Facebook Highlights Huge Increase In Video Uploads and Views

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Expect to see a lot more videos in your Facebook feed. According to the social media platform, people around the world are posting 75% more videos to Facebook compared to this time last year, and that growth is even greater in the U.S. where video uploads on the social network have risen 94%.

Unsurprisingly, this surplus of video content has also led to a much greater amount of videos being featured in users’ news feeds. Facebook says the number of videos featured in news feeds has risen 360% over the past year.

“With people creating, posting and interacting with more videos on Facebook, the composition of News Feed is changing,” said Facebook in the announcement. “Globally, the amount of video from people and brands in News Feed has increased 3.6x year-over-year.”

“Since June 2014, Facebook has averaged more than 1 billion video views every day. On average, more than 50% of people who come back to Facebook every day in the US watch at least one video daily and 76% of people in the US who use Facebook say they tend to discover the videos they watch on Facebook.”

With the fast growth, Facebook is poised to overtake YouTube as the primary place for marketers to post videos, especially as previous studies have found that on desktop Facebook has already surpassed YouTube in monthly video views.

Facebook also included suggestions for video creators to ensure you get the most reach possible for videos on the platform:

As a creator, you should be conscious that people will discover your video in News Feed next to a photo from a friend or a status update from a relative. Your video needs to fit in, and it needs to be something that your audience will want to watch and share.

With the launch of auto-play and the surge in mobile use, it’s also important to focus on posting videos that grab people from the first frame of video. Shorter, timely video content tends to do well in News Feed. Keep in mind that auto-play videos play silently in News Feed until someone taps to hear sound, so videos that catch people’s attention even without sound often find success.

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Yahoo Manages Its Highest Search Market Share Since 2009 With Help From Mozilla

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yahoo-search-appAccording to new data from web traffic analytics provider StatCounter, Yahoo has reached its highest share of the U.S. search market in more than five years thanks to a recent agreement with Mozilla.

In December, Yahoo’s search share jumped to 10.4 percent, up from 8.6 percent in November. The new share of the search market came at the expense of Google, who was previously the default search engine for Mozilla’s web browser Firefox.

In late November, Mozilla agreed to a five-year partnership with Yahoo, breaking a 10 year partnership with Google. December marked the first full month during which Yahoo was the primary search engine on Firefox.

The drop brought Google to its lowest share ever recorded by the analytics firm, falling from 77.3 percent to 75.2 percent.

SearchShareDec2014

“The move by Mozilla has had a definite impact on U.S. search,” says Aodhan Cullen, chief executive at StatCounter. “The question now is whether Firefox users switch back to Google.”

Bing also saw an increase in their share of the search market last month, though not nearly as significant of an increase as Yahoo. From November to December, Bing’s share rose from 12.1 percent to 12.5 percent. The “other” category stayed practically the same, fluctuating from 2 percent to 1.9 percent.

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Twitter Starts Showing Users New ‘While You Were Away’ Feature

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Twitter is making some big changes to its feed for the first time since the company established itself as a major social media platform. Users are spotting a ‘While you were away’ feature which helps sort through the noise of your feed to find the best content.

The feature is not available for everyone yet, but the increasing number of users seeing it suggests it will be fully available soon. Twitter is currently declining to confirm when a full release is expected.

‘While you were away” is the first notable non-chronological feature available on Twitter, making a significant break from the traditional time-sorted feed on the site. Twitter indicated something similar was coming back in November, when the company said it would allow you to find the ‘best’ tweets from your feed since you last opened Twitter.

“Every time you open the Twitter app, you’ll see something great,” said the announcement.

In the past, Twitter would alert users to popular Tweets with email and push notifications. The new feature should streamline the process to make it easier for users to catch up with their friends without having to scroll through endless posts.

‘While you were away’ may also have some potential benefits for businesses as well, depending on the platform’s algorithm. With continued visibility of successful posts, there is a greater chance for people to see anything you share once it has gained traction.

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Pinterest Expands Promoted Pins To All Users

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Pinterest started 2015 with a bang by expanding Promoted Pins to all users yesterday morning. Promoted Pins were first introduced early last year when a beta roll out was given to a select number of advertisers. The social platform announced the expansion Monday, while also providing some pretty astounding statistics about Promoted Pin performance.

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Here are some of the benefits Pinterest claims Promoted Pins can provide:

  • Promoted Pins perform as well or better than organic Pins.
  • Brand advertisers achieved about a 30% bump in earned media from people who saw a Promoted Pin and saved it to their own boards
  • Promoted Pins are repinned 11 times more than organic Pins on average.
  • Promoted Pins draw engagement from users well after a campaign has ended.
  • Businesses typically outside of Pinterest’s core categories and interests were also successful with Promoted Pins.

While these findings sound nice, it is important to remember that Pinterest’s beta launch of Promoted Pins was given to a select number of well-established brands. While the new promoted posting system may carry some weight, the data is based on a test of high-quality targeted ads. Your mileage may vary.

To help businesses get introduced to promoting themselves on Pinterest, the company is establishing the “Pinstitute” – a new interactive program to educate businesses on how to connect with users and improve their return on investment.

