in return for email list subscriptions and social media follows.

Here are some tips from Inc to help you maximize your return when sponsoring an event.


5. Interview Industry Influencers

Remember the importance of content marketing I mentioned earlier? Well, interviewing an industry influencer is a prime example of how to create epic content.

Interviews work because they are win-win situations. The interviewee gets more exposure, while the interviewer gets their hands on some hot content for their publication, which in this case, is your blog.

Make the most of the interview by asking relevant questions surrounding not only their lives and careers, but also the industry as a whole. This will ensure that fans of the influencer get a taste of their personality, while others will value their expert advice.

A great example of this is 500px’s interview with Elena Shumilova. As a popular name in the world of photography, her interview made perfect content for the online photo vendor.


6. Pull a PR Stunt

If you want that first sale fast, pulling a PR stunt could do the trick.

Much like viral videos, which are based on the same concept, a PR stunt has the potential to propel your brand into fame. If executed well, you’ll be swapping conventional time-consuming brand marketing with instant publicity, gaining you loyal followers and customers in the process.

Essentially, a PR stunt consists of doing something unusual, outrageous, hilarious, or remarkable enough to be worthy of media attention.

If done correctly, your store could benefit from tons of links from authority news sources, which is great for both traffic in the short term and SEO in the long term.

No company pulls a better PR stunt than Virgin. Their founder, Richard Branson, has dressed up like a wedding bride, jumped off a casino roof, posed as a zulu warrior, driven a tank down Fifth Avenue in NYC, and flown a balloon around the world, among many other newsworthy things.

To get your creative juices flowing, take a look at Entrepreneur’s list of top 10 successful marketing stunts. They’ve covered everything from outrageous tattoos to left-handed burgers. Remember, a good PR stunt doesn’t require tons of cash or a big brand to pull it off. It just requires creativity.


7. Experiment with AdWords

AdWords is Google’s hugely popular pay-per-click advertising network that allows online retailers to place advertisements on nearly every Google search results page, YouTube video, and partner website. Who wouldn’t want to rank in the top three of a search query that drives sales? Here’s what shows up when you type “Samsung TV” into Google. Note that the first result is a paid ad from Samsung.

The beauty of AdWords lies in its speed and massive reach. In as little as a few minutes, you can set up and launch an advertising campaign which gets your text, image, or even video ads seen by browsers all over the web.

Using the AdWords campaign options, you can create targeted ads which are triggered and displayed alongside Google searches when Internet browsers search for predefined keywords. Additionally, your ads also will appear on websites and articles which contain similar keywords.

To get started with your advertising campaigns, check out The Next Web’s informative Google AdWords beginner’s guide, where you’ll learn how to build and launch a successful AdWords campaign.


8. Share the Load with Affiliate Marketing

Trying to sell your products alone can be a difficult task, so why not share the load with others?

Affiliate marketing is when you let other people market your products and send you website traffic. In return, you pay them a percentage of any sales that originate from their efforts. Their marketing efforts can be kept track of by giving them unique hyperlinks (which they can post on their website) containing an ID code at the end of the link, just for them.

For example, a website owner may post your affiliate link for a blue sweater that is for sale on your website. If one of his website visitors clicks the link and then buys the blue sweater, you’ll have made a sale, and as an affiliate, the website owner will be entitled to a percentage of that sale.

The success of affiliate marketing schemes depends greatly on the types of products you sell, as well as the commission percentage you reward your affiliate partner.

To get started, check out this explanatory affiliate marketing guide from QuickSprout, which goes into great detail about the different facts, figures, and methods you’ll need to know.


9. Sell Wholesale to Other Retailers

Selling to consumers is fine, but there’s nothing wrong with selling wholesale to other retailers, too, especially if the consumers aren’t biting as often as you’d like them to.

One of the main advantages of selling wholesale is the obvious increase in cash flow. You may be selling with a finer profit margin, but you’ll be shifting products in quantity.

Additionally, if you’re selling your own products, you’re essentially enabling other companies and resellers to market for you, spreading the word about your merchandise as they buy it themselves. In other words, selling wholesale could indirectly boost your consumer sales.

For a crash course on the basics of selling wholesale, check out Entrepreneur’s guide to starting a wholesale distribution business.


10. Publish a Press Release

Lots of new online stores push out press releases in order to attract media attention, but fail.

It goes without saying that to get ignored by every single news outlet when distributing a new press release is demoralizing and often a huge waste of resources.

The secret to getting noticed is simple. Don’t publish a lousy press release!!!

First of all, make sure your news actually is news worthy. Don’t expect a massive response unless you’re giving the public something seriously interesting to read about. Also, a press release should be presented in a way that is concise and professional, without being too monotonous.

