Everyone knows that the Facebook mobile app has been at the top of the list in every app market for a long time now. It is quite possibly the most popular app released on any mobile platform, and it is starting to seem like people are using the mobile platform more than they are browsing Facebook on their computers. Marketers realized this a while ago, and have started using Facebook mobile advertising options and services to their advantage. These services have worked quite well, mainly due to the high engagement with Facebook mobile and ultimately the immense traffic that Facebook sees every day.

Now, according to a few sources across the internet, Facebook is improving upon their mobile advertising services. This upgrade will allow marketers to target Facebook users based on what type of mobile device they use, be it Android, Apple, etc. Now, everyone knows how much the mobile OS a person uses can tell about buying habits and interests, so targeting based on this information could be quite effective.

The new mobile marketing feature on Facebook was apparently not a very big announcement, but rather Facebook made drew very little attention from it. TechCrunch explains it like so;

Facebook confirmed to me it quietly unlocked the new device and OS mobile ad placement options when it officially launched its new mobile app install ads two weeks ago. These ads let developers pay to show links to their App Store or Google Play apps in the Facebook mobile news feed. Facebook needed a way to make sure devs were reaching users on the devices they build apps for.

The company also states that the option, so far, only allows marketers to target either Apple iOS or Google Android. Microsoft, Blackberry, and any other competitors have not been added into the equation quite yet. Also, Facebook has not figured out a way to allow marketers to target specific devices from either OS, aside from a differentiation between iPhones, iPods and iPads. The service, though still young and possibly underdeveloped, will prove to be a very effective tool for marketers.

Here is TechCrunch’s opinion on Facebook’s reasoning behind the release of this upgrade;

Facebook is desperate to become a mobile advertising company. It’s got the data to do it, luckily. It just needs to find more creative ways like this that turn what it knows about us into reasons businesses should pay.

I agree with this statement quite heavily. For a long time now we have seen Facebook’s focus on their mobile platform, apparently feeling quite comfortable with their desktop marketing efforts, which started off a bit shaky. Since the big boom of mobile popularity occurred, Facebook has been a thing for mobile phones, and realizing that most of their users were going mobile, Facebook has felt that they need to pick up the slack that is left behind on their desktop network. So, along with the various other mobile marketing services that they have created in past months, this new upgrade will allow them to become a step closer to their mobile advertising goals.

Acquinity Interactive, has started calling partners telling them that they are immediately shutting down all “promotional” type offers, often called e-mail and zip submit offers. This comes as a surprise to many people, as they were seen as the leaders in the space for many years – and because of that, people were talking this past week about what prompted them to make this seemingly sudden change.

PMI had the opportunity to speak with Garry Jonas, the CEO and Co-Founder of Acquinity and former CEO of ModernAd Media, LLC, and he was able to clarify the situation. Despite all the rumors, according to him, since he started Acquinity in 2011, they have been in process of leaving the space completely following Modern Ad’s transfer of its registration path business to Indian company RevenuePath.  Jonas told us “some within the industry were under a impressionism that Acquinity was the operator of the free gift path when Acquinity only provided traffic to the Indian company and in exchange, the Indian company ran Acquinity’s offers”.

“I wish this transition would have come earlier,” Jonas told us,” but there was so much on our plate at the time.” He mentioned that they have been working in the last year or so on properties such as Political.com, BSaving.com, and Sweepstakes.com, which according to him are much more “consumer friendly.”

Jonas was very honest about this business model, saying “it is not a consumer friendly experience”.  He points out that he “has reason to believe that the regulatory agencies are fed-up with the free gift space” and that inevitably action may be taken against companies that continue to do business in this space.

Their new focus, BSaving.com, Political.com and Sweeptsakes.com all provide long term relationships with the consumers and allow them to market to them long term and provide more value to both the consumer and Acquinity’s advertisers.  He believes this traffic is cleaner, more lucrative and long lasting – and because of their experience in buying media, driving traffic, and being innovative, they will be able to make huge inroads into the market.

Small and medium businesses have always had a different way of marketing than the country’s larger businesses have, simply because of the huge differences between them. However now, small and medium businesses are starting to adopt some of the methods of big businesses, when it comes to marketing. EMarketer recently released an article detailing the fact that small and medium sized businesses are, “adopting a multichannel approach.” Here is how eMarketer explains the situation;

Today’s small and medium-sized businesses are well aware that, in the modern marketplace, to ignore digital channels is to be left out in the cold. This growing certainty is reflected in data from a Q3 2012 survey of 300 SMBs in the US conducted by market researcher BIA/Kelsey, which found that 40% of small and midsized firms planned to increase their digital spending budget within the next 12 months. In sharp contrast, a mere 3.7% said they planned to decrease digital budgets.

Along with the 40% of small and medium businesses who planned on increasing their digital ad spending, 48% said that they were going to maintain the amount they spend, which leads me to believe that there are quite a few of these businesses that had already started spending on digital marketing prior to the survey.

