Since Facebook has never had trouble driving traffic to their network, one of their main concerns has been driving traffic to apps that function with Facebook, be they on mobile platforms or on Facebook itself. Last week, they announced a new feature that they hope will drive more traffic to apps, essentially giving advertisers better results with them. The new option has to do with the sharing of content from various apps to a users Facebook page and their friends’ News Feeds. In their official announcement of the new feature, Facebook describes it as, “building user intent into the Open Graph.”

The Open Graph was built so that users could express their unique interests through the apps that they were using. Just like any new feature, improvements will be made shortly following release, and that is just what Facebook has done now. Now, when users share information about the apps they are using, it will appear as if they posted to Facebook themselves, instead of the automatic app posts that used to appear. Facebook calls this an “explicitly shared parameter.” Users will have more freedom in what they do and do not share when using apps connected to Facebook in some way.

Facebook wrote in their official announcement,

We expect this change will drive more traffic to apps that people use to proactively share content to Facebook and result in no significant impact for all other types of apps. Explicitly shared actions are eligible to appear as stand-alone stories in news feed and they’ll appear consistently on the left side of a person’s timeline. All other activity will continue to appear in ticker, trending units and aggregations in news feed, and in recently activity and aggregations on timeline.

These new sharing freedoms are optional for developers, and they apply more significantly to a few certain sharing situations. These include sharing a user generated photo, sharing location through checkins or routes, and sharing user generated messages. Things like purchases in games, songs that are listened to, or following another user are not things that should be labeled as explicitly shared, as these are smaller actions within apps that people normally wouldn’t share on their own anyway. The function of the feature is to essentially let users share app content and information in the exact way that they want to share it, giving them more freedom to express interests through these shares.

For advertisers, more traffic is always a good thing. If this new feature brings more traffic, then it could be a big help to advertisers. Also, with more freedom in sharing, their is bound to be more sharing of content from businesses or advertisers that doesn’t usually receive a lot of shares. For users, those posts that were intended to be prominently shared will have an increased level of visibility. The new explicit sharing option will help app developers, users, and advertisers all at once, making it a pretty good move for the developers at Facebook. For app developers, Facebook has detailed the steps for implementing the feature into apps in their announcement.

Many advertisers today have been looking into Pinterest and seeing what it may have to offer. It can definitely bring in some good results, especially now since the company is taking steps to increase traffic to the network. Before they recently opened their doors to the public instead of requiring invites for registration, traffic to the network was good, but it was not great. It happened too recently to measure just how much of an impact their decision to make the network public has made on their traffic flow, but they have not stopped there. The people at Pinterest are now taking more interest in their name in the mobile world.

Pinterest already had an app for Apple iOS, but it was not as functional as some of the other apps you would see for other networks. Recently, they realized the limited functionality of their mobile app, and decided that it deserved an upgrade. During a summer party in San Francisco this week, Pinterest announced their Apple iOS app upgrade, but they also announced that they would be spreading to the Google Play Store, and even the Amazon App Store for Kindle users. With these new mobile apps that Pinterest has probably had up their sleeves for a while, the company will be able to grow their traffic further.

According to a number of sources, Pinterest made a right decision by creating separate apps for the iPad and the iPhone. The network’s vast array of visual content and countless “pinned” pieces make for a lot of data for an app to process. With the apps, however, the layout and design allow for a good organization of all these things. In most of the opinions I have read, the new upgrades are much better than the Pinterest app from the past, in numerous ways.

In regard to the Android app, Pinterest writes on their blog;

 Android owners have been very vocal with their requests for an app – every product announcement we’ve recently made has resulted in the question “What about an Android app?” We were listening, and our custom-designed Android app makes it simple and fast to pin, so that the time you spend on Pinterest is as productive as possible. We also made sure the app works well on Android phones and tablets, regardless of your device’s cost, speed or screen size.

So the question is, will these apps ultimately end up bringing in the traffic that Pinterest needs to be a successful platform for the marketing world? Since mobile is growing so rapidly, and people rely on their mobile devices for everything now, more people will definitely be interested in Pinterest now that they can use it where they feel most comfortable. If Pinterest’s traffic grows at the rate that they are hoping it will, then the network will end up being quite a reliable marketing platform. The way Pinterest works is unlike any other network, allowing marketers a new and unique form of advertisement that feels organic but still gets the job done.

