Daily Minute Master Series – December 14, 2020

December 14, 2020/by Corey Padveen

Social Media

What the FTC’s Call for Facebook’s Break-Up Means for the Tech Sector

Facebook is facing antitrust lawsuits from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and 46 states alleging that the company employed anticompetitive, illegal practices to acquire or eliminate its rivals.

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Twitter Acquires Multi-Participant Streaming App Squad, Which Enables Screen-Sharing Within Chats

This could be interesing. Twitter has officially acquired multi-participant video chat app Squad, which could pave the way for new video streaming features in the app.

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Periscope Down? New Finding Suggests the Twitter-Owned Live-Streaming App is Headed for Retirement

In news that’s both unsurprising, yet sad in a nostalgic sense, it seems that Twitter may be looking to put its separate live-streaming app Periscope out to pasture, with a line of code indicating that a ‘shut down’ of the platform may be imminent. The finding comes from reverse engineering expert Jane Manchun Wong who noticed this indicator when cross-checking the latest version of the Twitter app code.

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Marketing

4 of the Worst Content Campaigns in History (And Lessons to Learn From Them)

Publishing the wrong content can send your brand spiraling (think hate messages and millions of $$ lost). Here are 4 content campaigns not to emulate.

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How to Automate Title Tag Optimization Using Deep Learning

A quick SEO win for most sites is to include the top ranking keyword in the title tags that are missing them. Think about it for a minute. If a page is already ranking for a keyword and if that keyword is not present in its title, then that page could rank higher if we were to add that term in a natural way.

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2021 Outlook for Digital Marketing Agencies: The Future is Bright

No one was quite prepared for what 2020 had in store — including digital marketing agencies. When business shutdowns occurred in the spring, 66% of marketing agencies said they experienced a decrease in overall revenue. CallRail’s call data report showed a similar trend, with call volume in the advertising and marketing industry falling by 29% from pre-COVID levels. While 2021 still holds some economic uncertainty, digital marketing leaders indicate that their agencies have been remarkably resilient, according to CallRail’s fall survey of 167 global marketing leaders who use its services. The findings show that most agencies will finish 2020 with higher annual revenues than in 2019.

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Daily Minute Master Series – December 11, 2020

December 11, 2020/by Corey Padveen

Social Media

FTC Launches Lawsuit Against Facebook Over Antitrust Activity

The Federal Trade Commission has launched new legal action against Facebook, which alleges that the company is “illegally maintaining its personal social networking monopoly through a years-long course of anticompetitive conduct”. The suit specifically focuses on Facebook’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp, and calls for a divestment of the two apps, which would break-up Facebook into separate parts.

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YouTube Will Now Remove Videos Alleging Voter Fraud in the 2020 US Election

No matter how you look at it, YouTube, along with Facebook, has become a key source of news and information for many people, with users coming to the platform to get the latest information from sources and channels that they trust. That puts both platforms in a difficult position in terms of maintaining free speech, while reducing the spread of harmful misinformation. And both platforms have faced very public challenges with such – but leading into the 2020 US election, and throughout COVID-19, Facebook and YouTube have taken tougher stances on misleading reports, which has had some impact in reducing false narratives and ensuring people are better informed about the latest events.

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TikTok was the Most Downloaded App in 2020, According to New Data from App Annie

In what will come as little surprise, TikTok was the most downloaded app of 2020, according to the latest App Annie download charts for 2020, which look at comparative, year-on-year performance for apps on both iOS and Android.

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Marketing

5 PPC Strategies to Try for Your B2B Business in 2021

It’s easy to get stuck in a routine with your B2B PPC program. You monitor your paid search campaigns and optimize them. And they seem to be working well. So why change anything? In short, the reason is that you don’t know what you might be missing.

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10 Top-Trending Videos of 2020 That Demonstrate Longer Is Stronger

These 10 videos made it to the top this 2020. Get insights on video length and strategies to help you make better content.

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Ecommerce & Mcommerce: How to Prepare for the Holidays

Congratulations on making it through another record-breaking Black Friday and Cyber Monday. These eye-opening numbers illustrate just how busy online retailers were from November 27-30:

Shopify’s data shows that sales increased 76% on its platform during the Black Friday to Cyber Monday (BFCM) stretch in 2020 compared to 2019.
Amazon posted a 60% increase in sales on its marketplace.
Adobe estimates that $9 billion was spent online in the U.S. on Black Friday alone.

