A multi-screen world poses a great challenge to developers creating a consistent experience for consumers. It is equally hard for marketers to track the effectiveness of their advertisement campaigns. With the Analytics 360 Suite, Google hopes to provide an enterprise-class solution that integrates several data and marketing analytics products.
BlackBerry already made the PRIV official last month, and then followed up with some of the first official images of the device posted to its blog. Not much of what the company has said up to this point though has been new, though. Even the official images it published a couple weeks ago were pretty much the same as the ones we saw four months ago.
And this new video follows in the same vein as that theme. We’ve already seen an in-depth hands-on video with the phone, we’ve seen its specs leaked what feels like a dozen times, pre-registration for the phone opened up a couple of days ago, and just earlier today pre-orders for the phone went live in the UK. I guess it’s just a pretty marketing clip…
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Google has a lot of data on how different decisions made throughout the creation of an AdWords display marketing campaign can lead to a lot of different end results. Now it wants to use that insight to help marketers make the right decisions to reach their objectives, be it a transaction or even just an engagement with their website, and has created a step-by-step solution to do just that.
The new tool for display ads, live now in AdWords, takes marketers through the whole ad campaign creation process based on what they want to result to be. For example, someone who just wants people to visit their website may not realize that they can pay just for each click they get, rather than every single impression. Someone who wants to optimize for the amount of times their advertisement is simply seen, though, will probably want to pay for viewable impressions, or those ad placements guaranteed to be visible on the page (i.e. not needing the user to scroll to see them). Using the new setup flow, advertisers can also input their website URL and have Google choose keywords they may want their ad to appear against in search results.
There are a lot of small decisions like these that advertisers have to consider when creating a new campaign, and a lot of ways to make a mistake that impacts the results. So this new tool simply makes it a lot easier to not mess up. It’s important for Google, too, because a low return on investment for an advertiser is a negative experience that may lead them to not using AdWords again.
Google AdWords, the online advertising service that allows marketers to purchase advertising across multiple platforms and formats (i.e. images, video), has a neat new addition which recognizes that more people are connecting to the Internet from more devices.
Estimated Total Conversions, a larger tool which tracks ad clicks that lead to a conversion (i.e. a sale), can now track the number of display advertisement clicks that occur in a browser and end as a sale in an app, or vice versa. This also works cross-device when the converting customer has at any point logged into their Google account from both devices.
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Around the time of the launch of the Nexus 6 and Nexus 9, Google revamped its marketing for Android with the new tagline “Be together. Not the same,” uploading to YouTube a handful of heart-tugging videos featuring a slew of different animal pairs playing together and being friends. These ads were meant as a real-world analogous to how Google sees its Android operating system today, in 2015: one operating system that can power a bevy of different devices in different environments and use-cases. Not just phones with different screen sizes but also watches, TVs, and cars, to name the primary ones. With so much choice, Google has launched a new website which, based on user input, helps narrow down which phones might be right for different people.
While Google’s ad business is definitely in a transition phase, largely due to the shift away from personal computers towards mobile handsets, Google’s Senior Vice President of Ads & Commerce Sridhar Ramaswamy says that the company is handling this move well. Selling ads to advertisers may be harder with more of those ads ending up on mobile devices with smaller screens than notebooks and desktops, meaning more difficulty for customers to complete purchases, but Google is definitely taking steps toward slowing the rapid decline in ad prices.
According to a recent report from The Wall Street Journal, while Google is making several moves to make advertising more valuable, the market’s more recent move to larger-screened devices has helped significantly…
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Nestle announced in a press release today that it is partnering with YouTube for a limited edition version of KitKat. No, that’s not Android 4.4 KitKat, but rather the popular candy bar. As part of the partnership, Nestle will produce over 600,000 limited edition KitKat wrappers with the branding “YouTube Break.” Nestle says this is the biggest change in package design for KitKat since its inception 80 years ago.
Google this evening has uploaded six new Android ads to its YouTube channel. The ads all follow the same “Be together, not the same” marketing campaign that the company introduced a few months ago and had its partners heavily promote at CES 2015.
Microsoft’s sleazy and highly publicized Scroogled ad campaign has been its primary marketing effort against Google for two years now, but it appears that the program is finally dead. Speculation began to arise last year that Microsoft was slowly killing the controversial ad campaign after corporate restructuring.
Today, Winbeta noticed that the Scroogled website is no longer live, and instead redirects to a new “Why Microsoft” page. The Scroogled page had been live up until very recently, but without much publicity from Microsoft. The death of the Scroogled webpage also comes with no comment from Microsoft, who appears to want to act like it never happened in the first place.