Copyblogger has pieced together six ways to write a killer press release, explaining everything from avoiding jargon to creating a magnetic headline.


11. Pay Attention to Stats

Reviewing and acting upon website analytics is paramount. The behavior of every website visitor from entry to exit helps you understand why you are selling, and more importantly, why you aren’t.

Your website stats (or analytics) will show you what your customers are doing on your site, including which web pages they enter, the time they spend on particular pages, and the route they take to leave your site. Occasionally, some tools will display additional information, for instance how frequently a customer visits your site.

It won’t cost you a penny, either. Google Analytics is a completely free service, allowing you to measure your traffic in more ways than you can think of.

Here’s an example from Miracle Berry. You can see steady traffic up until early January when there is a huge jump. They looked at their data and saw that the jump came from StumbleUpon, which could be a good indicator that the social channel is worth pursuing further, either organically or via paid placement.

After you launch your online store and while you’re fighting for your first sale, it’s extremely important to spend time analyzing your traffic in Google Analytics. You never know what you’re going to learn.

If you need a hand getting a grip on the world of analytics, Simply Business offers a comprehensive Google Analytics guide, covering everything you need to know.


12. Run a Survey

Learning about the common pain points and desires of consumers can help you make all the right moves going forward.

Consumer surveys are an ideal tool for obtaining honest feedback. Unlike your friends and family, consumers have no qualms about hurting your feelings by picking at your web design or your marketing material.

To run your very own survey, you can make use of online apps like Survey Monkey and Qualaroo to create online surveys.

Econsultancy has picked up on some important practices to be used when conducting e-commerce consumer surveys, which can help you get the most out of your feedback.


13. Network on Forums

Online discussion forums are great places to give out industry tips and advice, answer questions, and acquire a customer or two.

Use Google to search out some active forums that may directly relate to your niche. When you post, ensure you aren’t breaking any forum rules when you promote your brand or products. Get to know the limits and restrictions of the forum, and stick to them. Using your forum avatar, signature, and profile page to promote your brand are usually well within the rules.

You may feel the temptation to post and promote wildly, but keep it professional. No forum will tolerate constant promotion or posts full of links to your website. Bedsides, acting in such a way online will damage your brand in the eyes of other forum users. So, keep it simple by posting just enough for people to notice your activity, but not enough to constitute spam.

Two popular business focused forums worth getting active on are Digital Point and Warrior Forum, both of which have thriving, helpful communities.


14. Set up a Cartel

Sometimes it’s nice to have some support. A small online cartel could be just the trick.

Find a group of complementary (but not competitive) retailers and agree to promote and support each other. It’s a brilliantly simple way to gain traction in a variety of ways.

For example, if you run an online clothing store, ideal cartel candidates might include jewelry and footwear outlets. Essentially, the stores you would partner with are similar enough to be able to cross-promote and share advice, but not similar enough to create a conflict of interest.

You can opt for a completely private setup, keeping things small and tight-knit, or you can branch out and publicize your online cartel in order to attract more members to help build a supportive community of online merchants.

Take The ecommerce Group for example. Operating via a Facebook group, they have over 2,500 members sharing advice, giving feedback, and providing a helping hand whenever possible.


15. Build the Right Relationships

It’s not what you know, it’s who you know. Building the right relationships, both online and offline, can act as your portal to success.

No matter what type of product you sell or which industry you work within, there always are like-minded businesses out there, and you need to befriend them.

The trick is to build relationships with others that are closely aligned to your business but not direct competitors.

For example, suppliers, blogs, and websites that focus on your industry would be ideal, as they can help provide you with consumer feedback and offer promotional deals, without stepping on your digital toes.

To learn more about how to build a positive relationship with your supplier, All Business offers a great relationship building tutorial.


16. Offer a Contest or Giveaway

Everybody loves free stuff, and if you’re looking to build up some trust while launching your sales efforts, a contest or giveaway could help you do just that.

Not only can contests and giveaways help you build valuable inbound links, they also are a great way to show potential customers that you can be trusted and that your brand means business.

It’s important to remember you don’t have to start big. Tease Tea is a new online tea store running a simple contest on their Facebook page.

This contest costs no money to run and likely took only a few minutes to put together.

Online services like ViralSweep and Gleam allow you to run such contests and giveaways online, helping you to keep things simple and professional without all the added work.

Get started by checking out Stoked SEO’s brilliant tutorial on how to get a ton of eCommerce traffic via giveaways.


17. Begin Tweeting on Twitter

Twitter’s beautiful simplicity is what makes it one of the most effective ways to engage with your target market. An excellent method for finding potential customers is to proactively search for people tweeting questions about your industry and reach out to them in a helpful way.

