Marketing Pilgrim Published: “Twitter’s Broad Match Helps Advertisers Spend Cash!” plus 4 more

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Twitter’s Broad Match Helps Advertisers Spend Cash!
AdSense Offers 434,216 New Ad Unit Sizes
New Pinterest iPad Update Encourages Speed Pinning and Sharing
3 Branded Videos Land in YouTube’s Top Trends for 2013
Photos Now in Twitter Direct Messages

Twitter’s Broad Match Helps Advertisers Spend Cash!

Posted: 12 Dec 2013 05:53 AM PST

How many times over the years have advertisers wondered just how many dollars they flushed down the Adwords drain as a result of broad match? Let’s just say it’s more than a couple …… thousand…….. times.

Now Twitter is offering to allow advertisers to spend more money than they budget by offering their own broad match. The Twitter blog tells us

Today, we're excited to share a significant improvement to keyword targeting on Twitter with the launch of broad match for keywords.

Twitter users have conversations about topics in a number of different ways, and the same intent can be expressed by using synonyms, different spellings, or Twitter-specific lingo. Broad match makes it easier for advertisers to reach users having these conversations by automatically expanding their targeted keywords to include related terms.

If you need a picture, we got that.

The end game here is that this platform needed to be put in place ahead of the IPO to show that there is progress being made in generating revenue.

Are

AdSense Offers 434,216 New Ad Unit Sizes

Posted: 12 Dec 2013 03:00 AM PST

AdSense has introduced the next step in responsive ads which is customer ad sizes.

A post on he AdSense blog tells us

Today, we're happy to announce the launch of 434,216 new ad unit sizes! Or in other words, we've just made it possible to create custom ad sizes to give you more flexibility and enable you to better design your content for your users.

Custom sized ads behave just like their standard size counterparts, showing a text or display ad depending on which is likely to have the best performance for the impression.

For text ads, we'll determine the optimal number of text ads to display for a given impression, and show the ads the same way they appear inside standard sizes. Our system predicts the value of each competing ad for every impression, based on historic performance and comparison across a variety of scenarios. For unique ad unit sizes, our system will need some time before it can optimize the number of ads shown.

This is how those text ads might look

The same is happening for display

To ensure that ads continue to deliver a positive user experience, we've put a few restrictions in place around maximum and minimum pixels for ad sizes. Any custom ad size that falls outside of the restrictions won't appear on a page. As always, all of your ads must adhere to the AdSense ad placement policies. Remember that users value your content, and that they appreciate a balance of content and ads, knowing that the ads support the content creator. Forcing too many ads into the users viewable screen is not likely to tempt them back to your site.

So many options. How are you going to respond?

New Pinterest iPad Update Encourages Speed Pinning and Sharing

Posted: 11 Dec 2013 01:01 PM PST

You know the old saying, you can never have too many pinned pictures of shoes on Pinterest. . . or something like that. . . .

Pinterest’s latest iPad upgrade is all about quantity over quality. Not saying this is a bad thing, I’m just telling you how it is.

The experience begins with a new interface that is modern and shiny. The bottom navigation buttons make it easy to switch between the home view, search and pinning pages. But the real secret is in the new pinning sidebar.

When you go to repin a photo from the site, the app automatically pops the left sidebar open with a list of your most recently used boards. Tap and you’re done. I repinned several images from my feed in 2 seconds. It’s so fast, you don’t even feel like you’re pinning. The upside for marketers is two-fold. On your end, you can now load your Pinterest boards with new content in a matter of minutes. On the other end, consumers are more likely to share more of your images because it’s so fast and easy.

For those who prefer to keep their fingers firmly planted on the screen, Pinterest has also added a slide instead of tap action.

Touch and hold anywhere on the page and you’ll get a wheel of circles. The options vary depending on where you are. If you’re on a board or an image close up that’s not your own, you get Pin It, Like, or Send. Send opens the sidebar so you can add a message and choose a recipient from Facebook or your iPad contacts.

If you perform the same touch and hold action on one of your own pins the options change to Pin It, Edit or Send. Pin It lets you add it to another board. Send is the same as above. Edit opens the sidebar so you can add or change the description field. You can also switch boards or delete from here but there doesn’t appear to be an option to change the URL. I found the edit tool to be clunky on the iPad but it will do for a fast fix.

Again, the whole point of this menu is to encourage quick pinning and sharing. You can plow through dozens of photos in your feed, liking and pinning with quick finger flicks and you never have to open or close a new page.

Sometimes when you touch and hold you get a light bulb icon which takes you to related pages. This is terrific for discovery but I couldn’t figure out how to make it work consistently.

Overall, this update should encourage shoppers to pin and share even more photos than ever. The only downside is that pinning isn’t buying. Personally, I think speed is your enemy if you’re trying to get consumers to convert. If brand recognition is your goal, then you’re good to go.

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3 Branded Videos Land in YouTube’s Top Trends for 2013

Posted: 11 Dec 2013 12:07 PM PST

The end is near! The end is near!

The end of the year, that is and it seems to be coming at us faster than usual. Our top lists of 2013 trends continues today with the always joyous celebration that is YouTube Rewind.

Every year YouTube puts together a video that pays homage to artists that made you click to play over and over and over again.

Animals were all the rage this year. We learned what the fox says and how they eat their food. We found out what those NFL guys are really saying when their mics are off and we watched soldiers shake their booty 95,426,415 times.

It’s all very amusing, but this is a marketing blog so we must pay special tribute to the three brands who made ads that were crazy enough to break through and land in the top ten.

Coming in at #5 is “Baby & Me” from Evian featuring the all new Evian Babies. We talked about this video a few days ago because it also made Bing’s list of most searched video ads for 2013.

The Volvo Truck ad featuring Van Damme didn’t make Bing’s list but it came in at #6 on the YouTube trend list. The video is called “The Epic Split feat. Van Damme” and it is totally epic.

The only other branded video on the list comes in at #8. It’s an ad for the movie Carrie called “Telekinetic Coffee Shop Surprise.” This over-sized prank video has a coffee shop full of customers believing that an angry young woman is destroying the place with her supernatural powers. More than 50,572,000 people have clicked to watch the unsuspecting citizens flea in terror. So not nice.

Now it’s time for your feature presenation. Here’s Kid President, Ryan Higa, Jimmy Kimmel, Cookie Monster, Bethany Mota, the Prancercise lady, The Slow Mo Guys and a cast of dozens in “YouTube Rewind: What Does 2013 Say?”

For the full list of Top Trending Videos in 2013, check out this post on the YouTube Blog.

What was your favorite, have to watch it over and over and share it with everyone I know, video for 2013?

Photos Now in Twitter Direct Messages

Posted: 11 Dec 2013 08:17 AM PST

Let’s face it. Life will never be the same.

Twitter is now letting pictures in direct messages. What else is there to say. It’s simply amazing and I know most of us will never be the same.

Too much? Sorry. Despite my over the top ‘reaction’ Twitter has really gone and done this as well letting users swipe between timelines. I am getting goose bumps.

From the Twitter blog

For the first time, you can share and view photos via direct message (DM) on your mobile phone. We've also introduced a new tab in the navigation bar that makes it easy to access DMs –– they're just one tap away from wherever you are on Twitter. You can also view photos in DMs on twitter.com.

It looks like this