The real point to eMarketer’s article, though, was to tell how small businesses have started to expand their digital marketing efforts. These businesses have started to branch out to many different digital channels, allowing them more effective marketing in the digital world. In fact, a chart from eMarketer’s article shows the growth of small businesses’ adoption of multiple channels from 2007 to the present. In 2007, the average number of media channels used by small and medium businesses for advertising was 3.0. Since then, a significant growth has occurred, as in 2012 the average number of media channels used by SMBs for ads is at 5.8.

The favorite media channel of these small and medium businesses comes to no surprise to me, as I’m sure it will not to you. A total of 52% of respondents said that they use Facebook to achieve their marketing needs. This percentage is more than those respondents who answered with newspapers, community sponsorships, email marketing, Google places, video, and online banners. As anyone who has a Facebook page can see, small businesses are starting to flood news feeds with promotions and advertisements, bringing them into a digital marketing world which they, for a long time, were reluctant to join.

There have, of course, been many businesses that embraced digital marketing from the beginning, and those small and medium businesses have always known the success that digital channels can bring. It was not until recent years, however, that digital marketing became absolutely essential to running a successful business, big or small. It is good to see that small businesses are grabbing hold of digital channels, but according to eMarketer there are still many that have not grasped mobile marketing yet. Of course, with time, small and medium businesses will see the potential of mobile and join in on that as well.

Change is something that all marketers are familiar with. The state of certain marketing platforms, tactics, and results are constantly changing, so it is often difficult to keep up and stay afloat. The constant change causes marketers to become confused, often wondering if what seems like the right move today, will still be a smart move a few months from now. However, today is the day for something that has not and does not seem to be changing in mobile marketing. It is information that marketers can rely upon, knowing that it has not budged in quite some time. Apple’s success in serving mobile ads has, in the past, trumped Google’s Android, and according to a report from Opera, it still is.

Opera Software, the company behind the relatively famous Opera internet browser, releases a quarterly report entitled, “The State of Mobile Advertising.” Just on Friday, the company released its report for Q3 of this year. In it, the company revealed that Apple still leads the way in mobile ads with a significantly higher eCPM than Google’s Android.

Here is a section from their highlights page:

iOS continues to deliver the highest eCPM

This quarter, iOS led the pack again with a $1.64 eCPM with iPad and iPhone garnering $4.42 and $1.48 eCPMs respectively. Android slipped down in the rankings with $0.88, well below RIM at $1.06.

For a long time I though Google Android to be the more successful of the two battling platforms when it came to mobile marketing. Sure Android gets the most use from consumers, and people tend to favor Android as their mobile platform, but Apple has been doing some amazing things in the way of mobile advertising that Google just has not been doing. This is what has led to their $0.76 higher eCPM.

Android will still be ahead for a long time in the actual smartphone market, but it seems that Apple has developed a significant lead in actual mobile advertising and eCPM. This slightly changes my opinion on who leads the way in the mobile market, as it probably does for many others.

The rest of Opera’s report covers things like what brings in the most ad revenue and, “App vs. Web.” Here is another highlight from the report regarding sports and their impact in mobile marketing.

Sports became the no. 1 category for mobile ad revenue, and mobile sites and apps in the Music, Video & Media category also grew this quarter, with both capturing 30% of overall revenue, making them the highest earners. However, Business, Finance & Investing properties consistently generate more revenue per impression than any other category.

I never knew about Opera’s quarterly report, which now makes me feel a bit behind on my reading. Regardless, it provides a lot of substantial information that marketers can use, such as this fact that sports are apparently the new “in” thing for advertising. Clearly, the more interesting data here is that regarding Apple’s domination of the mobile ad game, though, and the rest is simply a bonus.

There was something that I noticed that I decided to read up on recently, and that is Twitter’s testing of these new “Like” and “Star” buttons. In my mind, I could see no way for Twitter to make any additions to their social platform, but with the testing of these new buttons, I wondered what they could be planning. Could they possibly be some new buttons that could be used for marketing purposes, much like the “Want” and “Collect” buttons on Facebook that were recently reported? Another option is that these new buttons being tested are simply a way for Twitter to change things up and keep its users guessing.

The new testing of these buttons was first reported by The Next Web. In their article they give an example of what these new features being tested look like, if you have not seem them yourself yet. Everything looks normal in the line of buttons at the bottom of each tweet; Expand is there, Reply is there, Retweet is there, but then when we get to where the famous Favorite button usually is, the word Like is there next to the little star emblem instead.

As for the Star button, it simply appears in the top right corner of each Tweet. You either leave it as it is, or click it and mark it as starred. It really has me wondering why exactly they would be testing something new when the Favorite option, which has been with them since very near the beginning of the network, is working so well right now. The Favorite button has been in itself a favorite of most Twitter users, so why change it?

Here’s an excerpt from the TNW article,

Of note, the Star terminology is what fledgeling social platform App.net has been using for its ‘favorite’ feature. From what we’ve heard, the Favorites feature on Twitter has been used quite literally billions of times.

