How long should my YouTube ad be? It’s a question that every advertiser creating a video ad for YouTube has to consider.
Depending on your advertising goals you may have different opinions on the matter.
In this article we look at the results of a split test we recently carried out with one of our clients to find the optimal lenght for an ad when focusing on driving online conversions.
Organisations are more likely to integrate content marketing with their SEO strategy than they are with any other digital marketing discipline.
Nearly half (45%) of all companies say this area is ‘highly integrated’ with their SEO efforts, compared to just 24% for paid search marketing and 16% for mobile marketing.
These findings come from Econsultancy’s State of Search Marketing Report 2013, in association with SEMPO.
It’s easy to see why content marketing is so appealing, as it essentially gives your company something to talk about.
Instead of firing off the same boring press release to whichever journalists will listen to and parrot its dry copy, providing an audience with quality content means providing them with something they can engage with, share and ultimately do your own marketing for you.
Although your audience is only going to do that if your content is entertaining, useful or innovative.
Responsive design posts are always popular on the Econsultancy blog. That’s because people enjoy looking at beautiful things.
We’ve previously rounded up some of the best sites of 2013. We’ve also looked at the ins and outs of RWD and at some examples of responsive email.
I thought I’d add to our roundups and look at a brief selection of agencies with responsive sites.
Do have a play around with them by resizing your browser or accessing on mobile. There’s a few screenshots for each and you can click through from the desktop images.
Here’s the lastest stat: Pinterest’s Pin it button overtakes the Facebook Like on product pages. Another day, another report hammering a couple more nails into the Facebook coffin.
There’s a point where announcing the ‘death of Facebook’ feels more sensationalist than actual fact. Let’s take a glance at some of the most recent negative reports from the last couple of weeks.
Pinterest overtakes Facebook for UK referral revenue, this comes from Adobe’s own social intelligence report from Q4 2013.
Facebook remains top for social referral traffic globally, states the Q4 2013 Shareaholic report in a more positive tone, however according to Adobe, Pinterest is quickly catching up and is likely to overtake Facebook for referral revenue in the USA this year.
The level of active Facebook usage fell by 3% in the second half of 2013, states the latest GWI social report, with the gap between Facebook and it rivals narrowing year-on year.
These are just the three reports we’ve covered on the blog so far, each with their own tang of negativity. Please feel free to scour the internet for further pessimistic reading.
8th Bridge has joined doomsayers with its Social Commerce IQ Retail 2013 report, in which 872 brands are analysed for their effective use of social commerce. The results are mixed for Facebook. This is where the opening Pinterest Pin it stat derives.
The box, the tube, the telly, the television. Are any of us sure the set is set to evolve?
The television is one of those unifying pleasures and most people are already happy with the experience of watching it.
Additionally, advertisers still think of television as the big hitting ad medium, rightly or wrongly.
So, if it’s not broken, why fix it? Or is that the kind of reasoning that stymies innovation?
I think it’s fairly obvious that although we can choose to think of television as a constant, it has changed significantly since it went digital. FreeView in the UK, TiVo, Sky+, on-demand services like iPlayer and Netflix, Apple TV and Chromecast, the impact of Twitter and social TV, Roku, there have been many developments.
But what’s next? Here I’ve tried to sum up some of the innovations for advertisers and viewers I’ve seen in the last few months. See what you think..
Love for debate and disagreement could be described as one of the factors contributing to the success of social media.
Looking to harness this love for reasoned discussion, Bothsider is a nascent network that allows users to ask questions, agree or disagree with other users and explain why.
Starting a social network and getting ‘traction’ must be difficult with so many players having come and gone, and big hitters still dominating audiences.
So I caught up with Mark Gavagan, Founder, to ask him a few questions.
Baidu is often referred to as the Chinese Google, and while its respective dominance in its market is similar to Google’s, this can lead to the misconception that the two search engines differ only in name and region.
This is of course not the case. Baidu is a completely different search engine to Google, with different values and ranking factors.
Read on to find out my seven on-page tips for Baidu SEO, or for more information on this topic download Econsultancy’s Baidu Search Best Practice Guide.
Tablets, what are they good for? Primarily shopping and entertainment, according to a new study into how consumers use their devices.
It found that two-thirds of US and UK tablet owners use their tablet for researching product information before buying online (66%), making it the most popular consumer activity.
This was closely followed by watching videos/browsing photos and checking prices or store information (both 63%).
The research by Usablenet confirms much of what we already know about tablets in that the devices are mainly used during ‘lean back’ leisure time in the home.
It’s a provocative question and heaven knows we all love one of those.
There are a lot of contradictory opinions out there surrounding the term ‘blue links’ and how many are to be found on your average search engine results pages (SERPs).
While many proclaim the death of ’10 blue links’, other experts suggest their own research confirms otherwise.
Search is an ever evolving, constantly tinkered with playground that is almost impossible to ‘game’ in the long-term and second-guess in the short-term.
As a producer of content myself, I’ve always believed that SEO best practice lies in the quality of the content itself. Creating entertaining, useful, relevant or engaging content is the number one approach and any ‘wins’ your content may achieve in appearing in organic search listings are a well earned result.
Of course I sound naïve here and I’m fully aware that good SEO involves more than just that, especially if organic search listings on the first SERP are becoming less visible.
Let’s take a look at the current state of play for organic search and ’10 blue links’.
Earlier this year, I was surprised to find this post on Indoor Google Maps was quite popular.
Maybe it was because lots of people weren’t aware of Indoor Google Maps. Maybe it was because we’re all quite nosy, fans of MTV Cribs and the old British favourite, Changing Rooms.
Well, I thought I’d collect some of the coolest examples of Google Business Photos, the indoor equivalent of Google Street View.
These are the weirdest, most wonderful and beautiful 360 degree interactive tours. They appear in Google searches, Google Maps, and Google+ Local.
Anyone can use Google Business Photos (and be successful with them) apart from legal establishments and museums (this imagery is supported through Google Art Project). Admittedly a few of my examples aren’t businesses.
Econsultancy London even got involved (though we’ve recently upped sticks).
So heck, why travel, why leave the house when you can experience all this from your desktop? Enjoy!
Google Seller Ratings are a proven and easy way of increasing traffic to your site and thus multiplying sales.
Think of them as your star salesperson, who regularly tempts in new customers.
M&S and Tesco have the best mobile websites among the UK’s top 10 retailers, according to a new report.
The Foresee benchmark compares customer satisfaction scores achieved by the top online retailers in a survey carried out in November 2013.
One of the most interesting findings is that customer satisfaction on mobile lags well behind that for desktop sites, with the top 10 mobile sites averaging a score of 73 on the 100-point scale compared with 77 on desktop.
According to Foresee poor customer satisfaction has a drastic effect on sales, with every one-point increase in satisfaction translating into a 10.6% growth in a retailer’s online revenues.