Twitter has formally launched its self-service ad platform for small businesses, which it announced earlier this year as its answer to Google’s AdWords. It massively expands the number of advertisers using Twitter from an estimated 3,000 to tens of thousands.

While Twitter’s ad business is unlikely to match Google’s service in terms of use it is a major step into allowing businesses to harness the power of 140 character ads via Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts. Read More »

Google’s advertising revenues are now bigger than the entire US newspaper industry combined, according to new figures published by the Newspaper Association of America.

It has just published its newspaper advertising statistics for 2011 that say the industry posted total ad revenues of $23.9bn, according to Poynter. Read More »

Google has won a bidding war to acquire and hire the latest project by Digg founder, Kevin Rose, who will join the search giant.

Google is getting Rose along with his team at mobile app firm Milk, which is to close its only product Oink. It is understood that Facebook had also been in discussions with Rose, but Google won out. Read More »

YouTube is changing the algorithim it uses to suggest videos to users. From now on, the videos that appear as either related or suggested videos will give greater prominence to the amount of a video people view on average e.g. a minute long video watched foran average of 55 sceconds gains a higher ranking in the algorithim than a four minute video that is watchedd for an average of 55 seconds.

YouTube explain this in a post, saying the previous algorithim “was a helpful way to promote channels, but issues like misleading thumbnails kept this system from bringing videos with deeper engagement to the top.” The offer content creators optimisation tips in order to get the most out of these changes. Read More »

A lot of fan-fair around The Guardian’s open journalism campaign, Three Little Pigs – but did it live up to the hype? There was a comment on here last week that many of the ads we chose for January’s highlights didn’t have concept. The sort of interaction we’re looking for. However, you couldn’t accuse this of not having a concept – surely? Very interesting and right out of the BBH playbook.

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What does the future look like? It might look a little different viewed through these Google glasses, or Google Goggles if you like, which come with a heads up display not unlike that most of us will be familiar with from films like The Terminator.

According to the 9to5 Google blog the glasses are real and they are in at the late prototype stage and look not unlike a pair of Oakley Thump MP3 sunglasses featured here. Read More »

So I’ve had this inkling for a while. It goes a little something like this…

What your friends like does not have a massive impact on your purchasing decisions

I know, I know… it’s a hugely outspoken thing to say. After all, Facebook have dictated to everyone in the marketing world that people are hugely influenced by what their friends eat, wear, listen to and watch. Sponsored stories; the advertising function Facebook advertisers use to tell people what their friends have liked, is supposed to be hugely powerful to anyone who wants to believe it.

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Google looks like it could be following Amazon and opening a retail store. Unlike Amazon Google is reported to be planning to open its store in Europe.

We wrote earlier this week about how Amazon was planning to open its first Kindle store taking a leaf out of Apple’s book. Read More »

If you’ve been reading the media press this last week or two, you’ll be convinced of two things: everyone wants to see David Beckham in his pants, and Facebook is about to take over the world.

I’m not going to argue with the former, but I believe there’s a long way to go before the latter materialises. Read More »

Looking for a huge numbers of fans? Can’t wait a second longer? Then read on, this blog post is for you…

1. 1. Buy your fans
   This is definitely the easiest way to guarantee a following fast; decide how many ‘fans’ you want then simply go to any dodgy-looking site (probably via a Facebook ad) take your wallet out (remember to stick your head in the sand) et voila, success! But wait a second; by definition once you directly pay for a relationship what does that relationship become? What does it really mean? There’s a very obvious analogy here, one that doesn’t involve any love at all… Read More »