So, if Favorites are being used by users “billions of times,” then why make any changes? It could be for the purpose of further monetization of the network, similar to what Facebook has done with their Likes and Sponsored Stories. If this is the purpose of these new buttons, then it will be interesting to see what kind of results they can bring in. They would definitely allow marketers to more effectively use Twitter for advertising, and would show the company’s desire to keep up with companies like Facebook.

However, if the reason for these buttons is for something new or something to replace the Favorite button even, it might be a bad choice. People clearly enjoy the Favorite button, and it gives Twitter a unique way for its users to engage as they would with a Like on Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and Tumblr. All of these sites use the same basic mode of engagement, even using the same word. Twitter has veered away from the pack and done its own thing, which users have responded to well. If they add a Like as well, what makes them stand out?

Apparently, TNW couldn’t get any answers from Twitter on the matter, so it seems that for now we’ll just have to wonder.

In the past few months, Pinterest has been quietly lurking in the background of all the big news that has been making headlines. Sure, the company has been talked about here and there, but the rate at which it is growing is what should really be talked about. Pinterest has been rapidly increasing in success, due to some of their recent changes and improvements. It may not be one of the more famous social networks in marketing eyes, but I have a feeling that it will be there soon, especially considering how far it has already come in recent months. I suppose Pinterest is coming of age.

To prove that the company is rapidly growing, take a look at comScore’s Top 50 U.S. Web Properties for September 2012. Yes, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, and AOL still hold the Top 5 positions, just as they did in August. But take a look at number 50 on the list. Pinterest has finally made its way onto the list of the top websites in this country, based on unique visitors. Pinterest caught the number 50 spot with their impressive 25.3 million unique user count. Although they are not even close to the almighty social network Facebook, they are right on the heels of some of today’s more famous networks.

They only trail Myspace, which is in the 47^th spot, by just over 700,000 users, which is proving to Pinterest as not that hard to acquire. Also, the company follows relatively close behind Instagram at number 44, and Tumblr at number 42. Pinterest is still a relatively new network, and getting this far in such a short time is definitely impressive. It could also be good news to marketers, since many have been considering how they could use the network lately after finding out about its rapid growth.

What exactly is it that has been making Pinterest grow like a weed though? Well, recently Pinterest announced that invitations were no longer needed in order to register on the website. One can only assume that that led to an explosive boost in traffic. Not only that, but the company has also been making extensive upgrades to their mobile app, which has also brought them more traffic. So, it seems that the company has been doing everything right in the way of gaining traffic. Eventually, all of this newfound regular traffic will lead to more interest from marketers.

The fact is, Pinterest has become one of the next big things on the web. Accroding to the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, about 12 percent of all people who use the internet are using Pinterest. For number 50 on the Top 50 list, that is a pretty significant percentage of all users. Pinterest will probably continue to grow just as rapidly as it has been for some time, and when it slows down it won’t be by much.

Today, the Content Marketing Institute, a company that teaches marketers about effective use of media channels among other things, released some results from a research report that they, themselves conducted. They have called it, “B2B Content Marketing: 2013 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends—North America,” and it covers most of the on-goings with the use of content marketing by B2B marketers. The report is very relevant of course, because a majority of B2B marketers in the world have adopted content marketing as one of their main tactics. With the help of this report, CMI hopes to help these marketers more effectively get results.

The report tells us right away that B2B content marketers have begun to expand their horizons, using 12 tactics on average. “Unlike last year, where articles reigned supreme, social media (excluding blogs) was reported to be the most popular content marketing tactic, with an adoption rate of 87 percent.” This is no surprise, as social media constantly proves that it is still growing, and will not be stopping anytime soon. However, even though they may no longer be on top, articles still came in a close second place with an adoption rate of 83%, and enewsletters were third with an adoption rate of 78%.

The types of tactics that B2B content marketers are using has not changed, aside from a few being added to the list. However, how much these B2B marketers are spending has changed since CMI’s last report.

On average, B2B marketers are spending 33 percent of their marketing budgets on content marketing, which is up from 26 percent last year. Moreover, the majority (54 percent) say they will increase their content marketing spending in the next 12 months.

As more and more B2B marketers accept content marketing as their most effective marketing method, spending is bound to increase as it has. However, a significant point made in the CMI report is that a growing number of B2B content marketers are starting to lose confidence in their content marketing efforts, wondering if their efforts will lead to any sort of success at all.  CMI set up a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 representing “Not At All Effective,” and 5 representing “Very Effective.” The largest percentage, 45 percent, of respondents rated their effectiveness at a 3. 15% rated the effectiveness of their organization’s use of content marketing at a 2, and 2% at a 1. Overall, that is 62% of B2B content marketers who are on the fence about their content marketing efforts.

Even though marketers are using more tactics, they are still unclear about how effective they are — a trend that is similar to what we saw last year.

Another chart that CMI provides shows us that 67% of B2B content marketers still consider in-person marketing events to be the most effective tactic, showing little confidence in content marketing tactics. It seems like irony to me; when the numbers show growth in content marketing, the B2B marketers show that they are continuing to lose confidence in their tactics all together.