Small Businesses Prefer LinkedIn for Social Marketing Efforts

2013-02-01

It is safe to say that the most attention in digital marketing today is focused at social media, and it is easy to understand why. However, what we rarely hear about is how today’s big social media boom has affected the country’s smaller businesses and how small business owners are using the tools to their advantage. Small businesses need much different tools for their marketing efforts than do big businesses, which shows that what may be the best social network for big businesses may be very different from what may be the best for small businesses. In a recent study performed by the Wall Street Journal, it appears that small businesses are in fact less excited about some of today’s most popular social networks than many would expect.

The article from the Wall Street Journal reports the results of a survey of 835 small business owners, asking which of today’s most popular social networks had the most potential for helping their companies with their marketing needs. Going in, one would think that Facebook and Twitter would be at the top of the list for these small business owners, but in fact Twitter showed the lowest results. Only about 3% of small business owners chose Twitter as their best choice. After that, only 14% of small business owners chose Facebook as their best option. Regardless of the success of video marketing today, only 16% of small business owners chose YouTube as the social platform that they found most useful.

As it turns out, the Wall Street Journal’s survey resulted in 41% of small businesses choosing LinkedIn, widely known for being a business networking site. The highest percentage of small businesses thought that LinkedIn could help them in their marketing efforts, while LinkedIn certainly is not the top choice for most other marketers and big businesses.

From the Wall Street Journal,

Twitter said nearly a year ago that it would begin to let small businesses buy ads on the service, to circulate their Twitter messages more prominently or to targeted groups of Twitter users. Previously, Twitter allowed only larger companies to buy ads on the service. But it acknowledges that it has moved slowly with the small-business ad service to make sure it’s just right. The ad service remains in a test mode with a selected group of clients.

It seems that despite the efforts that Twitter has put forward as a company, to better accommodate small businesses in their marketing campaigns, these small businesses still feel that the network is not quite their best option. In trying to find out why LinkedIn was the best choice, one small online business owner stated simply that the network was the highest driver of traffic, and that revenue driven on the web has increased incredibly. Twitter and Facebook will continue to be very popular among most marketers, of course, but being that small businesses require much different tools, LinkedIn may just be the right choice for small business owners. These results show that there are other options in social marketing, and that Facebook and Twitter are not the only options.

BrightRoll Inc. vs. YouTube Top Video Ads

Pesach Lattin

2013-02-01

When people think video they think YouTube, and since Google attained YouTube as a web property of its own, it has gained a spot at the top of yet another platform market. Some would say that Google is the master of web marketing, covering all bases and creating success in each of them. YouTube as a company is not new to video advertising, and has always been the go to answer for marketing looking to start video campaigns. However, according to comScore and Bloomberg, another company has come up as a pretty worthy competitor, successfully showing YouTube and Google that they are not the only ones that can play the video game well.

In reporting results from comScore research, Bloomberg states that Brightroll Inc., a company that assists marketers in placing ads on websites across the internet, has taken Google’s place in the video market. That is of course, only when ranked by number of online videos served, but for a small company such as this to compete so closely with Google is a feat.

Google makes money from selling slots for commercials that run before users view clips on YouTube, which it owns and operates. BrightRoll matches marketers to competing websites, and takes a cut. That has helped it to siphon advertisers away from Google in a market that, according to AccuStream Research, jumped 52 percent last year as more people watch television and movie programming online.

The online video market is a $7.6 billion market that has gotten larger and larger over the past few years, and marketers know that video marketing is a very important part of a successful digital advertising campaign.

Perhaps the reason for BrightRoll Inc.’s incredible success over Google comes from the methods that each company offers for marketers. As we see time and time again, Google’s video marketing focuses almost entirely on YouTube, and the sale of advertising spots on the video sharing network. This has worked impressively well for Google, but BrightRoll Inc.’s methods seem to be preferred. This company offers marketers more traditional techniques. They find a website looking to run ads, then find companies looking for websites to run ads on, and match them with one another. BrightRoll Inc.’s revenue comes from a cut of the deal made between the two.