The “Pinstitute” helps you learn about what kind of Pins perform the best, what users are interested in, and what products will be coming from Pinterest in the future. The program will also invite select groups of brands and agencies to quarterly workshops. The Pinstitute will have provide webinars and other online education tools tailored for the needs of local and smaller businesses.

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5 Reasons You Should Consider PPC Advertising

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ppc-icon-300Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is still relatively new and many business owners are still hesitant about investing their limited resources into an advertising system they are unfamiliar with. But, there are countless reasons you should make the jump.

PPC advertising has proven itself time and time again as a means of driving real results for all types of brands across all industries, but it also offers several other benefits lacking in other ad formats.

Compared to other ad formats, PPC gives you a whole new level of control and visibility. That means you can finally feel like you hold the reins on your online advertising. Combine that with a professional to help guide you through the dangers of PPC and you have a surefire combination.

If you still aren’t sure, consider these five reasons PPC advertising is worth your time:

  1. You only pay when real people show interest. One of the best parts of PPC is being able to always know exactly where your dollars are going and you only pay when an interested party clicks on the ad. That’s starkly different from most traditional advertising strategies, where you spend money with the hope your demographic engages with the ad.
  2. You set the budget and control the costs. PPC is amazingly flexible and can be made to suit your needs, no matter what they are. You can set the budget to your needs, including putting a cap on daily spending. Of course, the more you invest the more you get back. But, you can at least get your foot in the door and see some engagement with limited investment.
  3. You reach your target at the best time with the right ad. PPC allows you to target a certain type of person in a specific place at a specific time with a specific ad in a simple and easy to manage manner. With full customization of who you are reaching out to, you get to decide who sees your message and when, allowing you to deliver specific messages to your consumers at just the right time.
  4. You can see results in just a short time. Traditional optimization and other organic online marketing can have a huge impact, but they take lengthy periods of time to gain momentum before their effect is obvious. In comparison, PPC is downright speedy. You can see results beginning to take shape the day after your ad runs and make changes to your strategy as soon as problems pop up.
  5. You can use PPC to improve your other marketing channels. The information you get from PPC can inform all other aspects of marketing, such as which keywords are improving, which products are getting the most response, or to promote niche events that often wouldn’t gain attention on other platforms. If you want to refine your marketing, chances are you will find useful data in your PPC reports.
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Instagram Purges Fake Accounts, But Large Brands Are Largely Undisturbed

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Instagram LogoMany celebrities and popular internet figures were shocked last week when they lost thousands upon thousands of followers in the Instagram Rapture. It shouldn’t have been such a surprise, as Instagram gave warning they would be deleting fake and spammy accounts, but the purge of useless accounts still caused an uproar across the social network.

Celebrities were the hardest hit, as Justin Bieber lost over 5 million followers, or 15% of his total followers. Kim Kardashian lost 1.3 million, but rapper Mase received the most embarrassing lost as his 1.6 million followers dropped to only 100,000 in under 20-minutes. His account was deleted quickly after.

Instagram was clear the purge would be coming in their announcement they had hit 300 million active followers. They noted spammy accounts had already been deactivated for violation of community and were not included in the count.

“When we remove accounts from Instagram that don’t follow our Community Guidelines, you may see a decrease in your follower count,” the company wrote in its blog post. “This shouldn’t affect engagement from authentic accounts that like and comment on your posts.”

Celebrities may still be reeling from their large drops in followers, but most marketers are celebrating and larger brands haven’t seen much of a change. For marketers, the deletion of spam accounts means better analysis of how many people are being reached with each post.

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Study Finds Apple iPhone Generates Over Half of Mobile Traffic

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A recent report from Chitika Insights shows the iPhone generates more traffic across both apps and the mobile web in North America than any other smartphone manufacturer. Perhaps surprisingly, its share of traffic was larger on the mobile web than across app usage.

For the study, Chitika analyzed two sets of data including half a billion mobile exchange impressions through their Cidewalk platform (for app traffic) and millions of ad impressions from the Chitika Ad Network (for web traffic).

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While Android devices collectively make up 54% of app-based internet traffic throughout North America, Apple takes the largest individual share. Apple also generates more web traffic (52.5%) than all Android devices combined. In both instances, Apple leads the second most popular smartphone maker, Samsung, by approximately 20 points.

This may seem strange to many, as Google search is prominently featured and more deeply ingrained in Android devices, while the iPhone emphasizes its app store strongly. Chitika explains the interesting findings by saying:

It’s likely that Apple users, in aggregate, are simply more likely to use their browser throughout the course of a given day. Safari has regularly earned praise for its functionality on mobile, and, perhaps more importantly, Apple makes it the default browser for any link clicked on an iOS device. This familiarity may predispose iPhone users to more often trust in their browser when performing tasks, as opposed to finding and using an associated app.

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Instagram Beats Twitter in Major Brand Engagement

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Source: Wired

Source: Wired

Instagram made big news recently by speeding past Twitter in active users, reaching 300 million to Twitter’s 284 million. Perhaps surprisingly, Twitter’s board members didn’t seem concerned by the numbers. Evan Williams, Twitter co-founder and board member didn’t mince words when he reportedly told Fortune “I frankly don’t give a s*** if Instagram has more people looking at pretty pictures.”

