PayPal partners with 15 retailers in big offline push
PayPal may already be ubiquitous on the web, but the payments giant has its sights set on much bigger fish offline.
In an effort to bring PayPal purchasing to the masses wherever they shop, the company yesterday announced pacts with 15 major retailers in the United States that will give consumers the ability to pay for their purchases using PayPal.
American Express teams up with Zynga for prepaid cards
In the market for farming supplies?
If you're looking for a new tractor or some seeds, American Express is hoping that you'll use one of its new prepaid cards to complete the purchase. On Farmville, of course.
Marketing is becoming the new R&D
Google’s Chief Economist Hal Varian coined the phrase “marketing is the new finance”.
Varian foresaw great advances in ways to satisfy people’s needs, better matches between buyers and sellers, and a more robust advertising environment due to the availability of vast quantifies of rich, real-time, highly available “big data.” His predictions today ring truer than ever.
Now, the information-rich environment enabled by the net is transforming marketing into something more. Specifically, marketing is becoming the new research and development (R&D).
Marketers now have immediate access to consumer behaviors and reactions across multiple channels and media. This empowers them to take a leadership role in determining consumer preferences, meeting customer needs, and helping match supply with demand. In other words, driving the business.
How healthy is your PPC account?
Whether you’ve been managing your PPC account for a while, just taken over a new account or even want to audit how your PPC agency is doing, it can be overwhelming to work out how well an account is performing.
Here at Confused.com we manage several different PPC accounts, and have compiled a list of reports you could run every month (just using AdWords) to check how ‘healthy’ your accounts are.
(I must thank 2 agencies we work with: NetBooster and Essence Digital for inspiring some of these for us!).
Content trends: six things everyone’s talking about
We're nearly halfway through 2012 and there are some clear content trends emerging.
Here are the top six hot issues we’re discussing with content owners…
Is Google selling leads in the UK?
Every so often a simple Google search reveals a hint at a new Google initiative.
In recent months we've seen various different types of ad extension formats and it seems that selling leads rather than clicks could be the next big push in Google's continuing search for revenue streams away from the simple click.
Peter Bell from Fuse Lead Marketing (@fuselead) recently alerted me to an interesting discovery which seems to have appeared over the last few weeks in the UK.
If you are signed into one of Google’s services (LeadPoint uses Google for email) you might stumble across a new type of ad extension in the top ranked ads – namely a way for the advertiser to capture your contact information and permission to contact you without clicking through.
The role of social media in financial services marketing
Today, LinkedIn launched its inaugural Financial Services Summit in New York which focused on the role social media is playing in the financial services industry. The first panel brought together representatives from American Express, Citi, Fidelity Investments, Prudential Retirement and Hearsay Social to talk about using social media in financial marketing.
It was curious to see a panel on social media where only two out of six individuals on the panel have Twitter accounts. One was Clara Shih, who runs the agency Hearsay Social, and the other, Frank Eliason, SVP of Social for Citi. The panelists' lack of Twitter accounts felt like a microcosm highlighting how most financial service organizations are behind in social media.
Square learns that customer service in the payments space is a tough job
Technology has disrupted a seemingly countless number of industries over the past decade, from advertising to real estate. When looking at the industries grappling with technology-driven change, however, arguably few have been more affected than the multi-trillion dollar payments space.
The advent of mobile phone, and the smartphone in particular, has created significant opportunities, many of which upstarts like Square are trying to exploit.
Is Google abusing its position with credit card comparison?
Google has announced that it is launching a price comparison service offering information on credit cards and bank accounts ahead of the natural search listings.
While Google’s price comparison service comes below the paid links, it includes images that make it more eye-catching than normal PPC ads.
This puts it in direct competition with high-spending advertisers such as moneysupermarket.com and comparethemarket.com.
This is not the first time Google has gone up against its advertisers. In December it began promoting its own hotel finder above paid links.
The mainstreaming of content marketing: ten implications
Let's face it, content marketing has gone mainstream. That kind of sucks, really, because it used to be a hugely powerful differentiator in most markets.
Soon it will just be the price of entry. Everyone will have a rich content library, so a new eBook or video won't be enough to make you jump out from that pack of pesky competitors.
So how will the world of digital marketing change when content marketing becomes the norm for everyone?
Here are ten predicions and what you can do about them...
