YouTube Crowned The Most Effective Paid Advertising Social Media Platform

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YouTubesYou might assume that the largest social media platform would have the most effective paid advertising platform, but Facebook’s platform doesn’t hold the title according to a report from VentureBeat.

According to the report based on a study by AoL Platforms, YouTube is actually the champion of paid social media advertising platforms in more than a few key areas, including introducing new products to customers, and helping consumers make purchasing decisions.

The report examined data found within 500 million clicks and 15 million conversions during the first quarter of 2014, using Convertro’s attribution technology to track social purchase interactions. This data was then used to determined which platforms had affected online sales and at what point in the purchasing decision they had influence on the consumer.

Jeff Zwelling, CEO and co-founder at Convertro told VentureBeat:

We believe that YouTube does well in both of these important purchase funnel areas for a number of reasons. YouTube’s own search volume and preferential positioning on Google’s results help drive large amounts of traffic, of course. But when you get to YouTube, the content is rich, descriptive, and usually helpful.

I’ve done this myself. I recently bought a coffee machine. I had the decision down to three alternatives and couldn’t decide which one was best for me. In the end, I watched videos on YouTube of people using all three machines and chose the one that matched my idea of a good coffee maker.

YouTube is the best platform for both introducing new products and helping to close sales, while Facebook comes in second in both of those areas. Google+ consistently came in third.
You can get more information from the full report available here.

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Google Brings Advertising For Apps To Search And YouTube

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A little over a year ago, Google brought apps into advertising through the use of app install and app re-engagement ads, which made their way to Google’s mobile AdMob Network this June. Today, these ads also became available on Google Search and YouTube globally.

If you haven’t gotten familiar with app install and app re-engagement ads, Ginny Marvin gives a great explanation in her article for Marketing Land.

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Facebook’s New Cross-Device Reporting Makes It Easier To Track Conversions

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With its ever decreasing organic reach, Facebook is putting a lot of attention into their paid ad platform, especially the ads shown on mobile devices. Now, the reporting side of Facebook’s paid ad is getting improved to reflect the huge increases in mobile ads in recent times.

One of these improvements is the launch of cross-device reporting for Facebook ads. Now Facebook advertisers are able to see how users move throughout their sales process, even if they move across devices. The announcement described just how advertisers may benefit:

Imagine seeing an ad for a product on your mobile phone while in line at the bank. Do you immediately make a purchase on your phone? Probably not. But perhaps you go back to your office later that day and buy on your desktop computer. Such cross-device conversions are becoming increasingly common as people move between their phones, tablets and desktop computers to interact with businesses.

Cross-device reporting allows advertisers to be able to see which devices ads were viewed on, and on which devices conversions subsequently occurred. That means you can see how many people clicked an ad on iPhone but then later finished their conversion on desktop, and vice-versa.

In a recent analysis of US Facebook campaigns, it was found that of the people who show interest in a mobile Facebook ad before converting, over 32% converted on desktop within 28 days.

You can view the cross-device conversions for campaigns by going to your Facebook Ad Reports, where you will click Edit Columns, and select Cross-Device on the left-hand menu.

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8 Things Anyone Can Do To Improve Your Paid Search Marketing Efforts

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Merlin2525_Paid_Business_Stamp_2As online optimization and marketing become more and more essential to the success of smaller businesses, many small businesses are trying to manage as much online marketing on their own as they can manage with limited time and resources.

Most often, this results in the company taking on relatively small SEO responsibilities which can give a slight boost to their online visibility and performance while missing out on the larger benefits of hiring professionals. With limited resources, this may sometimes be the best option, although it doesn’t pack anywhere near the punch.

One of the biggest problems with trying to pickup SEO as a part-time strategy for your business is that SEO is only a part of the equation. These days online marketing is only truly effective when you use a holistic approach that combines social media marketing, SEO, paid search, and even traditional marketing.

Many smaller businesses employ someone savvy enough to even contribute to social media marketing efforts, but typically the do-it-yourself approach results in paid search getting neglected and you missing out on some of the most successful parts of a successful online marketing strategy.

You don’t have to leave all your pay per click (PPC) efforts to the professionals however. If you can’t afford to hire someone to take on your paid search marketing, you can still gain some humble improvements and increase your conversions with some beginner level SEO. Huffington Post shared a list of 8 things anyone can do to improve your PPC efforts, and you might be surprised at what you can accomplish by just sticking your toes into the pool.

