How To Protect Your Website From Spam and Other Vandalism

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Giving your visitors a place to comment on content or in a forum on your site is a great way to encourage interaction and build a bond with potential customers. But, it can be a headache trying to keep any sort of open comment area clean from spammers, trolls, and other sorts of nogoodniks.

This creates two different problems. If visitors see your pages and blog posts are followed by nothing but spam and other types of website vandalism, they’re likely to think less of your brand and potentially move on to someone else. Additionally, you can even get penalized by search engines like Google if it detects an abundance of spam or malicious links or code on your site.

So what can you do to keep your forums and blog comments clean of those seeking to use the opportunity for their own ends without shutting it all down? Google recently offered a few tips to make sure the only comments and posts your visitors see are from real humans interested in building a valuable discussion around your brand and products:

  • Keep your forum software updated and patched. Take the time to keep your software up-to-date and pay special attention to important security updates. Spammers take advantage of security issues in older versions of blogs, bulletin boards, and other content management systems.
  • Add a CAPTCHA. CAPTCHAs require users to confirm that they are not robots in order to prove they’re a human being and not an automated script. One way to do this is to use a service like reCAPTCHA, Securimage and  Jcaptcha .
  • Block suspicious behavior. Many forums allow you to set time limits between posts, and you can often find plugins to look for excessive traffic from individual IP addresses or proxies and other activity more common to bots than human beings. For example, phpBB, Simple Machines, myBB, and many other forum platforms enable such configurations.
  • Check your forum’s top posters on a daily basis. If a user joined recently and has an excessive amount of posts, then you probably should review their profile and make sure that their posts and threads are not spammy.
  • Consider disabling some types of comments. For example, It’s a good practice to close some very old forum threads that are unlikely to get legitimate replies.
  • If you plan on not monitoring your forum going forward and users are no longer interacting with it, turning off posting completely may prevent spammers from abusing it.
  • Make good use of moderation capabilities. Consider enabling features in moderation that require users to have a certain reputation before links can be posted or where comments with links require moderation.
  • If possible, change your settings so that you disallow anonymous posting and make posts from new users require approval before they’re publicly visible.
  • Moderators, together with your friends/colleagues and some other trusted users can help you review and approve posts while spreading the workload. Keep an eye on your forum’s new users by looking on their posts and activities on your forum.
  • Consider blacklisting obviously spammy terms. Block obviously inappropriate comments with a blacklist of spammy terms (e.g. Illegal streaming or pharma related terms) . Add inappropriate and off-topic terms that are only used by spammers, learn from the spam posts that you often see on your forum or other forums. Built-in features or plugins can delete or mark comments as spam for you.
  • Use the “nofollow” attribute for links in the comment field. This will deter spammers from targeting your site. By default, many blogging sites (such as Blogger) automatically add this attribute to any posted comments.
  • Use automated systems to defend your site.  Comprehensive systems like Akismet, which has plugins for many blogs and forum systems are easy to install and do most of the work for you.
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YouTube Opens Mobile Live Streaming To More Creators

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YouTube has been teasing its plans to expand its live streaming services for over eight months, and that plan is finally coming to fruition. The video platform says it is bringing mobile live streaming to its biggest content creators, with plans to share the feature with everyone soon.

YouTube is also releasing a new chat tool known as Super Chat to help creators monetize live streams.

Mobile Live Streaming

YouTube has built mobile live streaming directly into its mobile app, with a single catch. You must have at least 10,000 subscribers to use it. If you happen to already have a sizable following, launching a mobile live stream is as simple as opening the app and tapping the capture button.

The company plans to bring the tool to everyone in the coming months, but there is currently no firm estimate of when to expect it.

In the announcement, YouTube says streamed videos will have all the features you expect from normal YouTube videos. Streamed videos will be:

  • Searchable.
  • Discoverable via recommendations and playlists.
  • Protected from unauthorized use (using Content ID).

Super Chat

To accompany the release of mobile live streaming YouTube has also launched Super Chat, aimed at monetizing live content.

Super Chat essentially lets any viewer purchase a chat message that will be especially prominent in the chat feed and can be pinned to the top of the chat window for up to five hours. Super Chat messages will also be highlighted with a color and other viewers can see the amount paid.

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Super Chat is now live to creators with 10,000 subscribers across 20 countries and viewers in over 40 countries.