For two out of these last three months, BrightRoll Inc. has trumped Google’s numbers as far as video ads served.

After trailing BrightRoll in October and November, Google took back the lead in December by serving 2 billion video ads on personal computers in the U.S., versus 1.83 billion for BrightRoll, ComScore said. While Google delivered more ads, BrightRoll’s network of video providers reached a larger part of the population, at 43 percent, compared with Google’s 32 percent in December. ComScore’s data excludes some video ads that reach Google’s sites from third-party networks, including BrightRoll.

I think it is obvious that this lead may not be lasting very long, but I think we can expect a close race for some time to come. BrightRoll Inc. has been relatively well known for a while now, but now that it is neck-and-neck with Google, it may just gain a bit more notoriety among video marketers.

This Facebook Feature Works Best

Pesach Lattin

2013-01-30

Advertising with Facebook allows marketers many options for placement as well as many ways to reach consumers in the online Facebook community. Constantly, the company releases new tools and techniques, so choosing the very best one can make for a bit of a confusing experience. However, according to a recent study, there is really only one form of Facebook marketing that brings marketers the results that they really want. With social marketing being such a huge industry these days, marketers need all the help they can get to make sure that their social efforts are at the best they can be. Therefore, this new study from Nanigans reveals where these marketers should be focusing their attention, when it comes to Facebook.

The results of the Nanigans survey have been reported by Inside Facebook, and they show that the best method for marketing with Facebook today is placing advertisements directly in the News Feed. With Page Post advertisements, marketers are able to put their social marketing content directly in front of consumers’ faces in the place where their attention is focused the most. However, possibly the most important fact is that the study shows Page Post ads as being able to generate a 14 percent higher return on investment than the marketplace ads that used to be the talk of the town in the Facebook marketing community.

There have been plenty of other studies showing the success of Page Post ads, however most of these studies did not compare them to Marketplace ads, but instead to Sponsored Stories. Since Sponsored Stories are only available to be shown to friends of users that connect with the advertiser and can only lead to a Facebook destination, Nanigans chose to compare to Marketplace ads which can lead to locations that are off of Facebook and that can be targeted to any given Facebook user.

In doing their research in such a way, here are a few things that Nanigans found in their study as reported by Inside Facebook.

Nanigans found 45 times higher clickthrough rates and 68 percent lower costs per click with Page Post Ads versus Marketplace. Nanigans says the average CPC ranged between $0.14 and $0.26. The cost per action — with actions being registering for the retailer’s site — was 48 percent lower with the Page Post Ads in the feed.

In comparing Page Post ad performance on desktop to the performance on mobile, the study showed that mobile Page Post ads brought in CTRs that were 1.9 times higher than those on desktop. Page Post ads had around 46 percent lower CPCs as well, which means that all of the stress that is put on mobile optimization of web sites is even more justified.

Even though there really has not been anyone that has had any doubt that Page Post ads bring in success, we can now be sure that they are the best option. Not only do they perform the best, but they are also one of the cheapest ways to advertise on social media, which is always an important consideration.

80% of Social Media Will Fail

Pesach Lattin

2013-01-30

In most cases, the majority of what you will find on the web regarding digital marketing news will contain tips, data, and good recommendations for marketers that have just begun or for those with years of experience. However, as we have all learned by now from a life of learning the news; not all news is good news. Today, Gartner has released some information based on predictions of their own that says that marketers may be in trouble when it comes to their social efforts. It seems that, from Gartner’s point of view, the social efforts that marketers and businesses are putting forth are not going to work quite so well in the near future.

The Gartner results, as they have been reported by MyCustomer.com, businesses should prepare for some issues if social efforts continue in the fashion that we see today. The company says that social media adoption by businesses for marketing will of course continue for some time, and that they will become even more of a widely used digital marketing tool than they are today. As far as marketing on the web goes, social media will eventually become the number one choice among most marketers, which has already started to occur in large numbers.