If you are pleased with the results, it might even be the push you need to invest serious resources into a strong online presence in all areas.

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In an Increasingly Mobile World, Consumers are Learning to Trust Mobile Ads

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The report from the 3rd Annual U.S. Mobile Path-to-Purchase Study conducted by xAd and Telmetrics shows that as consumers mobile shoppers are increasingly receptive to relevant mobile ads, reflecting the increasing trust in mobile browsing.

The report, published earlier this week, shows that nearly 50 percent of mobile shoppers reported they felt mobile ads are informative or helpful, up 113 percent from 32 percent last year.

Even more, 40 percent of those surveyed said they have clicked on ads and nearly half of those have taken secondary actions such as viewing the referring website and searching for additional product information.

Clearly, mobile advertising is a blossoming target as the internet becomes increasingly mobile. In a market where mobile use has begun outpacing desktop access, it makes sense that users would become equally interested in relevant ads for their mobile devices.

You can get more information in the infographic shared below, or you can view the report in full here.

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Google’s New Product Ratings Could Mean Big Things For Online Retailers

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Google Product Ratings

Google has been working hard to expand their reviews and ratings systems, and yesterday they made a big step by announcing that they will be introducing product ratings for Product Listing Ads (PLAs).

The announcement, which appeared on the Inside Adwords Blog, stated:

Product reviews provide critical information to shoppers making purchase decisions. To help shoppers easily find this information when searching for products, we’re introducing product ratings on Product Listing Ads.

Shoppers browsing on Google will see the typical product listings they have become accustomed to, but beneath the listings product ratings will also be shown in the shape of stars and review counts. For now it appears the changes will only be seen on search results within the United States.

The data used for these review listings will be gathered from multiple sources, such as merchants, third party aggregators, and editorial sites.

If reviews for businesses are any indication of what this change will bring, it seems very likely that businesses offering products with largely positive reviews will be able to leverage the updated listings to not only increase their click-through rates, but to also increase conversions overall.

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2014’s Most Important Paid Search Changes You Should Know About

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My SEM writing tends to focus on optimization and organic outreach, but with organic reach shrinking across the web, paid search advertising is becoming an increasingly important part to growing your brand and attracting new customers. Paid search has changed just as much as SEO over the past few months of 2014, and Ginny Marvin from Search Engine Land recently compiled the 10 most important developments. Her list is a handy way to catch up on all the Bing Ads and Google AdWords advancements you need to know about.

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Successful Brands are Still Seeing Growth on Facebook Despite Organic Reach Declines

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It has become a truism that “Facebook is losing organic reach,” almost like it is widely accepted that teens are leaving Facebook in droves. While the matter of teens leaving Facebook is up for some debate, the social media platform has even acknowledged that organic reach across the site is dropping and they explained why.

However there is more to the story. It is widely agreed upon that Facebook’s dropping organic reach is inherently bad, because the majority of businesses and marketers are getting the bad end of the deal. Those succeeding with the new algorithms are probably quite happy though.

A new study from Socialbakers shows that page engagement for successful Facebook Pages has risen 30% since January. That means that although many of us are losing reach, those who have mastered the are of Facebook marketing are seeing more success than ever.

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Socialbakers analyst Phillip Ross wrote:

The conversation that seems to be dominating the Facebook marketing community is all about how algorithmic changes to Facebook’s News Feed are hurting organic reach. Our numbers say the opposite; brands have never had a better opportunity to have their best content placed in front of so many people.

To be clear, Socialbakers’ numbers aren’t refuting the common knowledge that Facebook’s organic reach is losing ground quite fast. This study focused specifically on the 3 million largest Pages, but there are over 30 million active small business pages that weren’t included.

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Still the numbers show the other side of Facebook’s marketing results and helps explain why they continue down this path. With such a huge amount of content being shared every day, Facebook wants to focus on quality rather than quantity. Those with great content and quality marketing are still seeing strong results, but it is undeniably getting harder for the small guy to find some ground to expand with.

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Boring Companies Can Still Be Exciting On Social Media

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Social media is typically thought of as where all the cool kids hang out. Fast food, clothing, and entertainment all have it easy when it comes to making friends and getting retweets, but businesses in seemingly boring industries frequently settle for mediocrity out of the belief they can’t keep up with the “cooler” industries. But, Uri Bar-Joseph showed us five companies that shrug off the assumption that “boring” businesses can’t be exciting online.

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