From SEC Release: Washington, D.C., Aug. 17, 2012 – The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced fraud charges and an emergency asset freeze to halt a $600 million Ponzi scheme on the verge of collapse. The emergency action assures that victims can recoup more of their money and potentially avoid devastating losses.

The SEC alleges that online marketer Paul Burks of Lexington, N.C. and his company Rex Venture Group have raised money from more than one million Internet customers nationwide and overseas through the website ZeekRewards.com, which they began in January 2011.

According to the SEC’s complaint filed in federal court in Charlotte, N.C., customers were offered several ways to earn money through the ZeekRewards program, two of which involved purchasing securities in the form of investment contracts. These securities offerings were not registered with the SEC as required under the federal securities laws.

The SEC alleges that investors were collectively promised up to 50 percent of the company’s daily net profits through a profit sharing system in which they accumulate rewards points that they can use for cash payouts. However, the website fraudulently conveyed the false impression that the company was extremely profitable when, in fact, the payouts to investors bore no relation to the company’s net profits. Most of ZeekRewards’ total revenues and the “net profits” paid to investors have been comprised of funds received from new investors in classic Ponzi scheme fashion.

“The obligations to investors drastically exceed the company’s cash on hand, which is why we need to step in quickly, salvage whatever funds remain and ensure an orderly and fair payout to investors,” said Stephen Cohen, an Associate Director in the SEC’s Division of Enforcement. “ZeekRewards misused the power of the Internet and lured investors by making them believe they were getting an opportunity to cash in on the next big thing. In reality, their cash was just going to the earlier investor.”

The SEC’s complaint alleges that the scheme is teetering on collapse with investor funds at risk of dissipation without its emergency enforcement action. Last month, ZeekRewards brought in approximately $162 million while total investor cash payouts were approximately $160 million. If customers continue to increasingly elect to receive cash payouts rather than reinvesting their money to reach higher levels of rewards points, ZeekRewards’ cash outflows would eventually exceed its total revenue.

Burks has agreed to settle the SEC’s charges against him without admitting or denying the allegations, and agreed to cooperate with a court-appointed receiver.

According to the SEC’s complaint, ZeekRewards has paid out nearly $375 million to investors to date and holds approximately $225 million in investor funds in 15 foreign and domestic financial institutions. Those funds will be frozen under the emergency asset freeze granted by the court at the SEC’s request. Meanwhile, Burks has personally siphoned several million dollars of investors’ funds while operating Rex Venture and ZeekRewards, and he distributed at least $1 million to family members. Burks has agreed to relinquish his interest in the company and its assets plus pay a $4 million penalty. Additionally, the court has appointed a receiver to collect, marshal, manage and distribute remaining assets for return to harmed investors.

The SEC’s investigation was conducted by Brian M. Privor and Alfred C. Tierney in the SEC’s Enforcement Division in Washington D.C. The SEC acknowledges the assistance of the Quebec Autorite des Marches Financiers and the Ontario Securities Commission.

SEC Complaint

Something we haven’t seen in a while is a new idea for improving upon Google’s original purpose; search. That is probably because Google has already created a pretty tight, functional search platform so that little improvement needs to be made. Also, Google is becoming less and less known for its search function, and more so for things like social networking, driving direction, and advertising all over the web, among countless others. Now, though, Google has added something to its apparently flawless search engine, and that is Gmail results upon searching. It will be great for advertisers, but there is a decent possibility that users will be skeptical at first.

Last week, Google announced that they will be testing a new pilot scheme that will allow for a user’s Gmail messages to show up when they search for related criteria. Advertisers have long faced the problem of their email marketing messages not being read by those receiving them, therefore making these messages completely irrelevant. Whether marketers have received an email address through user registration, email newsletter sign-up, or just plain lead generation, people are often not attracted to emails that don’t pertain to the daily essentials currently at hand.

