Social media brought about the boom in targeted marketing, and for most it has proven a very effective way to advertise to the right people in the right way. The question is; how sure are we that we are actually targeting the right people? There are countless people purchasing data all over the web in order to grow their advertising potential, but what makes this data accurate? It has been working, but has it been through luck or through the actual accuracy of this targeting data. Well, most would argue that the data they are using is quite accurate, and that questioning it just brings unnecessary complications to the complicated process that purchasing and using data already is. Regardless, a new survey from a company called Enliken, which deals in the business of first party data direct from the consumer, shows that the data being used by most marketers on the web today is far from as accurate as they may have come to believe.

The survey is available for anyone to take, in order to see whether the data advertisers are using to target them accurately depicts their individual interests and information. However, for informative purposes let’s stick to the averages that the company has found from about 116 people. Clearly, the survey didn’t reach many people and it covered around 9,000 data points, but the information that was found can still be informative. The data points come from some of the most well-known tracking firms on the web.

The average is not too good, but it is not too bad either. In fact, it lies square in the middle, with only an average of 50 percent of data being accurate to online consumers’ interests and other information. While 13 percent of the survey’s respondents concluded the survey by finding that the accuracy of data used to target them was uncertain, another 37 percent finished finding that the data used for them was entirely inaccurate.

The good news is that marketers seem to be pulling back on the use of sensitive data for marketing, with 65 percent of data used for targeting consumers being harmless, and only about 15 percent showing as sensitive data.

To break it down by company, the survey results tell us that the highest amount of accurate data comes from none other than Google, with 68 percent of data being accurate. Next in line was Exelate, with 58 percent of the data the company uses showing as accurate. Bluekai came next with 49 percent, Aol had 45 percent, and Yahoo only hit about 40 percent for accurate data. Yahoo also had the highest percentage of inaccurate data after excluding that which was uncertain. Yahoo’s percentage for inaccurate data hit 48 percent, higher than their accurate percentage.

This just shows the importance of thinking hard about where your data comes from. It is a waste of time and money to target consumers when the data used to do so is completely off base. These days, it seems data makes the world go round, and its accuracy is key to its effectiveness.

If you are a Facebook Page owner, but you are not posting from it very much, Facebook knows it. Not only do they know it, but they want to change it. So, now Facebook is pushing Page owners to make posts from their Pages in order to keep in touch with social followers and keep up social presence. Of course, when you sign up for a Facebook Page, you are not really signing up for a social marketing coach, but a little reminder here and there never hurts.

For a while now, Facebook has been changing up the prompts in the compose box, for both Page owners and everyday Facebook users. For users, the new prompts have switched from the standard “What’s on your mind?” to things like “What’s new?” and “How are you?” Each of these of course is followed by the user’s name. The same is so with Page owners, although the prompts look a bit different. This is all in an attempt from Facebook at getting users and Page owners alike to start posting more and more. Now the company is taking the push a bit further for Page owners, by automatically beginning a post for them, without the owner hitting a single button.

The company does not provide any sort of text for the post, but rather as soon as a Page owner logs in, they will see a post started, with a link to the company’s web page attached to said post. Will it help much in any way? Maybe.

There are many Page owners on Facebook that have the Page simply so that they can have their names on Facebook, and not be out of the loop. However, these people rarely even post anything for their users to see, so what’s the point? I myself follow at least 5 or 6 brands on Facebook from whom I have never seen a single word, link, video, or image. I forgot I even followed those brands and businesses until I went into my Likes section of my profile page. Maybe this feature will somehow take a bit of time away from the process of posting to fans, making the whole thing more convenient.

But then, we must consider those brands that do post content from their Pages on a regular basis. This is going to be quite an annoying little prompt. These Page owners post at the right time and to the right audience, and whenever it is not the right time, they will have to close out of the small compose box. The annoyance of hitting the X every time one signs in however, may coax them into posting even more.

Either way, Facebook is trying to get Page owners to post content more often, which would essentially result in more consumers engaging with those brands on the network. Not only does it work out for the business, but it makes Facebook look good. Even though this little feature may get annoying for some, it is really a win-win when it comes down to it.

