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Advertisers Go Gray as the Balance of Power Shifts in the US

posted on July 19, 2012

AARP (formerly known as the American Association of Retired Persons) is on a quest to get advertisers to include their demographic in more campaigns. Using tag lines such as “I may be creased, but my money is crisp,” they hope to persuade advertisers that there’s a profit to be made in the over fifty market.

Since the dawn of time, advertisers have sought out the younger buyers since they were the ones with discretionary cash. But these days, there aren’t too many 20 years old who are flush with the green stuff. 53% of recent college grads are unemployed or underemployed, the worst its ever been in the last 11 years. So why are advertisers so keen on pitching to a crowd of over-educated, broke young folks? Habit, mostly.

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eBay’s Mobile Shopping Numbers Are Impressive

posted on July 19, 2012

While many are trying to figure out the best way to get the most from the mobile world that we now live in, it looks like eBay may be an early champion to look to for ideas. The trouble is, not everybody has the advantage that eBay does in the space so maybe this is just something to be admired rather than replicated?

All Things D reports

In what is becoming a routine move, the company said [yesterday] during its second-quarter earnings release that it is now expecting eBay and PayPal mobile to each transact $10 billion in volume this year.

“That’s more than double 2011,” said eBay’s CEO John Donahoe, who called it “a staggering surge” in mobile commerce that did not exist just a few years ago.

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SPONSOR: New International SEO eBook from HubSpot

posted on July 19, 2012

SEO is something that gets more and more complicated as we continue to watch the intersection of search, social and just about everything else in the online space. This is something that can be troubling for those that are primarily marketing to one country or one region of the world.

That complexity gets ratcheted up several notches when you have the task of doing SEO for international sites. Any number of issues can crop up.

Our Inbound Marketing channel sponsor, HubSpot, has put together a free eBook to help SEO’s navigate this special area of the Internet marketing world.

In this eBook, you’ll learn how to:

* Launch a globally-optimized website
* Master on-page SEO strategies
* Generate inbound links from your target countries
* Make sure your website loads properly across the globe

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Top 100 Companies Increase YouTube Usage by Nearly Forty Percent

posted on July 18, 2012

Burson-Marsteller recently released the results of its third annual Global Social Media Check-Up Study and YouTube came out as the big winner.

The yearly report examines social media usage among the Fortune Global 100 companies, including Ford, Sony, Walmart, and HP.

82% of these companies are now maintaining YouTube accounts, the biggest jump up across all of the social media platforms. These channels average 2 million views each and have an average of 1,669 subscribers.

That’s almost 2,000 people who willingly checked the box to get updates from a branded, commercial channel. That’s like intentionally sitting through the commercials when you watch a TV show on the DVR.

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As Citizen Journalism Rises, YouTube Offers Face Blurring

posted on July 18, 2012

More than a third of all news video on YouTube was filmmed by a bystander, says Pew Research. Not surprising, given that a good portion of the world population is walking around with a camera in their pocket every time they go outside.

Homemade news footage is compelling because it personalizes the story. When you watch a riot happening just yards in front of the lens, or shaky footage of a major earthquake as it knocks the camera man off his feet, it’s more real. It’s more human and that’s why people are rushing to YouTube for their daily look at what’s happening in the world.

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90% of Marketers Using Social Media But Are They Using It Well?

posted on July 18, 2012

If growth in social networks is measured by the total number of users could it be that we are close to being as far we can go?

A recent study from the Association of National Advertisers as reported by eMarketer shows that there may not be much more room for the number of businesses using social networks for marketing.

The easy way to take this data is to say that growth for social media networks is plateaued and near complete. This comes from the eMarketer article

When the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) surveyed US marketers this year, 90% said they were using social networks for their efforts—about even with last year, at 89%. While this percentage has risen dramatically since 2007, when just 20% of marketers used social media, growth has plateaued—and shifted to other new digital media platforms instead.

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Facebook Stock Stung By ‘Proprietary Software’ Findings

posted on July 18, 2012

Talk about having the tables turned on the tech industry!

If I had a nickel (well let’s make it a buck since that sounds better) for every time a tech company or agency or whomever dodged an inquiry by falling back on the ‘we use proprietary software to determine those results’ line, I wouldn’t be filthy rich, well, maybe I would be. Heck, I have even sold services by using that same talk. Of course, I believed every word of it but never truly considered how evasive it sounds to the other party. I can see clearly now ……

So imagine how the folks at Facebook must feel as their stock took about an 8% dip over the past two days based on the report of an analyst from Capstone Investments. A Reuters report tells us