Now, though, when potential customers are searching for specific search criteria, any emails in their inbox that pertain to these criteria will appear in the results, whether they have read them or not. Google has not provided much information on the pilot, but it is easy to understand just how well it can function for marketers. Email marketing will be much more successful than it already is, in that consumers will find the things that they are actually looking for, within their email accounts, even if they were never aware of the promotions or advertisements even being there.

This new pilot also brings about another strange new opportunity. Now, messages and information distributed through email can also be optimized for the search engine. Since both email marketing and SEO have been quite successful in the past, bringing the two together can only improve them as a team. Including important keywords within the subjects of emails will now be essential, because causing an email to show up within search results [or rather beside them] will make the advertisement all the more successful for the advertiser.

There are a lot of people that are disappointed with this new pilot, as they have always expected more from Google than something this small. But, in reality, this improvement is not all that insignificant. This new feature could help marketing professionals quite a bit, giving them more room to target consumers through email. The feature is still only in a pilot form, but Google has invited anybody to join the testing process. Currently, it is only available in English and on Google’s search engine for Gmail accounts. Google states that a spot during the testing period is not guaranteed, but they encourage advertisers to join so that they can get feedback on just how well the feature works.

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Media Buying Superstars Use Engage:BDR

Way back in December, Facebook revealed to the public that they were testing the new page post ads that allowed for businesses and advertisers to market their products, deals, or services directly on the News Feeds of their fans. That, though, was the very problem that these ads presented. They could only work when trying to target those already interested in your business, and no new customers could be reached. That is what has led to the new improvement that Facebook is making to this feature, or at least they are testing it out. Facebook is trying out page post ads that can be seen by users that are in no way connected to the businesses posting them.

They will basically function the same way as sponsored stories do, except now these sponsored posts will appear much larger, and in a much more effective spot. Inside Facebook reported that these posts will look very organic, as any other company post would look. The only thing that will differ is that the word “Sponsored” will appear in the bottom corner of the advertisement. It is not as though Facebook is intruding on any user’s news feed, as no personal information is revealed for targeting purposes. They are simply no longer limiting page post advertisements to the News Feeds of page fans.

Inside Facebook’s writer, Brittany Darwell wrote,

This latest test, along with the mobile app ad unit announced last week show Facebook is no longer limiting News Feed inventory to entities that users have already connected to.

It seems that since Facebook has eased up a bit on their limitations by testing out these universal News Feed advertisements, things have improved in their marketing results. So far, the page posts have performed very well, showing much higher clickthrough rates than the sponsored stories on the side of the page. Inside Facebook fears, however, that, “because these ads don’t necessarily have social context, they could confuse or frustrate users.” Most people are on Facebook to keep up with family and friends, and not to learn about new products or services, therefore making the prospect of using these news feed advertisements a bit risky. They could potentially have the opposite effect, turning away users that were originally targets for advertisement.

This new method of marketing on Facebook can be compared to the Promoted Tweets on Twitter. Twitter’s Promoted Tweets have been doing quite well, and since these new page post ads are very similar to the way the Tweets work, there’s a good chance of success with them. There will finally be a way for those who advertise with Facebook to reach new audiences, instead of relying on sharing to grow their fan base. We should probably expect the same reaction from users regarding Facebook’s new and improved Page Posts that we saw when Promoted Tweets were first revealed, and Twitter did not suffer much grief from users whatsoever.

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Sponsored by ITALeads. Where the Action Is.

The words “Twitter” and “Tweet” are almost household words these days. I would not be surprised if “Tweet” landed a spot in a dictionary someday, as it is really more than just a word pertaining to the Twitter network, but it is a word that people use every single day of their lives in today’s digital age. The two people that founded Twitter in the first place, Ev Williams and Biz Stone, are often worshiped by the public for their creation of the new daily essential, much like the way people are always talking about Mark Zuckerberg. With Twitter on their list of accomplishments, these two have had new prospects in mind, and now they will be launching two entirely new websites that could be big names in internet marketing in the future.

Both of these site that the Twitter founders have been working on have similar functionality to that of Twitter, but they are not the same websites whatsoever. The names of the sites are Medium and Branch and they are both unique from other social websites that exist today, in their own ways.

