Greg Finn is the Director of Marketing for Cypress North, a company that provides world-class social media and search marketing services and web & application development. He has been in the Internet marketing industry for 10+ years and specializes in Digital Marketing. You can also find Greg on Twitter (@gregfinn) or LinkedIn.
One of the goofiest elements to Facebook advertising has finally been extinguished. A new campaign structure update that impacts all Facebook ad campaigns gives the newer “ad sets” the ability to feature targeting, placements and bidding. Earlier this year, Facebook announced the new “ad set” groupings which ended up disappointing due to its lack of flexibility. While […]
This week, Target has launched a goulishly great Instagram campaign that ties together Halloween, cooking and creativity. Full of holiday spirit, Target took to Instagram in a “choose your own adventure” format with a crafty payoff awaiting their followers. In the campaign, Target has been releasing fun Halloween illustrations full of pumpkins, gouls, monsters and […]
If you’ve looked at your Facebook feed recently, something new may be stuck to comments in your feed. That’s right, the massive stickers from Facebook messaging are now eligible to be posted as a comment on a user’s timeline, in a group post or in an event post. These big bold images come in different sets […]
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Comedian Billy Eichner of Funny of Die & Fuse TV fame should be quite flattered every time he catches the new Burger King commercials. Eichner popularized “drive by” interviews in his “Billy On The Street” segment that included yelling, fast-talking, screaming and celebrities. The commercial in question […]
The insanely popular temporary photo and video sharing network Snapchat is on the verge of monetizing the service according to CEO Evan Spiegel. Since turning down Facebook’s roughly $3 billion dollar offer, the social network has been valued near $10 billion dollars, but has yet to capitalize through advertising. According to the Wall Street Journal, […]
We knew that Facebook’s expanded ad network was in the works. Well, today Facebook’s “Audience Network” has arrived for more marketers worldwide. The Audience Network positions Facebook as a player in the mobile ad space and grow their earning reach outside of the Facebook interface and take a chunk out of the Google dominated display market. With […]
This summer, many Facebook users were appalled that the social networking behemoth had performed psychological research just a few years earlier. The research lead to formal complaints from the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and an outcry from users. The uproar didn’t go unnoticed as today Facebook has released a new framework for research that […]
Roughly one week ago, a few changes slid through the Facebook Power Editor Interface and into the hands of marketers. These changes included a better preview pane for News Feeds ads and a new bulk import option for specific ad targeting types. The changes that rolled out on September 4th should enable advertisers to use ads […]
A new iOS app is taking user activity and converting into another format. You may be thinking, this new format would be hardcore structured data, but you’d be wrong. Steven takes the user activity and converts into simple emojis. Users perform actions and based on their locations, their activities are updated in picture format. The […]
The highly popular self-service ad product from Twitter is continuing its global penetration. Geared toward small to medium sized businesses, self-serve ads are the quick route for advertisers without massive budgets to get involved. The new roll out feature 11 countries throughout Europe and Latin America, bringing the total number of active countries up to […]
Earlier this year, LinkedIn became the only American social network that has been able to penetrate China. While this has been considered a win, Bloomberg has released an article chronicling the challenges that LinkedIn has faced under such stringent censorship. Turns out that this stringent censorship is not only limited to China, but extends to […]
One of the slicker connection features that LinkedIn offered has been quietly discontinued. InMaps was a tool from LinkedIn that allowed users to better visualize their connections that they’ve made on the service. As of this week, InMaps will be retired as the following message is present on the main InMaps page: [blockquote]InMaps is being […]
Twitter users that are new to the service will be greeted by a brand new sign-up flow, the first change to the user experience in quite awhile. According to Twitter’s Senior Director of Product Management, Christian Oestlien, the refresh took months to complete and has been the first major update in 3 years: According to […]
After six years of service, LinkedIn Head of Product, Deep Nishar is stepping down from the business networking behemoth. Nishar made it to LinkedIn by way of Google and has recently joined a handful of boards including Auction.com. LinkedIn gave re/code the following statement on Nishar’s departure: [blockquote]After nearly six years at the company, Deep […]
Brands are about to get a big boost on Instagram. Today, Instagram announced a new suite of business tools that will give marketers mounds of important data and metrics including impressions, reach frequency and engagement. This suite has been beta tested for a few select advertisers, but will be rolling out to all advertisers now. […]
There’s no doubt that at one point Twitter had a spam problem. From hashtag jacking to auto-following spammers had their way with Twitter — until the spam killing system BotMaker was born. Upon launch of Twitter’s internal tool, the overall number of spam metrics dropped 40% from the pre-spam-terminator days. Late yesterday, Twitter released a […]
Twitter is continuing to tweak their interface for optimal performance, and this newest test isn’t well-received. A new test that is rolling out to select users treats friend’s actions as “newsworthy” showing in the feed and potentially sending the user a notification. Previously this information was contained to the Discover tab, but the notifications on […]
The current VP of Product Management and Harvard acquaintance of Mark Zukerberg will be leaving the company at the end of the month. Sam Lessin, previous founder of start-up drop.io, will be on his own and according to a Facebook update that he posted yesterday. According to the post, he’ll be spending more time kite-surfing, chasing […]
While more and more marketers are looking for solutions that bring both mobile and desktop campaigns together, it turns out investors are too. AdStage, an all-in-one ad management platform, announced today that they’ve secured $6.25 million in funding from Verizon Ventures, Digital Garage, Newbury Ventures, Freestyle Capital, Chris Noble and Neal Dempsey of Bay Partners. AdStage features […]