So what’s the issue here? Well, Gartner believes that in the next few years as the amount of focus on social media rises, success with social media will decrease. The company estimated that through the year 2015, about 80% of all business efforts on social media will not succeed in gaining the “intended benefits.” They say that this will be due to an overemphasis on today’s technology as well as neglectful leadership of social marketing efforts. This is an understandable prediction, because when anything gets too large, it becomes incredibly difficult to properly maintain.

The MyCustomer.com article quotes Carol Rozwell, the VP at Gartner in stating;

Businesses need to realize that social initiatives are different from previous technology deployments. Traditional technology rollouts, such as ERP or CRM, followed a ‘push’ paradigm.

Workers were trained on an app and were then expected to use it. In contrast, social initiatives require a ‘pull’ approach, one that engages workers and offers them a significantly better way to work. In most cases, they can’t be forced to use social apps, they must opt-in.

There is too much focus on content and technology, and not enough focus on leadership and relationships. Leaders need to develop a social business strategy that makes sense for the organization and tackle the tough organizational change work head on and early on. Successful social business initiatives require leadership and behavioral changes.

If we can really expect the success of social media to decrease so much in such a short amount of time seems a bit to determine. With the success that social media brings in today, it is hard to see such a decline within a few short years. Either way, here are a few other key highlights from Gartner’s predictions.

By 2016, 50% of large organizations will have internal Facebook-like social networks, and that 30% of these will be considered as essential as email and telephones are today.
In 2017, the majority of all new user-facing applications will exhibit gamified-social-mobile fusion.

YouTube to Test Paid Subscriptions

Pesach Lattin

2013-01-30

There are plenty of places for marketers to look when they present interest in starting a video marketing campaign, but most commonly we see marketers turning to YouTube for video marketing solutions. This is mainly because the site sort of combines video marketing with social, and allows marketers to reach such a grand audience. However, what if in some way YouTube did something that decreased the amount of marketing that takes place on their video sharing network, such as revealing a way for users to get rid of ads all together? Well, although that will not be happening anytime in the near, or even distant future, YouTube is now trying out a new idea that could hurt marketers in a few ways.

According to Ad Age, YouTube has decided that they will begin testing out paid subscriptions for users on their site. With people subscribing to popular channels more than ever these days, it seems that YouTube has found another way to bring in revenue for the site.

YouTube is treating paid subscriptions as an experiment. much like video rentals when it began in 2010. The initial group of channels will be small, likely about 25 at the outset. The revenue split from subscriptions is expected to be similar to the 45-55 split that is common for ads on YouTube. Partners will also have the option to include ads in their pay channels, but its unclear what form those will take.

Having users pay upwards of $1 to $5 per month, YouTube hopes to increase their revenue by what would be quite a lot, if the idea were taken well by these users.

Now, what exactly can we expect from YouTube users as a reaction to this new idea that is to be tested out? Well, I am sure that it is no surprise that most of the responses have been negative. For example, take a look at this reaction from @MadMaxde as a response to a CNet article reporting YouTube’s new endeavors.

I simply said that if youtube is planning on turning to a subscription base that I would not pander into it. They have been a free use website for many years (at least for entertainment purposes, I don’t have a channel myself), and have made huge amounts of revenue from the ads plastered all over the website. This subscription model looks to be a way for them to squeeze out more revenue from the individuals that are actually taking their time to make meaningful content. If you would like to start paying for all these videos that have been FREE for so many years be my guest. I, however, do not plan on supporting youtube as they bleed the community dry.

If it is not easy to see just how this could affect marketers, it is because there is only a chance that it will. There is reason to believe that if YouTube does decide to make these paid subscriptions a more widespread thing, some of the more popular channels on the site will opt in to have their channels be paid for by users. Also, it is rumored that those people who run these popular channels will have to make a choice between ads or paid subscriptions. There is a good chance that YouTube will not make people pay for subscriptions and then continue to throw ads at users on the channels that they have paid for. So, advertisers may be out of luck when it comes to advertising with the more popular channels on YouTube, but we will just have to wait and see what the next move from YouTube actually turns out to be.

Google+ Doing Better than Thought?