Branch is a website that is based on the idea of allowing Twitter conversations to surpass 140 characters, which is quite a low limit for many of its users. The Twitter founders came up with the idea as they wanted to allow users to interact with one another in a more fluent way, rather than with countless tags. ClickThrough Marketing, a search conversion news site, reported that the head of product at Branch, Josh Miller, stated;

Between articles, blog posts, and tweets, the Internet is dominated by monologues. So we want to build a home for dialogues online, by combining the intimacy of a dinner table conversation with the power of the Internet.

The other site they have conjured from their social media expertise is Medium, a site that is similar to Pinterest, but has a twist to it. Medium will allow users to collect text, photos, drawings, and other artwork and vote on these pieces. The pieces that receive the most votes will appear highest to the community of users. Voting on items that they find on the network will allow users to interact much more with the network.

Clickthrough Marketing reported Ev Williams as stating;

 Medium is designed to allow people to choose the level of contribution they prefer. We know that most people, most of the time, will simply read and view content, which is fine. If they choose, they can click to indicate whether they think something is good, giving feedback to the creator and increasing the likelihood others will see it.

Twitter has already had its own substantial impact in the internet marketing world, so it can be expected that two new networks created by the same people will serve a role for internet advertisers as well. The two founders have experience with managing advertising through Twitter, so these new networks will definitely offer something to the internet marketing community, and we’ll just have to wait and see exactly what that is.

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There have been countless studies based on the mobile world we live in today, be they about mobile advertising, mobile device usage, or even just how mobile platforms are being used most. Seldom do any of these reports and studies result in the future of mobile looking badly. Each time we hear of new performance information regarding mobile platforms, it is usually good news and can benefit marketing professionals in one way or another. With that, Yankee Group, a prominent mobile research company, has released their study entitled “Mobile Advertising Forecast: Marketing Steps Through the Looking-Glass.” Their study tells us how mobile advertising has taken its place high atop the pedestal, and the Yankee Group believes that advertising on mobile platforms will triple by the year 2016, meaning that mobile still has a lot of room to grow, believe it or not.

Their predictions include things like;

 Data on context, explosive tablet take-up and smartphone adoption in high-growth markets such as Brazil, India and China underpin the explosion. Investors will reward presence in both advanced and high-growth markets. Revenues will flow to companies that draw on user data to design and deliver mobile advertising.

Yankee Group predicted that mobile will move even further up the list of priorities in high-growth markets, especially in select countries like Brazil, India and China. It is forecasted that mobile will become the dominant platform for digital marketing in many places around the globe. It is hard to see any way that this prediction could be wrong, as mobile has already grown so much in the past year or two than anyone could have foreseen.

In a highlight from their report, Yankee Group wrote,

Tablets generate six times the advertising revenues of the feature phones that dominated the market five years ago. Tablets are driving fast into the mass market. In 2016 over a quarter of smart mobile devices globally will be tablets.

Tablets have become something of a big deal in the marketing world, as we all know, and there seems to be no way of stopping them. Tablets take mobile advertising to a whole new level than smartphones, as so much more functionality and design can be put into advertising on such a larger, more popular mobile platform. Tablets are already the talk of the mobile marketing world today, so to imagine how performance will be in 2016 is almost unreal.

In a final point, the Yankee Group commented on targeting mobile users.

Mobile advertising’s weak point has been a lack of data on the user. Apps are helping to fill that gap and drive better-targeted ads. Among app downloaders, over 22 percent of smartphone owners and 27 percent of tablet owners clicked on an in-app ad during Q1 2012.

Targeted ads have proven to be a bit more difficult for mobile marketers, but now there are plenty of apps that can help advertisers along in their efforts to reach the desired demographic.

Yankee Group has shed a bit of light on just how far mobile will go in the next few years, and it should give mobile marketers something to look forward to. Mobile marketing has always been expected to dominate the playing field, and Yankee Group has simply provided proof on the matter.

Matthew Inman is a name that is pretty well known by anyone who browses the web a lot. If not, his comic series, entitled The Oatmeal, has got to ring a bell. Anyway, the reason for bringing up this illustrator’s name is that he was the first to experience the changes that are taking place with Google+ right now. In April, Inman wrote about his opinion of G+ on his page on the network.