Yet as retailers will know from experience, the BFCM period has blurred into one long, festive shopping extravaganza.

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Daily Minute Master Series – December 10, 2020

December 10, 2020/by Corey Padveen

Social Media

TikTok’s Looking to Expand its Video Length Limit to Three Minutes

According to reports, TikTok is testing a new option which would enable users to upload videos of up to three minutes in length, an increase on the current 60-second limit.

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Snapchat Announces New, $3.5 Million AR Creator Fund to Help Fuel the Next Stage of AR Development

With augmented reality glasses getting closer to reality, AR looks set to take a major leap in 2021, and Snapchat’s seeking to remain at the forefront of that next stage, with the announcement of a new, $3.5 million AR creator fund to help fuel the next advancements in creative AR use. Snap made the announcement on the first day of its Lens Fest AR developer conference, which is being held online, and is open to all this year.

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Instagram Tests Adding Timers to Stories to Boost Engagement

According to screenshots posted by user Kyle Harris (and shared by Matt Navarra), Instagram is now testing new timer listings beneath Stories bubbles, which show how long each Story has left before it’s erased.

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Marketing

20 of the Most Popular SEO Experts: A Social Listening Analysis

One of the main guiding lights on our SEO journey is usually the SEO experts – those prominent voices in the community who share their knowledge and skills with others. You may have learned SEO from courses and books, but SEO influencers are able to give you something else. They can fill you in on all the intricacies and little details of the SEO craft and provide you with a deeper understanding of the subject matter. Search Engine Journal gets it like nobody else, that’s why they’ve prepared the list of SEO experts to follow in their SEO for Beginners ebook.

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10 Important 2021 SEO Trends You Need to Know

What’s 2021 going to be like for SEO professionals? Check out 10 important trends you need to know from 42 top experts in the field.

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13 Best Practices for Optimizing XML Sitemaps

Creating and updating your sitemap is an essential yet overlooked SEO practice. Sitemaps are important for webmasters and search engines alike. For the search engines, sitemaps are an easy and straightforward way to get information about your website’s structure and pages.

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Daily Minute Master Series – December 9, 2020

December 9, 2020/by Corey Padveen

Social Media

YouTube Gaming Saw 100 Billion Hours of Watch Time in 2020, Underlining the Rise of Gaming Culture

If you’re not paying attention to the influence of gaming on popular culture in 2020, you’re missing out on one of the most significant elements for the next generation, with gamers now becoming major celebrities in their own right, and leading the way on the latest trends and shifts. Indeed, just last week, YouTube listed its top channels of 2020, which showed that five of the top ten channels are largely aligned with gaming-related content. And this week, YouTube’s provided some new insights into the growth of YouTube Gaming specifically, which underlines the rise of gaming culture, which has been exacerbated further amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Reddit Shares Insights into Top Posts, Trends, Users Numbers and More

Reddit has shared its annual year in review, which includes a range of insights into on-platform trends, user behaviors and broader shifts, which could help in your planning for, or understanding of, the platform moving forward. And for the first time, Reddit has revealed its daily active user numbers, as opposed to monthly actives. Reddit actually reported this to the media last week, but they’ve officially announced the figure within their annual report today.

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Facebook Shares Insights into Key Topics of Discussion Across Facebook and Instagram in 2020

Facebook has released its annual ‘Topics and Trends’ report, which outlines the key topics that saw increased discussion across both Facebook and Instagram in 2020.

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Marketing

WhatsApp Adds ‘Carts’ to Further Facilitate Shopping Within Message Streams

As WhatsApp continues to build on its eCommerce potential, it’s continually adding more ways to facilitate business-to-consumer connection, and make it easier for users to buy items via the messaging app. Its latest addition on this front is ‘Carts’, which will enable WhatsApp users to add items as they engage with a business, then submit a larger order all at once via the app.

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Link Building: How to Understand Your Niche With These 10 Questions

A better understanding of who you want to market to will make link building more effective. Asking these 10 questions can help you determine that.

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How Misspelled Keywords Affect SEO

Algorithms are constantly getting updated to give searchers the best user experience. Is using misspelled keywords still a valid strategy for SEO? Find out here.