Pesach Lattin

2013-01-29

In the realm of social media that is rapidly expanding across the World Wide Web, there is one thing that everyone thinks that they know for sure. The common belief around the web is that Google Plus is in no way the success that Google thought it would be. It has often been referred to as a “ghost town” and it is known for having a very small user base and very little potential for marketers. These are all the ideas that have been spread to marketers, and it has caused for very little interest to be put into Google Plus, compared to networks like Facebook or Twitter. However, the truth seems to be just the opposite, according to a recent report from GlobalWebIndex, a multi-platform market research company.

The report lays out in a chart the world’s social platform active usage for the final quarter of 2012, and as anyone could have expected, Facebook has an incredibly strong lead. Facebook’s active user base contained about 52%-53% of global internet users. The surprise came from the second place spot, which hosted Google Plus. Surely, no one expected Google Plus to be number two in active user base, but the network boasted about 25% of global internet users. After that of course came YouTube and Twitter, with YouTube’s active user base containing about 22% of global internet users, and Twitter containing just under that.

Google+, who despite being branded a failure or ghost town by large portions of the media, grew in terms of active usage by 27% to 343m users to become the number 2 social platform. Interestingly for Google, YouTube (not previously tracked by us as a social platform) comes in at number 3, demonstrating the immense opportunity of linking Google’s services through the G+ social layer. This is also a key indication of why Google+ integrated with the Google product set is so key to the future of search and the internet. We’ve got more coming on Google+ later this week as well.

Google Plus’s active user numbers seem to reflect any interaction with the network, which includes using things like Gmail or other Google services. Any time a user logs into any of Google’s services, they log into Google+ essentially. Therefore, their numbers may not even reflect usage of social media network itself. Either way, usage of Google Plus is up, and it shows that it is absolutely not true when you hear otherwise.

Between Q2 of 2012 and Q4 of 2012 which really is not a long time in the grand scheme of things, Google’s active user numbers increased by around 27%. Clearly, Google is doing something right in their social media efforts, and Google Plus may be more of an asset than people were originally led to believe. Or maybe not. Maybe these numbers are only the result of Google’s new social integration of all of their services, including Gmail. If that is that case, then maybe very little has changed for the social network itself, but numbers are being influenced by users simply logging into Google and not Google Plus. Whatever is the case, the numbers are exciting and Google Plus should at least be placed on marketers’ radars once again.

Yahoo’s Revenues Increase

Pesach Lattin

2013-01-29

Year after year, Yahoo has not left marketers with much news for excitement, and revenues from the company have not really been as impressive as some would like to see. A rise in the company’s revenues has not been seen in about four years, and people have begun to lose hope for finding success in doing business with Yahoo. However, as just about everyone on the planet knows, Marissa Mayer recently took a seat as the leader of all that is Yahoo, and everyone saw good things coming for the company alongside her. According to Yahoo’s recent release of Q4 2012 and Full Year 2012 results, the assumption that Mayer would bring more success to the company was completely accurate.

After four years of waiting, we finally saw Yahoo’s revenue boost 2% since Q4 of 2011. Although the increase is not insanely huge, it is very impressive compared to the few years prior. The company’s revenue hit about $1.35 billion in Q4 of 2012, and for the full year Yahoo’s revenue hit $4.99 billion. So, it seems that Yahoo will not be losing its spot as a top internet company any time soon, as revenue increases once again.

However, the company’s profits slipped by 22% since Q4 of 2011, which is not good news for Yahoo. Profit for the quarter only reached $190 million, but there is good news in this for the company. Wall Street estimated a much lower number than Yahoo actually brought in in profit, therefore causing the company’s stock price to rise 4%.

The revenue was up 2% year-over-year at $1.35 billion for the fourth quarter and $4.99 billion for the 2012 year. Yahoo’s profits slipped by 22% year-over-year, showing $190 million for the final quarter. This did, however, beat Wall Street estimates, and Yahoo’s stock price is now up almost 4% in after-hours trading.

Yahoo’s relatively new CEO Marissa Mayer made the following statement for the release of these revenue results.