Social marketers around the world love marketing with Facebook, primarily because of the numerous social targeting options that the company provides to them. The company offers marketers far more than its targeting options, but it is through targeting that Facebook has really had the opportunity to shine among other social marketing platforms. Even though marketers are quite content with what Facebook offers to them now, the company is now announcing another new targeting option, before advertisers even get a chance to get used to the current options. The new option that Facebook has just announced is called “lookalike audiences,” and Facebook says it will help businesses, “helps businesses reach new customers and grow their businesses.”

The company began testing these new “lookalike audiences” just a few weeks ago, and it seems they are quite confident with the feature working out well, as they should be. The feature will allow advertisers not more reach, but a more focused and essentially relevant audience. The company reported in their announcement that the new feature performed quite well in both online and offline situations during the testing period.

How It Works

If you use Facebook’s targeting options, then you are probably familiar with the custom audiences feature that Facebook launched late last year. As a refresher, custom audiences is a feature that lets businesses use a list of current customers to target ads to specific Facebook users that have already shown enough interest in the business to actually become a customer. This feature has proven that it can only go so far in gaining more customers and it is for this reason that “lookalike audiences” were created. They serve as a new level to custom audiences, allowing advertisers to expand using their customer lists.

As the name suggests, the feature will allow marketers to target more Facebook users based on the information that current customers provide.

Now with lookalike audiences, Facebook can use attributes like interests or demographics and show ads to people who share common attributes as their existing customers.  Advertisers can serve any type of Facebook ad to these new groups of people potential customers.

Facebook reports that for some direct response companies, success with “lookalike audiences” has been seen through things like lower cost per checkout, lower cost per acquisition, larger purchase sizes, and faster, larger ROIs. This is quite a step up from what custom audiences currently offer for advertisers, which is cause for a bit of excitement.

Facebook says that the new “lookalike audiences” feature will be available to advertisers in the power editor this week.

Interest based targeting is rapidly growing in popularity, especially with social marketers. It provides a way for marketers to show relevant ads to the right audiences, which is quite important. Consumers tend to only pay attention to ads when they are interested in the content, and the new feature will allow advertisers to give them just that. To see what the feature will look like in power editor, you can visit the company’s announcement page, or simply wait to try it our yourself.

Make a guess about what time of year mobile advertising revenue and mobile use overall grows substantially. Anyone that follows mobile advertising will say Christmas, and they will be right. The holiday season means thousands upon thousands of new smartphones and tablets are being activated, with children and adults alike itching to try out all of the apps that were not available to them before. Often, we see that it is during Christmastime that mobile marketers bring out their big guns, pumping out ad dollars to reach as many of those brand new smartphone owners as possible. More often than not, this is a successful tactic, as the ROI usually ends up being quite impressive.

Here is the question asked by Tapjoy, a mobile advertising and monetization company; what about the other holidays? We know that “the holidays” are the best time to advertise on mobile devices, but which holidays are we talking about in particular? The company recently took the concept of “the holidays” to another level, taking into account Christmas, Valentine’s Day, and the Chinese New Year.

According to our data, the holidays represent a major revenue opportunity for developers, regardless of the day of the week or how well you’re performing leading into the holiday. The developers on our network that participated in our last three holiday currency sale programs saw their revenue increase by as much as 50%, compared to the previous 7-day average.

The three holidays studied panned out like this, in terms of impact on average mobile app revenue;

• Christmas: 54 percent
• Chinese New Year: 44 percent
• Valentine’s Day: 34 percent

In Tapjoy’s study, it seems that although Valentine’s Day showed little impact in revenue, it was quite a successful time of year in other areas. “We tracked the results of a major retail brand that ran Valentine’s Day-focused advertisements on our network on iOS and Android. They saw increases in their click-through rate and conversion rate as Valentine’s Day approached.”

Around February 10^th, just a few days before Valentine’s Day when most shopping for the holiday tends to take place, Android’s conversion rates in their mobile apps saw a peak, more so than did iOS. As proof that it was because of the holiday, the company tells us that conversion rates immediately dropped following the holiday.

It appears that marketers have been paying close attention to the right holiday, but there are others that should receive special attention as well. When people think of consumers buying excessive amounts of product, they think Christmas. In retrospect however, the truth is that people spend a lot of money on multiple holidays. Because of this, people are constantly on their mobile devices looking at items and comparing prices, all the while they are noticing every ad that could give them an idea of what to get.