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Bing Removed Over 130 Million “Bad Ads” in 2016

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It’s no secret that there are lots of bad people trying to operate scams online. Bing’s latest report on bad ads makes that crystal clear, as the search engine has removed over 130 million ads and banned 175,000 advertisers in just the last year.

Somewhat surprisingly, that number is actually 120 million fewer ads than in 2015. In comparison, both those ads combined are still dwarfed by Google’s 1.7 billion blocked ads in 2016.

As the Bing Ads’ Ad Quality in Review 2016 report explains, the ads were rejected for “direct policy compliance issues or intention to mislead users.” It continues:

“We introduced new policy around software download advertising that reduced unwanted and potentially malicious ads for many top free software programs. We ramped up systems that detect browser hijacking ads, phishing attempts, scareware ads, ads targeting the most common sites on the internet, and ads with multimedia content. We also enforced policies directed towards gender determination ads to comply with country specific regulations.”

The report specifically highlights six different types of bad ads it removed in 2016:

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  • Phishing: More than 5,000 advertisers and 7,000 sites were blocked for phishing.
  • Counterfeit: More than 1 million ads were blocked for selling counterfeit goods.
  • Tech Support Scams: More than 17 million ads were blocked for third-party tech support scams.
  • Download: More than 4 million ads were rejected for violating download-related guidelines.
  • Scareware: More than 300 advertisers were blocked for ads that highjack the browser or scare users that their PC is infected.
  • Misleading Ads: 7 million ads were blocked for misleading content. This is a huge drop compared to 2015, when Bing rejected 30 million ads.

Bing emphasized the scale of their efforts with a final comparison, saying “if one person took a minute to find and take down a bad ad or actor, it would take them nearly 500 years to remove the same number of bad ads or actors found by our automated methods in 2016.”

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The Best Super Bowl Ads of 2017

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The Super Bowl is advertising’s biggest day of the year with brands spending millions to get their products in the spotlight. Many tune in just to enjoy the biggest ads of the year and this year commercials gave audiences a fair share of laughs, pangs of nostalgia, and surprises – though maybe not anything as shocking as the Patriot’s comeback.

Of course, these days you don’t have to sit through the big-game (and insanely long pre-show) to see the ads. Several advertisers shared their campaigns early on YouTube, and the others were uploaded as they aired for you to watch and re-watch.

To make sure you catch the best and biggest ads of this year’s Super Bowl, I collected five of the most unforgettable commercials you’re likely to hear people talking about:

Snickers Live Commercial

https://youtu.be/_9M_wQDTTdk

Most brands spend weeks shooting and editing their commercials ahead of the game to make sure everything is absolutely perfect. Snickers took a different route this year with a live commercial starring Adam Driver which ends in a (perfectly orchestrated) catastrophe. It’s a novel twist on the typical Super Bowl ad in a way that perfectly ties into the message, and I predict other brands may follow their lead in the future.

Avocados From Mexico

https://youtu.be/VneoEvAJX0g

Comedy in Super Bowl ads usually boils down to celebrities doing zany things (and yes, we will get to one of those soon). But, the funniest ad in this year’s game is almost entirely celebrity free – aside from SNL’s Jon Lovitz, if you consider him a celebrity.

Instead, it sets up a simple premise of a secret society gathering to discuss their recent leaks, including all the most well-known conspiracy theories. Even better, the brand took a risk and slipped in a “Deflategate” joke knowing there was a good chance the Patriots would make it to the Super Bowl – and it payed off beautifully.

T-Mobile – #NSFWireless

https://youtu.be/pNCG9fHGXB0

T-Mobile went with the “celebrities doing zany things” angle this year, with mixed results. While the dancing Justin Bieber ads were eye-rollingly awkward, two hilarious commercials starring comedian and actress Kristen Schaal more than make up for their missteps.

Schaal, playing a Verizon customer addicted to being treated poorly by her service provider, perfectly sells the message that only a masochist would enjoy the customer experience of T-Mobile’s competitors.

It’s a 10 – Four Years

Perhaps unsurprisingly, politics also played a major role in ad campaigns from several advertisers including Budweiser and Audi. While those ads were beautiful, my favorite political ad of the night took a lighter tone. Opening with “America, we are in for at least four years of awful hair,” It’s a 10 urges viewers to “do your part by making up for it with great hair.”