As Lenovo’s acquisition of Motorola nears closing, today Motorola shared some updates on changes to its leadership. Announced in its press release is a promotion for Charlie Tritschler to Senior Vice Present of Product Management overseeing product development on all the company’s products. Tritschler joined Motorola in March of 2013 from Amazon’s Kindle team. Motorola notes that “Charlie has been one of the leading forces behind Moto G and Moto E.”
The company also announced it’s adding regional sales heads as three new members of its senior leadership team and also making Adrienne Hayes the SVP of Marketing and Communications of a new marketing and communications team responsible for the company’s brand and advertising worldwide.
These changes ensure that our leadership team accurately reflects our priorities and organization structure, and put us in the best possible position to continue growing our success. Congratulations to all the leaders in new roles, and my thanks to everyone who helped bring us this far.
Missing from Motorola’s new executives page is Bill Morgan who was previously the company’s Senior Vice President of Marketing overseeing the brand, advertising, and communications role that now seems to be filled by Adrienne.
A report earlier this week claimed Google and Motorola are beginning work on a 5.9-inch Nexus device codenamed Shamu as Motorola transitions to its new home at Lenovo.
Google’s Glass division may be losing its lead engineer, but the company announced today that it had hired former Gap and Old Navy marketing chief Ivy Ross to head up the division. Ross will start her new position on May 19th.
Aside from Gap and Old Navy, Ross has also served as Chief Creative Officer for The Disney Store, headed up worldwide product design at Mattel, and, worked as Vice President of Design and Development for Outlook Eyewear at Bausch & Lomb. That last position is perhaps the most relevant to her selection as the new head of Glass.
When it comes to tech on the web, Google is typically a trendsetter, but even the most revolutionary companies miss a beat every now and then. Perhaps in an effort to get with the times, the software giant has announced some new designs for its text-based web ads. Recognizing that people are browsing the web across multiple devices, Google has adopted a new font and color scheme that should make its text ads easier to digest. These ads now default to a blue and grey layout with a Roboto font. Google is also aware that some people only visit the internet from mobile devices, so with finger tapping in mind, the company has resized its call-to-action button, making it user-friendly. While these new additions won’t likely stop abrasive advertisers from going too far, it does make some ads easier on the eyes and that’s a good thing, right?
Earlier this month, a report emerged claiming that Samsung and Jay-Z were on the verge of signing a marketing deal worth upwards of $20 million, and now Samsung has confirmed the deal. The company has just sent out a mysterious email to the press inviting us all to tune into game 5 of the NBA Finals on Sunday. It looks like the deal has to do with music, which you’d expect from a Jay-Z partnership, as the promo image tells us to “turn up the volume.”
Game 5 kicks off at 8PM EST on ABC, but Samsung teases it will take over at 9:15PM EST. We’ll be sure to let you know what they have in store.
Google just acquired coupon firm and platform Incentive Targeting.
The deal closed for an unknown amount at this time, but 9to5Google contacted Google for a comment, as the last unconfirmed —and false—acquisition created quite a stir in the tech blogosphere, and will update accordingly.
TechCrunch first noted that Mike Dudas, Google’s emerging business lead for mobile commerce, confirmed the news today via a Tweet on Twitter, and he further revealed the buyout will “power highly targeted manufacturer and private label coupon programs.”
Update: A Google spokesperson just confirmed the acquisition to 9to5Google:
“We look forward to working with Incentive Targeting in our ongoing efforts to help consumers save time and money and enable retailers deliver relevant discounts to the right customers.”
The full press release posted to Incentive Targeting’s website is below.
Samsung let New Yorkers experience the all-new Galaxy S III at a release event in Manhattan earlier this week, but it seemed the company’s primary goal was to announce a fresh, cutting-edge marketing campaign for its latest Android offering.
“We are launching the biggest marketing campaign in Samsung’s history,” bragged Chief Marking Officer Tom Pendleton.
He then discussed “never been done before” executions for the S III strategy, including 50 kiosks and 40,000 interactive posters that will surface around the country over the next few weeks. They will serve as stations for S III users to download free music, eBooks, and other content directly to their smartphones via Near Field Communications.
9to5Google already spotted two of Samsung’s interactive posters. The first ad is located in New York City’s Lower East Side and offers a free Goodie Mob and CeeLo Green song (as seen in the picture above).
The second ad is live at Port Authority in Manhattan. It is a giant screen, which is the size of a wall, and it shows dozens of Samsung Galaxy S IIIs rotating in air. Upon touching the screen, the display transitions to a different scene with three big Galaxy S III selections. Each option features downloadable content. A huge crowd surrounded the interactive poster, so it was hard to get a close look or take a picture.
Samsung is clearly taking interactive and marketing to a completely new level this summer; it even plans to run a 3D advertisement before blockbusters in 55 theaters across the United States. The ad is actually a Kinect-like game that detects audience movements as each viewer works together, waving their hands in the air, to control a large S III on the cinema’s screen.