During the Q2 Earnings call last month, Twitter reported that 14% of users accessed the service via third party apps during the quarter. However, in a new SEC filling released yesterday, the company changed that number to 11% of users. This is an important metric as users that don’t use the official Twitter app, mobile […]
Twitter had a fantastic Q2 this year, with revenues up and monthly active users (MAUs) up 24% to a record of 271 million users. Yesterday however the social media giant disclosed the fact that 8.5% of MAUs were in fact accounts that aren’t updated manually.* These accounts use third party apps to push out Tweets […]
Even the big guys are susceptible to infiltration. Yahoo’s News Twitter account @YahooNews was compromised yesterday and the hackers were able to push out a fraudulent Tweet about a non-existent Ebola outbreak as shown above. Thankfully Yahoo was able to correct the issue in just a short matter of time and released the following Tweet: […]
Facebook page managers may notice an absence of stars when viewing their Facebook pages today. Those Pages without a physical address have lost their page ratings. According to Inside Facebook, the Pages without a defined location will no longer show rating stars to visitors. About the decision, Facebook chimed in: “We’re focused on ratings and […]
Communicating about a specific pin within Pinterest just got a whole lot easier thanks to a new feature from Pinterest. The new ‘messages’ service allows users to send pins to other users (even multiple users) for private conversations. To initiate, users can press down on a pin and click the send icon (the paper airplane) […]
Today, Foursquare users can upgrade to the highly anticipated new Foursquare App. As shown in the previous sneak previews, the new app features high style, and a streamlined look, that could finally make Foursquare a serious Yelp competitor. One of the elements that Foursquare is touting in the new app is the smart learning based […]
The era of social selling is upon us and LinkedIn’s taken note. In response to the varying needs of its users, LinkedIn is dividing their apps and segmenting each with various tools. The new Sales Navigator app is geared specifically towards sales folks, putting the most pertinent information at the fingertips of users. Updates can […]
The process for getting your site listed in Google News has been nothing short of a catastrophe over the past few years. Google News has been known to have vague quality standards and a submission process that left webmasters guessing. Thankfully, Google has released Google News Publisher Center that integrates with your Webmaster Tools account […]
How often do you see a hashtag then scroll through dozens of Tweets just to uncover the meaning? Well that may be coming to an end in the near future as the Wall Street Journal has uncovered a promising new Twitter test. In this test, a hashtag search in iOS showed not only the Tweets […]
Cue the Google+ is dead talk. Today Bloomberg reported that the photos service that’s been the biggest boon to Google+ may become independent from Google+. Google+ has the best photo functionality of any of the major social networks, hands down. According to the report, this move would allow for non-Google+ users to reap the rewards […]
On Tuesday Twitter flat out crushed expectations during their earnings call. While the big buzz was about ad revenues jumping 129%, there was some other interesting tidbits that came out about the overall audience. During the earnings call, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo stated that the overall number of monthly active users is 271 million, up 16 […]
The popular “visual organization for creative minds” app, Icebergs, has been capsized by Pinterest through a recent acquisition. The popular tool featured a variety of plans from free to paid that gave different levels of storage and collections (or Icebergs) that were stored in a cloud based format. Bad news is that the Icebergs service […]
Ever find yourself yearning for one of those extreme makeovers you see on TV? Unfortunately we can’t grant that wish, but you can see yourself looking better than ever in your LinkedIn profile on a mobile device. A whole new look has arrived on LinkedIn mobile that adds flair to profiles while bringing pertinent information […]
There are plenty of reasons why you shouldn’t be purchasing email lists for your marketing efforts, like the whole legality of it. Besides the Federal violation and potential fine, a recent study from email marketing provider, MailChimp showed that scraped, stolen, purchased or rented lists simply don’t work. Using data from their MailChimp’s anti-abuse system, graphs […]
Retargeting powerhouse AdRoll recently crunched data from their advertisers and uncovered some surprising findings on retargeting and Facebook. AdRoll supplies advertisers with options for retargeting across the web and FBX (Facebook Marketing Exchange) on the desktop and WCA (Custom Audiences from your Website) on mobile. The click and response results might not be what you’d […]
It’s pretty clear that Facebook is leading the way in digital ad targeting, and will for quite a while. While Google is struggling with mobile and socially-driven demographic/interest targeting, Facebook keeps on releasing the hits. The newest release is key for those marketers looking to promote plugins/extensions or specific programs/apps by OS. One of the […]
If you’ve ever registered a domain name, you’re likely acutely aware of the Domain Registry of America. The company is notorious for the incessant mailing of deceptive renewal letters that essentially trick users into renewing with the Domain Registry of America (DROA) (many times at a much higher price) instead of renewing with the company […]
While the synchronization between Twitter’s mobile apps and the web version has been a bit disjointed in the past, this soon may change. To date, there have been issues with the limitations on the history of DM’s on mobile as well as a disconnect with DM deletion and viewing between mobile and web. A new […]
As YouTube publishers specializing in commentating and reviewing have become ultra popular, the pressure to infiltrate with brand messaging has followed suit. Yesterday, Eurogamer released a dissertation on undisclosed advertorials on YouTube in the gaming industry. While there are set rules in the U.S. and Britain concerning endorsements, internationally the lines are more blurred. Due to […]
Fact: This year Twitter stock (TWTR) took a dive from nearly $70 a share down to just over $30 a share due in part to Q1 reports that the overall monthly users were slowing. According to Business Insider, Twitter has now begun shutting off data to companies that publish their own content on the size […]
While native advertising has been the hot topic over the past year, it turns out that this ad type may be leaving users feeling burned. Contently, a content creation company, took a deep dive into how native advertising is perceived by audiences. The short answer — not well. A survey was implemented between users 18-65 […]