Understated and smart, the brand left a mark on their night with a truly bipartisan message urging everyone to take pride in their hair.

Tide Cleans Terry Bradshaw’s Shirt

https://youtu.be/jF3otdfvSBQ

Terry Bradshaw and Tide teamed up last night to tear down the walls between reality and advertisements like never seen before. Many viewers noted that Bradshaw returned from commercial in the second quarter with a conspicuously large stain on his shirt, which prompted mass ridicule on social media.

But, the joke was on us. Bradshaw’s stain was setting up a Tide ad telling an epic journey from the broadcasting booth to actor Jeffrey Tambor’s house to clean out the stain and do some quiet sitting in front of the TV. The ending is enjoyable enough on its own, but the creative breaking of the fourth wall makes Tide’s campaign a standout ad of the night.

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Pinterest Expands Search Ads To More Marketers

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Pinterest has been teasing its leap into search advertising for months, if not years. While the company is still yet to open its search advertising platform for all businesses, it continues to test search ads with a limited number of partners.

Now, the company says it will open its ad product to a wider number of advertisers and indicates it is getting ready to expand further.

As the announcement points out, Pinterest currently reaches over 150 million unique monthly users around the world, with over half of its users residing outside America.

“When people come to Pinterest, they’re starting earlier in their decision-making process,” said Jon Kaplan, global head of partnerships at Pinterest. “We saw this with the holidays — people were pinning holiday ideas as early as August. For brands, the implications to our business, that’s an amazing opportunity to reach someone at the earliest stages of decision-making.”

To underscore that idea, Kaplan also points out users conduct over 2 billion searches on Pinterest a month – making up approximately half of the site’s activity.

According to Kaplan, the thing that separates Pinterest’s ads from other platforms is the visual nature. While services like Google deliver text rich ads, Pinterest prefers to let pictures do the bulk of the talking.

“When you search for something like modern furniture, a lot of times a text query doesn’t capture the nuances of your individual tastes or what you actually want to see. So having something that’s visual in nature for a lot of different queries is actually the most powerful way of demonstration or displaying.”

In the past, Pinterest allowed advertisers to target ads using keywords such as “furniture,” which would show ads alongside the site’s relevant organic content. Now, the company says the ads will appear immediately after a person enters a search term.

For now, the social media platform is still limiting its search ads to its partners and companies advertising through the Kenshoo marketing suite. However, it says it plans to eventually offer an open self-serve digital ad service, similar to Google’s.

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Facebook Changes How They Rank Videos

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Over the past year or so you have probably noticed a pretty big shift happening on your Facebook News Feed. Video content has taken over, making up a huge portion of what you see on the platform.

To help sort through the influx of videos, Facebook is refining their News Feed algorithm with a new video ranking signal for videos: completion rates. Facebook has used several metrics in the past for ranking videos – including how long a person watched the video.

The problem is these metrics often benefitted shorter videos that don’t necessarily have as much value as longer video content

As the company explains in a recent update:

“One of the signals we look at is ‘percent completion’ — the percent of each video you watch — to help us understand which videos you enjoyed. If you watch most or all of a video, that tells us that you found the video to be compelling — and we know that completing a longer video is a bigger commitment than completing a shorter one. As we continue to understand how our community consumes video, we’ve realized that we should therefore weight percent completion more heavily the longer a video is, to avoid penalizing longer videos.”

For the most part, the new metric shouldn’t affect most pages sharing video content. However, they say “some shorter videos may see a slight dip in News Feed distribution.”

The key takeaway is that if you want your videos to be seen on Facebook, they have to be engaging – no matter their length.

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You Can Now Sync Your Ad Campaigns Across Google and Bing Ads

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While Google largely pretends Bing Ads doesn’t exist, Bing has been working hard to make it easier for advertisers to manage campaigns for both services from one place.

This started by offering the ability to import Google AdWords campaigns directly to Bing Ads, but now the company is expanding this with the ability to automatically sync your campaigns across platforms.

With this new feature, advertisers no longer have to make manual updates to their Bing Ads campaigns if they decide to tweak things on AdWords. Instead, when anything like ad copy, campaign budgets, and ad extensions is updated in AdWords, the changes will automatically be applied to a synced Bing Ads campaign.

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To do this, go through the typical process to import your campaigns into Bing Ads. At the end, you’ll be asked if you would like to import data now, at a later date, or on a recurring basis. Campaigns set to import on a regular basis can be set to update on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.