Leaked slides from a confidential deck show Google+ may soon feature Google Analytics integration.
Dutch website Dutchcowboys found the entire deck with screens showcasing the combined services. According to the slides, users will soon have access to total number of visits with percentage of new visits, page views, average time spent on the site, and the bounce rate for their Google+ pages.
Google+ is a social network operated by Google Inc., and Google Analytics is a free service that generates detailed statistics about the visitors to a website. There is currently no way to measure or view Google+ activity other than self-analyzing +1 social engagement.
Samsung confirmed plans to launch its Galaxy Note phone in the United States come Feb. 5 with an aggressive marketing push. The South Korean conglomerate will spare no expense promoting the 5.3-inch device that features a stylus, as it will take advantage of the nation’s most valuable ad space during the Super Bowl XLVI finals. To our overseas readers, Super Bowl is the largest sporting event in the United States.
The 90-second Galaxy Note Super Bowl commercial will air during the fourth quarter of the big game on Sunday, Feb. 5. Pre-orders for the Note begin the same day, Samsung confirmed. As we learned yesterday, the Note will also be available at AT&T and Best Buy Stores beginning Feb. 19, with pre-orders at those outlets also starting Feb. 5.
The commercial, which will also feature HD shots made on the Note, marks Samsung’s Super Bowl debut, as the company never bought a Super Bowl ad slot in its 71-year history. The advert is directed by Bobby Farrelly of the “There’s Something About Mary,” “Dumb and Dumber” and “Kingpin” fame. The announcement also marks a continuation of Samsung’s aggressive marketing push…
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUtmOApIslE]
Kinda neat. The voiceover quotes French writer François-Marie Arouet Voltaire.
The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbors, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes property of all.
And then, Amazon adds its own cheesy part: From Kindle, the Fire is born. Talk about pun intended.
The new Kindle Fire tablet costs $199 and ships November 15.
Also, amazon.com/kindlefire.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMULBXflsWc]
While the new Kindle Fire tablet failed to impress folks who were hoping for an iPad killer, the $79 regular Kindle has gotten us excited because this thing is now within grasp of an average consumer and if history is an indication, sales should grow at an exponential rate. Conveniently, Amazon has a new television commercial to push the $79 Kindle into mainstream. Clearly they want you to view the device as the perfect holiday gift. The new inexpensive Kindle is available today. Its touch-based counterpart named the Kindle Touch is arriving in time for Thanksgiving, priced at $99/$149 for WiFi/3G variant.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyJIbTVEkp8]
Samsung is showing no signs of downplaying their tablet marketing amid the ugly patent spat with Apple. On Thursday the company aired a trio of new adverts that pitch its Galaxy Tab tablet as being “thinner”, “lighter” and “faster”, presumably compared to the market-leading iPad. The “Lighter” commercial brags about the Galaxy Tab weighing in “at a dainty 565 grams – as light and portable as they come“. iPad 2 weighs in at 601 grams.
The “Thinner” advert says their tablet “does what other tablets can only dream of”, underscoring “the sleek design you’ve come to expect of all Samsung Galaxy Tabs”. iPad 2’s profile measures 8.8mm versus 8.6mm for Samsung’s device. Interestingly, design is one of the treats Apple said Samsung “slavishly copied” from them.
The “Faster” commercial touts Galaxy Tab’s processors capable of “handling even the largest of video files with ease” and making “buffering a relic of the past”. Go past the fold to check out the remaining two Galaxy Tab commercials.
Color us blue (no pun intended), but this has got to be one of the best AT&T television commercials yet. Dubbed “Spider”, it sports the new Samsung Infuse 4G said to have colors “so real that it’s almost unreal”. Why “Spider”, you ask. Just watch…
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcr2uWkJkzI&w=670&h=411]
Notice how he simply grabs his shoe magically from under the table?
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQ48ZKAU2jw&w=670&h=411]
Just as Verizon Wireless announced Thursday launch of Sony Ericsson’s Xperia Play handset in the US, the New Zealand branch of the big red carrier tweeted Monday that the entire shipment headed to that country had been stolen.
Regret to advise the Xperia Play launch will be delayed. Major security breach. The shipment of phones has been stolen.
Turned out that was just a clumsy marketing gimmick that had cleverly exploited the whole Sony-versus-hackers brouhaha in an effort to drum up publicity ahead of the Xperia Play launch in New Zealand. To make the whole thing appear realistic, the carrier even released security footage, allegedly from the Vodafone store, seen above. They were “investigating” the theft, per this tweet:
Our fraud team are investigating the stolen Xperia Play phones and have released footage of the break-in. Can you help?
Needless to say, it opened a can of whoop ass…
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