Marketing Pilgrim Published: “Google Rolls Out Google Plus Ads That They Aren’t on Google Plus” plus 4 more

Link to Marketing Pilgrim - Internet News and Opinion

Google Rolls Out Google Plus Ads That They Aren’t on Google Plus
Grammar Counts on Social Media. Who Woulda Thunk?
Old School GIFs Turn into Top Ads on Tumblr
50 Percent of Retailers Are on Instagram. Can You Name the Top 3?
Infographic: Gigya Sees Rising Pinterest Interest

Google Rolls Out Google Plus Ads That They Aren’t on Google Plus

Posted: 10 Dec 2013 06:33 AM PST

Even if you are a Google plus hater you have to give Google some points for being more creative than other ‘social networks’.

The latest ‘innovation’ (if you want to have some fun about the death of the word innovation read this article from the WSJ) from Google are social media ads that don’t occur on the social media site. Instead they originate elsewhere through Google’s ad network and then turn into a post on Google+. Get it? If not here is a video for you to take a look at

Will it work and catch on? Who knows.

I think it makes some good sense. Trouble is, even though it seems cool I can’t imagine myself actually doing anything with one. That’s the thing about Google+. Not enough time in the day to really give it a go and, as a result, its other offerings don’t get the exposure they may deserve.

Where are you on Google+ these days? Use it? Find it helpful? Is it a good marketing channel?

Grammar Counts on Social Media. Who Woulda Thunk?

Posted: 10 Dec 2013 03:04 AM PST

Typos and grammar faux paus may hurt your social media efforts more than you might think. Personally it’s my own worst nightmare because it happens too much in my life. I just hope people are forgiving but it looks like that may be a bit optimistic.

A study from Disruptive Communications in the UK shows which groups hold these issues against social media content producers.

What customers hate about your brand in social media | Create infographics

Grammar and being too salesy are no-nos according to this study. The younger you go on the scale, however, the less likely grammar impacts anything.

Most people flagged up poor spelling and grammar as their number one turn-off. This is interesting because so often in social media we see brands being much less formal and even using heavily abbreviated txt speak, perhaps in an effort to appear more laid back and human. The survey findings show that this could actually be counter-productive and is more likely to annoy people than win their trust.

Broadly speaking the results were very similar across all age groups and between the different genders, with one notable exception. When we drilled down into the 18-24 age group, we found their biggest complaint was brands not updating frequently enough, which happened to be at the very bottom of the list for all other age groups.

Hw does grammar impact your experience with social media? Does it matter to you? Does it get in the way of your enjoyment or is it just not anything to get your knickers in a twist over?

Let us know in the comments.

Old School GIFs Turn into Top Ads on Tumblr

Posted: 09 Dec 2013 03:21 PM PST

The GIF file format has been around since 1987 and people have been arguing over how to pronounce it ever since. Is it a soft “g” as in Jif the peanut butter or hard “g” as in golly this is a cool gizmo. Potato – potahtoe: how ever you pronounce it, the Gif has become synonymous with the animated image.

Let’s get this straight. Some GIFs just sit there and look pretty, but in the early 90′s we discovered they could move and suddenly the internet was alive with flying cats, dancing babies and TV characters making the same face over and over again. Here’s a fact I just made up: 90% of all GIFs were created by TV and movie fans.

These GIFs run in a short loop that makes a Vine video look like a 3-Act play. And though they seem simple enough, making a GIF that catches on is actually quite tricky. Maybe even trickier than creating a 30-second video ad for YouTube.

And so we gather together to congratulate the marketing geniuses who turned the humble GIF into a top twenty Tumblr ad.

The list comes from AdWeek. The ads were ranked based on “stats such as reblogs and likes (Tumblr uses "notes," which can be either of the two) for the promos' first 24 hours on the site.”

Starting at the bottom:

The Walking Dead took the 20th spot with a single image made up of 9 moving tiles. Creepy times 10.