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Daily Minute Master Series – December 8, 2020

December 8, 2020/by Corey Padveen

Social Media

Facebook Shares New Insights into the Impacts of COVID-19 on SMBs

Facebook has published the latest version of its State of Small Business Report, which looks at how COVID-19, and the related lockdown measures, are impacting SMBs around the world. The data, which Facebook has been tracking since July, incorporates responses from more than 30,000 small business owners across 50 countries, and highlights the key concerns and challenges they face as each seeks to maintain operations. The insight here is valuable for virtually every organization, as the flow-on effects from SMBs will relate to spending in almost all aspects of the economy, and will influence market spend and focus moving forward.

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YouTube Provides Answers on Common Reach and Algorithm Distribution Queries

YouTube has shared some new insights into how its feed algorithm works, addressing some common questions from creators around video distribution, and how they can align in order to maximize reach.

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Facebook’s 2020 Year in Review [Infographic]

We’re now into the final days of 2020, and while most will be happy to see the back of what’s been an extremely challenging year, it’s also worth reflecting on the various incidents and happenings over the last 12 months, just to take in the full scope, and the many impacts. And there have indeed been many – as highlighted in Facebook’s latest overview, the events of 2020 will have major implications for years to come, while significant cultural shifts occurred amid the chaos, which will also have long-lasting effects.

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Marketing

Bloggers Are Worth More Than Their Links

Everyone wants to rank across all search engines for their desired terms. At a certain point in the evolution of Google search, it became apparent that naturally acquiring links (such as those from bloggers) helped with that goal. That said, algorithms change. So is it still worth it to work with bloggers?

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How to Get More SEO Insights from Google Data Studio with SEMrush

Learn advanced ways to use Google Data Studio with SEMrush to better present insights and improve reporting across your SEO activities.

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Google Ads Unveils Enhancements to Lead Form Extensions

Google Ads has announced new enhancements to their lead form extensions. These two new features should help streamline and add better controls for advertisers, while creating a lot more efficiency in creation and management leads.

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Daily Minute Master Series – December 7, 2020

December 7, 2020/by Corey Padveen

Social Media

10 TikTok Trends to Guide Your Social Media Strategy in 2021 [Infographic]

Are you looking for ways to improve your social media marketing in 2021? Want to know how TikTok could fit into your online strategy? The team from Oberlo share the TikTok trends you need to know in this infographic.

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Snapchat’s Latest Bitmoji Fashion Options Could Help it Lead the Way in the Next Big eCommerce Shift

Could this help position Snapchat to lead the way on the next big eCommerce trend? This week, Snapchat has announced a new partnership with Levi’s, which will enable users to dress up their Bitmoji avatars in classic Levi’s outfits.

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10 Social Media Trends to Guide Your Online Strategy in 2021 [Infographic]

Are you looking for ways to ramp up your social media marketing in 2021? Want to know the key trends that should affect the way you manage your social media presence?

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Marketing

Google: Structured Data is an Extremely Light Signal

Google’s John Mueller offered insightful comments in a Twitter conversation about structured data and how Google uses it. His comment touched on the importance of structured data as a Google signal.

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Why Predictability is More Important than Speed in Agile Marketing

Most people think agile is all about the race to the finish line and cranking out more and more work, but if you’re a newer agile marketing team you’ll want to focus more on predictability than speed. It sounds weird because we do want faster campaign delivery, but predictable delivery is needed first. Let’s be real here—marketers often aren’t trusted by stakeholders. Marketers always have good intentions, but too often they are overloaded, causing them to miss deadlines. When the Sales Department is waiting for that new product promotion to launch so they can meet their sales quota and it’s not ready on time, the relationship becomes strained.

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Using AI to Replace Cookies with Context

Advertisers and publishers are scrambling to find alternatives to the third-party cookies which have been prime way of understanding audiences and their interests, but which are soon to be history. One alternative, which seems almost too obvious to mention, is contextual advertising.

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Daily Minute Master Series – December 4, 2020

December 4, 2020/by Corey Padveen

Social Media

Facebook’s Updating its Approach to Hate Speech to Combat ‘The Worst of the Worst’ Cases

Facebook is reportedly looking to overhaul its approach to hate speech, in order to better detect and address ‘the worst of the worst’ cases, as opposed to treating all hate speech incidents equally. According to The Washington Post, Facebook has shared an internal overview of its ‘WoW Project’, which will put increased focus on removing hateful comments directed at Black people, Muslims, people of more than one race, the LGBTQ community and Jews. Facebook has confirmed that it has made changes to its hate speech approach, but it hasn’t detailed the specifics.