Well, if the last report wasn’t enough to give Twitter’s board pause, maybe a new study on brand engagement will make them less flippant.

Social analytics firm Socialbakers compared the top 25 brands in Instagram engagement with the top 25 on Twitter and found Instagram received up to 50 times more engagement rates per post.

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By comparing three months of data ending December 9, Socialbakers found the average Instagram post for a major brand has a per fan engagement rate of 3.31% (counting likes and comments), whereas top brands on Twitter only receive an average rate of 0.07% per tweet including retweets, replies, and favorites.

Throughout the three month period of the study, brands included averaged 38 times more total interactions on Instagram (6.5 million a month) compared to Twitter (167,000). Socialbakers didn’t release a full list of included brands, but they did divulge five brands appearing on the lists for both Twitter and Instagram: Victoria’s Secret, Starbucks, GoPro, Forever21, and Aeropostale.

Socialbaker’s report isn’t much of a shocker in light of past reports. A previous Forrester Research study released last May found Instagram’s per follower engagement rate for major brands to be an astounding 120 times higher than Twitter.

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Less Than a Third of Marketers Properly Prioritize Mobile

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Mobile-Search-Image-MashableDespite numerous  studies showing that mobile is beginning to overtake desktop, a new survey by Marin Software shows only a third of the 300+ digital marketers polled in the U.S. and UK make mobile a priority.

Over half (57 percent) said they optimize for mobile when they can but don’t put great focus on it, while 10 percent said mobile is not a significant part of their strategy at all.

The survey does suggest lack of time and resources could take partial responsibility for the lag. Three-quarters of those polled said their jobs became more complex over the past year as a result of media fragmentation and data overload.

Other portions of the findings suggest hurdles in implementing cross-channel marketing may also play a significant role. Attribution modeling across channels was cited as the biggest road block to implementing effective cross-channel marketing. As Ginny Marvin explains, “If marketers can’t successfully measure the impact of their mobile campaigns, they’ll put their attention elsewhere.”

These problems were reflected in the findings that half of those surveyed also cited a lack of transparency into the necessary data.

While properly prioritizing mobile can be difficult, the latest indications show that mobile will only be more important in the next few years and smartphones improve and society gets more comfortable using phones and tablets in their day-to-day life. Marketers and businesses who stall on prioritizing mobile will eventually have a lot of catching up to do.

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Google Releases Their “Year In Search” List For 2014

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Much like Bing, Twitter, and Facebook, Google releases a yearly list of the topics we’ve been searching for over the past 12 months. Compiled by analyzing the trillions of searches performed on Google in 2014, the list shows a more serious side to the internet compared to their competitors’ lists which tended to highlight the cute, funny, and scandalous.

Google shared lists for both the U.S. and globally, and the top search of the entire year is not devoted to either of the popular sporting events in 2014 or the social events happening around the world. Instead, the top search highlights the impact Robin William’s comedy brought the world. The deceased actor took the top spot for trending searches in the U.S. and globally.

The global and U.S. lists are largely the same in most categories. For example, eight of the top ten U.S. trending search terms also made the global list. The two search terms exclusive to the U.S. – Ferguson and Ukraine – show America’s continued interest in important news both at home and abroad.

Google’s Top Ten U.S. Trending Searches

Robin Williams

  1. Robin Williams
  2. World Cup
  3. Ebola
  4. Malaysia Airlines
  5. Flappy Bird
  6. ALS Bucket Challenge
  7. ISIS
  8. Ferguson
  9. Frozen
  10. Ukraine

Google’s Top Ten Global Trending Searches

  1. Robin Williams
  2. World Cup
  3. Ebola
  4. Malaysia Airlines
  5. ALS Ice Bucket Challenge
  6. Flappby Bird
  7. Conchita Wurst
  8. ISIS
  9. Frozen
  10. Sochi Olympics

Google’s Top Ten Trending “What is…?” Searches

Ebola

  1. What is Ebola?
  2. What is ALS?
  3. What is ISIS?
  4. What is Bitcoin?
  5. What is Asphyxia?
  6. What is Gmaergate?
  7. What is WhatsApp?
  8. What is MERS?
  9. What is Hamas?
  10. What is Airdrop?

Google’s Top Ten “How to…?” Searches

Airdrop

  1. How to Airdrop
  2. How to Contour
  3. How to Vote
  4. How to Kiss
  5. How to Craft
  6. How to Colorblock
  7. How to Wakeboard
  8. How to Refurbish
  9. How to Delegate
  10. How to DIY

Google Maps Most Searched Places in 2014

Walmart

  1. Walmart
  2. Starbucks
  3. Target
  4. McDonald’s
  5. Home Depot
  6. Bank of America
  7. Walgreens
  8. CVS
  9. Wells Fargo
  10. Costco

If the typical list is not your thing, Google also compiled the following video to summarize the year in search. For the full collection, visit Google’s Year in Search for 2014.

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