I’m proud of Yahoo!’s 2012 and fourth quarter results. In 2012, Yahoo! exhibited revenue growth for the first time in 4 years, with revenue up 2 percent year-over-year. During the quarter we made progress by growing our executive team, signing key partnerships including those with NBC Sports and CBS Television, and launching terrific mobile experiences for Yahoo! Mail and Flickr. At the same time, we achieved tremendous internal transformation in the culture, energy and execution of the Company.

Marketers can get excited about Yahoo’s search numbers, with the company showing an increase from Q4 2011 in paid clicks of about 11%. Also, the price-per-click decreased 2% in comparison to the quarter prior.

Certainly, Yahoo has been in a pretty large shadow for years now after Google’s complete domination, but the company still thrives. Marissa Mayer has clearly been doing some pretty diligent work since she took her seat as CEO, and the company’s numbers are looking up. We can probably expect good things to come in the future from Yahoo as they continue to grow.

Email Sticks Around as a Consumer Favorite

Pesach Lattin

2013-01-29

In email marketing, there are a lot of very fragile lines that marketers have to be careful not to cross, making for a very sensitive marketing platform. However, since it began too many marketers used email in all the wrong ways, and now consumers have reached the point where they often dread opening their inboxes to find a bunch of what appears to them to be the average, everyday spam. For this reason, some would think that email is in store for an ultimate downfall, as consumers begin to ignore efforts from marketers more and more. However, according to an article from ClickZ, which reports data from ExactTarget, a cross-channel interactive marketing provider which in the past dealt in email marketing, email marketing remains the top choice for those looking to spend their ad dollars on the web.

In the results being reported by ClickZ, we see that both marketers and consumers mark email as their first activity on the web for the day. For marketers, 76% said that email was priority one each day, and of consumers 69% said the same.

In the company’s results summary, they included the following highlights;

Email

45 percent of marketers prefer to interact with brands on email compared to 36 percent of consumers with a smartphone, and 49 percent of consumers who do not own a smartphone
93 percent of marketers and 49 percent of consumers have made a purchase as a direct result of an email marketing message
93 percent of consumers subscribe to at least one brand’s email, remaining consistent compared to 2010

The company states in their report,

Marketers must keep in mind that they do just about everything online more than the average consumer, and they must be careful not to apply their professional behaviors to consumers as a whole.

The report also shows that a quarter of marketers feel that brands should be investing more time and effort into email, and a third of consumers feel the same way. When asked the same questions about social media, only about 21% of marketers wanted more investment in Facebook and only 12% of marketers wanted more investment in Twitter. As for consumers, only 22% wanted more investment in Facebook and 5% wanted more for Twitter.

Although there are countless new ways for marketers to reach online consumers, with even more being released every day, consumers and marketers still love the way email marketing works. It is quick, simple, and allows a lot of room for creative technique. Email has always brought in great performance numbers for marketers, and it makes viewing ads an easier and more personal experience for consumers. So, it is easy to see why such interest in email marketing still exists. People have liked the platform from the get-go, and signs point to email continuing to grow in the marketing world. Marketers simply need to learn better techniques for approaching email marketing campaigns in order to better reach the customer and have their efforts not be ignored.

Murray Newlands Drinks and Flies

Murray Newlands

2013-01-29

Ever wonder what Murray Newlands does for fun? Well, when in Vegas he was at the Total Marketing Systems party, which consisted of drinking and being shoved into a small plane in freezing weather and being flown over Las Vegas. The flight started with 4 passengers, but with all the new junk CPA networks popping up, it landed missing one passenger.

Exclusive Offers is How to Work CPA

Murray Newlands

2013-01-29

Sean Wagner of Infinite Traffic makes it clear in this interview on PMI-TV that exclusive offers are where it’s at. While it’s not that in-depth, it’s always good to hear from those in the industry that are doing new things. Additionally, he points out why their traffic works, and how it ensures that affiliates are getting the best offers and the clients are happy. He must be doing something right, because his network came out of nowhere to grow fast and made a name for itself very fast.