On my profile, I’ve got a lot of followers so the discussions are bustling, but when I was researching this comic I went through a bunch of my friends’ profiles and look at the discussions, and they seemed pretty empty (other than the occasional spammer).

Even if it is true, Google+ is still a very young social network. Give it another 6 months to a year and maybe it’ll begin to really chip away at Facebook.

Also, the new design is pretty bitchin, although I still wish I could set up a fancy profile URL so I don’t have to link people to http://plus.google.com/blergasdf1234thimbleturdorgasm99meatpoopypoopxv9donkeypie when I want them to follow me”

According to what he has written, he was quite impressed when he first started using the network, but he had a problem with the way the URLs functioned while linking people to pages. Well, it seems that Google has listened, because Inman recently found that his joke link actually started leading people to his page.

So, after hearing of Matthew’s story, I looked into it and found on the Google+ blog that Google has begun making the option of custom URLs available to its users. As of now, the feature is limited to a few brands and celebrities, such as Hugh Jackman, Toyota, and of course, The Oatmeal. Based on what Saurabh Sharma writes in the blog, the feature will soon be more available.

Custom URLs will also be available to people and pages worldwide, so brands like Globo can point readers to google.com/+epoca, or any of their other Brazilian publications.

A shorter URL is simply more appealing to anyone that a brand is trying to target, making it easier for them to understand exactly where it will take them before even clicking it. A giant link will become confusing to users and there is a good chance they will just scroll on past it. These short URLs will create a cleaner appearance, potentially bringing more traffic to brands’ G+ pages.

This new feature will help brands in their attempts to drive traffic, but G+ will benefit from the feature in that they are one of the only networks to offer it. A custom URL can be helpful, so people who want one may have to go to G+ to get it, bringing up the traffic to the network itself. Google+ has done a smart thing with these custom URLs, and they will soon be available to anybody who uses the network for personal or business reasons.

At first, eCommerce was something that could only exist on a computer screen while a buyer was sitting at their desk. Online shopping and payment goes back to the beginnings of the internet, and things have improved greatly since then. To nobody’s surprise, however, the bulk of eCommerce still takes place on a computer screen, but now Mac has taken the top spot. Through the years, though, as new technology arose, eCommerce has veered away from computers a bit, giving the iPhone second place in order value. Monetate provides a Quarterly data report each quarter based on shopping trends, and the report of Q2 of 2012 shows that, with the exception of Mac users, people are starting to do most of their shopping on other devices.

To explain better, Monetate has broken down the average order value by device for Q2 into three categories; traditional computers, smartphones, and tablets. For traditional computers, Mac has a huge lead over Windows and Linux with $102.83. Widows has an average order value of $88.75, and Linux is as $84.91. Now, the real news is that every smarphone and tablet brand listed exceeds the average order values of Windows and Linux, besides the Kindle Fire. Behind Mac computers, iPhone brings in the most eCommerce with an average value of $97.49, followed by Android with $97.16, and the iPad with $96.80. Needless to say, Apple Inc. has been incredibly triumphant in the line of eCommerce for Q2.

In the world of eCommerce, though, the device that people access an e-store on does not really matter, unless catering to a demographic based on the device they use. What does matter, however, is the success rate of the platform shoppers use to arrive at the store to begin with. As we know, there are three major platforms for all things marketing on the web; email, search, and social.

Social media referral traffic lags far behind email and search, with the Average Order Value (AOV) of social traffic $26.21 less than search traffic and nearly $20 less than email referral traffic

Conversion rates from social referral traffic in Q2 were .59% when compared with 4.25% for email and 2.49% for search

What Monetate is saying is that, even though social platforms have provided a lot of success to marketers in the way of advertising, they don’t perform quite as successfully in the line of driving traffic to e-stores or getting those stores the conversions they are looking for. Monetate, of course, has provided some numbers proving that point. In a graph of conversion rates by traffic source, email leads the way with a rate of 4.25%. Search comes in second with 2.49%, and social media shows that it is not the choice for driving traffic with a conversion rate of .59%. Though social media conversion rates are incredibly low compared to other sources, it will always remain a reliable source for branding, and getting your name out there is the reason behind a lot of online traffic anyway.

