The Digital Marketing Industry: What You Need to Know

With platform changes occurring on a daily basis, it’s hard to stay up-to-date on the world of digital marketing. Massive amounts of news and content are produced every day, making it hard to sift through it all and find the really important information. So we’ve taken it upon ourselves to devour everything that has happened in the digital marketing industry over the past week, and here are the most important and interesting bits for easy digestion!

• Twitter Unveils Ad Carousel Featuring User Tweets

Twitter is testing out a new ad scheme that would allow brands to leverage both user tweets and their own through a carousel format – though brands will have to get permission from users to use their Tweets as ads. The Promoted Tweet Carousel will be a swipe-able ad unit that can include videos, images and text.

• Two tried and true methods to make social media impact SEO

While it is not a direct contributor to search engine algorithms, there are tangible benefits to social media that do provide SEO value. This article does a good job of summarizing the argument for social content as an SEO tactic, primarily:

1. Building your brand (increasing online footprint and aiding customer service)
2. Leveraging relationships through social media to further the reach of your content and get more people to create content for you/share your content – in other words – influencer management

• Apple gets into the SEM business with paid-search for app developers

At next week’s WWDC, Apple is reportedly unveiling paid-search ads for the App store (along with a new app-subscription revenue sharing model). Bloomberg first reported on the possibility of Apple rolling out an SEM product for the app store back in April, and the actual product launch will come this fall. According to the Apple website:

“Search Ads is an efficient and easy way for you to promote your app within the U.S. App Store search results, helping people discover or reengage with your app at the very moment they are searching for apps like yours. Designed to give users a safe search experience, Search Ads sets a new standard for delivering relevant ads while respecting user privacy.”

• Updates in the world of video!
  • Now you can leave a video as a Facebook Comment
  • Twitter adds support for videos in direct messages
  • Snapchat claims they can prove most users watch videos with the sound on (contrary to Facebook’s stance on audio in mobile video)

• Android “Nearby” uses beacons to push apps and sites relevant to user location

Last week, Google introduced a new feature for Android users called “Nearby.” It’s a location-based system for notifying Android smartphone owners of apps (and sites) that are potentially useful or relevant in real time based on where they are. Beyond letting users know of content or experiences that might be relevant or helpful, Nearby effectively is another app marketing/discovery tool and a way to help developers engage users. It’s also a way to get Android users to opt into location services and notifications. That, in turn, supports things like Store Visits data for Google AdWords.