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Facebook’s Stepping Up its Efforts to Remove COVID-19 Vaccine Misinformation

With COVID-19 vaccines now being shipped, Facebook has announced that it will step up its efforts to eliminate vaccine misinformation, which has the potential to undermine public health efforts.

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Twitter Makes Frequency Capping Available for All Ad Campaign Types

Twitter has added a new control option for marketers by making frequency capping available for all campaign types globally.

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Marketing

Google Confirms Rollout of Core Algorithm Update

Google confirms a core algorithm update, the December 2020 Core Update, is rolling out today.

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International SEO in 2020: 4 Key Takeaways

International SEO pros offer their unique take on optimizing for Google and Yandex. Here are some optimization insights for global websites.

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Salesforce Signs Agreement to Acquire Slack

As the bell rang to close the New York Stock Exchange at 4pm EST today, investors, Salesforce and Slack users, and the martech community at large were awaiting the anticipated announcement of a multi-billion acquisition of the popular collaboration platform by the CX and CRM giant. Slack already has close integrations with Salesforce, but the acquisition would represent a dramatic entry by the latter into the project management and collaboration space. Then the news came. Salesforce announced it had signed a definitive agreement to acquire Slack in a $27.7 billion deal.

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Daily Minute Master Series – December 3, 2020

December 3, 2020/by Corey Padveen

Social Media

Twitter Strengthens Two-Factor Authentication Options with Physical Security Keys

Twitter is looking to beef up its account security options with the expansion of its support for physical security keys to mobile devices, which will enable anyone to use physical security keys to login to Twitter via iOS and Android.

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TikTok Shares Insights into its Top Creators, Clips, Trends and More

TikTok has continued its meteoric rise in 2020, despite various, significant challenges that have impeded its growth. The biggest blow for the platform came in late June, when India banned TikTok, along with 59 other Chinese-originated apps, due to ongoing conflicts with the Chinese Government. At that time, India was TikTok’s biggest market (outside China), with some 200 million users – and then, TikTok faced the prospect of being banned in the US as well, with the Trump Administration issuing an executive order for the sell-off of the app back in August.

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Instagram Now Allows Up to Three Guests in Live-Streams in India

Instagram has added a new option for Indian users which enables the addition of up to three guests on an Instagram Live stream.

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Marketing

Black Friday’s High Stakes Ad Environment in 2020

Every year, retailers and ad managers eye the calendar. They watch, they wait, and they plan months in advance for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. It’s a lot like the digital ad version of the Super Bowl for brands. In many industries, verticals, and specific companies, they operate at break-even (or even at a loss) through the year. The sales volume of the holiday season putting their ledgers back in black. (Hence, the name.) Paid social already offers many creative ways to attract buyers. The multitude of ad units and platform options create many ways for brands to create attention-getting ad experiences to capitalize on the sales potential of Black Friday.

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Google FAQ Provides Core Web Vitals Insights

Google published an FAQ that provides insights into how Core Web Vitals (CWV) works, what it doesn’t measure and the value for ranking purposes.

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Google Explains Discovery & Refresh Data in Crawl Stats Report

Google’s John Mueller offers more detail about new data in Search Console’s updated Crawl Stats report – the ‘discovery’ and ‘refresh metrics. The Crawl Stats report in Google Search Console was updated several weeks ago and offers data that wasn’t being reported on previously. A specific section of data, Crawl Purpose, came up in the November 27 edition of the Google Search Central live stream.

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Daily Minute Master Series – December 2, 2020

December 2, 2020/by Corey Padveen

Social Media

Reddit Reports That it Now Sees 52 Million Daily Active Users

Reddit has reported that it averaged 52 million daily active users in October 2020, a 44% year-on-year increase in active engagement. It’s the first time Reddit has reported daily active usage – last December, Reddit reported that it had reached 430 million monthly active users, a +30% YoY increase. The platform’s daily active user count, however, provides a different comparison – here’s where Reddit stands on DAU against other social platforms.