We know a lot about today’s video marketing scene, in regard to performance. We know what types of video advertisements get the most views, we know all about engagement rates that different video marketing platforms bring in, and we know how to place these ads effectively. However, how much is really known about how consumers actually react to these videos. Surely, this is something that can never be known entirely, but it is something that should be looked into. A new report called ‘How Consumers Shop with Video,’ from Invodo, which serves marketers in video distribution, and E-tailing, an ecommerce consultancy group, shows the results of a survey of just over 1,000 consumers at the end of last year. Essentially, this study tells us how video effects purchase decisions and how influential it really is.

Before we look at the effect, we need to see the reach. Although 1,000 people is not much, it still can stand to represent the average. With that said, of those surveyed only 13 percent said that they rarely watch videos posted by brands and businesses. What’s more important is the 35 percent of people who said they watch these videos at least most of the time. In the same study from 2011, only 27 percent said that they watched branded videos at least most of the time, representing an 8 percent increase year over year.

So, it seems that a good amount of people gain from branded videos, but now to look at how and where this gain happens. Again, mobile takes the cake, with 69 percent of respondents saying that viewing videos on their phones is a great way to get a quick overview of a product prior to a purchase. In fact, 57 percent even said that they check videos on their smartphones while in store, prior to actually purchasing an item. On a related note, it seems that QR codes are making a comeback, with 55 percent of respondents saying that they still scan codes to get more information on brands or products.

Now, arguably the most important aspect of the study tells us how many times a person views a brand’s video before making final purchase decisions. Here is the breakdown;

• One view:  26 percent
• Two views: 37 percent
• Three views: 22 percent
• Four views: 5 percent
• Five or more views: 5 percent
• Never: 5 percent

A whopping 37 percent of respondents rely on videos enough to view them at least two times before making their final decisions. Another 22 percent rely on videos even more heavily, with three views. Only 5 percent of people do not need videos at all before making their decisions.

Although video ads can give marketers a great way to pull consumers’ attention, retail videos that demonstrate products or give overviews are important as well, according to the study. Consumers need these videos to make the decision whether or not to buy, and if they have as much influence as has been noted above, then they are an important part of leading to a sale. In gaining conversions, it seems that these types of videos act as a sort of middle man, and quite an important one.

Something that is becoming more and more evident as the days pass is that the desktop version of Google is not seeing quite as much action as its mobile counterpart. The convenience of mobile search is being recognized quickly and by large numbers. So, it is because of this fact that we should start looking into mobile search; how it works, who is using it, and why. Thanks to a new report from Google and Nielsen called “Mobile Search Moments: Understanding How Mobile Drives Conversions” which takes data from more than 6,000 searches, we can gain quite a bit of insight into the way mobile device users are searching. In fact, there is about 43 pages worth of insight, so allow me to stick to a sort of summary

The report tells us that 77 percent of searches happen at home or at work, while only 17 percent of mobile searches happen on the go. This is particularly interesting because when I think mobile, I think of a device somebody uses because they cannot use their computer. It appears that this is less and less the case, and that people are just using mobile in place of desktop computers.

However, when it comes to mobile search related to shopping, users are most likely to do this type of searching while in a store. Actually, they are two times more likely to search with shopping related queries while in the store than they are while elsewhere.

Next come the numbers that everyone really cares about; conversions. According to the report from Google and Nielsen, 75 percent of searches on mobile devices caused users to take “follow-up actions,” or create conversions. Furthermore, the average mobile search triggered just about 2 follow-up actions. Also, the report tells us that 55 percent of said conversions happen in no longer than an hour.

As consumers increasingly turn to their mobile phones, it is critical for businesses to understand the range of “mobile conversions” that can occur, such as phone calls, store visits, or purchases on other devices.

The report is chock full of useful information for anyone interested in marketing through mobile search engines. Mobile search has become more popular among consumers without a doubt, and more marketers are spending money to get their ads in view of mobile searchers. It is an effective place for advertising, and will continue to grow in that direction.

Here are a few of the more important findings in the report;

• 22 percent of mobile searches take place between 8PM and midnight
• 81 percent of mobile searches are driven by speed and convenience
• During the study, 65 percent of respondents noticed mobile search ads
• People are more likely to notice ads while in-store
• 59 percent of people thought mobile ads were useful in their mobile searching