Once you’ve done this, you can also view your import schedule and history, to ensure your campaigns are being properly updated. From here you can also pause or edit scheduled imports.

It sounds like Bing is already at work to expand these features even more, as they say to expect enhanced compatibility with multi-language targeting in the not too distant future.

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Google Improves YouTube Ads With Better Tracking and Targeting

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YouTube Ads

YouTube may be one of Google’s largest platforms, but it gets treated a bit like the black sheep when it comes to Google’s ad services. Targeting has been limited compared to typical AdWords options, and ad options have been built around desktop functionality first.

This is all starting to change, as Google says it is rolling out several updates aimed to make advertising on YouTube better on both mobile and desktop. The announcement also mentioned that over 50% of YouTube videos are now happening on mobile, which likely motivated the change in how they think about ads on the platform.

Target Advertising

Google is now allowing YouTube ads to utilize information associated with users’ Google accounts like their search history, demographic information, and whether the viewer has engaged with an advertiser in the past to better target who sees your ad.

More Focus on Mobile

In response to the increasingly mobile viewership of YouTube, Google is shifting away from a desktop-first mindset. To do this, they are moving from using cookies and pixels because they were not designed for targeting users on YouTube’s mobile, TV, and set-top box apps. The hope is to make tracking and ad functionality more accurate across all devices.

Better Control of What Ads You See

Not all of the new changes are limited to advertisers. Google is also introducing the option for users to device what ads they see on both Google and YouTube from one location. For example, if a user mutes a specific advertiser in Search, the advertiser will also be muted for the user when they watch videos on YouTube.

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Google is Retiring Google+ On January 24th, Replacing It With Google+

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Google+ is dead. Long live Google+.

Google announced it is retiring the “classic” Google+ we all know and replacing it with an all-new updated version with several big updates. The company says it is aiming to please users with several of the most heavily requested updates from the Google+ community.

”With this latest round of updates, we believe the new Google+ is really your Google+— designed around your suggestions, requests and needs. It also means it’s time to say goodbye to classic Google+ on the web, which we’ll be turning down on January 24.”

Here are a few of the things you can expect when the “new” Google+ launches on January 24:

Hide Low-Quality Comments

Google+Comments

Google+ will begin to automatically bury low-quality comments that its algorithms deem non-conductive to conversation. It’s hard to know how exactly the function will work, but you can opt to leave the “low-quality comments” visible to everyone if you desire.

Putting Content First

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Google+ is aiming to trim the fat with its new update by reducing the amount of wasted space on the screen. Instead, it aims to put the focus on content with more images that you can even zoom in on.

Events Make Their Return

Events disappeared from Google+ some time ago, but the ability to create and join events is coming back. However, the company says it still needs to refine Events based on user experience, so expect it to be a work in progress when it launches.

“And Much More”

While Google is relaunching Google+ on the 24th, they say their work is far from over. “Our aim is to make Google+ the best place to connect around the things you care about,” the company says. Google is encouraging users to give their feedback and help shape the new Google+ as it takes shape in the future.

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Ads and Insights are Coming to Instagram Stories

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Instagram Stories

In just five months Instagram Stories has grown into a force to be reckoned with, as the company has launched numerous new features like links, live video, and hands-free video recording. Now, the platform is working to make Stories more attractive to businesses with ads and insights for Stories.

According to Instagram’s own numbers, over 150 million users interact with Stories every day, with one in five Stories also receiving direct messages from viewers. The company also says 70% of users follow a business on Instagram and a third of the most viewed Stories are created and shared by businesses.

Now, the company has announced that ads and insights for Instagram Stories are coming soon.

Ads for Instagram Stories

For now, ads are limited to just 30 brands like Maybelline, New York, Nike, and Netflix, who have been given the ability to test a new 15-second, full-screen ads during Instagram Stories.  If you want to see what the ads might look like, check out how Airbnb is using ads in Instagram Stories:

 

Insights for Instagram Stories

In addition to the testing of ads for Instagram Stories, Insights will also be available as part of Instagram  Business Tools. Anyone with a business account can now view impressions, reach, replies, and exits for all their stories within Business Tools. You can see a preview of Insights for Stories below:

 


These new features are expected to roll out globally in the new couple of weeks, so keep your eyes out.

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