Technology News and Industry Knowledge

Earnings results from Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest Thursday built on momentum established by Snap and suggest bigger bets on areas like e-commerce are paying off. source https://www.marketingdive.com/news/social-platforms-explosive-revenue-growth-signals-pandemic-weight-on-digit/588133/

The restaurant has historically been vocal about voting rights and inclusivity, adding voter registration forms to its menu in September and resource flyers in takeout bags. source https://www.marketingdive.com/news/nandos-hidden-camera-stunt-urges-voting-with-undemocratic-meals/588115/

For people not near the Los Angeles "scare-thru," the chain is running a coupon effort on Twitter to ramp up usage of its app and loyalty program. source https://www.marketingdive.com/news/wendys-turns-drive-thru-into-spooky-halloween-experience/588107/

With holiday shoppers expected to crowd Amazon's site, ad spending and other promotional activities in its ecosystem are likely to remain strong. source https://www.marketingdive.com/news/amazon-ad-revenue-jumps-51-to-54b-as-marketers-eye-online-shoppers/588084/

The video platform's ad revenue jumped 32% as marketers ramped up their media spending to reach homebound consumers. source https://www.marketingdive.com/news/google-bounces-back-in-q3-with-98-ad-growth-as-youtube-shines/588085/

As the COVID-19 pandemic shifts spending online, the brand will focus on DTC and the digitization of its operations.  source https://www.marketingdive.com/news/levis-promotes-cmo-to-brand-president-amid-leadership-shuffle/588123/

We’re excited to have interviewed San Francisco SEO Expert Alastair Nee from Firebrand Communications for the next installment of our Featured SEO Expert Series! Firebrand Communications is one of SEOblog’s Top SEO companies in San Franci

Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the most prevalent marketing trends among online businesses today. That’s why digital marketers need to pay special attention to the tactics that have proven to be the most important SEO trends of 2020. We m

The sudden global upheaval caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has pushed industries to the brink, and many companies have had to throw Plan A and even established Plan B strategies right out the window. That’s because, when it comes to managing your marketing organization through a crisis of this scale, it means starting with “Plan C”. “It is always going to be more effective for you to have options that you can start with that you build before you’re panicked because you’re going to make more rational decisions in the early stages,” said Michael Trapani, senior director product marketing for Acoustic. According to Trapani, who shared these insights during his presentation entitled “How to Manage a Marketing Budget During a Crisis” at the recent MarTech conference , the key is to create a Plan C before you need it.  For those caught off-guard by the pandemic, now is an important time to make sure you aren’t blindsided again since many organizations are deep in fall planning for th...

Posted by Paddy_Moogan Link building campaigns shouldn't have a start-and-stop date — they should be ongoing, continuing to earn you links over time. In this informative and enduringly relevant 2018 edition of Whiteboard Friday, guest host Paddy Moogan shares strategies to achieve sustainable link building, the kind that makes your content efforts lucrative far beyond your initial campaigns for them. Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab! Video Transcription Hi, Moz fans. Welcome to Whiteboard Friday. I'm not Rand. I'm Paddy Moogan. I'm the cofounder of Aira. We're an agency in the UK, focusing on SEO, link building, and content marketing. You may have seen me write on the Moz Blog before, usually about link building. You may have read my link building book . If you have, thank you. Today, I'm going to talk about link building again. It's a topic I love, and I want to share some ideas around what I'm ...

When the COVID lockdowns began in March, Google local business profiles saw a massive drop-off in directions requests and a corresponding spike in local calls and website clicks (61% increase in calls). Since that time, call volumes fluctuated but, according to CallRail, have now stabilized at levels that are 27% higher than the pre-pandemic peak. Small businesses (SMBs) as a group have historically not done a good job answering the phone and returning calls. A 2016 study of SMB phone activity found that only 38% of calls received a live answer; another roughly 38% were sent to voicemail and 24% received no response at all. Remarkably, the study found that 70% of businesses answered less than half of their calls. Missed or unreturned calls means lost revenue. There’s a very real cost to this poor service. Research compiled by UK-based Aircall says that “roughly 85% of people whose calls are not answered will not call back” and almost 70% of people will stop dealing with a firm whos...

Google Ads has rolled out a new look for Report Editor (located under Reports in the UI). I started seeing this new layout for setting up Custom reports in some accounts a few weeks ago when I was looking into the changes to Location reporting . With this update, Report Editor is set up more like Data Studio with the dimension and metrics panel on the right. There are also more visualization features like conditional formatting as well as the ability to filter and sort data with dropdowns next to each field. There are still the set of pre-defined reports. Why we care. Custom reports in Report Editor gives you a way to visualize campaign performance in various ways without having to leave the UI. It also has gives you segmentations like Location Type that aren’t in the main UI anymore. It does have limitations — there’s no option for a bar chart with a secondary axis, for example. The post Google Ads Report Editor gets a new look appeared first on Search Engine Land . Via Search...

COVID-19 has taken a disproportionately large toll on TripAdvisor’s two primary customer audiences, hotels and restaurants, which have seen double-digit revenue declines compared with 2019. The company has been trying to help these groups with a number of new products and services that meet perceived needs and generate new subscription revenue. Listings and menu syndication. The first offering is a restaurant menu-content syndication program called Menu Connect . It uses SinglePlatform, which TripAdvisor acquired last December from Endurance International Group, and is now available globally to the more than five million restaurants on TripAdvisor. Restaurants confirm their business listings and upload their menu details. That information is then distributed across a network of more than 100 sites, including Google, Yelp, OpenTable, Foursquare, Facebook, TripAdvisor itself and numerous other sites and restaurant apps. The product features an analytics dashboard that offers data on ...

The brand is among other companies bringing holiday celebrations directly to consumers sheltering in place. source https://www.marketingdive.com/news/jose-cuervo-supports-at-home-day-of-the-dead-festivities-with-ofrenda-kits/588026/

After calling off doing an in-game commercial for the first time in six years, the produce brand turns its eyes to mobile-minded retail activations. source https://www.marketingdive.com/news/avocados-from-mexico-looks-to-capture-super-bowl-hype-with-first-celeb-led/588032/

Inspired by its Dove Mango Collection, the Unilever brand is leveraging the idea that sound helps shape sensory perception to connect with consumers. source https://www.marketingdive.com/news/dove-soundtracks-self-care-with-pandora-partnership/588015/

It’s been 12 months since Google announced a new update called BERT in production search and there should be no surprise the recent Search On event, falling almost on the eve of production BERT’s first birthday, included so much talk of huge progress and breakthroughs using AI and BERT during the past year. A recap on what BERT is To recap, the Google BERT October 2019 update is a machine learning update purported to help Google better understand queries and content, disambiguating nuance in polysemous words via greater understanding of “word’s meaning” (context). The initial update impacted  just 10% of English queries as well as featured snippets in territories where they appeared.   Importantly, that initial BERT search update was for disambiguation primarily, as well as text extraction and summarisation in featured snippets. The disambiguation aspect mostly applied to sentences and phrases.   Within a month or so of BERT’s production search announcem...