The idea is not to pitch or even mention your products – just be helpful. For example, when Gary Vaynerchuk was running Wine Library, he would search “Chardonnay” on Twitter and find people asking related questions. All he did was offer advice; he never pitched.

As a result, people would be grateful and naturally look further into who he was, and ultimately discover his business on their own. This is just one of many Twitter strategies that can work wonders for your sales figures.

If you need some real life examples of how to nail Twitter marketing, take a look at the Twitter profile of online jewelry store Lola Rose, which could teach you a thing or two.


18. Make Connections on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the office block of the Internet. Within it, you’ll find professionals and executives of all types, boasting about their abilities and connecting with others. It’s an online resume so to speak.

After you set up your e-commerce business profile, you can begin doing the same for yourself (if you haven’t already). You may not make many direct sales through LinkedIn, but you’ll discover an array of opportunities with other companies, suppliers, related websites, and more.

LinkedIn Groups also are a stellar way to engage with other business owners in your industry. There are vast amounts of public and private groups set up for specific niches, allowing you to post questions and converse with other members.

To find some relevant Groups, check out Practical Ecommerce’s top ten LinkedIn Groups for ecommerce.


19. Go Visual with Pinterest, Instagram, and Vine

When it comes to representing personality and creativity via social media, the three big visual platforms do it best.

Pinterest, Instagram, and most recently Vine, all allow you to take a slightly different approach to engaging with consumers.

These platforms are the perfect place to present the creativity and passion that goes into your business behind the scenes. Snap pictures of your products, take videos of the manufacturing process, tell a story with images. Always aim for beauty if possible. People love beauty.

Need some visual inspiration? Melt Cosmetics is a new brand that already has over 150,000 followers on Instagram.

They are doing a great job of Instagram marketing, building up a brand image and a following with their beautiful photographs.


20. Don’t Forget Facebook

It may not be what it once was, but make no mistake, Facebook still is a social media powerhouse.

Leverage your personal Facebook profile and your business page to engage with friends, family, and acquaintances and to get people talking about your products. Get creative with status updates and interact on public groups and fan pages relevant to your niche.

It’s also important to keep Facebook Ads in mind. Much like with AdWords, you can create targeted campaigns to attract Likes, make sales, and promote your brand.

A popular blow drying salon in Toronto called Drybar has an extremely engaged Facebook community of over 80,000 who talk all things blow drying.

If you’re fresh out of ideas for your Facebook business page, check out Shopify’s ten ways ecommerce brands can increase traffic and sales with Facebook.


21. Beat the Competition on Comparison Shopping Engines

Many, if not all, consumers like to shop around before making a purchase, and that includes a visit to comparison shopping engines.

Popular engines include The Find, Google Shopping, Nextag, and a range of others, all with thousands of products and stores being simultaneously compared.

Here’s an example from The Find where I’m searching for a price comparison on my favorite hot sauce.

To get noticed, you need to play by the rules of each engine, stay competitive in terms of price, and play the waiting game while you experiment to find out which engine suits you the best and gives you the best ROI.

PC Pro has put together a detailed guide on how to get noticed on Google Shopping, and Sociable360 has a list of the 10 most popular comparison shopping engines with a brief explanation of each one.


22. Create an Infographic

An infographic is exactly what the name implies, a graph of information, or a visual representation of facts and statistics in a form that is easy to digest.

Although they aren’t entirely easy to create, infographics are gold when it comes to social shares and search engine traffic.

In fact, according to UnBounce, which has created an inspiring and detailed guide to marketing with infographics, people are searching for infographics like you wouldn’t believe, with Google seeing an 800% increase in such searches in the last two years.

If you aren’t a visual genius, there’s no need to worry, plenty of firms like Column Five Media offer infographic creation services, leaving you to focus on content.


23. Design your Store to Look the Part

First impressions are everything, and when it comes to selling online, first impressions rely heavily on web design.

Based entirely on your website design, visitors need to be able to grasp your brand and products without too much scrolling or exploring. Furthermore, navigating through your catalog should be easy, if not enjoyable.

Additionally, making your store responsive to mobile devices is nothing short of vital. Perhaps more so than having a website built for standard PCs and Laptops. Internet Retailer recently reported that 55% of all online shopping occurred via mobile devices in June 2013 compared with just 45% from desktops and laptops. We’re seeing similar numbers with our stores at Shopify. So, looking the part on all devices is an absolute must.

To get some creative ideas about your own store’s design, have a look at Smashing Magazine’s list of 35 beautiful ecommerce websites and Inspired Magazine’s roundup of 40 stunning online stores.