Next we have the DJing kitties from Fresh Step, ads for This is the End and About Time, along with a Red Balloon takeoff for Hulu and a wacky dancer doing his thing for Adult Swim.

Jansport took 14th place with a very simple, color-changing backpack GIF.

AT&T turned their adorable “It’s Not Complicated” campaign into a Mother’s Day ad that got them 50,000 shares.

Natalie Portman’s luscious lips helped Dior gather 52,000 Tumblr “notes” and Veteran’s United used a sweet, patriotic ad to pull us in.

Top 10

Number 10 is another creepy 9-block. This one for the movie The Purge.

Trolli took the 9th spot with a creepy in a different way ad featuring a dog made of gum.

Comedy Central got 75,000 likes on their amusing James Franco roast ad.

Sony capitalized on the captive One Direction fanbase, delivering an odd ad that shows one band member slapping another. That brought in 113,000 likes.

Zach Galifianakis and The Hangover III took 6th.

Home Depot claimed 5th with a strange (which seems to be the key to a lot of these ads) Star Wars themed Fourth of July ad.

Ford gets my “I’ve seen it and still don’t get it” award for their “And is Better” campaign.

A smiling Leonardo DiCaprio hefting a glass of bubbly in The Great Gatsby took 3rd.

Converse made simple line-drawing sneakers dance into 2nd place.

And the number one Tumblr ad for 2013 is. . . . . .

Despicable Me 2!

315,000 notes since July, of which 58 percent have been reblogs.

Dare I ask? What’s your current favorite GIF?

50 Percent of Retailers Are on Instagram. Can You Name the Top 3?

Posted: 09 Dec 2013 02:18 PM PST

I hear it over and over from entrepreneurs and authors – I’m not fond of Facebook but I have to be there. A year ago, I would have agreed wholeheartedly, but now . . . not so much. Facebook is a tough place for anyone trying to build an audience from scratch. If you’re a top retailer, it’s a different story.

Campalyst gathered data on the top 250 retailers in social media and found that 98% had Facebook Pages and 78% had more than 1 million fans. Average fan count across all of the top retailers is 1.79 million. Four out of the top five retailers didn’t surprise me – one did.

Adidas? Really? What’s even more interesting is that while Walmart, Target and Amazon rule on Facebook, they don’t even make the top 5 on the other social media sites.

Victoria’s Secret is a true juggernaut, landing in the top 5 on Twitter (3M), YouTube (350K) and Instagram!

Speaking of which – over 50% of retailers are on Instagram and 3 of them have already managed to acquire over 1 million followers.

Joining the lovely ladies on Instagram is the jewel of the jewelry biz, Tiffany & Co. Urban Outfitters is a natural fit for the young users who flock to Instagram. It’s also one of the few places to get the young male audience, thus Nike and NFL.

While the footballers are hanging out on Instagram, the baseball fans are over on Google+. This top five is the oddest mix of all.

Art.com? No insult intended to the company but how did they manage to become the Google+ leader. Or more importantly, why? This is also the only place you’ll find GameStop and Williams Sonoma in the top five.

Sephora shows up in the top five on Pinterest along with leader L.L. Bean (over 5 million followers), Nordstrom (4.4M), Lowe’s (3.5M), and lululemon(1.9M).

The top five on YouTube are Apple (1.7M subscribers), Discover Channel (almost 1M subscribers), Nike (800K),Victoria’s Secret (350K) and Newegg (280K).

What can we learn from this? Mostly that the rest of us have a long way to go before we knock any of these brands out of the top slot.

Infographic: Gigya Sees Rising Pinterest Interest

Posted: 09 Dec 2013 09:28 AM PST

The folks over at Gigya have seen a trend that many of us would suspect but may not have the numbers to back it up. We found it interesting enough that we took them up on this kind offer and are passing it along to you too! Oh happy Monday!

From the Gigya blog we get

Take a look at the below infographic for our full set of data from Q3 2013 (July – September) below, which measures shares to different social networks from the hundreds of thousands of sites and apps that leverage our Connected Consumer Management Suite