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Facebook’s Content Oversight Board Takes on First Cases

It’s been a long time coming, and there’s a lot riding on its success, or failure as it may be. But today, Facebook has outlined the first cases that have been chosen by its new, independent Content Oversight Board for assessment outside of Facebook’s moderation teams. Facebook’s Oversight Board is an independent panel of experts which users can appeal to if they disagree with decisions Facebook has made about their content on Facebook or Instagram. The hope is that this will provide a whole new way for Facebook to manage difficult content decisions, taking the final rulings out of its hands and providing a broader depth of insight and nuance to such calls.

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Facebook Launches New Website to Help Businesses Advance Their Social Impact

Facebook has launched a new website which includes a range of resources and tools designed to help businesses advance their social impact.

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Marketing

Could You Offer People a Reward or Discounts to Gain Backlinks?

While exchanging money or other goods for links may be appropriate in some cases, there are potential risks you need to know about.

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How to Find Anyone’s Email Address in 60 Seconds or Less

Whether you’re a journalist or a digital marketer, you’ve likely been in the situation where you need to email somebody whose email is hard to find. Luckily, journalists and digital marketers are some smart people, so they have all sorts of ways to find who they’re trying to reach.

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The Future of Cybersecurity: What Marketers Must Know

The only inevitability in cybersecurity these days is that high-profile compromises will continue to dominate international headlines. This leaves organizations with one burning question: ‘How do we prevent our company from becoming the next headline’? Cybersecurity is a child that keeps getting new toys, each old one is cast aside in the pursuit of something “new”. However, security threats are increasing and attackers are becoming ever more resourceful in finding weaknesses to exploit. More troubling is a shortage of cybersecurity professionals, making it hard for organizations to defend themselves. That’s why businesses are increasingly turning to expert partners to provide security capabilities, from threat intelligence to defenses powered by AI, ML, and much more.

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Daily Minute Master Series – December 1, 2020

December 1, 2020/by Corey Padveen

Social Media

Social Shorts: Snapchat’s TikTok Rival Is Here, Facebook Teams with BBB for Ad Reviews

The social media marketing week in review: A round up of news and announcements you may have missed.

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Instagram Adds ‘Giving Tuesday’ Features to Highlight How People Can Assist Nonprofits and SMBs

Instagram’s looking to highlight how people can provide assistance on Giving Tuesday with a new collaborative Story at the top of user feeds which will highlight publicly posted Story frames that include a dedicated donation sticker.

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25 Predictions for Social Media Marketing in 2021

Any way you look at it, 2020 has been tough. Many businesses had to rapidly pivot in order to stay afloat amid global shutdowns to limit the spread of COVID-19, while many others weren’t so lucky, and were forced to close forever as a result. We’ve learned to work from home, navigating our daily tasks amid home-school and other distractions, and find new forms of entertainment to keep each other occupied. And this is all before you factor in the ongoing political turmoil, and the uncertainty around what comes next.

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Marketing

How to Win in Competitive & Costly PPC Environments

Working in different verticals will quickly teach you something about cost per click: it varies wildly. A CPC for a pair of sneakers will be in a totally different ballpark than searches for exterminator services, for example. In general, if what’s being advertised doesn’t cost much, the average CPC is lower. It’s really a function of economics for retailers and services: each sale is only worth but so much, and costs that aren’t in line with that don’t make sense to spend.

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The Agency Guide to Surviving Next Year’s Black Friday Week

Phew, you’re finished! You survived another Black Friday/Cyber Monday (BFCM) week; and now you collapse exhausted into December – barely functioning enough to make it through until Christmas. The last thing you want to do is think about next year. But let’s think about next year in a way that stirs hope.

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Record Growth in Online Shopping Over the Holiday Weekend

In October, Taylor Schreiner, Director of Digital Insights at Adobe, told us in an interview: “It’s very hard to predict with precision what’s going to happen. The biggest question in my mind is, how bad is the personal employment and disposable income situation going to become?” On Black Friday, in a release, he said: “We are seeing strong growth as consumers continue to move shopping from offline to online this year. New consoles, phones, smart devices and TVs that are traditional Black Friday purchases are sharing online shopping cart space this year with unorthodox Black Friday purchases such as groceries, clothes and alcohol, that would previously have been purchased in-store.”

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