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AdBrite is Dead

Pesach Lattin

2013-01-28

AdBrite, which was originally founded by “FuckedCompany” legend Philip Kaplan aka “Pud” in 2002 has finally called it quits. Despite claiming to be the largest independent ad exchange and at one time being seen as a serious competitor to Google Adwords, it seems that they were unable to make enough money or sell the company to potential buyers. They are now positioning themselves to sell the assets and perhaps run away with as much cool AdBrite branded pens as possible.

The demise of AdBrite is indeed strange, because the growing marketplace of exchanges, real time bidding platforms still seems to be very hot right now, and anyone who has a technology that actually works seems to be able to not only find investors but easily find people to buy it. The idea that no one would want to buy the company, especially with almost no news about potential buyers is just weird to me.

As many people in the industry knew, AdBrite most likely exaggerated their position in the marketplace in the last few years more than just a little bit. While in 2008, Comscore listed them in the top 5 marketplaces, it was clear that as Comscore became more and more stringent about their rankings, that they were losing rankings fast. In fact, an August 2012 ComScore report didn’t even show it in the top 20 ad ecosystems. This probably was the nail in the coffin that they didn’t need.

An Insider basically pointed out to me that the AdBrite system was not only outdated, but the quality of the traffic was beyond horrendous. Despite claiming to be fully transparent, it seems that the company, desperate to make money was buying junk traffic and attempting to sell it at highly inflated prices. Other media buyers I spoke to told me that any buys they ever tried, ended up in being completely fraudulent and they didn’t believe that any of the traffic was going anywhere they claimed, and more often than not, going to other exchanges.

Is this a bad sign for other exchanges and marketplaces, or was AdBrite just doing it wrong? I’m curious what you think about AdBrite, and if there are other junk exchanges that will be going out of business?

Facebook Helps Bring in the Likes With New Page Recommendations Bar

Pesach Lattin

2013-01-28

A new post from Inside Facebook shows yet another change to Facebook’s Pages platform that marketers can use to their advantage. The new module that has appeared within Facebook Pages will allow marketers to use other companies’ and brands’ Pages to their advantage. It seems to be yet another way that Facebook is interconnecting people and businesses along with businesses and businesses, making for the ultimate social networking web. Facebook is making every possible social media relationship available to the public and customizable for users and Facebook marketers alike. The Like button represented an incredible breakthrough in the way of social marketing and online presence, and the new module that Facebook has released into the world recently, brings more power to the button on Page timelines.

Now, upon a user’s clicking of the Like button on a company, business, or brand page, the new module will show recommendations of Pages that a user may also want to Like. These recommendations will appear directly below the cover image and Page title, showing about eight Page recommendations at a time. For example, upon learning of this new module from Facebook, I went to the Page of Wholly Cannoli, a small, local café in Worcester, Massachusetts and hit the Like button. Upon clicking, the recommendations appeared, listing other cafés along with other local Worcester businesses. Also, upon Liking the Facebook Page of Guitar Center, a larger and more popular music store, brand Pages like Gibson, Jim Dunlop, and Ibanez appeared in the recommendations. Facebook lists recommendations for Pages that are most similar to the Page being Liked. When a user hovers over one of these recommendations, the famous thumbs up symbol appears, and users are given the option to Like the Page being recommended straight from the Page of the original business.

Facebook will show pages from a similar category, whether it’s local pages, entertainment or others, however this does not seem to be appearing on all pages. It should also be noted that these are not paid placements. Facebook makes these recommendations organically based on location, category and other pages that fans of one page also Like.

It seems there is no way for marketers to influence when and where their Pages show up in the new recommendations module. However, the new Pages You Might Like function allows those businesses that have a Facebook presence to reach out to users that Like competitors and businesses that are in some way similar. Essentially, it is just a way for Facebook to help Page owners in making their names seen more often and to bring in more Likes for Pages.

Inside Facebook mentions the possibility of this module taking engagement away from Pages, as users focus more on recommended Pages. They point out how frustrating it would be for users to visit your Page and end up Liking that of a main competitor in the industry. However, this same feature will appear on most Pages, so the balance of engagement distribution exists. Although it is similar to recommendations of Pages in the side bar of Facebook, this new module will better catch user attention.