24. Hold a Pop-up Store

Just because your store began online, it doesn’t mean it has to stay online. A pop-up store could be just what you need to compliment your online presence.

Unlike traditional bricks-and-mortar premises, a pop-up store is far less of a financial burden, thanks to its temporary nature.

Like most kinds of physical stores, a pop-up store is all about location. You can open a pop-up store at farmers markets, art fairs, shopping malls, galleries, and any other place people gather. Just make sure you’re set up in an area that is clearly visible and where your target market will be wandering.

A pop-up store also can act as a great offline marketing outpost. You can use your store to hand out coupons to be used via your online store, and you can collect email subscriptions and social media followers.

For some ideas on how to get your pop-up store going, Business Insider has compiled no less than eighteen creative pop-up store ideas to get you thinking.


25. Document your Launch on Reddit

Reddit is a socially powered news and entertainment website where registered users submit content. Also, and more importantly, Reddit is a place where you can attract a large number of dedicated followers and customers.

Using the r/entrepreneur subreddit in particular, you can introduce your brand, gain feedback from consumers, and learn lessons, while also promoting your own products.

The process has to be one of give and take, though. Walk those entrepreneurial redditors through your journey, take them behind the scenes, detail your mistakes and expose some personality in order to gain not just customers, but fans, too.

A brilliant example of using Reddit to promote an online store is what the guys at Beardbrand did. The beard grooming specialists documented their launch on the r/entrepreneur subreddit, deriving valuable advice from subscribers and customers, while giving back to them via regular updates and inside information.

Here’s the founder posting an update to the r/entrepreneur community.

Note how many upvotes and comments this post received. Reddit can be an extremely powerful tool, not only for gaining valuable educational resources to help you start your business, but also for helping you make your first sale.

It’s In Your Hands

The 25 strategies listed above are stellar ways to kick-start sales for your online store.

With the right approach, you will need only a handful of the strategies listed above to make the first of many sales.

So, what are you waiting for?





Via KissMetrics.

AOL Launches Programmatic Ad Platform ‘One’

By Chris Crum at WebProNews:

AOL has rebranded AOL Networks to AOL Platforms, and announced the launch of One, a cross-screen programmatic ad platform, which combines the teams and technologies behind Adap.tv, AdLearn Open Platform (AOP) and MarketPlace, and lives under the AOL Platforms brand.

Here’s the official description for One:

"ONE will be the first platform that empowers brands with a holistic view of the consumer’s journey through the marketing funnel, and makes that insight actionable, in real-time on the platform. Development on ONE is underway and customers will be able to start using portions of the platform later this year. The single, unified platform takes media planning and management to a new level, with predictive analytics that provide immediate insights on metrics like reach, frequency, and performance, and post-campaign insights that look across all screens and formats to deliver immediate impact on brand metrics. It is completely format, screen and inventory agnostic – from video, display and TV, to tablet, desktop and mobile devices, to reserved and non-reserved inventory across AOL or any other publisher or media source."

IPG Mediabrands plans to be the charter agency network partner for One. The news was announced at ad:tech in San Francisco.

AOL CEO Tim Armstrong said, “AOL has spent the last four years building platforms to facilitate the efficient and effective flow of advertising dollars to digital. We build brands – our own, and those of more than 22,000 publishers in our global network and the thousands of marketers we work with daily to help them accomplish their business goals in today’s fast moving, dynamic market. On the platforms side of our business, as machines automate more media decisions across TV to digital, we are well-positioned to help advertisers, agencies and publishers realize the true value of data-driven advertising.”


Read the full story >>

2013 Ad Spend Growth Across Media Comparison

By Chris Crum at WebProNews:

Kantar Media has a new report out indicating that U.S. advertising expenditures increased 0.9% last year, driven mainly by large advertisers. Expenditures finished the year at $140.2 billion, with ad spending during Q4 up 1.6% year-over-year.

Spending among the top ten advertisers reached $15,964.4 million, up 6.6% from the previous year with Pfizer putting in the highest growth rate.

Check out the comparison between channels:

As you can see, display ads showed strong growth compared to the rest.

“Advertising growth eased in 2013 without the stimuli of Olympic and political spending. However, the market still registered a gain for the fourth consecutive year,” said Jon Swallen, Chief Research Officer at Kantar Media North America. “Although the macro theme of ad dollars moving to digital media still generates much discussion, another significant but less recognized trend has taken hold. The ad market is currently being carried by the Top 1000 advertisers who, as a group, are steadily spending more while the long-tail of small-sized marketers is sharply cutting back.”

Here are the top spenders, according to the report:

And the top categories:

More analysis by channel, advertiser and category here.




Via