Netflix is a service that has been extremely popular for a long time now. However, Netflix is not the only popular connected TV providers, being that it is accompanied by sites like Hulu. The sites are similar in that they allow users to watch connected TV instantly, but they also are not ad supported. Never in any show or movie on Netflix or Hulu will you find an advertising from sources outside the company itself. Because of this fact, AOL has ushered in something very new by creating a connected TV platform that is completely ad supported, allowing advertisers to delve into the relatively new but rapidly blooming industry.

There have been others that have tried this idea in the past, but they have never really been used like AOL’s new app entitled AOL On Network could be. In an article on ClickZ, Matt Kapko writes,

No one is really taking advantage of the ad-supported video business out there,’ DelaCruz [general manager of connected TV and mobile video at the AOL On Network] added. While some digital video platforms are focused on bringing the entire online experience to other devices, AOL is purposefully leaving social media and tracking mechanisms out of the equation. Although there is a natural inclination to want to track users online, DelaCruz believes there’s little room for that in today’s connected TV landscape.

Much like with YouTube and other video sharing websites, ads will appear has High Definition video ads lasting about 15 to 30 seconds each. Since AOL is afraid of over advertising so early in the game, these ads will only appear about every 15 minutes, which is still a good spread of time. Starting a platform in connected TV can’t be easy, and too much advertising right now would complicate things even more, potentially leading to a huge decrease in the company’s success with this endeavor.

If AOL on Network becomes a successfully functioning television platform, however, it could be just as popular as Netflix and Hulu, especially with all of AOL’s experience with online business. The actual AOL on Network platform has been around for about a year, but its first version had a very simple design and little functionality, keeping it far behind its competitors in the industry. Their new and improved version of the app has a much larger library of videos and films provided by numerous sources as well as videos from content partners.

Advertisers now have a more available connected TV platform, essentially opening an old door that has not seen much use. AOL has been constantly building their video content library, giving users more viewing options and driving more traffic for marketing. The app is currently available on smart TVs, most recently Samsung’s popular Smart TV devices. It has continued to grow in availability, and soon it will probably be very good competition for Netfilx and Hulu. With this relatively new advertising platform will come likely marketing success, just like the success that YouTube has seen with similar advertisements.

Everybody has heard of Pinterest, but not everybody has actually experienced using the network. People have always had a harder time joining Pinterest than any other social media platform, simply because the site has always required people to be invited to the site in order to register, as if it were some sort of high class user society. It is a very popular network, as it gives users a way to share their interests with anyone and look at the things that others are interested via “Pins.” The problem has always been, at least for marketers and businesses, that people must be invited, making traffic and user count much lower than other social networks. However, recently Pinterest announced that its registration rules have changed, and now it is an open network that anybody can join at anytime.

From the Pinterest blog announcement;

We’re really excited to have the capacity to offer Pinterest to more people and if you’re a Pinner with friends who’ve been waiting on the sidelines, we hope you’ll let them know. Happy pinning to everyone.

Pinterest has never been a platform for display ads or anything similar to the Sponsored Stories of Facebook, but it has been a place for businesses of all sizes to promote themselves through things like shares, favorites, and “Pins.” Since Forbes released information reporting that Pinterest has reached the third spot on the list of most social network  visitors with 104 million, it has already done quite well for marketers. Now, with all of the new traffic that Pinterest will be bringing to the posts of these businesses through open registration, marketing a business on Pinterest seems like quite a smart decision. However, so far advertisers have been hesitant to take advantage of the network, not being able to see many ways in which the promotion of their name on Pinterest would help them at all.

Pinterest is not one of those networks that is against the use of their services for advertising. They even have an advertising page, giving businesses a head start in placing content in boards and sharing them throughout the Pinterest community. They make it quite easy for your content to be shared among the many users that already use the network. Now that they have opened registration, there will be far more traffic on the network, bringing better results to businesses that place content in boards.

Pinterest has finally decided to stop being such a snob and open up their doors to the general public. It will probably end up making the network a more interesting place to visit, as interests of all sorts will be represented. Not only will users enjoy the experience more, but businesses will benefit from the increased traffic as well. Pinterest has done a smart thing by making their service public, and it will of course, give them a stronger hold in the social media world.