Networks Need to Be 100% Transparent

Murray Newlands

2013-01-28

Scott Yamano, the CEO of Dedictated Media and CPADNA talks briefly with Murray Newlands at Affiliate Summit West 2013 about their CPA network, and how they have entered the performance marketing game differently than other networks. Dedicated Media is already one of the top display networks in the world, but their newest addition CPADNA is doing things a bit differently than other networks: they have unparalled visibility, so that their major clients know exactly where they are running, how they are running and what to expect.

Facebook Takes #1 for Mobile Apps in 2012, Google Maps Struggles

Pesach Lattin

2013-01-27

It will not be long now before people start asking the question; “Is anyone using a PC anymore?” Of course that seems a bit of an exaggeration, and it very well may be, but mobile is showing absolutely no signs of slowing down its takeover. Mobile has given marketers countless new ways to advertise, and it is mobile that is on everyone’s mind these days in place of the older, more experience desktop PC platforms that have been used for years. Using Facebook as an example of the evolution of digital consumer activity is a great way to gauge just how mobile is making a change in today’s digital marketing climate.

In a recent comScore report, we are told that Facebook hit the top spot for mobile apps in 2012, in terms of consumer audience. It stole the spot as number one from Google Maps sometime around September or October of 2012.

Now, comScore states that Facebook’s overall success is not the only reason that the network’s app took such an impressive lead for the last part of the year. The company states that Apple Maps is also partially responsible, as the app caused a great decline in Google Maps usage near the end of the year when it replaced Google as the Maps application on iOS 6. However, Google Maps did show clearly evident signs of climbing back up during the last couple of months of the year, therefore making it safe to say that the battle for number one will be intense in 2013.

As for Facebook and the reasons for its leading the charts, comScore writes;

In addition to owning the top app audience ranking, Facebook has consistently ranked #1 in terms of mobile app engagement. Their app currently accounts for 23% of time spent on apps, while sister app Instagram owns another 3% of the market. Various Google apps combine to account for 10% of time spent, with Gmail owning the highest individual share at 3%. These two leading web companies combine for more than 1 out of every 3 minutes spent on mobile apps.

Therefore, as many already knew, Facebook is not only number one for consumers and everyday internet users, but it is number one for marketers as well. The network’s mobile app brings in the best engagement of any app, allowing marketers the best results. So, yes, Facebook has a leg up in the competition as far as things stand right now.

However, comScore still believes that the mobile supremacy competition will absolutely be heated for 2013, with Google Maps coming back to their former glory. Maybe so, but it seems that it will be hard to beat out the engagement numbers that Facebook presents currently. Either way, Facebook and Google now lead the way in desktop internet marketing as well as mobile, and the companies cannot be stopped. They are each other’s only real competition these days, and their ongoing battle is always interesting to hear about.

2013 will present an interesting dynamic as Google and Facebook wrestle for app supremacy, while other media properties look to carve out a niche or establish a more prominent position. Will Twitter, Amazon or eBay find their way into the top 10 apps this year? Will engagement on the Netflix app skyrocket as people become more comfortable viewing video on their phones? What will be the next Instagram to come out of nowhere to build an audience of tens of millions in a few short months?

UrbanObserver

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Small Businesses Prefer LinkedIn for Social Marketing Efforts

BrightRoll Inc. vs. YouTube Top Video Ads

This Facebook Feature Works Best

80% of Social Media Will Fail

YouTube to Test Paid Subscriptions

Google+ Doing Better than Thought?

Yahoo’s Revenues Increase

Email Sticks Around as a Consumer Favorite

Murray Newlands Drinks and Flies

Exclusive Offers is How to Work CPA

AdBrite is Dead

Facebook Helps Bring in the Likes With New Page Recommendations Bar

Networks Need to Be 100% Transparent

Facebook Takes #1 for Mobile Apps in 2012, Google Maps Struggles

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